Mr H.J.van der Merwe - alias 'Van the Penguin Man'

Penguins: Common name for flightless, aquatic birds of the Southern Hernisphere. The name penguin originally was applied to the now extinct Great Auk of the North Atlantic, a large flightless black and white bird with an upright stance. Similar flightless birds were discovered subsequently in the Southern Hemisphere and they were also called penguins, a name that is now restricted exclusively to these birds....

Penguins form a truly unique bird family, comprising 6 genera and a total of 17 species found only in the Southern hemisphere.

They are flightless, due to the fact that their ancestors lost their ability to fly as long as 100 million years ago. Their fossil record indicates that they were already well established over the greater part of their present range, some more than 50 million years ago. Some of these prehistoric penguins stood taller than l.5m and must have had a mass of about 100kg. The transformation of their wings to flippers was an evolutionaiy adaptation to a way of life intimate with the sea and dependent on marine environment.