Color the ice, add toppings to your friends... penguin poop is more magical than you think

In Antarctica, cute penguins are a common sight on the snowy plains. Even more magical is that penguin poop has become a unique sight in Antarctica. Tourists who travel to Antarctica and researchers who conduct scientific research there are all deeply impressed by this.

Figure 1 Source: Science

However, what really makes them "remember" for the rest of their lives is the stench, a unique fishy smell mixed with the salty and wet sea water, so much so that most people who encounter penguins in Antarctica can hardly forget it.

But what may seem smelly and dirty to humans is actually quite useful to penguins.

Penguin is the general name for all species under the class Aves, subclass Aves, and family Spheniscidae.

Most people's perception of penguins includes their classic black and white coloring, their upright walking, and their living in Antarctica. In fact, in addition to Antarctica, penguins are also distributed in South Africa, Argentina, New Zealand, Namibia and other places.

Although they look similar in appearance, there are some differences in appearance between different types of penguins. For example, the emperor penguin is the largest and has a faint yellow circle around its neck; the chinstrap penguin has a thin band under its chin, hence the name.

Figure 2 Chinstrap Penguin Source: Britannica

As an ancient swimming bird, although penguins have lost the ability to fly, they are very comfortable in water. Therefore, the main food sources of penguins include krill, squid and small fish.

Penguins have different dietary preferences depending on their size and weight, with smaller penguins (such as Adélie penguins) relying primarily on krill, a small crustacean that provides the energy and nutrients necessary for survival in the cold Antarctic.

Figure 3 Source: americanoceans

Larger penguins (such as emperor penguins) have more choices. Species such as squid, whitebait and anchovies are very popular with large penguins because they contain sufficient protein, carbohydrates and cholesterol, which are very suitable for penguins who are active at sea to obtain energy.

It is worth mentioning that penguins eat a monotonous and large amount of food, so their poop is stained with the color of the food, so Antarctica may not be all white now, but also have patches of pink or cyan. The Adélie penguins contribute the most, consuming about 1.5 million tons of krill each year. After conversion in the biological "factory", the natural pigment astaxanthin contained in the krill is "imprinted" on the ice sheet of Antarctica by the penguins' poop.

Figure 4 Source: allthatsinteresting

During the breeding season, many penguins in Antarctica gather together. In addition to finding mates, they also do "shitting together".

Due to the low temperature in Antarctica and weak direct sunlight, if the egg is laid directly on the ice, it is hard not to doubt the physiological condition of the egg.

At this time, a large wave of hot feces comes into play. Thanks to the penguins' super fast metabolism, they poop once every 20 minutes on average, and up to 6 to 8 times per hour. With such a high density and high intensity of defecation, the penguins can quickly clear out a large breeding ground on the snow.

Figure 5: Terrifying snow melting ability. Source: the verge

The fading of the white snow field reveals a dark surface. Compared with the white surface, the dark surface can absorb some of the sun's heat under long-term sunlight, providing better conditions for hatching penguin eggs.

In addition, in order to ensure the smooth birth of the baby penguins, the male penguins responsible for incubating the eggs will eliminate all dangerous situations. In other words, they will almost never leave the nest, even when they are urinating or defecating.

Figure 6 Source: penguinsinternational

The photos taken by Professor Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow from the Institute of Luminescent Biology in Japan recorded the scene of penguins defecating next to the nest: "A penguin stood up, moved slowly to the edge of the nest, then turned around and raised its butt, leaving a semi-liquid white (pink) trail several dozen centimeters long."

Image 7 Source: Alexey Seafarer/Shutterstock.com

This behavior also intrigued two physicists, who wanted to know how far this type of defecation could be sprayed and how much pressure the penguin's cloaca would need to generate.

Through calculations, they found that when penguins defecate, their feces can fly as far as 30 to 40 cm, and the rectum can generate a pressure of 10 to 60 kilopascals, which is three times the pressure required in the rectum when humans defecate.

Figure 8 Source: improbable

This research also won the 2005 Ig Nobel Prize. More than a decade later, the penguin defecation issue was brought up again by two Japanese scientists. The reason was that the research at that time only considered the spraying distance of penguins when they were horizontal. But if the penguins stood in a higher position such as on a rock, they estimated the maximum spraying distance could reach 1.43m based on Newton's equation of motion.

As for why the physics of penguin defecation need to be re-examined, it is because this can enable penguin keepers to more accurately understand the spray distance of penguins' defecation and thus maintain a certain safe distance.

However, for a group of penguins that have no sense of boundaries, the feces excreted in this way can easily "pour" near or even on other penguins. Therefore, during the incubation period, the penguins' original "gentlemanly demeanor" is gone, and they become real "drowned rats."

Figure 9: “I hate penguins that have no sense of boundaries” Source: reddit

As one of the iconic species of Antarctica, it is very important to understand the population status of penguins, but it is not easy to do a census of penguins. It is obviously very difficult for scientists to search for penguins in the harsh environment of Antarctica through carpet search, and it is also difficult to find penguins using satellites in the air.

But surprisingly, although the penguin was not found, a "spot" other than white appeared prominently on the satellite image. Yes, that was the penguin's poop.

Using this information, scientists have accurately located many penguin habitats. For example, the world's largest Adélie penguin habitat was discovered by scanning satellite images.

Figure 10 Source: Penguinmap.com/Google Earth

About 1.5 million Adélie penguins live on a small island on the edge of Antarctica - the Danger Islands. As the name suggests, the island is far away from the Antarctic continent and is covered with thick ice all year round, so researchers have never conducted a survey on this island.

It turns out that there are more Adélie penguins living on the Danger Islands than in the rest of Antarctica combined. This discovery directly reversed the originally declining number of Adélie penguins and made them the largest penguin population.

And as the accuracy of remote sensing satellite images (sub-meter level) continues to increase, scientists can even perform group detection and abundance estimation directly through images, greatly reducing the difficulty of tracking penguins.

In short, penguin poop not only provides them with a safe haven and a place to raise chicks, but also provides humans with a lot of important information about penguin populations. Of course, more importantly, we cannot ignore the most basic role of penguin poop as "fertilizer".

Image 11 Source: Stef Bokhorst

Just as whale falls are to the deep sea, feces are to Antarctica, which is no less than a carnival inside the soil. The rich nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon in the feces fertilize the Antarctic land. According to a 2019 study, within a radius of one kilometer where penguins defecate, the biodiversity is eight times higher than in other areas, contributing the most primitive power to the Antarctic food chain.

References:

1.Life thrives in Antarctic hot spots created by seal and penguin poop https://www.science.org/content/article/life-thrives-antarctic-hot-spots-created-seal-and-penguin-poop

2.Mapping the Abundance and Distribution of Adélie Penguins Using Landsat-7: First Steps towards an Integrated Multi-Sensor Pipeline for Tracking Populations at the Continental Scale https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0113301

3.Penguin Pooing Pressure, Calculated Anew https://improbable.com/2020/07/03/penguin-poo-pressure-calculated-anew/、

Penguin Poop Is So Pink And Plentiful That It Can Be Seen From Space https://allthatsinteresting.com/pink-penguin-poop

4.The Usefulness of Penguin Poo https://www.penguinsinternational.org/2020/02/09/the-usefulness-of-penguin-poo/

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Author: Fish

Winner of the Silver Award for Outstanding Science Popularization Works of China Science Writers Association

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