Summary
14 January 2011
Scientists in France have suggested that biologists who tag penguins to help track their movements could be causing them harm. The method could also affect data collected from penguins for research on climate change.
Reporter:
Richard Black
The colony of king penguins was studied for ten years
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Report
For decades scientists have been following penguins by putting bands around their flippers. This allows individual birds to be identified at a distance. But there have been concerns that flipper bands might harm the birds by slowing them down as they swim.
The latest study, reported in the journal Nature, confirms it. Scientists from Strasbourg University followed a colony of king penguins for ten years. Birds fitted with bands died younger, started breeding later in the year, took longer to forage for food, and overall raised about 40% fewer chicks.
The researchers suggest that using flipper bands would now be unethical in most situations. Scientists in the field will now have to find other tagging methods, but in the meantime there are also concerns that some data gathered on penguins down the years, in this ecologically crucial part of the planet, may now be worthless.
Richard Black, 大象传媒 News
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Vocabulary
- bands
here, tags which are attached to the penguins to identify them
- flippers
penguin's wings, which are used for swimming instead of flying
- concerns
worried feelings
- harm
hurt or injure
- colony
here, a large group of penguins which live together in one place
- breeding
reproducing
- forage
search their surroundings
- chicks
very young penguins
- unethical
not following widely held moral beliefs
- worthless
of no real use or value
