What do you call...

"What do you call a penguin in the desert?" was the question put to me, both casually and airily by the wrapped up chocolate biscuit. The answer I recieved produced puzzlement, shock and dismay to my mind. For a penguin in a desert is not "Lost." but very much at home!

When we think of penguins and where their habitats are, we are naturally drawn to think of Antartica; as shown here with regards to Kev O'Donnell and the BBC:

But that isn't the only place they naturally occupy on Earth. (I'm not thinking of zoos here!) They can also be found, somewhere you may not expect, the Atacama desert in Chile, with thanks to New Zealand Penguins:

It's hiding out of the sun under the rocks on the right of the picture, bless it! There are also other penguin populations across South America and also in some parts of Africa and in the Galapogas archipeligo, though all are restricted to the Southern Hemisphere. Have there ever been any in the Northern hemisphere? We'd have to look for fossil evidence, but it does appear the equator(being too warm) is acting as geographical boundary to penguin spread, though other factors such as human interaction and ocean currents may alos be at work.

What also remains to be said is that both the pictures of penguins above are taken in deserts!! As a desert by definition is an area or region that recieves little to no precipitation and is moisture deficient, this includes both hot sandy deserts like the Sahara as well as the wide, cold, desolate ice sheets of Antartica.

To conclude, a penguin in a desert is not necessarily lost, though a penguin in the N. Hemisphere would be...and a penguin finding it's way into a dessert even more so!