There they come, trudging along, straight upright on stubby legs, shoulders swinging back and forth with each step， coming into focus on the screen just as I´ m eating my first bite of popcorn. Then Morgan Freeman´ s voice informs us that these beings are on a long and difficult journey in one of the most inhospitable places on earth, and that they are driven by their "quest for love. ” I´ ve long known the story of the emperor penguin, but to see the sheer beauty and wonder of it all come into focus in the March of the Penguins, the sleeper summer hit, still took my breath away. As the movie continues, everything about these animals seems on the surface utterly different from human existence；and yet at the same time the closer one looks the more everything also seems familiar.Stepping back and considering within the context of the vast diversity of millions of other organisms that have evolved on the tree of life 一 grass, trees, tapeworms, hornets, jelly-fish, tuna and elephants 一 these animals marching across the screen are practically kissing cousins to us.
Love is a feeling or emotion 一 like hate, jealousy, hunger, thirst 一 necessary where rationality alone would not suffice to carry the day.
Could rationality alone induce a penguin to trek 70 miles over the ice in order to mate and then balance an egg on his toes while fasting for four months in total darkness and enduring temperatures of minus-80 degrees Fahrenheit?
Even humans require an overpowering love to do the remarkable things that parents do for their children. The penguins´ drive to persist in behavior bordering on the bizarre also suggests that they love to an inordinate degree.
I suspect that the new breed of nature film will become increasingly mainstream because, as we learn more about ourselves from other animals and find out that we are more like them than was previously supposed, we are now allowed to "relate" to them, and therefore to empathize.
If we gain more exposure to the real 一 and if the producers and studios invest half as much care and expense into portraying animals as they do into showing ourselves — I suspect the results will be as profitable, in economic as well as emotional and intellectual terms —as the March of the Penguins.