Content provided in partnership with
Come on in, the water's fine
Natural History, July-August, 2004 by Erin Espelie
On sunny afternoons in the Falkland Islands, the South Atlantic Ocean turns into a roller coaster for gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua), as they ride the breakers home from a day of diving. For his photograph, Kevin Schafer camped out for a week on New Island, which shelters more than 5,000 gentoos (and only four humans) year-round. Every day, in what Schafer calls "return rush hour," the penguins tumble onto the beach en masse--a defense against stalking sea lions.
- Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »
To Schafer, the New Island coast is a "sandy, un-polar place," where penguins might seem out of place. Yet penguins have not always been cold-loving creatures. Fossils recently examined by Julia A. Clarke, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, show that an ancient relative of penguins was swimming in these same waters 40 million years ago. Clarke's finding doubles the age of the oldest comparable fossil, pushing the penguins' roots back to an epoch when these waters were warm and polar ice caps were nonexistent.
Today most penguin species would have a tough time doing an evolutionary back-paddle and coping with a hotter habitat. The population Schafer observed recently suffered when a warm-water bloom of algae poisoned thousands in the colony. Another penguin species, the Adelies, were cut off from their breeding grounds by unusually large icebergs, calved from the continental ice shelf. Let's hope for a cool summer.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Natural History Magazine, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
Find Research Guides for:
Find Featured Titles for: Home & Garden
Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »