In this scene, Herzog is bored to tears talking to a penguin expert so he asks the seemingly flippant question, “Can a penguin go insane?” Yet the very next scene we see just that — out of a swarm of penguins heading to the mating grounds a lone dissenter makes make a sharp right and head towards the mountains in a full-speed waddle. It’s explained that this penguin has become confused and will head for that mountain with the same vigour with which he pursued the promise of procreation, until he reaches his goal or dies. Isn’t insanity a human trait? Near the end, while exploring some tunnels under the south pole, Herzog wonders what an alien race would think of the relics of our civilization and how they would imagine us to be. Who knows what an alien race would have thought of the deeply funny snow-blindness training sequence featuring people with cartoon-faced buckets on their heads leading each other around — literally the blind leading the blind.

From: Encounters at the end of the world (Werner Herzog)