‘King
penguin colonies are very crowded and can stretch for more than 1km on
the relatively flat and featureless beaches, yet individuals know how to
find their place within such colonies’
Displaced penguin chicks navigate well in
pairs as they find their way back to base in their colony, according to
a new study. King penguin chicks gather together in “creches” as they
wait for parents to return with food, and if a chick gets moved to a
different place in the colony it is important to get back so that the
parents can find it, says researcher Anna Nesterova from the University
of Oxford.
“King penguin colonies are very
crowded and can stretch for more than 1km on the relatively flat and
featureless beaches, yet individuals know how to find their place within
such colonies,” she says.
Nesterova and
colleagues tracked 31 pairs of chicks that were artificially separated
from their creches as they made their way back to the correct part of
the Ratmanoff colony on the Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian
Ocean.
The chicks navigated well in pairs,
and even took turns leading in some cases. Also, pairs from the same
creche arrived closer to their original location than pairs where the
individual chicks were from different creches.
The study, which was funded by the Institut Polaire Français and Marie Curie Actions and published in Animal Behaviour,
will help us to better understand group navigation in animals,
according to Nesterova, who was surprised at how quickly the chicks from
different creches split up along their path back. “The
chicks like to be in a group, but going towards the right destination
seems to be more important,” she says. “It makes sense: if you do not
know where your partner is heading, it is better not to take the risk
and end up at the wrong end of the colony.”
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