Joe Gentry

Hundreds of thousands of Emperor Penguins live at the bottom of the world and emerge from the sea each April to trek over 50 miles to their inland colonies. After breeding, the females return to the sea for food and the males stay behind, each incubating a solitary egg in a pouch above their feet. Without nests or food, they brave the elements by huddling together on stable pack ice. Their process of huddling maximizes ambient heat and minimizes exposure. Facing the elements alone would risk survival.

Francois Blanchette, a mathematician at the University of California, Merced, stated, “A penguin huddle looks like organized chaos. Every penguin acts individually, but the end result is an equitable heat distribution for the whole community.”

My daughter Anne, Alpena Downtown Development Authority director, shared this information with me from an article, “Math of the Penguins,” from Quanta Magazine. Anne indicted her desire to share this information with DDA members, hoping that they might realize the benefits of the fact that while acting individually, the end result equitably strengthens the whole community of members.

The penguins huddling is more dynamic than just one of the animals trying to survive. Daniel Zitterbart, a physicist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has discovered that penguins execute their huddling with a high degree of mathematical efficiency. Research has shown that the penguins do not move in unison. Penguins in the huddle’s center, where temperatures reach a sweltering 100 degrees Fahrenheit, mostly stand still. A penguin who finds himself on the huddle’s windward side is soon driven to relocate to its warmer, leeward side. As more birds leave the windward side, penguins in the center find themselves exposed. In due time, these penguins also depart for the leeward side. In the process, each individual prioritizes his own warmth, yet the huddle’s heat is shared by all.

Mathematicians tell us the densest packing of shapes on a plane is a hexagonal grid. Most penguin huddles start off as misshapen blobs, but eventually works its way toward an oblongish shape with flat sides and rounded ends — with mathematical perfection.

With approval of the DDA’s boundary expansion, we’re sure this action will initially appear as a misshapen blob — that Anne hopes will eventually grow into a mathematically perfect huddle of individuals prioritizing their own well-being while strengthening the well-being of the community members.

United Way of Northeast Michigan participates in the Human Service Coordinating Council, aptly led by Courtney Holmes, Food Bank of Eastern Michigan. This group consists of a number of human services organizations pursuing their own mission, be it providing emergency services, addressing food and housing insecurities, strengthening families, addressing mental health issues, providing senior services, or enhancing health care services. Even though we are individual organizations prioritizing our own mission, we often find ourselves on the windward side of the human services huddle and have a need to find our way to the leeward side of the huddle to regain our strength. By leaning on each other, our community gets stronger.

Blanchette also stated that without knowing it, the penguins stumbled into an almost perfect arrangement. “We tried to think of a better way (penguins could huddle) but it always involved an omniscient being who would tell them where to go.”

Whether you are the DDA or our human services organizations prioritizing our own individual goals and missions, when we lean into each other and huddle, our community survives and gets stronger.

Joe Gentry is the executive director of the United Way of Northeast Michigan. Reach him at jgentry@unitedwaynemi.org or 989-354-2221.