Scientists implant electronic tags under the skin to study the ecological status of king penguins
chrispeng [ad_1]
The online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a report by a French and South African research team on the 12th, stating that if global warming progresses at the current rate, king penguins living near Antarctica will be on the verge of lack of prey. The possibility of extinction.
King penguins are large penguins second only to emperor penguins. The winter walks of king penguins at Asahiyama Zoo in Hokkaido, Japan are well-known. About 2 million pairs of king penguins live in the Indian Ocean and the southern Atlantic Ocean, and two-thirds of them breed in the French Crozet Islands in the southern Indian Ocean.
The research team has been observing the Crozet Islands for 9 years and has implanted small sensors under the skin of about 450 penguins to investigate their ecological conditions. The survey results show that the increase in sea temperature in winter has reduced the prey of king penguins such as small fish and cuttlefish, and the number of adult penguins has also decreased. Based on this result, it is estimated that for every 0.26 degrees Celsius increase in sea temperature, the number of king penguins will decrease by 9%.
According to the prediction of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for the next 20 years, the temperature will rise at least 0.2 degrees Celsius every 10 years.
The research team warned, “The results of this survey show that the warming of the climate will lead to the extinction of king penguins, and the situation is very dangerous.”
[ad_2]
