All About Atlantic Puffins
The Atlantic Puffin is an extremely interesting animal. If you can imagine a penguin, an Atlantic Puffin looks very much alike. It has orange webbed feet and a black and white body. It has a colorful beak including orange, black, yellow, and white. Unlike a penguin, a Puffin can fly, but not too fast. A penguin and Atlantic Puffin are often mistaken as each other in the wilderness.
It has many innate behaviors. An innate behavior is something that comes naturally to an animal; it is inherited through its genes. An example of a human’s innate behavior might be a baby being born with the hiccups or crying. The baby gets these because inside the mother, air is practically “fed” to them, but in our world it would be the first time for him/ her to do this. They might be scared.
Some of an Atlantic Puffin’s innate behaviors could be swimming, breathing, and eating. Although swimming doesn’t occur until the Puffin is a little older, when it does they know exactly how to do it. It just takes a whole bunch of practice. The Puffin is abandoned by its parents a few months after birth, so they don’t have an “instructor” to tell them how to swim.
An Atlantic Puffin also has some learned behaviors. A learned behavior is plainly something an animal learns from experience or even observation. It learns that flying isn’t too easy for it so the Atlantic Puffin flaps its wings so many times just to stay buoyant. It also learns how to use its rough tongue to keep fish in its mouth while swimming and catching more. The Atlantic Puffin can hold many fish in place and not let go of even one piece of food when it opens its mouth for more fish, swims, flies to land, and keeps predators from eating its prey. It is difficult, but a whole lot easier with its beak and rough tongue.
The Puffin has survival behaviors as well. A survival behavior is simply something an animal does in order to survive in the wild. A survival behavior that the Atlantic Puffin has is being able to swim really fast away from its predators. It can also use it beak to peck at anyone who gets near him/her. It also hunts shelled fish and invertebrates.
The Atlantic Puffin also marks its territory. The colorful beaks of males attract female mates. The offspring tend to look nothing like the parents, unlike humans. On the way back to the nest, bigger kinds of birds often follow the Puffin and when he/she lands, they try to pry away some of the Puffin’s catch. The Atlantic Puffin then uses its defensive behavior, its beak and wings, to peck and injure the predator. It can then swiftly waddle away and use camouflage to hide itself. Marking territory is a very important behavior in surviving.
Courtship is equally as important as any other behavior. The Atlantic Puffin’s nest is often made of feathers, twigs, leaves, and much more. The nest is usually in a borough and near the end. This makes it harder for predators to fit in. If there is something wrong, such as a predator, the Atlantic Puffins will “talk” to each other. Courtship is actually really important.
Parenting is one of the most important behaviors in staying alive in the wild. First, the baby Puffin is born and the parent Puffins go to see one at a time to catch enough food for all three of them. Then, the parent Atlantic Puffins go off to sea when the season comes. The baby Puffin follows days later. The parent Puffins and baby Puffins never meet again.
The Atlantic Puffins have seasonal behaviors along with everything else. A seasonal behavior is when an animal does something different according to the season. During the winter the Atlantic Puffins don’t go on land. On the other hand, when it is summer they only go in the ocean for food and live on land. During that time, they give birth to little baby Atlantic Puffins. A Puffin is old enough to reproduce at about the age of five. Seasonal behaviors have a great impact on the daily life of a Puffin.
