Keeping an eye on penguins and their populations is a daunting task, especially among those species that are traditionally shy. That's why researchers are infiltrating penguin flocks with robot baby penguins, which reduces the stress of penguins while they are being monitored.
Penguins are generally tracked by using tagging with Passive Integrated Transponders (PIT-tags), which use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for monitoring each animal. However, those tags can only be read when a penguin is within 23 inches of a radio antenna.
This generally requires humans hanging around the animals, which causes the animal stress.
So researchers at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Strasbourg, France, recently came up with a new way of monitoring these animals. They created a remote-controlled rover, disguised as a baby penguin, for reading the RFID tags.
The result was less stressed penguins and the ability to gather better data.
Researchers first tested their rover on king penguins tagged with heart rate monitors. When approached by the rover, the birds attacked, but their heart rates were four times lower than when approached by humans. In fact, it seemed that the penguins were treating the rover as another penguin and the attacks were a result of them defending their territory. When the rover stopped moving, the penguins were even less stressed and their heart rates returned to normal.
But how did the rover fare on a shier species, the emperor penguin? Interestingly enough, the rover did not illicit a reaction from most of those penguins at all. Many approached it curiously and vocalized at it. However, they seemed disappointed when the rover didn't respond.
"They were very disappointed when there was no answer," says Yvon Le Maho of the University of Strasbourg in France. "Next time we will have a rover playing songs."
At times, the rover moved into a crowd of chicks, with no response from the other penguins marking it as different.
Using a rover to spy on animals could result in us learning more about animal behavior. When humans come too close to most species, it's likely that animal behavior changes as a response, but if a rover is accepted as part of the group, as demonstrated by the emperor penguins, we'll be able to get data about the natural unstressed behavior of these animals.
"Approaching animals with a rover can reduce impact, as measured by heart rates and behavior of king penguins, thus allowing such animals to be considered as undisturbed," write the authors. "The relevance of this technology extends beyond terrestrial populations of seabirds or mammals, as rovers could be adapted for use in aquatic or aerial environments."
Photo Credit: Wiki Commons
