A video of two male penguins fighting over a mate has been circulating around the internet recently. The video was from the National Geographic channel's program that features wildlife and natural history, Nat Geo Wild. The two male penguins exchanged blows with each other, using their flippers and beaks, until the two birds are covered with bloody wounds. "They use them [their wings] like baseball bats to club each other, delivering up to eight blows a second," said the narrator.
According to BBC, the video shows a violent confrontation between two male penguins, after one penguin returned back to shore after catching fish, to find his mate with another penguin inside their nest. "He flips out, his strategy is simple - batter the home wrecker until he flees" says the narrator of the video.
At the final part of the video, the badly wounded husband calls out a final plea to his mate. "But she's got no time for losers. Defeated and humiliated he's left out in the cold," said the narrator, as the mate returns back to its nest with the home wrecker.
According to National Geographic, penguins are known to be faithful to their mates, with 72 percent of the birds return to mate with the same bird that they were with during the previous year. The two birds return to the same nest site where the first hatchlings were laid. The mating period, which lasts for only three weeks, starts during late October, after which the birds will go their separate ways and hopefully return the following year.
Sometimes though, penguin separation is caused by either two factors. The first factor is if one of the pair dies. The second factor, which causes only 26 percent of separations, is due to female penguins offering themselves to bachelor penguins in order to get more rocks for their nests. Usually, the female penguins run away as soon as they get their rocks, without doing the mating ritual.
