Stressed Happy Feet just the tip of iceberg
MICHAEL FORBES
27/08/2011
Ever since Happy Feet arrived at Peka Peka Beach and began chomping on sand thinking it was snow, New Zealand and the rest of the world have listened to the associate professor's sage advice on how best to nurture the confused creature back from the brink of meltdown.
His seven trips to study the habits of emperor penguins in Antarctica certainly qualify him in that area.
It was his results on two separate trips to Antarctica in 2003 and 2004, where he studied the stress levels of emperor penguins, that produced the most "dramatic" results of his career, he says.
Dr Cockrem would take individual penguins and hold them in a one-square-metre metal pen. The birds would just sit there looking around, surrounded by other penguins displaying the same behaviour outside the fence, but the difference in their stress levels was dramatic, he says.
"With the bird in the pen, it was as if we had jumped on it and sat on it for half an hour – it was just as stressed. But you couldn't tell by looking at it.
"Even though its behaviour didn't show it, the penguin in the pen perceived that situation to be a threat. It couldn't choose to move away."
Dr Cockrem says people tend to look at animals and interpret what they are experiencing, based on our own "framework". But in fact, behaviour is no real indicator of how stressed an animal is.
In his 20 years of globe-trotting scientific expedition, Dr Cockrem has examined how stress affects quail in Japan, the exotic houbara bustard in Saudi Arabia, and even tiny sparrows in Sweden.
Next month, he will return to Japan to continue his studies of quail before heading to North America in mid-2012 at the request of the United States Navy, to look at whether its activities are making whales, dolphins and seals stressed.
"It has been suggested that naval activity, the sonar on their ships and submarines in particular, might lead to marine life beaching."
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Emperor penguin prepares to head south
27 August 2011
The bird, nicknamed Happy Feet, underwent a series of operations to pump sand and sticks from its stomach and restore its health.
Well-wishers have been asked to don black and white to say their last goodbyes at Wellington Zoo at 11am on Sunday.
Happy Feet will be anaesthetised and fitted with a GPS tracker for his journey back to the sub-Antarctic region aboard a NIWA research vessel on Monday.
He'll be released at the northernmost range for young emperor penguins.
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