The Albino penguins (Aptenodytes albus (source?)) are a species of penguin described by explorer William Dyer, as standing six-feet-tall, making them larger than even the Emperor Penguin, and thus the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species. The modern Albino Penguins discovered by Dyer and Danforth in Antarctic mountains near the Elder Thing city are concluded through sculptures to be descendants of archaic penguins bred by the Elder Things. When Antarctica became glaciated, the penguins retreated to a heated underground abyss, although years of evolution in these depths "destroyed their pigmentation and atrophied their eyes to mere useless slits." Despite being incredibly large, they are harmless, calm and apathetic towards humans. Having lived side by side with the Elder things, they learned to be unbothered by their horrible stench. However, the smell of the shoggoths will put them in a frenzied panic.
In the Expanded Mythos[]
In his short story "The Fillmore Shoggoth", Harry Turtledove gives their Latin name as Aptenodytes miskatonensis. Specimens are kept as exhibits in San Fransisco zoo, the only zoo in the world to have successfully bred them. They were brought back from the Antarctic by the Starkweather-Moore exploration team which followed the disastrous Pabodie expedition.
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