Adélie penguins, Antarctica (© Otto Plantema/Minden Pictures)

What can a 70-centimetre-tall bird teach us about life? Quite a lot. The Adélie penguin offers a lesson plan packed with resourcefulness, resilience and a little mischief. Found along the Antarctic coast, the species was named after Adèle, the wife of French explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville, during the expedition that encountered the penguins in 1840.