By B Comber, Posted on » Friday, May 01, 2009
Penguins are, without doubt, sometimes as bad as people, and despite the PR job done by the films March Of The Penguins and Happy Feet a few years ago, I have always viewed them with suspicion. The Penguin, after all, was a menace to Batman, while another Penguin almost brought about the downfall of Wallace and Gromit in The Wrong Trousers. A coincidence? I think not.
In view of this, I was not surprised when findings about penguin behaviour were brought to my attention, for they confirmed the insidious nature of these creatures. Published in the September 2007 issue of the journal Polar Biology, the paper, Responses Of Emperor Penguins To Encounters With Ecotourists While Commuting To And From Their Breeding Colony, by Burger and Gochfeld, reports research conducted to determine the effects on tourists of penguins waddling or tobogganing across the ice, when commuting between their colony and the sea.
The findings show that on average, a penguin notices people when they are 35.6 metres away, and changes direction when the distance has gone down to 22.8 metres. These distances increase when there are more people around. Furthermore, when penguin tobogganers notice people, they stop, stand up and often call. Later in the day they stop for less time and respond less quickly to people.
These figures agree with my own research on human commuters: they notice me coming when I am about 35 metres away, but pretend otherwise and wait until the gap has decreased to 22 metres before they start to lurch directly into my path. Having got in my way, they stop, stand still and often call a friend or hold a conversation with a companion. Later in the day, it gets worse, just as with the penguins. For they are tired and irritable after a day's work, move more lethargically, react more slowly and generally get in the way even more.
This all becomes even more worrying when viewed in the light of a later report on penguins from researchers on Marion Island in the south Indian Ocean last year. Their report - stop reading here if you are easily shocked - concerned a sighting of an Antarctic fur seal attempting to have sex with a king penguin. Apparently, the seal subdued the penguin by lying on top of it, then spent 45 minutes trying to make love to it, before finally giving up and flobbling its way back to the sea, completely ignoring, according to the researchers, the bird it had just assaulted. (Yes, I know 'flobbling' isn't a word, but it seems perfect to describe a seal's mode of locomotion).
The researchers put it all down to the seal's lack of sexual experience, but I suspect the penguin had led him on. After all, it must have seen him approaching 35 metres away and could have waddled out of the way. Worse still, the researchers say they do not know the penguin's sex.
Source:
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=249347
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