The surprising truth about Gentoo penguins

This is the first time researchers have returned to the off-shore moments of Gentoo penguins when the 'army' is looking for food in the Antarctic freezing waters.

By using the GoPro miniature cruise camera mounted on the backs of seabirds, the team found that the communication between these Indian penguins was closely related to the more crowded calls. is the gathering of food.

The video also shows that Gentoo penguins have a shorter dive time and swim to different areas after the call. This helps researchers realize that offshore sounds can serve many functions.

Gentoo penguins concentrate into large populations of up to 30,000 individual pairs.

Researcher Won Young Lee of the Korean Polar Research Institute told ScienceAlert that the video portrays this seabird's mysterious food-seeking behavior. He said: 'These penguins spent a lot of time on the ocean, but the way they communicate is still a vague unknown. What surprised our team was that they used calls out to attract other penguins. "

With orange neon beaks, white striped heads and pale pink legs, Gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua) naturally catch the eye of the research team while in the dark, cold Antarctic lands.

Height 90cm and weighs 8.5kg, Gentoo penguins gather all the elements to become the third largest penguin in the world. Like their relatives - the Adélie penguin ((Pygoscelis adeliae) and the small penguin (Eudyptula minor), Gentoo concentrated into a large population of up to 30,000 individual pairs.

And in the case that our vision is still not able to distinguish these characteristics, these birds also make very loud resonance cries that make them impossible to mix with any other species.

However, echoing cries are not just about harassing neighbors. Similar to other birds, Gentoo penguins rely on a variety of audio signals to exchange information, pool and coordinate.

More than half of the penguins have gathered in groups for about a minute to listen to the cry of their fellow humans.

By speculation in mind, the topic of Gentoo penguins becomes very easy. But things aren't that simple. Researchers took a long time to decipher the behavior of this seabird feed when they hunted for mollusks and fish in the ocean.

To find out the real cause, the researchers attached miniature camera cameras to the backs of 26 Gentoo penguins to record their cries when swimming to the sea.

During the two breeding seasons, Young Lee and his colleagues recorded 598 penguins leaving King George Island in Antarctica. When reviewing video files, the researchers analyzed the sound of offshore cries and simultaneously analyzed diving behavior, food search and similar behavioral groups.

They discovered that more than half of the penguins had gathered in groups for about a minute to listen to the cry of their fellow humans. Each sound is different in length and frequency and sometimes there are certain similarities with the African penguin (Spheniscus demersus).

Although searching for food by the flock, there does not seem to be any interaction between the birds. Moreover, researchers are still unable to find many changes in diving, gathering information or ways to capture prey in offshore calls.

The immense cry of the ocean in the ocean is merely a combination of swarms.

It is this that shows that vast ocean-like cries are merely a combination of colonies and are not much related to finding food. When the research team watched the video, they found that these penguins had dived in shallow waters as soon as they raised their voices. Because such communication will cause energy loss, in the deep water layers where there is not much oxygen, the sound bar will almost be cloudy.

Young Lee commented with ScienceArt: 'We still do not understand why Gentoo penguins call each other when they go out or how they recognize each other with those sounds in the vast ocean. We suspect that hidden behind those cries are other mechanisms related to vocal communication. "