New Zealand, just before sunrise, and a golden-eyed penguin peeks out of the forest. In Asahiyama Zoo, Hokkaido, thousands of visitors line up to watch the daily penguin parade. Hundreds of cruise ships set off every summer to take tourists on penguin-spotting expeditions in the Antarctic. Penguins take starring roles in media, from Misha in Andrey Kurkov's Death and the Penguin to the villainous modelling-clay penguin of the Wallace and Gromit films. They are the world's favourite flightless bird - but what effect is our world having on them? Since their first contact with humans, penguins have been exploited: slaughtered and eaten by Polar explorers, rendered down into oil in their thousands by an enterprising New Zealand businessman in the 1800s and shipped off to zoos around the world in the 19th century - where not a few of them died of sunstroke. And yet all of this bloodshed pales in comparison to the potential damage of climate change and habitat destruction, which may cause the extinction of penguins before the close of the 21st century. Marcel Haenen has written a comprehensive history of the penguin which is also a bittersweet love letter, outlining both the cultural pull of the penguin and its heartbreaking vulnerability.
