Many people think that all Penguins live in Antarctica but they live in other places too. In fact penguins live on every continent in the Southern Hemisphere – that is the half of the planet that is below the equator. Penguins live in South America, Antarctica, South Africa, Southern Australia, New Zealand and the Galapagos islands.
Penguins live in large colonies. The size of these can vary between 100 pairs to many thousands in the group. The area where penguins come to mate, bring up chicks and nest is called a rookery.


The first European explorers ever to see penguins were the Portuguese. The Portuguese explorer – Vasco de Gama was the first person to report seeing penguins when he described seeing them along the South African coast in 1497.