PARIS: Emperor penguins shed all their feathers every year, a precarious ritual that will have turn into lethal as local weather change pushes them into shrinking patches of Antarctic sea ice, researchers stated Wednesday (Feb 25).
The flightless birds moult throughout summer time, counting on saved fats to outlive for a number of weeks till their mackintosh grows again to allow them to swim and hunt in icy waters once more.
Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey, analysing seven years of satellite tv for pc photographs, by chance found a number of moulting colonies alongside the extraordinarily distant shoreline of an space referred to as Marie Byrd Land.
As sea ice melted, the penguins have been pressured onto smaller areas in more and more massive and tightly packed teams, the UK polar analysis organisation stated in an announcement.
In 2025, solely 25 small teams of penguins have been seen within the satellite tv for pc photographs, it stated. Previous to 2022, greater than 100 teams had been noticed in the identical area.
“Whereas we do not know for positive what occurred to these penguins, we all know they’ll discover new appropriate breeding websites after ice loss, so it is potential they’ve established new moulting websites elsewhere,” stated Peter Fretwell, lead creator and mapping professional on the British Antarctic Survey.
“But additionally it is potential that vast numbers of penguins perished after getting into the Southern Ocean earlier than they’d changed their waterproof feathers,” Fretwell stated.
“If this has occurred, the state of affairs for emperors as a species is even worse than we thought.”
The researchers stated that if emperor penguins are pressured into the ocean earlier than their feathers are changed, they face exhaustion from elevated vitality use, hypothermia and elevated threat from predators.
