A fight breaks out when a husband comes home and finds his wife with another penguin. pic.twitter.com/9ejYGcJ5TJ
— Nat Geo Channel (@NatGeoChannel) November 4, 2016
Warning: graphic content ahead. Twitter nearly lost it over a video of a jilted male penguin seeking revenge on his female partner’s new love, which was shared by National Geographic via Twitter on Friday, November 4.
In the nearly three-minute clip, the narrator explains that “every September, 200,000 penguins flock here to fix up their nests and breed. Life here is good.” Cue footage of cute penguins waddling around on the sandy shore.
But for one penguin, this year’s homecoming wasn’t quite so happy. “But this husband has come home to find his wife with another penguin,” the narrator explains, as the clip shows a male penguin coming across the new coupling. “He flips out. His strategy is simple: Batter the home-wrecker until he flees.”
While the narrator explains that penguins’ wings, unlike their fellow feathered friends’, are not hollow and can be used “like baseball bats,” the angry male penguin deals blows to the new lover of his “wife” at rates of “up to eight blows a second.”
When the two male penguins come to a standoff, they both make guttural cries for the female penguin to pick the victor — and the female penguin totters over to select the home-wrecker.
Rather than leave peacefully, however, the first male penguin follows the pair back to what used to be his nest, and he and the home-wrecker penguin engage in a bloody pecking and pummeling battle as they try to gouge each other’s eyes out.
At the end of the day, however, despite his sad plea for his wife to return to him, the original male penguin is left alone and without a home. “She’s got no time for losers,” the narrator intones as the defeated penguin waddles away.
Twitter users had strong reactions to the violent video:
this was painful to watch. If human beings were like this, all men will know how to fight. Bloody world it will be.
— Chidi Okereke (@Chydee) November 5, 2016
bro that was a lot to take in! Was not ready.
— alex medina (@mrmedina) November 5, 2016
He stayed. And fought for love. He fought. And fought with all his heart. Like Romeo would fight for Juliet. But she still chose another man
— Chidi Okereke (@Chydee) November 5, 2016
Happy Feet was lie
— Yule (@YuleD) November 5, 2016
He fought so hard. She ain’t have to do him like that. He can do better. She even took his kids. Trifling.
— Mari. (@thepaperframes) November 5, 2016