Oh hey, it's your Internet dad who just learned how to mute her mic on zoom. A alleyboard back with a shiny new episode of Ologies. This one's coming out on April twenty first. Do you know what week it is?
Y'all?
It is World Penguin Week. That's not true. April twenty fifth is World Penguin Day. There's no such thing as World Penguin Week, but I'm declaring it a week World Penguin Week. Welcome to it. But before we get to the fanfare and all the fun facts, a few thanks to everyone on patreon dot com slash Ologies for supporting the show. Thank you to everyone tagging their merch photos
Ologies merch so we can repost them. Thank you to everyone who has rated and subscribed on Apple Podcasts and all the other platforms, especially those leaving reviews to booy the bad days, such as sailor Thought, who says weirdly meditative listening. I've been listening Toologies for quite some time, but Quarantine has made me appreciate this beautiful podcast more than ever. I listened to old episodes every single night to help me turn my anxiety off. Thank you, Edward.
You're welcome sailor thought, let's get to some penguins. Let's get him in your ears, in your brains, in your hearts. Penguinology. It's a real thing. It has been for years. We'll discuss shortly. So I became aware of this ology after approximately one million of you tweeted me a photo of this ologist maybe a year and a half ago with the chiron, which is the graphic as the lower third of the TV screen that says who someone is. And
this ologist identified on the BBC as a penguinologist. Oh and who better to call it that than one of the world's foremost penguin experts. He's legit. Penguinology is thus legit. So we have been in touch for months and months, but I had to wait for him to be in not Antarctica, and then we hopped on the phone. He from the UK where it was evening and he was settling in to relax and get barraged with idiot questions from me, your stupid podcast host. So he is a
research fellow at Oxford University's zoological department. He spent well over a decade working and studying and very gently buying on penguins. And heads up Penguin watch dot org, where you yourself can go and see wonderful penguins in remote regions on planet Earth. You can join eleven thousand volunteers who help scientists, including him, count penguins just by looking at pictures of penguins and just putting a dot on
the penguins. It's so good and quick. Audio note if you hear any clickity clacking, that is just the keyboard in my shared home office with Jarrett, So just consider
it like an ASMR treat. Okay, great, Okay. So we talked about what it's like working on the ends of the Earth and how cold it is, and what exactly is a penguin and how do they stay warm and mating habits and weird knees and bad parents and neck facts and diets and swimming and waddling and Pooh and you and how you can help out our feathered friends.
So observe this World Penguin Week by slipping on a tux and sliding down the ice to join us for one of the most anticipated episodes of Ologies maybe ever with penguinologist doctor Tom Hart. Okay, it looks like we're off sync, but I swear it'll work in the audio. Okay, we're business, right, you're Tom Heart. You're a penguinologist. Yes, this is so thrilling. I'm not sure if you understand
how thrilling this is. You are perhaps like the best person to ask about penguins, but also you're the best person to have an ologies because you are a self titled penguinologist.
Absolutely.
Yeah, what was the moment that you decided that your lower third should say peguinologists.
I'm a bit nerved by calling it my life a third. That sounds a bit invasive. But it was a BBC interview on Emperor Penguins, and I think I've been calling myself that for a few years and it's half joke, but it's half it's informative. It just tells people what you do. So the whole point is they usually they usually laugh and then they ask why what, And at that point you've got people. So it's the most honest
ologist in that It's not everything I do. It could be you know, anything from model and molecular biology to ecologist or behaviorist, but largely when I'm talking about penguins, and particularly when I'm trying to conserve them. It makes sense to just say I'm a penguinologist. People know exactly what it is, and it is a little bit of
a joke. But at the same time, when when people have kind of fought me on it, I pushed back twice as high because it is transparent and that's what we should be doing.
Do you have other academics who are penguin researchers can tell you that it's not a protocol.
I've had a few turn the noises up, but largely no. I think people are coming around. I mean it makes the point, and actually, through both outreach and engagement, I've been able to do a lot, so I think any early cynicism is fading now.
M h. I mean you're here with us now, and would you have done?
That's that absolute pinnacle of my career.
Doctor Tom Hart is a globally celebrated expert on seabirds, having been an author on paper such as high coverage genomes to llucinate, the evolution of penguins and divergent trophic responses of sympatric penguin species to historic anthropogenic exploitation and recent climate change. But those things, let's be honest, pale when compared to watching me fumble through my abject penguin in ignorance overscape. I'm sure. So where did it all start?
When did you start liking birds and zoology and conservation?
Oh, very early on, I think anytime from about age ten. I probably wanted to bring a marine biologist. I definitely like biology and I like the marine environment, and so it was that or lifeboat crew or something like that. But yeah, it's no surprise to ten year old me, who's pretty toughed with it. It's kind of no surprise. And yet at the same time, it could have been a lot of other things that make a difference and our conservation related.
Did you always want to go on remote expeditions as part of your work or did it just so happen that penguins was an area that you kind of gravitated toward or that needed yourope you working on it.
I think I definitely wanted to go remote. But again, the exact ending up in Antarctica is is a mild surprise because you're not told as a kid it's possible. I mean, you're told the standard jobs and no one ever mentioned this, and actually, really almost any job in science or a lot of them. If you're doing it right, you're inventing a new job that didn't exist for the previous generation because you're trying to push boundaries. So to
some degree that's fair. But at the same time, yeah, no one told me that as a kid that I should be looking to work in Antarctica or even though it was possible.
How many times have you been to Antarctica for your work?
I have any clue?
Yeah, okay, so that many?
Yeah, I genuinely don't know, but it's I think it's it's something like thirteen seasons worth over about fifteen years, so I've missed a couple of seasons since I started. What is it?
What was it like the first time you went?
Genuinely life changing? Yeah, because yeah, it's life changing in the sense that it's like saying wonders of world, knowing that it's changing. It's very eye opening to put things in global context, as well as being personally very rewarding. So yes, it's definitely, I mean, I think or inspiring, awesome that I overused, but life changing in the sense that you know there and then your life is not going to be the same. Absolutely, a few.
Of the places he commutes to for work are the Sandwich Islands and South Georgia, which are little dispects, no bigger than one hundred miles long way off the coast of Argentina, just above the continent of Antarctica. Now Anarctica, the continent. Who even owns it? I asked Google for us, Well, it was air quotes discovered only about one hundred years ago.
Doesn't really belong to anyone. It's likened to a condominium politically, with different countries having jurisdiction and putting research stations there. And there was a nineteen fifty nine Antarctic Treaty It essentially said, hey, nobody answers, okay, now parts of Antarctica, how cold can they get? Negative eighty nine degrees celsius. That's negative one hundred and twenty eight fahrenheit. And it's a polar desert. It's blustery, it's cold, it's white, it's icy,
it's pristine, it's gorgeous. Now, in terms of critters, you got your orcas, you got some seals, some albatross, you got some shrimpy little krill munchies in the water, and of course penguins. Now, for Tom, why penguins.
It wasn't really penguins, It was studying the Southern Ocean and trying to conserve it. So, if anything, I was attracted to the Antarctic Treaty and the idea that no one known Antarctica and that if you could show what the problem was, they had to fix it. That's a little bit naive with the politics, but it's still somewhat true. It's a place where knowledge can make a real difference. Antarctica is were and would I'd kind of distinguish between
Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. So a lot of Antarctica is different from the stereotype of just cold, white and windy. I mean, that's definitely true, but it's incredibly diverse. No one goes to Antarctica and knowing what it's like because although you've seen it on the telly, it's vastly different from that. And so everyone everyone goes to Antarctica with us, you know, with some kind of story about how they got there, but at the same time, no one knows what it's like until they're there.
What is it like going to study penguins, Like does a guy with a pipe and a wiry beard drop you off of a research vessel, just like later suckers see you in three months.
In a word, now, it would be a bad season for us if we ended up in the same place for three months. So we want to hit as many sites as possible. And that's how we change data and knowledge about Antarctica is by to a lot of sense going to a lot of different sites for very little and leaving things like time lapse cameras in there in place for a whole year that record a whole year
with us only there maybe for three hours. So yeah, now we do still go places in camp, but largely it's we're getting dropped off somewhere for a few hours or a couple of days, and then we moved on.
Ah, it's like a very adventurous science cruise, a cruiser see a couple hour.
Well, I mean we hitch hike on tour ships all the time. I mean that's how we really, Yeah, that's how we do a lot of our work. I mean that's it's not joke. It's the most efficient way we can work. A tourship will drop you off, usually near penguins, because they want people to see them for a few hours, and then they well, they're maneuvering somewhere else. You're having lunch, then you sleep, you know, you wake up and do it again. It's an incredibly efficient way to get around
an enormous number of penguin colonies. Yeah, hitchhiking is how we've been able to do so much. So we've got a major benefactor called Quark Expeditions. They're incredible with us. But equally, you know, we have phoned people up out of the blue saying, I gather you're going somewhere interesting.
Hello on Tom Hart, doctor Tom Hart, penguinologist.
And usually they give us a space.
And now, when you're talking about these colonies, how many penguins are we talking and what species? Tell me about these penguins as someone who's never seen a penguin outside of.
A zoo, why not?
Why have I not? It's a great question. I live in la not a lot of penguins here other than zoo penguins, which Tom says just aren't the same.
No, wild penguins are impressive because of the numbers of colony. You know, the numbers in a colony and seeing them in a in a natural habitat is totally different. So fix that please, that's.
Okay, I will, I'll get of ground rule. What is it? What is a colony like? How many will will kind of coalesce together? How many?
It entirely dispends depends on the species and where you are. So so in Antarctica, on the kind of mainland continent of Antarctica, the colonies are actually often quite a lot smaller. So gent two penguins are dailies. They're often in colonies of about three five thousand, with a few exceptions. So when you get into the Ross Sea, they can be
a lot bigger. They might be several hundred thousand. Emperor penguins on sea ice there are very varied, but yeah, it could be anything from a couple of thousand two again, one hundred thousand, so.
A colony could be as populous as the city of Boulder, Colorado, or even Vacaville or West Covina, Hi, West Covina.
The largest colonies on Earth are in the South Sandwich Islands, and those are well, they were we haven't finished counting them recently, but they were one point three million pairs. And that's a lot of penguins.
And are you using drones and mathematical calculations to figure out how many are in these huge colonies.
Yeah, everything we do is a mixture of I mean, we're always trying to post the tech to get something. I mean we're basically always playing catch up. These colonies are too big, they're understudied, and we want the answer fast enough to do something about usually declined. So yeah, the big thing is time lapse cameras, so that records, you know, a year in the life of a colony, and as many images as we can get we want
to process. So if we can take a photo every hour, we get the timing of breeding and success and things like that. If we can take a photo every minute during breeding season, then we get feeding behavior, foraging and all of that stuff, which is you know, has not been possible on the scale we're talking about of hundreds of colonies simultaneously. So yeah, we need a mixture of citizen science and machine learning. So we need all the kind of AI tools and crowdsourcing if we're ever going
to do this. But yeah, we're always pushing. It's things like drones with collaborators, it's satellite imagery.
Let's pack up a minute, let's just waddle on backwards. And now basic stupid questions about penguins. What exactly makes a bird of penguin?
Well common ancestry. I mean they're monophyletic, which means they evolved once and then everything else is diversified within them.
Oh so it's thought that penguins diverged from the ancestors of albatrosses and petrels seventy one million years ago. What is a petrol you're asking, It's a good question. I didn't know. It's a tube nosed, short winged seabird. And if you squint at a picture of a petrol, you can kind of see the resemblance to a penguin. It's kind of like looking at two brothers with wildly different haircuts and one of them can fly. But penguins, penguins, you are great swimmers. This is not a contest.
What makes them a penguin in terms of if you're going to describe emits quite a large seabird. Seabirds tend to be larger on average than other birds, but large they don't have hollow bones, so they've by giving up the ability to fly, they've become a lot more, a lot better adapted at diving and swimming. That's also allowed their feathers to change, So those are more about hydrodynamics and insulation obviously. Yeah, there's a lot of cold adaptations,
both anatomically and behaviorally as well. But one of the big things that people forget is just starvation tolerant. I mean you think of the emperor penguins, the males that are incubating an egg and then a chick for about three four months. That's a lot of it. So any other species they molt all at the same time. So flying birds they melt several feathers at a time so that they can still fly.
So a few weeks ago, in case you missed this, we covered it in plumology. But flying birds will lose a flight feather from one side and then the other. That way they can keep balance, and some species, like parrots and pelicans, it can take them up to two years to replace all those ding dang feathers. But our penguins, penguins are your friends who cannonball into a pool instead of dipping a toe in. They are right or die all at once. Let's do this.
Penguins all have this catus traphic molt where they then go to sea for a week or so, feed up as much as they can, and then they stand in one place, looking grumpy, losing all of their feathers before the winter.
Oh what is the evolutionary advantage of doing it all at once?
I'm not sure, but I think it's so that. I think it's so they don't lose foraging efficiency when they're breeding, and then because they can't do it over winter, they need I mean, they want to go into winter with peak condition for their feathers.
And what are some behaviors in penguins that are so different? Like, what are some of the behaviors that are so endearing about penguins or that are that are shitty people?
I mean, do we have to call it endearing? I think we don't. They deserve a respect, okay comment? I mean the ones everyone knows about is the one, the one a lot of people think of is huddling and emperors, but that really is almost only in emperors for the breeding king penguins that look very similar but are in the sub Antarctic in places like South Georgia, they also huddle over winter, but only the chicks, so the chicks get left behind. And you see these massive aggregations of
chicks huddling to keep warm. So mostly it's a thing that's found in chicks rather than rather than the adults, and it's a mixture of trying to avoid big predators pecking at you as well as to stay warm.
Come on, a bunch of fuzzy groundbirds in tuxedos having an icy cuddle party. Let me have this, also a quick who's who of penguins? Are you ready for this? There are seventeen to twenty different species, and my understanding is that there are more than twenty penguinologists who disagree about subspecies, but either way. On the shores of Antarctica we have emperor penguins. These are the big guys, three to four feet tall. They have this sheen of golden
yello on their face and chest. And then there are smaller daily penguins which have very simple curved lines that black and white, and daily penguins look like mid century modern of penguin design, very simple, so elegant. King penguins look like smaller emperor penguins, and they're in the northern reaches of Antarctica and the Falkland Islands, and chin strap penguins they look like they're sporting a little black bike helmet.
They live on the islands in the Scotia Sea. Gentoos are on the Antarctic Peninsula and the nearby islands, and they're the ones with the orange feet and the matching orange bill. Gentoos are like those ladies with nice shoes and handbags that go together. Crested penguins those are the ones with the bananas, yellowish spiky things near their eyes.
They have a very speak to the manager haircut, and they include rock hoppers and Macaroni penguins, named not for the pasta but for the flamboyant men's fashion style of macaronism of the seventeen hundreds. Now there are banded penguins which have kind of a racing stripe around their bellies. Those are in South America and South Africa. They include the jackass. There are yellow eyed penguins in New Zealand and the sub Antarctic Islands. And finally, finally, little penguins.
Those are on the Southern Australia Coast and New Zealand and they have a bluish tint to their feathers and they're teeny just over a foot tall, maybe three apples high and blue motion to call them smurf penguins whirled all right. Also, thirty seven million years ago there was a colossus penguin which stood, oh my god, six feet
eight inches tall, the same height as Lebron James. So if you take nothing else from Ologies as a podcast, just know that at one point on planet Earth there were groups that look like entire NBA basketball leagues consisting only of ginormous as penguins.
The movement around the colony is phenomenal. Really, it is a bit like a city in their respect that you've got. You know, you've got loads of nests that are kind of really regularly spaced, and so there's just penguins looking quite stoic, staying in one place, and then these massive highways of movement and partner exchanges so they can't leave
the egg. So you see a lot of what you see minute to minute is penguins huddled over on a nest and then occasionally one relieving it and the next one going to see So the behaviors you see are largely the kind of stoic ones, the ability to stay in one place and stay warm for a long time. And then it's really really visibly about the dedication to an egg and then a chick, And how.
Do they find their nests? Again, do you guys know?
No, but I think if it's known, I don't know it, but I it doesn't bother me. I mean I think if I could roughly find It's like in a crowd, you wouldn't say, oh, you're so clever that you can find a human in a crowd. I mean you'd go to where you last saw them. Then you might call, and you know, it's not it's not that hard. We're giving them undue credit in that's we could probably do that.
Do they have certain calls for each other?
Absolutely? So they have, particularly between chicks and adults, and then between the adults. Between the partners, it's probably more tone. So I'm sure they can recognize them by voice, but a lot of it, we think is tone. So it's like you come home say to a partner, how are you? How are you dear? Or someone says how was your day and you say, oh fine, and they say, right,
what's wrong? So tone is probably more important than what they're saying, because that to us, it seems like they're saying the same thing all the time.
These calls can vary wildly between species, but most that I heard, when it went down too deep a rabbit hole, sounded like lovelorn horny kazoos. Mm hmm.
Oh.
And what about monogamy. I know people love to cite penguins as these pillars of monogamy, but no animal really is.
Definitely no birds, definitely no bad. I mean they're they're I mean they're pretty monogamous. To give them their due, and particularly if something works, they they stick with it. If it doesn't work or if the partner doesn't come back, they move on. Then within a season there's also some extra pair copulation. Oh hey, that I think estimates better are roughly ten percent. Penguins have been used justification for a lot by all on the political spectrum, and that's
absolutely fair. We can infer good qualities from penguins if we also are prepared to poe where we sleep and eat more crill. And outside of that, I think we should leave them to be penguins.
So what about same sex penguin couples. Does that only happen in captivity or is that in the world as well.
I don't know if it's been conclusively shown in the world. But I would expect it to happen. So that's almost like giving humans too much credit to say that we're the only ones that can do it. So no, I mean, I'm positive it's there, I'm not sure. It's an interesting research question.
Okay, look this up. And there have been studies like one published in the journal Ethology in twenty ten, which found that same sex courtship displays were common twenty eight percent of fifty three displaying pairs in a study of king penguins, and then a fraction of those went on to learn each other's calls and bond as couples. Ten out of ten would happily bake a cake for their nutshaales. But Tom says there are more interesting questions to be had. What is he working on.
In the field. We're generally like, we get landed somewhere by small rubber boat called a zodiac, and we jump off, and we might be changing a camera and hoping it's working. They usually do, but you know, you're very trying to get the data down. Often fly a drone so we can do all the counts, so we can get spacings of penguins and things like that, and then we're often sampling, which is picking up feathers and taking Pooh samples. That's
the quid stuff. So from those, the cameras are getting behavior. The drone will be looking at counts and also spaceial structure of the colony. Then Pooh samples are everything. Biologists do love Pooh. It's a great record. So that is everything from diseases to diet and stress. We're doing more with that in over time. I mean at the moment we're looking at disease, but we also have plans on diets and stress.
For more on these topics, see the recent scatology episode on poop or plumology on feathers.
Oh, and then also feathers, we can often see what they've been eating over time.
We would use hair and forensics absolutely.
I mean it's grown once, but it's grown in one year, but over a period. That was the ground whee. By the way, that's Mike Polito's work that I just took credit for. But sure you won't mind. I picked up some of the.
Feathers, and you know, when it comes to populations for penguins, I'm afraid to ask, how are they doing?
Largely fairly poorly? Some of them, some of them are doing well. So gent penguins and king penguins are doing pretty well. Largely they're kind of the climate change winners. Also king penguins, they were probably exploited in the past, so there's a kind of rebound from that. The ones that are within Antarctica or the Southern Ocean, the ones that are really dependent on krill and ice, are doing very poorly. Dailies and chin straps are doing very poorly
in the Scotia Arc. Dailies are actually doing pretty well. Over in East Antarctica, which is the bit south of Australia, They're doing pretty well there where the sea ice is relatively stable. But actually you come outside of the Southern Ocean, come to South America, South Africa, and actually those temperate or subtemperate species, those are the ones that are doing
really badly. I mean they have crashed and that is hard to say, but it's likely a mixture of direct disturbance and fishing and in some cases actually guano extraction as well, where they took historic depth positions of poo to use for fertilizer and so that's actually destroyed habitat where all the warmer weather burrowing penguins would burrow to have their nests stewing poo.
Poor no tur davery please, And so it's more using it for industry rather than just sightseeing. That is the disturbance.
Absolutely, yeah, so, I mean that's historic. Fishing is still very much going on even in Antarctica, and tourism is an issue, but it's also sort of essential. I mean, we need people to keep an eye on other people down there, so you actually need this kind of standoff of tourism versus national programs to actually enforce them to flag up pollution events and things like that. I mean, tourists largely are pretty well controlled, so I would say they are they have to be part of the solution.
So don't feel bad about going to visit a penguin colony.
No, No, if it's well run, I mean, if they're telling you to stay five to ten meters away. All of the tourism in Antarctica is pretty well regulated. I'm not sure that's true around the world where they're near human populations. Mm hmm.
Stupid question. Do you have a favorite type of penguin? No comment, No comment. Wow, That means yes. Yes, that means yes.
The arsiest one. There is one species that is absolutely Can I slag off New Yorkers or Londoners? Okay? So am I going to get hate mail though?
Yes, Okay, we're just going to direct this towards Londoners because New York it's been a rough couple of months. We see you and we love you, and wow, this is going to take some needling to get Tom to shit tuk A penguin species, right.
So there are Okay, well it's Macroni penguins and basically, if you look at a clony of Macaroni penguins, they would steal your hub caps. They would. They're just wonderful. So they're charismatic in the level of aggression that they show each other. And it's a lot like imagine that you've sat at a table in some cafe in either London or New York just watching all of this go down. That's Macaroni's.
So they're scoundrels, yeah, admirably, So okay, I'll take it. Yes, I can't believe I got that out of you. I'm so excited. Can I ask you a questions.
Easily?
It's them, it's the wine. Can I ask you questions from listeners. But before your questions, each week we donate two cause of the ologists choosing, and this week we did two. He had two picks and I was like, let's do it man. So one is Terrestrial Restoration Action Society Sechelles which plants mangroves and how with deforestation along coastal regions, which also helps to offset carbon footprints associated with global travel. So jet setters, that's a good one,
an excellent choice. Another donation is going to Penguin Watch, which helps fund doctor Hart's work alongside his collaborators around the world who research the threats to penguins and how to mitigate these threats using long term monitoring in the field and using genetic analysis of penguin feathers to get a complete picture of how populations are changing. So donations went to both organizations. That was made possible by sponsors of the show, which you may hear about.
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Links to those sponsors and the charities are in the show notes. But now your questions, stupid questions from wonderful listeners. Zoe wants to know. Do penguins smell more fishy or more birdy fishy?
But they sort of smell They smell seabirdy, seabirdy. So it's a mixture of raw sewage mixed in with ammonium. Okay, but it's wonderful after a while, you just anosmia is a great thing. Your your nose has a lot of nerves that talk to each other, and after a while you don't smell it.
Okay, and imagine it probably imprints as comfort as I'm Yeah.
Maybe, or occasionally if someone opens a bag in the lab or a notebook or something you get, it all comes back quite quick.
Yeah. Ol Factory nostalgia. I'm sure is pretty hard smell. Could Elena Clemenkin Charles. First question asker wants to know what does a penguin feel like? What is their texture? But also if you squeeze them just a little bit, would they be squishy or really solid?
They would be really solid and they would hurt you back. Okay, they're feathery. They'd feel like a strong, muscled like duck or you know, nothing, like nothing like most of your pets. That's the key. They wouldn't feel they wouldn't feel soft and squishy like a dog or a cat. They're they are bulls of muscle.
And also their bones are not hollow. So are they denser than your typical bird?
They're definitely. Yeah, they're definitely heavier than than yeah, than any equivalent size. And also they use their flippers as weapons, both on each other and on on passing researchers. So yeah, they will they will flip a whacky if you get too close.
Have you ever been slapp by a penguin?
Oh? Yeah?
Does it hurt?
Yeah?
Okay, are they are there flippers also feathered? Right?
Yes, they're very small feathers so those yeah, those are wings. They are flying underwater. But the feathers on a flipper are very small. It's almost like a shark skin where they're trying to shed small vortices, so they don't get a lot of drack. So yeah, it's like a one way samdpaper kind of thing.
Oh okay, okay. I looked up photos of penguin feathers and yes, on the flippers they're very little and they overlap kind of like roof tiles. And then on the body there is some serious fluff under the shiny surface, so that's good to keep out the chill. Maybe serves as padding for body to boggeting. Perhaps, Sabina KIARTI wants to know. Do penguins really slide on the ice as you see in Super Mario.
I don't know what happens in Super Mario. I'm really sorry, but they do slide on the ice.
They do? Are they having fun?
No? They usually, well, it's usually if they just need to get away fast, or if it's really downhill. I mean, they seem to prefer to walk unless it's really hard going because the snow is actually quite coose and it rubs all the oil off their feathers, so they want to keep. You know, that means they've got a pream later and reoil them.
Okay, I was like, where are they getting this oil? They probably barf it up from a krill pouch in their beautiful weird necks. So I looked it up for us, and thankfully, it's just from a grease bigot near their butt. No, biggie, it's at the base of their tail. It looks like a little fleshy knobber jobber. It's called a europigeal gland, but you know what, if you're close pals, please call it a preen gland.
I'm waiting for some really stupid question from a friend. I'm positive.
Michelle Lee wants to know. Can penguins drink seawater? Is that how they stay hydrated?
Absolutely? Yeah. They eat snow and drink seawater, and they have a gland just just beneath their eyeball at the back of the bill, a lot like our kidneys, but actually functional for drinking seawater, so they can shed saline quite well without it dehydrating them. So yes, they can. Definitely, they can definitely get water from seawater, but they would, given a choice, they'd rather drink fresh or snow because it's not having to expend energy.
Of getting rid of the snot. Okay, This next one is about a penguin with a donkey call and thus a very unfortunate name. Tony Olivier, first time question asker wants to know the African penguins previously known as jackass penguins are endangered and there's a project and a way to try to create a new colony to bridge the big distance between the two egs colonies. Has this ever been attempted or achieved before and is it likely to succeed?
I have no idea, but it's definitely been achieved before. In Puffins on I think Egg Island up in Maine, there was a colony of puffins that were reintroduced by someone. Yes, a researcher made like dummy puffin models and started broadcasting breeding calls because there were puffins around but they weren't nesting, and managed to get them to resettle. And I gather that's now quite a successful colony.
I did not know that. Did you know that the porgs in Star Wars were puffins?
Yes, we actually have a camera there. Yeah, we actually have a camera that was just out a shot in that. So if you go on Seabird Watch, you can be part of Star Wars.
Okay, I look this up. Side note and these scenes from the Last Jedi were filmed on Skelley mckel Michael, I don't know. It's an Irish island which is absolutely lousy with puffins, just infested with these squat, colorfully beaked, just stomach churningly pretty Atlantic puffins. They are so repulsive you just wanna, oh you want to cuddle them. So yes, Disney and Last Jedi director couldn't paint them out at the background, so they just made a new icon and
a bunch of cash on porg merch. It was easier than cheating them out of the scenes. Oh, speaking of cheating, many of you patrons had questions about penguin monogamy, such as Julia Ruby, Johnstone, em Flying Squid with Goggles, Catalina and Barberu, Alisa Figueroa, Jess Lynn, Zoe, Jane, Natalie Brandt, and first time question askers Sylvia Travirio, Sam Cohen, Andrew Telvin, Julia Hayman and Emily Dix. Plus two folks sid Gopkujar and Enrique I C. Sarmiento, who saw the same nat
Geo video titled home Wrecking Penguin. But this husband has come home to find his wife with another penguin. They saw this video in which two penguins nearly beat each other to death because one's partner cheated on them with the other. Is that a common occurrence?
It's not common, but I've definitely seen it.
Really.
Yeah, absolutely so. I mean that's classic social punishment to deter them. But yeah, yeah, wow, that's definitely.
A lot of people had questions about flight and wings and flippers. They were Stephanie Bird's and a Valerie, MICHAELA. Goings, Vanessa Fray, Courtney, Ryan Corey Navis, and Ashland who wrote do penguins have flippers? Are they technically wings? Oh boy, I'm so excited for this, And then there was a hard it emoji. Troy Clarkston as well as others want to know. Have penguins always been flightless birds? Or were they at one point able to fly and then they just got better and better at swimming?
Yeah? So flightlessnesses evolved several times in seabirds, and it's often the kind of offshore sea staff. Actually, in fact, we get the word penguin means great oak, which is now an extinct seabird in the northern hemisphere. Actually it means white cap white head, and so it's probably sailors that first came south saw something that they thought was a great ork.
A great ox side note is a now extinct flightless bird whose numbers dwindled partly because its fluffy down plumage was prized in Europe and now there are no more great ox. So they stood nearly a meter tall, they were great, They had a grooved black beak, and they looked like a penguin, but they were not closely related.
Flight listeners has evolved in seabirds several times, in cormorants in the ooks, and also in penguins. So I think the nearest the nearest modern relative is something like a pelican, and the ancestral penguin was quite big, and gradually, yeah, you got better at probably diving, and then gave up flight. I mean, there are examples of bad flyers, like cormorants are a great one. So cormorants and shags aren't good flyers,
but they're quite good divers. And so for a penguin to evolve you probably have to have no predators on land, and you probably have to be quite close to your food source so that you you get better at diving, and you you know, it matters less and less that you have to either be able to fly to escape predators or that you have to be good at flying to get there, and then you probably just get better and better at diving.
Any flim flam that you would want to debunk, any myths about penguins that you're so sick.
Of, I'm really glad you defined flim flam that they fall over when aircraft go overhead.
So it did not happen.
No, they used to be. No, I don't know where it started, but yes, they don't fall over backwards and.
Can't get up this plum flam. By the way, it started as stories of Royal Air Force pilots swooping over the Falkland Islands, and our penguin friends would stare up at them and crane their necks until they plopped backwards. So it was said. Now this has been bird lore for so long that one penguinologist, doctor Richard Stone, finally flew a bunch of aircraft over some king penguins in South Georgia. It varies altitudes for five weeks and narry
a penguin toppled, not one. They did run away, and they seem irked understandably, like can you not ugh, no enough? What about movies with penguins? Do you have a favorite or any that are on your shit list?
Ah?
Yeah, really I.
Want to say no comment, but I also really want to say it. So Morgan Freeman is one of my favorite humans, and yet yes, March of the Penguins is wonderful with the sound off, and it's slightly exaggerated throughout. So it's really disappointing when Morgan Freeman is exaggerating about penguins and you're like, oh, Morgan, Yeah, so March of the Penguins is absolutely one of the best. But yeah, it's just it's all kind of you know, it's very dramatized.
With a sound on. It would be happy Feet. I mean it gets the behavior so well.
Really, so happy Feet gets the behavior really well as well.
Yeah, just every now and then when they're walking in the attitude. It it's stunning. I mean, it captures something. It's like seeing you know, it's like someone doing an impression of someone famous or or your best friend. It's a lot like that. So yeah, happy Feet is really good.
So enjoy March the Penguins, but know that it's kind of like David Attenburrow with a dash of Real Housewives.
You absolutely don't need to exaggerate about penguins. They are badass and they are really stoic and strong and amazing.
Respect a lot of people. Sarah Michelle, Josh Duncan, Meghan Johnson, Elena Clements and Charles Madeline, Uncle, Tayley Kawakami, Diane p All want to know what's happening with pebbles? What makes one pebble better than another? How do penguins decide on the best pebbles to give their meats?
Lots? Is the simple answer.
Okay, so some species of penguins, like Gen two's, for example, are like, if you want a bone, you better bring me a bunch of small rocks. It's like a roast ceremony, but with a bunch of small rocks.
So how do they decide on it? If they can carry it and it's I mean, they tend to be of a certain size. Partly I think that's what's available, but they're definitely choosing I mean, it can't be like a stack of grain. It can't just fall down. So I mean they're they're for insulation. It's to keep the eggs and the chicks out of meltwater when it starts getting a bit sloppy. So they're like a raised stone donut. And the higher the better. I think it's not just
giving them their mate, because they both do it. They both maintain the nest, but the male is usually building well, the male is building it, and then the female is usually helping. There's a lot of maintenance in between foraging trips. But yeah, pilum high, that's the secret. Pilem high and then keep your egg out of any meltwater.
Oh so they're functional, they're not just like I thought. You man like this.
It's a bit of both. It's good real estate. It's showing that you can provide, so that's more in the choice, and then then it's maintaining something. Then it's maintaining a nest.
Some people had questions about necks knees. Tia mckinness wants to know why does a penguin's neck account for so much of its body? And Madison Nobraga and Hadley literally just wrote penguin knees. What's happening.
Well, penguins do have knees, they're just tucked inside inside their body, so they look like a swan sat up right basically if you could take the flesh off.
Let's not do that, okay, So if you can picture a penguin like, no neck, tiny stubby legs, right, ha, that's what you think. That's what we all think. Their knees are way the hell up there. They're tucked up and almost like up near their rib cage and then there, seemingly bodybuilder lack of a neck is actually long. Boy. Their neck goes all the way down to where their flippers start. Pretty much. Do they look like a fluffy potato, Yes,
but they're like the Billie Eilish of birds. What's under there is none of our damn business.
The next I'm not sure when the next are so long. Yeah, I have no idea why they've maintained that, because it really is tucked inside the body. Most of the time it's used in courtships, so anything that's kind of sexual signal is often maintained. But in the water, I mean, it's tuck right in and they look a lot more like a torpedo, but they still have a lot of dexterity in their feet, in their legs, both walking and also in the water as rudders.
Oh, as rudders, So that's kind of how they maneuver so fast.
Yeah, it's deep.
Can they dive?
The record is an Emperor penguin that's about just over five hundred meters. The smallest ones little penguins in Australia might be twenty to thirty meters. Most of them in Antarctica are diving where the prey is, so that's kind of often anywhere between forty and sixty meters. Emperor's half a k that's pretty bonkous.
Do they not get the bends?
Well, most breath holding means you don't have a build up of nitrogen. Also, most diving animals store a lot in their muscle, and they have my globin that releases a bit more a bit slowly. But yees, a lot of diving mammals. I don't know about birds, but a lot of diving mammals do get decompression sickness over time.
Really, Kylie Wilkinson wants to know are they black with white feathers or white with black feathers.
I'm not sure. I think developmentally they are white with black feathers, because you can occasionally see mutations where you see a line but you don't see the black is gray. So I'm not sure. Okay, but it's amazing how many species are both black and white and that counter So that's one of the coolest things about penguins, is it. I mean, in general, everyone thinks of them as upright, and they're not. That is where they come ashore to breed, and if they can breed in water, they would. When
they're in water, that's their natural element. And like cormorants, like so many seabirds, and also a lot of killer whales and things like that. This counter shading is camouflage. So if you look at them in the water from above, they're dark against a dark background, and if you look at them from underneath, they're light against the light background.
Oh oh my god.
Just see black and white animals everywhere, because that seems to be just a natural way to camouflage yourself in the ocean.
I never even thought about that. Orcs and penguins were in the same fabulous outfit, just laying and getting slaid. But I want to think about that. The most common question I got by far Meganyounce, Nicholas Cazulis, Meghan Johnson, Nikki DeMarco, Kelly Brockington, They're a peck. Joey Tabb, Amanda Lot's, Loretta Neil, Elizabeth Kapustka, Diana Silver, and Jess Swan all have the same question, and it is why are they so cute? Why are pengins so?
Thank you genuinely not comment.
Do you find them cute? I know you work with them, but do you know I don't.
Find respect them when I'm absolutely awesome? Okay, No they're not. They're not cute. They're wonderful.
Okay, I love that distinction, but you would not patronize them to the point of calling them cute to you? Are you aware? As one listener, Julia Tolbert said, is it true that the Chinese word for penguin translates to business goose?
I have no idea.
I don't know, but maybe that's why we think they're Cute's because we see them in a tuxedo. But really they're just like a They're like an orca, countershaded for maximum badassery.
Yeah.
Yeah, wow, we need to have a completely different view of penguins. They're not cute business, they're badasses or a business goose.
Oh maybe we should think of us when we have to be smart as more business goose.
I think we should. Okay, y'all, I check this out and it's real. Oh lord, oh my word. If there is nothing to be happy about and you're feeling glum, just remember business goose is a thing, all right, And to be fair, the Mandarin translation can also technically mean tiptoe goose. That's also great either or tiptoe business goose. All in my life has changed. Also. Another thing that's real and I didn't know what aside to put it in was some species of penguins try to steal each
other's chicks. If there's dies penguin abduction not very business. Like the last questions, I always ask what do you hate the most about penguins or your work? There's got to be something that sucks about being a penguinology email.
Yeah, it's always email. I crave the destruction of emails, so I can guess on with what is important.
But no.
There and in science short term contracts. Otherwise, there is very little that is bad about my job. So it's a tiny bit of insecurity and it's a lot about trying to do twelve months worth of admin and emails in eight months, okay, but otherwise no, I literally have the best job in the world. It's it's incredible, and there are there are a lot of times where you pinch yourself and it's nuts. It's nuts. What what main
team collaborators is absolutely insane. What we get to do, and in the knowledge that we're making a difference, that is crazy. So I wish someone had told me that as a kid, because like that that is so important and now I just I genuinely cannot believe. I still I still expect someone to tap me on the shoulder and say, no, you can't do that. The gigs are.
What's your favorite thing about it the.
Year to year is the ability to make a difference. Then the kind of minute a minute the highs are. I mean, we get in some cases we've been to places that no one's ever been and most and a lot of them are just people where very few people have been or seen what we do. I mean, I've just got back from the South Sandwich Islands and we always have this argument and the fact that you say always have this argument in the South Sandwich islence is a little bit like saying I was on the Moon
the other day and no one gets it. But yeah, we were having this argument about because you know, we don't have Google, so we were arguing and trying to calculate where the next nearest human was and was it on the space station or you know, was it on South Georgia. And so yeah, there's some truly bonkers moments like that. There's quite a few nutty moments where you pinch yourself and genuinely cannot believe you get to do this.
And is there anything that you feel like people can do for penguins?
The average joe absolutely eat less krill. So krill supplements are taken from Antarctica. It's actually hard to know the degree to which that's damaging antarctica. But I do not think we should be exploiting antarctica. So amiga three supplements from krill. I mean there are placebo anyway, and there was a meta analysis recently that showed they had either know or they had negative impact on humans. So please
don't eat krill. Eat less krill unless you're a penguin, which case, Okay, eat more krill.
I do know.
I mean they can go to penguin Watch and every time they go to penguin watching click on something, they're helping us with data and protecting them. That's pretty wonderful.
Thank you so much for doing this. You're the world's most famous penguinologist. So ask smart penguins stupid questions because they deserve our respect. They're not cute, even though they are very adorable. So to watch more penguins and follow doctor Tom Hart's work, you can check out Twitter dot com slash Penguin Underscore Watch. They're also Penguin Underscore Watch on Instagram. Penguin Watch dot org will take you to the best video game ever. You can help scientists count
business geese. They're using community science to get their counts, right. I did it last night and like animal crossing, but real animals. So there you go. You just get to look at pictures of penguins and clickity clickity click and help them count. It's the best. A link to that will be in the show notes. We are at ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Ali Ward with one L on both. Thank you to everyone again for supporting on patreon dot com slash Ologies if you want to
ask questions and get some behind the scenes stuff. Ologies Merch is available at ologiesmirch dot com. That's managed by Shannonfelds and Body Dutch, two sisters who host a comedy podcast called You Are That. You can check that out if you're looking for anyone. Bleeped episodes and transcripts are at the link in the show notes, and thank you to all the Ologies transcribers and Emily White for heading that project. Thank you to Caleb Patten for bleeping episodes.
Assistant editing was done by Jarrett Sleeper of the mental health podcast My Good Bad Brain. He hosts weekly live streams on Sundays at teneam Pacific with traumatologist doctor Nick Barr and those are so great, especially these days. Thanks as always to lead editor and just the nicest business ghost you you can ask for, Stephen Ray Morris, who hosts the Kitty themed per Cast and the Dino themed See Jurassic RTE podcasts. Nick Thorburn wrote and performed the
theme music. He's in a great band called The Island, so do check them out. If you stick around at the end of the episode, you know I tell you a secret. This week's secret as that down on my last roller toilet paper. We got two boxes of Kleenex on standby, but at this rate, it was going to take a very long time to get any ordered, and there's none on shelves. So I did it. I got a bid dat, I ordered a bi day. It came
in the mail yesterday. I spent an extra twenty nine dollars for a warm water option because I'm not about to shoot an icicle at my butt yet to be installed. Stay tuned. We're getting through this together, all right. Stay home, stay in, stay safe, Rest up. Talk to you next week. Pray by pack Aderman College Ambiology, r doo Zoology, Lithology, Technology, Meteorology, Stology, Technology, Seriology, Canology.
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