Penguin Walking Solo to the Mountains Goes Viral: Where to Watch the Extended Version Of This Viral Video

That video of the of a penguin walking alone to the mountains, which people online are calling the "nihilist penguin," has blown up all over social media. Short clips showing the penguin ditching its group and going inland toward faraway Antarctic mountains have made people really curious, and it's sparked jokes and discussions, with many viewers trying to find some deep meaning in what it did.

Even though social media has been calling the so-called "lonely deranged penguin" a "nihilist," the video actually comes from Werner Herzog's 2007 documentary titled Encounters at the End of the World. In the film, the penguin abruptly leaves its colony and walks inland toward the mountains, a path experts describe as leading to certain death. Scientists observing the behaviour say the penguin continued the journey despite the risk, showing no signs of turning back. Viewers also note that the scene is presented simply as a strange, unusual behaviour, rather than a symbolic act.

So, in the scene, a bunch of penguins are heading to the ocean, and then this one penguin just turns around and starts walking alone toward the mountains. Instead of going the usual way to get food, this penguin goes inland, to a place that the scientists in the movie say penguins can't even survive in.

The researchers in the film say that when this kind of thing happens, trying to get the penguin to go back to the sea just doesn't work. Even if you physically turn it around, it'll just go back in the same direction it was going before.

Here's what Werner Herzog, a German filmmaker, actor, opera director, and author says about the lonely penguin.

"Everyone spoke about penguins, but the questions I had were not so easily answered. Even today, I find it fascinating that a penguin filmed almost twenty years ago in Antarctica, for my film Encounters at the End of the World, continues to capture the imagination of so many people.

Before we filmed it, scientists spoke to me about strange behaviors among penguins - about insanity. Then there was this one penguin that walked away from the sea and marched straight into the interior of the continent, toward the mountains - a journey that could only end in death.

Part of this story is also my voice. I had learned something from watching crime television shows like Unsolved Mysteries, where a calm narrator describes horrific events: a man returns home, finds his door open and blood everywhere, and knows that something is terribly wrong. His wife lies murdered on the kitchen floor. But the question remains - why?

I used that same voice here. We followed the penguin as it marched deeper into the continent, climbing higher and higher, until it disappeared completely.''

If you want to see the whole thing, the original video of the penguin walking alone to the mountains isn't fully available on social media. It's from the 2007 documentary titled Encounters at the End of the World, which you can watch if you pay for it on places like:

• Amazon Prime Video
• Apple TV
• Google Play Movies

There are also some official clips from the documentary on YouTube, which give you a little more context than those short, edited videos everyone's been sharing.

So, people started calling it the "nihilist penguin" because they thought the penguin was rejecting its basic instincts, its routine, and even survival itself. People have joked that the penguin chose its destiny even though it knew what would happen, turning the clip into a way of talking about big life choices.

But the documentary doesn't try to say any of that. Instead, it just shows what the scientists saw, along with Herzog's narration, which ends the scene with a simple question: "But why?"

The short clips people share often leave out the narration and the scientists' opinions, which makes the scene seem more symbolic. But if you watch the whole scene, you see that it was just meant to document a strange thing that happened with an animal in a harsh environment.

Since everyone's so interested in the penguin walking alone to the mountains, which they now call the nihilist penguin, the documentary has become popular again with people who want the real story behind the video. Did he die or survive?