Do Penguins go insane?

Hear me out. I just finished watching Werner Herzog’s documentary Encounters at the End of the World, about Antarctica and its quirky community of scientists and researchers.

Anyway, there’s a really poignant and sad scene in which Werner is discussing the Penguin colonies with one of the experts—who seems a little off the rails himself, incidentally—and the camera cuts to a group of Penguins heading for the open water (which is still a long way off). Most of them continue on to their destination while one of them turns around and heads back to the feeding grounds. That’s fine, he bottled it.

The Penguin in question, however, is the one that stopped right in the middle and neither carried on or turned back. He simply stood there seemingly undecided or confused. He looks in both directions then shortly after decides to go a completely different course – directly towards the mountains ...and certain death.

The expert insisted that even if they were to go and bring him back to the colony, he would still set off and head for the mountains. I just thought this was really sad.

Why did the Penguin do this? Was it confusion/insanity, or something else? Any thoughts?

You’ll have to excuse the excessive post. That scene just really got my attention.