(Bloomberg) — What’s up with all these penguin movies?Sure, penguins appear cute on the screen, real or animated. But zoo personnel don’t always find them that cute. Rick Yazzolino, a penguin keeper at the Oregon Zoo in Portland, said they bite hard and use their stumpy flippers to slap around anyone who annoys them.

“I’ve been bitten hundreds of times,” he said. “There’s not a day that goes by I don’t go home without a wound, a sore or cut on my hands.”

One more thing, he said: They don’t sing or tap dance.

All that aside, penguins remain wildly popular, judging by movie audiences that obviously are getting only one side of the story. In “Happy Feet,” the computer-animated feature from Warner Bros., a young Emperor penguin named Mumble tap dances his way into love, friendships and wisdom, generating big box office along the way. Over the past three weeks, Mumble and his pals have grossed more than any real-life movie creature, including Sasha Baron Cohen as Borat, and stand atop all current films with $121 million in ticket sales through last weekend.

“March of the Penguins,” which chronicled the life cycle of real Emperor penguins, last year became the second-highest- grossing documentary ever, at $77.4 million, according to the website box office Mojo. Only Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which was not about penguins, earned more with $119.2 million.

And more penguinmania is afoot.

The comedian Bob Saget has written and directed an “R”- rated sendup of “March of the Penguins” called “Farce of the Penguins.” Scheduled for release on DVD next month, it uses stock footage of penguins from National Geographic and Samuel L. Jackson narrating the story of foul-mouthed penguins in search of, well, use your imagination. Penguin voices are provided by Lewis Black, Tracy Morgan, Gilbert Gottfried, Whoopi Goldberg and a host of other A-list comedians.

Sony Pictures has a more family-friendly project in the works, an animated comedy called “Surf’s Up,” with voices by Jeff Bridges, James Woods and others in a story that highlights the Penguin World Surfing Championship.

Studio-inspired penguins have been around for decades. Chilly Willy, a star of more than 50 cartoons, made his theatrical debut in 1953. Tennessee Tuxedo became a penguin television icon in the 1960s. Burgess Meredith played a gangster named the Penguin as a comic villain in the “Batman” television series. Danny DeVito played him more villainously in the 1992 feature “Batman Returns.”

In the 1980 comedy “The Blues Brothers,” Dan Akyroyd and John Belushi complained of being tormented by “the penguin,” but that penguin was a nun.

So what is it about cinematic penguins that makes them more attractive than most other animals, like cats (“Garfield: The Movie,” $75.4 million) or pigs (“Babe,” $63.6 million)? (Dogs still hold the box-office lead, with 1997’s “101 Dalmatians” at $136.2 million.)

George Miller, who directed “Happy Feet,” said the birds’ anthropomorphic qualities, like the way they walk, account for much of their popularity. Also, he said, “only in the last decade or so has there been serious documentary footage out of Antarctica. It’s tough to get around Antarctica.”

Gil Myers, an area supervisor for penguins at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, where penguins remain one of the major attractions, said they also benefit from a growing public awareness that global warming and overfishing are threatening the habitats of some species, a major theme in “Happy Feet.”

Saget said he, too, was inspired by the arduous lives penguins lead and the encroaching challenges caused by human behavior. Watching “March of the Penguins,” he found them irresistible — but not for the story on the screen. He was more intrigued by the story in his head.

“Here was the Hallmark card of a movie, one of the most beautiful documentaries ever made,” he said. “But the more I watched, the more they looked like rabbinical students to me. Imagine, marching 70 miles for a piece of fish. When it was over, I was humming the theme song to ‘Exodus’.”

Thus, a smart-alecky film was born.

Miller said the penguin phenomenon also reflects a familiar pattern in Hollywood — profitable ventures breeding imitators. “It tends to happen,” he said, offering a caution to any future cinematic penguinists.