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23 July 2008
Penguins wash ashore in Brazil, prompting concerns about their habitat (Brazil)
More then 400 of young magellanic penguins washing up over the past month along the shoreline of the Rio de Janeiro state has sparked a scientific mystery over what may have led the birds thousands of miles astray. They began appearing in late June, many of them dead or barely alive. They arrived on beaches all over south-eastern Brazil about 2,500 miles from their native southern Patagonia.
"It appears the penguins are not finding fish where they normally do, and one reason could be that warming waters and climate change have impacted the fish population.", according to biologist Marcelo Bertellotti at the National Patagonic Center in Puerto Madryn, Argentina.
The penguins that recover in Niteroi will be flown to Barcellos' museum, where they'll be released into the ocean. And from there, biologists hope, the penguins will find their way back into the migratory cycle that so many of them strayed from this year.
Bron: Guardian and Der Standard (German)17 July 2008
Rehabilitated penguins are released following oil spill in Uruguay (Uruguay)
After a thorough rehabilitation process conducted by wildlife specialists, 40 magellanic penguins were returned to their ocean home off the coast of Maldonado, Uruguay. More than 14,000 cubic metres of fuel oil were spilled when two tankers collided 20 km from the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo in early June. The spill affected hundreds of birds, including almost 150 penguins.
Source: IFAW and ENN13 July 2008
The baby Antarctic penguins being frozen to death by freak rain storms (Antarctica)
Tens of thousands of newly-born penguins are freezing to death as Antarctica is lashed by freak rain storms. Adelie penguins are born with a thin covering of down and it takes 40 days for them to grow protective water-repellent feathers. With epic rains drenching their ancestral nesting grounds, their parents try to protect them. But when the adults leave to fish for food, or are killed by predators such as seals, the babies become soaked to the skin and die from hypothermia.
Emperor chicks are similar to the Adelie – they are downy and not waterproof and could not survive in the cold sea for any period of time. ‘These penguins are sentinels who are showing we really are looking at big changes in the world’s climate.’ A spokeswoman for the British Antarctic Survey, said that 50 years ago two days of snow were recorded for every one day of rain at the region’s Faraday meteorological station. ‘Now, in the past few years, the trend is two days of rain to every one day of snow.’
Source: Daily mail30 June 2008
Penguins setting off sirens over health of world's oceans (USA)
Like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, penguins are sounding the alarm for potentially catastrophic changes in the world’s oceans, and the culprit isn’t only climate change, says University of Washington conservation biologist Dee Boersma in a paper published in the journal BioScience.
Oil pollution, depletion of fisheries and rampant coastline development that threatens breeding habitat for many penguin species, along with Earth's warming climate, are leading to rapid population declines among penguins, said Dee Boersma, a University of Washington biology professor and an authority on the flightless birds.
Source: University of Washington News, ENN and Bioscience volledig artikel27 June 2008
Passports for penguins (Zuid-Afrika)
Scientists at the University of Bristol in Britain, in conjunction with the University of Cape Town's Animal Demography Unit (ADU) in South Africa, have developed an identification system based on smart technology that recognises and tracks individual African penguins. The technology records the unique pattern of black spots on the penguins' chests via remote camera sensing.
Source: Eurekalert, , Der Standard (German), Spot the penguin project and Times online21 June 2008
How a wire on a bird keeps watch on food chain (Australia)
They’re one of Victoria’s most popular tourist attractions and this year they are being watched closer than ever.
Phillip Island Nature Park is using satellite tracking devices to monitor its little penguin colony as two major infrastructure projects impinge on the birds’ territory: the dredging of Port Phillip Bay and the proposed desalination plant near Wonthaggi.
Source: The Age9 June 2008
Dozens of dead, oil-covered penguins appear on Uruguayan beaches (South America)
At least 60 dead Magellanic penguins have washed up on Uruguay's coast in an incident that an environmentalist linked to a fuel spill following a boat crash near Montevideo's port days ago.
Source: Herald Tribune7 June 2008
Sphenisco (Germany)
In the zoo Landau they founded a new organsiation for protecting humboldt penguins. They work together with other zoos in Germany, organisations in Chile and the World Association of Zoos and Aquaria (WAZA).
Source: Sphenisco, WAZA project and Humboldt penguin pdf5 May 2008
'Sex pest' seal attacks penguin (Antarctica)
An Antarctic fur seal has been observed trying to mate with a king penguin. The South African-based scientists who witnessed the incident say it is the most unusual case of mammal mating behaviour yet known. The incident, which lasted for 45 minutes and was caught on camera, is reported in the Journal of Ethology. The researchers speculate that the male seal was too young to win access to female seals, and in a state of sexual excitement, looked elsewhere.
The penguin did not appear to have been injured by the seal, the scientists report.
Source: BBC and Digital Journal2 April 2008
Flying penguins on BBC documentary
April fool made by BBC show flying adeliepenguins.
Source: Birdlife.org, You tube video and You tube making of11 March 2008
Penguin droppings help identify pesticide hot spots (Antarctica)
Scientists from the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) have found that Antarctica has become a hot spot for chemicals that are used thousands of kilometres away from the icy continent – by looking at Adelie penguin guano.
Source: ABC News, Planet Ark and Virginia Institute of Marine Science8 March 2008
Sandy has found a new love. (Germany)
The lovestory of the female african penguin Sandy in the Allwetterzoo in Münster (Germany) gets an unexpected sequel.
Apparently Sandy has found a new love, after 11 years of love for a human man. When Peter Vollbracht was ill last year and couldn't work for some months, Sandy fell in love with a penguin man. The penguin stays nearby her and they made a nest together, in which Sandy laid 2 eggs. After a few weeks breeding they turned out to be unfertilized, so the attendant took them away.
Pity, but in August starts a new breeding season and hopefully a lucky one for Sandy and her new man too.
And although her love to Peter changed to friendship, he still can take her on his arm and she still allows visitors to caress her.
Source: Echo Münster (in German)7 March 2008
King penguins no longer in Wilhelma zoo Stuttgart (Germany)
The Wilhelma zoo in Stuttgart (Germany) stops keeping king penguins. The exhibit is outdated and not true-to-nature anymore, so the zoo decided to stop keeping king penguins. Furthermore the European climate is warming up and the sub-Antarctic birds don't cope with it very well. Each summer they stay in their cold store and only leave it to go outside by night.
The four last king penguins can stay till they die, but as they are already 36 years old, it will not last very long. Penguins in the wild does only live around 15-20 years, but in captivity this can be much longer. ( see also lifespan or longevity).
Afterwards no new king penguins will come.
Source: Pressehaus Heidenheim (in German)3 March 2008
Penguins facing a rocky road to survive (New Zealand)
According to a study, recently published in the New Zealand Journal of Zoology road kill has been identified as a contributor to the declining populations of blue penguins in some parts of New Zealand.
The population of blue penguins in New Zealand, estimated at about 50,000, is overall in decline, especially on the mainland.
While predators such as mustelids were generally thought to be the main cause of the declining populations of blue penguins there, the researchers found that on the West Coast, roadkill was a factor.
Source: NZ Herald<12 February 2008
King penguins are threathened
King penguins are a species that do not feed on the tiny krill and other crustaceans but their prefered foods are small fish and squid.
In a research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), scientists indicated that the global warming threathens the food chain of the king penguins.
Even the tiniest warming of the Southern Ocean has an direct effect of the amount of fish and squid. Fish and squid, in turn, eat the tiny krill, who are very sensitive to the rise in temperature. An increase of just 0.25 degrees Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit) in surface sea temperature translated into a nine-percent decline in an adult bird's chance of survival, Le Maho calculates. This warming causes a massive fall in the birds' ability to survive.
The report was the result of a study, done by scientists at the CNRS Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien in Strasbourg, France, who studied king penguins on Possession Island on the Crozet archipelago in the southern Indian Ocean over nine years.
Source: Reuters UK, Planet Ark and CNRS (in French)11 January 2008
Stewart Island penguins fighting to survive (New Zealand)
Just six of 25 yellow-eyed penguin chicks hatched in monitored areas of Stewart Island have survived so far this summer, the Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust has said.
The island's penguin population faces an uncertain future after a devastating breeding season last summer in which all 33 chicks being monitored died. Breeding rates have been plummeting since monitoring began four years ago.
Source: Stuff.co.nz
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