Revealed: The horrific sexual depravity of 'hooligan' penguins

Necrophilia, rape, and murder — George Levick's 100-year-old observations on Adélie penguin culture are just now seeing print, and shocking readers

An Adelie penguin
(Image credit: Michel Setboun/Getty Images)

Humans tend to view penguins — who walk upright and appear dressed for a formal dinner party — as adorable, even genteel, little avian half-cousins. No wonder British doctor and naturalist George Murray Levick was appalled to discover "astonishing depravity" among the Adélie penguin population 100 years ago in Antarctica, where he was part of famed explorer Capt. Robert Scott's 1910-1913 Terra Nova expedition. A hundred years after Levick studied the raw, violent sex lives of Adélie penguins, his notes have finally been published, in the Cambridge University journal Polar Record. Here, a look at what Levick found, and why it scandalized him so:

What is Levick's story?

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