Penguins do not topple over when aircraft fly overhead, a new survey has found.
A team led by Richard Stone of the British Antarctic Survey spent five weeks watching 1,000 king penguins on the island of South Georgia. Two Royal Navy Lynx helicopters made repeated flybys at varying heights, from different directions and at different speeds. Stone filmed the birds’ reactions.
“Not one king penguin fell over when the helicopters came over Antarctic Bay,” he told Reuters. “As the aircraft approached, the birds went quiet and stopped calling to each other, and adolescent birds that were not associated with the nests began to walk away from the noise.” But the survey found that the birds quickly returned to their normal behaviour.
Reports of penguins watching approaching aircraft, and falling over backwards as the aircraft passed overhead were first made by British pilots during the 1982 Falklands War.
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Some environmentalists have been concerned that the rise in air traffic in Antarctica could be harming wildlife.
But Stone’s team found that the penguins’ reproduction did not seem to be affected by the passing aircraft. The increase in the number of incubating birds in the observed colony over the five week period matched the number in an undisturbed colony at nearby Possession Bay.
