The African penguin (Spheniscus demersus), also known as Cape penguin or South African penguin, is a species of penguin confined to southern African waters. Like all extant penguins, it is flightless, with a streamlined body and wings stiffened and flattened into flippers for a marine habitat. Adults weigh an average of and are tall. The species has distinctive pink patches of skin above the eyes and a black facial mask. The body's upper parts are black and sharply delineated from the white underparts, which are spotted and marked with a black band. The African penguin is a pursuit diver and feeds primarily on fish and squid. Once extremely numerous, the African penguin is declining rapidly due to a combination of several threats and is classified as endangered. It is a charismatic species and is popular with tourists. Other vernacular names of the species include black-footed penguin and jackass penguin, due to the species' loud, donkey-like noise, although several related species of South Jackass penguins produce the same sound. They can be found along the coast of South Africa and Namibia. Taxonomy In 1747 the English naturalist George Edwards included an illustration and a description of the African penguin in the second volume of his A Natural History of Uncommon Birds. He used the English name "The Black-Footed Penguins". Edwards based his hand-coloured etching on two preserved specimens that had been brought to London. He suspected that they had been collected near the Cape of Good Hope. When in 1758 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the tenth edition, he placed the African penguin with the wandering albatross in the genus Diomedea. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Diomedea demersa and cited Edwards' work. The African penguin is now placed with the banded penguins in the genus Spheniscus that was introduced in 1760 by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson. The genus name Spheniscus is from Ancient Greek word σφήν (sphēn) meaning "wedge" and is a reference to the animal's thin, wedge-shaped flippers. The specific epithet demersus is Latin meaning "plunging" (from demergere meaning "to sink"). Banded penguins are found mainly in the Southern Hemisphere with the Humboldt penguin and Magellanic penguins found in southern South America and the Galápagos penguin found in the Pacific Ocean near the equator. All are similar in shape, colour and behaviour. Description African penguins grow to tall and