Amplify’d from penguinology.blogspot.com
actually have no trouble seeing in the dark. Instead, they say, penguins head for shore at night because they cannot gauge the risk of being eaten by leopard seals or killer whales.
Even their migration patterns, when they move from some of the Southern
Ocean's most productive waters into those that are marginal, are likely
shaped by the fear of predators. "They would rather be hungry" than
dead, says the study's lead author, David Ainley, a marine ecologist at
H. T. Harvey and Associates, an ecological consulting firm in Los Gatos,
California.
colleague, Grant Ballard, a marine ecologist at PRBO Conservation
Science, a conservation organization in Petaluma, California, outfitted
65 adult Adélie penguins with time-depth recorders. The devices, which
register depth and light every second, were taped to the lower back, so
that they caused the least amount of drag. Data collected on nearly
22,000 of the birds' foraging dives showed that most were hunting prey
at 50 to 100 meters below the surface, where the water is quite
dark—akin to early night. The birds also made a significant number of
dives into deeper, darker waters, where they can forage successfully.
penguins, other scientists have shown that these birds dive even deeper,
into waters more than 500 meters below the surface. "At that depth,
it's absolutely black," Ainley says.
leopard seals, which regularly kill both species of penguins, rest at
midday, making it safer for penguins to hunt during this time. Even
then, the penguins are cautious; they stay in the water only long enough
to feed, and they're adept at remaining motionless when they're on thin
ice and spot a leopard seal. At the Ross Island colony in Antarctica,
Adélies that land at the far end of the island will even walk the 5
kilometers to reach their home rather than enter the water again and
swim, which would get them back faster.
actually observed taking either Adélie or emperor penguins, cetacean
researchers suspect that they do, because orcas have been seen killing
and eating other penguin species in Antarctic and subantarctic waters.
What's more, certain types of killer whales are prey specialists,
feeding only on marine mammals and seabirds, and in the Antarctic these
orcas are known to visit areas near emperor penguin colonies.
however. It also influences the birds' migration patterns, Ainley and
Ballard report this week in Polar Biology. Emperor penguin adults
and chicks leave their colonies in the late Antarctic summer. But
instead of heading to the closest and richest waters, they swim north to
far less productive waters. During that journey, other researchers have
noted, some 20% to 30% of juvenile emperors are killed.
taking them," Ainley says. Similarly, the Adélie penguins migrate to
northern areas in the Antarctic winter, presumably because they do not
want to live in total darkness in the south. It's more difficult to spot
predators during this period, Ainley says.
"They've provided a convincing argument for what look like very
strange behaviors" on the part of the penguins, says Aaron Wirsing, a
behavioral ecologist at the University of Washington, Seattle. "It's
another good example of how widespread the ecology of fear is in
nature," adds William Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University in
Corvallis, who has studied the effects of fear on the elk population in
Yellowstone National Park following the reintroduction of gray wolves.
"Predators, and the fear they instill, are major shapers of ecosystems,"
he says.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/on3GyQ
