This Battle Between Penguins For a Mate Is Absolutely Savage

Penguins: they’re just like us.

Everyone knows the wild kingdom is filled with life-or-death battles among the furry and feathered every day. Then there are penguins, our happy little tuxedo-clad pals who mostly populate icy arctic ocean fronts. Everything is Disney-Pixar great among the penguins, right?

Apparently not. Friday the National Geographic Twitter account posted the above video depicting what happened when one unfortunate penguin came home to the nest to discover his “wife” had taken up with another male.

The blood bath that ensues would upset the average WorldStar viewer. Husband penguin tries to oust his rival but dude is not having it. As the narrator dispassionately notes, penguins’ flippers are not hollow-boned like a bird’s wings—they are thick-boned flat paddles, and penguins use them to whale away at each other like they’re wielding a pair of baseball bats. That’s exactly what these guys do, and it’s brutal. 

In the end, cuckold and homewrecker alike were gruesome, blood-soaked messes, and worst of all, the wife penguin apparently elected to stay with her boyfriend, kicking hubs to the curb. No wonder the video blew up social media—it was about as savage a real-life domestic drama as we ever get to see played out online.

Quentin Tarantino or some other auteur with a rep for making ultra-violent films will probably be shopping a script for an animated film based on this in the coming months. 

Disney or Dreamworks will probably take a pretty hard pass.