These birds of a feather stick together in the face of austerity, surviving on no food and still managing to look cool. Could this movie favorite teach us how to survive the recession?

Dancing on ice ... the penguins in Happy Feet Two know how to keep their pecker up in tough climes. Photograph: Warner Bros Pictures

Happy Feet Two 3D
Production year: 2011
Country: Rest of the world
Cert (UK): U
Runtime: 103 mins
Directors: George Miller
Cast: Brad Pitt, Common, Elijah Wood, Hank Azaria, Hugo Weaving, Matt Damon, Pink, Robin Williams, Sofia Vergara
More on this film

Animals used to get cavalier treatment from the movies: they were patronised, sentimentalised, mocked, pitied or turned into objects of dread. Now that humanity has screwed up its supposed mastery of the universe, things have changed: the big screen looks to fur and feather for moral guidance. This year, primates have been showing us our shortcomings. In the new year we're promised condign equine reproof. Yet the creature emerging as the number one finger-wagger comes as something of a surprise. It's the penguin.
Few of us ever encounter these birds in the wild. They can't even fly, and they look ridiculous. Yet they've managed to seize our imagination. Entertainment Weekly pronounced them the 56th biggest hit of the noughties: "Whether they were walking (March of the Penguins), dancing (Happy Feet), or hanging ten (Surf's Up), these oddly adorable birds took flight at the box office all decade long."

During that heady era, penguins didn't just bask in the devotion they engendered; they used it to advance their own ethical agenda. March of the Penguins, an Oscar-winner and still the second-highest grossing documentary of all time, became a key text for family-values conservatives. It was presented as an affirmation of "traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing" and used as a stick with which to beat liberal decadents.

In our own, bleaker decade, the feathered prigs have not only raised their profile further but intensified their sermonising. Mr Popper's Penguins took it upon themselves to teach their eponymous custodian how to be human. The harsh climate which penguins endure seems to have enhanced their moral authority as our own prospects chill. An audience of seven million marvelled at the fortitude they displayed in episode three of the BBC's Frozen Planet. In the Times, this stirring performance got the penguin labelled "the mascot of this economic winter" (paywall). Apparently, "for their monumental forbearance, the penguins are our heroes, our hope".

Now, Happy Feet Two brings back its own Oscar-winning penguins in state-of-the-art motion-capture 3D. Naturally, they're as irritatingly intent as only their kind can be on teaching us how to behave. According to director George Miller, they're supposed to be telling us about "being true to yourself, being brave and trying to treat the world and yourself with respect".

So perhaps it's time that this bird's moral credentials were subjected to some scrutiny.

The penguin's reputation for bravery seems to stem from its willingness to allow humans to approach within three yards without turning a feather. Still, that's because most Spheniscidae species have few land predators, so they don't know how nasty we can be. No points for that.

Stoicism in the face of harsh circumstances seems less disputable. Emperor penguins, like Happy Feet Two's Mumble, Gloria and Erik, have to waddle up to 60 miles from the firm ice of their breeding grounds to the open sea to find fish. This means they have to go without food for up to two months. They manage without a nest, balancing their single egg on their webbed feet to keep it clear of the ice, and warming it with their body heat alone. In view of the way things seem to be going, we may soon have cause to be grateful for this example.

Penguins are resourceful too, and in more relevant ways than those demonstrated by Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private in Madagascar. March of the Penguins showed us starving chicks managing to plunder their fathers' throat-sacs to extract enough of a protein-rich substance secreted there to save their lives.

These birds don't just withstand privation: they know how to maintain standards in tough times. There's no lounging around in tracky bottoms for them, however inactive they're forced to be. They always look dapper. Nor do they allow harsh circumstances to sap their moral fibre.

During the breeding season, emperors are, as billed, monogamous. However, they don't mate for life, as the Times would have you believe. Their monogamy is of the serial variety, lasting just one reproductive cycle, a fact that the exasperated director of March of the Penguins felt obliged to point out to the American moralists trying to hijack his film. Still, even time-limited fidelity is more than many of us humans seem able to manage.
Penguins show a commendable openness to sexual diversity that extends to gay parenthood. In 2004, two male chinstrap penguins in Central Park Zoo began a relationship. After they were observed trying to hatch a rock, keepers provided them with a pre-fertilised egg from which they successfully raised a healthy chick, who also turned out to be gay.

Commitment to parenthood does, of course, form the centrepiece of the penguin's claim to virtue. Not many human dads would fancy devoting nine weeks to solo childcare at -60°C with no food and only snow to drink. Not many mums would enjoy trekking off in the meanwhile to collect the fish without even a prospect of chips to go with it. All the same, penguin parenting can prove more enthusiastic than is altogether commendable. Mother penguins who lose chicks or eggs have a habit of stealing replacements from their neighbours.

Perhaps of greatest relevance to our own current predicament is the social solidarity which undoubtedly forms the cornerstone of penguin society. Those grass-widowed penguin dads literally huddle together for warmth while their other halves are away. The communal oneness on which Happy Feet Two so lovingly dwells seems indeed to be authentic.

Vast colonies co-operate peacefully in the face of austerity with no equivalent of our own jostling for position, grabbing the likes of bonuses or going on strike to protect sectional advantage. And, as Happy Feet Two is at such pains to point out with all that synchronised hoofing, these penguin collectives seem able to keep their pecker up whatever life dares to throw at them.

Here at least is a lesson that may stand us in good stead during the icy days to come.

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