Puffins

Alex Re (00:01): Hello, welcome to On Wildlife. I'm your host Alex Re. On this podcast, we bring the wild to you. We take you on a journey into the life of a different animal every week, and I guarantee you, you're going to come out of here knowing more about your favorite animal than you did before. The animal that I want to tell you about today is a bird that spends years of its life out on the open ocean. These adorable creatures have colorful beaks and they even have a cereal named after them. Don't mistake them for penguins though, so join me as we fly over the seas to talk about puffins.

(00:53): Puffins belong to the family Alsa day, which also includes birds like Mers and razor bills. Many people think that puffins are penguins, but this isn't true. They're in completely different families. Penguins belong to the family Ade. They're actually not even closely related at all and aren't even on the same branch of the family tree. There are four species of puffins, the Atlantic puffin, horned puffin, tufted puffin and rhinoceros alet, and each species differs from the other in physical characteristics and where they live. The Atlantic puffin, as its name infers, lives in the North Atlantic and is the smallest of the four species. They're distinguished from the other three by blue triangles at the base of their beak. The horned puffin gets its name from small horn like projections above its eyes. These look similar to the Atlantic puffin, but lack the blue on their beak.

(01:54): They inhabit the northern Pacific, mostly off the coast of Alaska and Asia. The tufted puffin is the largest of the four species and is easily distinguished by the long yellow tufts of feathers on their head. They inhabit the same areas as the horned puffin, and the last species was actually not thought to be a puffin at all. Hence their odd name. The rhinoceros Alet is easily identified as it looks nothing like the other three. It gets its name from the protrusion. It develops during the breeding season on its upper bill. They inhabit the same areas that horned and tufted puffins do. Puffins also have a few nicknames including the clowns of the ocean because of their colorful bills and facial markings and they're also called sea parrots or bottle noses. Some people began calling them puffins because their babies look like a huge puff of feathers.

(02:49): Puffins are a largely aquatic species of bird, as are all the members of Alsa Day. They possess both the ability to fly at great speeds and swim very efficiently. When they swim, they can use their wings as flippers and their webbed feet as rudders. They can dive up to 200 feet underwater to find food and they can stay underwater for about a minute. They can also fly at speeds of up to 55 miles per hour and flap their wings around 400 beats per minute. Because of their largely aquatic nature, they'll spend their entire winters at sea only returning to land in the spring and summer to breed. This means that they spend a lot of time in and around the water and their feathers are actually waterproof so that they don't get damaged. Puffins are very long lived animals with estimates putting them at average over 30 years.

(03:46): The oldest recorded puffin was 41 years old. Puffins are almost entirely ferous, meaning that they get the majority of their food from fish. They'll eat any fish between two and six inches in length, but their main prey are sand eels. They'll also eat spratt, caplin, herring. Hake and cod fish aren't the easiest to catch or hold onto though. That's why puffins have special spines on the inside of their beak and tongue that allow them to grip onto the fish that they catch. They'll catch multiple fish per dive holding them in their beaks until they're ready to eat or they return to shore. They usually hold around 10 fish per dive, but the current record is 62 fish in one dive and we've got a lot more interesting stuff to talk about right after the break. The science word that I want to talk to you about today is hydrolysis. This is the process that we use to break down large molecules into smaller ones using water. When we break the bonds, it makes energy that our cells can use.

(05:16): Puffins only come to land in order to breed, otherwise they remain far out at sea. They'll head on to land around April and stay until August, and after breeding is complete, they'll return back to the open ocean. During the breeding season, puffins will become extremely social birds and form colonies. That number in the millions, one colony of Atlantic puffins was found to have over 4 million individuals. While puffins will form these large groups, they are monogamous and will return to the same partner at the same breeding ground to the same borough year after year. Male puffins have a funny way of attracting females to mate with. Like many other bird species, male puffins have a mating dance where they'll try to impress the female. They'll flick their heads and bills around while grunting like a pig near a burrow or a potential burrow site. If a female decides that this male has won her affection, they'll solidify their bond by rubbing their bills together.

(06:19): The colors of their beaks also become much more vibrant during the breeding season and are dull the rest of the year. It's interesting that these birds will spend most of their lives out at sea, but will make burrows to live in. They prefer to make these burrows in hard to reach places like cliffs in order to avoid as much predation as possible. These burrows are around two to three feet in depth. They even have their own bathroom, which is just an offshoot off the edge of the tunnel. This is where the chick will go to the bathroom so it doesn't soil its feathers. In addition to flying and swimming, puffins are also relatively good at digging and use their bills to cut into the soil while shoveling out loose dirt behind them. While both sexes participate in this activity, the male does on average more digging than the female.

(07:12): Other males have been known to try and steal burrows from each other, and puffins are highly territorial when it comes to their homes. If a new male intrudes on an already inhabited burrow, he might be met with an open bill and ruffled feathers, and sometimes a full out fight will break out. When puffins open their beaks, it's called gaping, and the width that their beak is open at is indicative of how upset the puffin is. They'll also stomp their feet angrily to signal displeasure, and if there's a fight, individuals that are not engaged in the battle will surround the brawl like spectators and watch the action unfold. Puffins will not reach their breeding age until they're around five years old in captivity. They'll breed as early as three years old, though a pair of puffins will introduce one egg per year, which takes between 35 and 45 days to incubate, and the parents share their duties of raising the young.

(08:13): Once the egg hatches, a puffing is born and the chicks literally look like a ball of fluff, and once the chick leaves the nest, it'll stay out in the open ocean for two to three years without coming back to land. Another reason that puffins are so interesting is because their social structure changes drastically at different parts of the year. As I stated earlier, puffins become hyper social when it comes time to breed, but during the winter when they return to the sea, they're pretty much solitary and will usually only hang around a few other individuals. They also interact in interesting ways. When they do come together in large flocks, they have a way of showing respect to other individuals that seems oddly human. New arrivals to the colony will greet the group by bowing to them. They'll also walk around horizontally to signal non-aggression to their fellow colony members.

(09:12): Puffins who are in the colony that are not breeding known as non breeders will flock together and fly in a figure eight pattern for hours on end, and they mainly communicate their intentions through body language. When a puffin wants to demonstrate a non-aggressive attitude, it'll walk through the colony very quickly with its head lowered effectively saying that it doesn't want any trouble. When it wants to demonstrate an aggressive attitude, it'll assume what's called a pelican walk, where it'll stand upright and stiff making large struts. This posture is assumed by puffins guarding a burrow or a challenger, and unlike most birds, they make growling noises that have been described as muffled chainsaw sounds. Okay, time for our last break, and when we get back we'll talk about why puffins are so important to the ecosystems that they live in time. For our trivia question, which animal has the most powerful bite in the animal kingdom? The answer is salt water crocodile, which has a bite force of 3,700 pounds per square inch.

(10:53): Puffins are extremely important components of the ecosystems that they inhabit and for us too. First of all, they're indicator species. For scientists that can tell us the health of an ecosystem, if there are puffins around then the area is typically a healthy ocean environment. There are also major indicators of the health of fish populations because of the sheer amount of fish that they need to bring ashore to support their offspring. If overfishing in an area is very high or fish populations are low, then puffins will not nest there. Due to where puffins nest, there are not many animals that can prey on them. However, there are a few A puffins. Most prominent predator is a bird known as the great black backed goal. This goal singles out vulnerable puffins and dive bombs them snatching them out of midair. They also have to worry about klepto parasites.

(11:51): A klepto parasite is an animal that steals food from other animals as its primary form of foraging. Herring goals are the most prominent klepto parasite. The puffins will face these goals will steal whole mouthfuls of fish from them, and they'll also rob puff and nests of their eggs, and even the baby chicks. Puffins don't really have a good way to defend themselves against these birds, so they're important to all of these predatory animals, but they also help to control fish populations so that one species doesn't. Overpopulate. Humans are also a major predator and an influence on puffins. In the past, puffins have been severely affected by both overhunting and overfishing. Overfishing can be very detrimental to puffin populations as they rely heavily on fish populations to raise their young. Also, specifically in Maine, puffins have been hunted ferociously for their feathers and their meat. This has almost made the puffins go extinct in that area.

(12:55): Humans have also introduced invasive species that have harmed puffin populations because they have no defense against them. They specifically choose to breed on isolated islands in order to avoid as much predation as possible. But humans have introduced mammals like foxes and rats to these islands. These mammals will raid puffin nests, and since they have no natural defenses against them, they're helpless. Human disasters like oil spills are also destructive to their lives. When oil gets in the water, they'll destroy the waterproofing on puffins feathers, leaving them vulnerable to cold and water exposure. Puffins can also get sick when they try to clean the oil off their feathers. Because of this, puffins are currently listed as vulnerable by the I U C N red list. While human activity is detrimental to puffins across the board, there are many things that people are doing currently to try and help puffin populations.

(13:56): There's a project known as Project Puffin that's focused on returning the populations of Maine puffins back to their former glory. In order to help out these awesome birds, definitely go check out Project Puffin, save Puffins and the Marine Conservation Alliance. Thank you so much for coming on this adventure with me. As we explore the world of puffins, you can find the sources that we use for this podcast and links to organizations that we reference at onwildlife.org. You can also email us with any questions at On Wildlife dot podcast@gmail.com, and you can follow us on Instagram at On Wildlife or on TikTok at onwildlife. And don't forget to tune in next Wednesday for another awesome episode, and that's On Wildlife.

Jess Avellino (14:53): You've Been listening to On Wildlife with Alex Re. On Wildlife provides general educational information on various topics as a public service, which should not be construed as professional financial, real estate tax, or legal advice. These are our personal opinions only. Please refer to our full disclaimer policy on our website for full details.