English Don't Like Sex With Penguins

No sex please, we're Bwitish!

Times change. And so do our tolerances - thank god!
Accounts of penguins' unusual sexual activities (observed a century ago by one of Scott's polar team) are finally seeing the light of day.
Details including "sexual coercion", recorded by Dr George Levick, were considered so shocking that they were removed from official accounts! Now, scientists understand the biological reasons for the acts that Levick considered "depraved", and UK's Natural History Museum has published his papers unedited in the journal Polar Record. Brace yourself, Enid!

Lotsa sex please, we're penguins!

Levick was an avid biologist and the medical officer on Captain Scott's ill-fated South Pole expedition in 1910. A pioneer in the study of penguins, he was the first to stay for an entire breeding season with a colony. He recorded many details of the lives of Adelie penguins, but some of their activities were just too much for his Edwardian sensibilities.

Too much penguin sex is
melting the Antarctic icecap

He was shocked by what he described as the "depraved" sexual acts of "hooligan" males mating with dead females. Back then, they simply did not have the scientific knowledge to explain what he termed "necrophilia". He was so distressed that he wrote about the "perverted" activities in Greek!
Douglas Russell, curator at the Natural History Museum: "It's full of accounts of sexual coercion, sexual and physical abuse of chicks, non-procreative sex, and finishes with an account of what he considers homosexual behaviour. Fascinating!"
Only two of the original 100 copies of Dr Levick's account survive.