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Explorers Scandalized by Penguins

100-year-old documents record reactions.

Don’t let their little tuxedos fool you—penguins are into some pretty kinky stuff. Or so scientists on a 1910 polar expedition led by Capt. Robert Falcon Scott thought. A recently released trove of documents show that one scientist thought the sexual habits of the flightless birds were “depraved,” recording in his notebook that male “hooligan” penguins mated with deceased females. George Murray Levick’s observations were kept out of the official record when published in Edwardian England. The newly revealed report also includes accounts of “non-procreative sex, and finishes with an account of what he considers homosexual behavior, and it was fascinating,” said Douglas Russell, a curator at the Natural History Museum.