Banded penguins suffer
Trying to tell one penguin apart from another can be quite difficult – the tuxedoed birds tend to look very similar – so scientists developed a method of banding their flippers, a move which may have done more harm than good.
Trying to tell one penguin apart from another can be quite difficult – the tuxedoed birds tend to look very similar – so scientists developed a method of banding their flippers, a move which may have done more harm than good.
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King penguins suffer because of metal tags used to identify them |
A ten-year monitoring project has revealed that the bands – a metal ID strip on the narrow part of the flipper near the shoulder – reduce penguin survival and success at raising families. On an Antarctic island, king penguins banded in this way had 41% fewer chicks and a 44% lower survival rate over the ten years.
The study looked at 100 electronically monitored king penguins – 50 of whom also carried flipper bands.
Young penguin chicks at the breeding site – who need to build up reserves to survive their first winter – only eat what a parent comes home with food collected hundreds of kilometres away. The research showed that flipper-banded penguins averaged 12.7 days away from home on foraging trips instead of 11.6 days.
“One day or two days is a huge difference,” says ecologist and co-author Claire Saraux from the University of Strasbourg.
Scientists believe that the flipper bands may be increasing drag on penguins during swimming and in a swimming test in a tank an Adélie penguin wearing a band used 24% more energy than an unbanded penguin.
“From an ethical point of view, I think we can’t continue to band,” said Saraux.
The researchers also found that environmental conditions affected banded birds more severely than their unbanded counterparts and that the banded birds had a greater tendency to arrive late at the breeding grounds.
