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Emperors of the ExtremeEmperor penguins can flourish in locales where few other animals roam. But scientists now wonder if they can adapt to a new threat: climate change.By Mario C. Aguilera Emperor penguins are the ultimate survivors. Over millions of years, they have adapted to thrive in some of the most unforgiving conditions on Earth. The public's fascination with the rotund flightless birds hit fever pitch in 2005 and 2006 with the one-two Hollywood punch of the blockbuster documentary "March of the Penguins" and the animated box office hit "Happy Feet." But decades before the Antarctic birds became the rage of Tinseltown, they captured the attention of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego's Jerry Kooyman and Paul Ponganis, scientists who have devoted a considerable portion of their careers to studying the animals in the wild.  
Kooyman and Ponganis began studying emperor penguins by cracking some of the birds' physiological capabilities, qualities that deed them the title of Earth's deepest diving birds. While living among penguins during expeditions over the past 40 years, Kooyman has tracked the cyclical fluctuations of penguin colony populations. He's seen their numbers rise and fall, but lately he acknowledges that climate change could precipitate more permanent changes. Recent results published by Kooyman, Ponganis, and their colleagues described in alarming detail how, in 2001, a gigantic iceberg --the largest ever observed--broke off from the continental ice shelf and demolished a penguin nesting habitat. Thinning sea ice, which has been shown to disrupt penguin habitats and lead to premature deaths, is also a cause for concern in a warming climate. 
While Kooyman admits that climate science is not his area of expertise, he wonders if emperors, the model of resiliency, can adapt to warming temperatures. He worries that the breeding, feeding, and very survival of emperor penguins could be at a level of risk not seen since Antarctica last endured a glacial epoch of warming tens of thousands of years ago. Next page: Aliens living in the Antarctic extremes |
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