Researchers can spot penguin colonies thanks to the large poop stains they leave on the ice.
Credit: Digital Globe, Inc
Posted on 12/13/2018 8:10:23 AM PST by ETL
It turns out that these elusive seabirds had lived on the islands undetected for at least 2,800 years, according to new, unpublished research presented Dec. 11 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Washington, D.C.
It all started when a group of researchers spent 10 months doing what they thought was a pan-Antarctic survey of Adélie penguins by looking through every single cloud-free satellite image that they had of the southern continent.
"We thought that we knew where all the [Adélie] penguin colonies were," said Heather Lynch, an ecologist at the Stony Brook University, during the news conference.
That is, until a colleague at NASA developed an algorithm that made the detections automated. ..."
When Lynch and her team went back to look more closely at the images, sure enough, they saw the extent to which the Danger Islands were filled with penguin poop.
"We, I think, had missed it in part because we hadn't expected to find them there," Lynch said. They had previously surveyed one of the islands of the group, but not all of them.
The Danger Islands are not easy to get to, as they are "so-called because they're almost always covered by a thick layer of sea ice all around that precludes regular censuses in this area," Lynch said.
Even so, spurred by the poop stains, Lynch's colleagues journeyed to the islands for a full survey, where they counted — physically on the ground and with drones — just how populated by this seabird they were. "In this area that's so small that it doesn't even appear on most maps of the Antarctic," live more Adélie penguins than the rest of Antarctica combined, Lynch said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
That’s because the role of the penguin in the northern hemisphere was filled by the Great Auk, which were hunted to extinction...
Antarctica wasn't even officially discovered until 1820.
It turns out that these elusive seabirds had lived on the islands undetected for at least 2,800 years... Danger Islands
Since Antarctica wasn't discovered until 1820, the 2,800 year figure is nonsense; also, since penguins only came to the attention of those colonialist Europeans during the 16th century, the 2,800 year figure is also nonsense.
They finally discovered the location of the true World Masters! From their secret Enclave we have planned and guided history since time immemorial. Super intellectual Immortal beings are so vastly Superior for the rest of us that they hid themselves away to avoid upsetting the delicate balance human societal evolution. A new era begins
Now the island will be inundated with environmental wackos, and scientist and the rest of the earth worshipers to show how much they care for these poor critters.
What do penguins need? A place inaccessible to predators, near good supplies of seafood. The islands seem to be suitable.
Yeah, from Troy, Michigan, to Ithaca, NY, was a bit of a big ask for Homer Simpson to write about back then. No wonder he got confused. And his descriptive faculties were never that good to begin with.
So that all makes sense. Don’t recall the Odysseus character in the show, though...
And his Roman counterpart, Yule Lysses, didn't make it into the Peanuts Christmas special.
“We thought that we knew where all the [Adélie] penguin colonies were,”
I often wondered if whales don’t have unknown haunts that we know nothing about.
It’s pronounced “Peng-oo-win”
Cool!
That looks almost as $hitty as San Francisco.
Sure, but the penguins aren't good housekeepers, plus they've had 3000 years to work on it.
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