Chasing Penguins: The Allure, the Obsession, and the Inconvenience

Penguins occupy a singular place in the popular imagination, a prominence that becomes especially pronounced during the festive season and winter months. They appear everywhere, commercially ubiquitous, from greetings cards and table decorations to toys and clothing, embodying a familiar blend of charm, whimsy, and anthropomorphic appeal.

Their chicks, in particular, possess a disarming visual perfection that can seem almost artificial, especially in the age of AI-slop. An abundance of softness, fluff, and symmetry makes them feel closer to illustration than to the natural world. “The power of their image rivals any creature on Earth,” writes Jamie Lafferty in An Inconvenience of Penguins, neatly capturing why penguins hold such an outsized grip on our collective imagination.

In this book, Lafferty, an award-winning travel writer and frequent contributor to ExplorEarth, invites readers along on his extraordinary quest to photograph all eighteen species of penguin. The result is both a hilarious memoir and a compelling journey across the southern hemisphere, one that ultimately ends with the realisation that he has himself become a “twitcher”.

These are the box-ticking militants of the global birding fraternity, for whom a tiny grey bird glimpsed at distance may provoke more excitement than a sweeping Emperor Penguin colony. Lafferty’s self-awareness and willingness to laugh at his own obsession are what give the narrative its sharpest edge.

As enjoyable a read as this book is, and it’s hands-down my favourite non-fiction of 2025 (Sorry Rutger Bregman), it also raises deeper questions about the nature of human concern and, in some cases, obsession. Lafferty suggests that even well-intentioned protection can become problematic, especially when we begin to view penguins as our own children. He memorably describes them as resembling “toddlers emerging from the ocean”, a phrase that perfectly captures our tendency to project human vulnerability onto wildlife.

Pokémon-esque in its approach, An Inconvenience of Penguins is as much about the hunt as it is the hunted. The quest for the ‘Small 18’ opens out into a wider exploration of twitching itself, a hobby which, after reading this book, might reasonably be classified as an extreme winter sport (Please note! Jamie has since corrected me on this, that it’s not technically a winter sport, as most penguins are only accessible in their summers!).

There is no question that penguins, particularly the Antarctic endemic species, are the leading poster-children (or poster-chicks) for lazy expedition cruise marketing. And why wouldn’t they be? For most people, there is no realistic way to see most species of penguin up close without setting foot on an expedition ship (and then one of its Zodiacs).

Even for seriously intrepid seekers like Lafferty, who is also an expedition team photographer, cruise ships proved essential. Multiple ExplorEarth partners supported his journey, and readers can find his account of photographing the Northern Rockhopper on an Antarctic positioning voyage with Swan Hellenic in his original story, The Last Penguin.

What makes the book particularly striking, however, is the moment Lafferty completes his eighteenth and final penguin, only to discover that several fellow passengers aboard the ship have just done exactly the same. It is an achievement that makes climbing Kilimanjaro, or even Everest, feel almost pedestrian by comparison.

Penguins have survived some of the harshest environments on Earth for millions of years, and humans have arguably been their greatest and most direct threat. Their growing vulnerability today reflects not natural fragility, but the cumulative weight and passive consequence of human activity.

Penguins are more than symbols of a warming planet. They have become measures of our restraint, our judgment, and our ability to balance care with humility. To consider penguins properly is not merely to admire them, but to accept that sometimes the most meaningful form of protection is knowing when to leave them alone.

And if you feel the urge to encounter all eighteen species yourself, it is worth noting that reading Lafferty’s book is vastly easier and far less expensive than attempting the face-to-face approach.