One of my top priorities on our selfish trip was to see penguins in the wild. I did lots of research to determine whether we should see the penguins in Australia or wait until New Zealand. Since we were in Australia during the winter, we weren’t likely to see hoards of penguins ascending from the beach at dusk, which is more typical during the summer. I therefore opted to see the rarer yellow-eyed penguins in Dunedin.

These yellow-eyed penguin only exist in New Zealand, and there are only an estimated 3,000 left. These penguins are different from every other penguin in the world, because they are quite anti-social. They do not live in large colonies. In fact, each penguin has one long-term mate, and they can only mate when they do not see any other penguins. Other than mating and raising their offspring with one other penguin, they do everything individually. Hence, they go hunting alone and come up from the beach one by one.

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