Squawk! Gurgle! Honk!
Along the bustling
“highways” crisscrossing
Antarctica’s Danger Islands,
more than a million Adélie
penguins waddle to and from
the ocean. It’s a lot of traffic
and noise—but until recently
scientists didn’t even know
this metropolis existed.That is, until penguin
poop helped them find it.
Few people have ever
explored the Danger Islands.
Researchers could never get
too close for too long
because of heavy sea ice
that could trap their boats.
So no one really knew how
much wildlife was there.
Then satellite imagery
from space spotted guano,or poop, stains on the
islands, hinting that a large
number of penguins might
be present.
“Penguin guano is a
pinkish red color and looks
like practically nothing else
in the Antarctic,” ecologist
Heather Lynch says. “Once
we viewed the images, we
figured there had to be pen-
guins on the Danger Islands.”‹‹