By
The Associated Press
LONDON - Penguins are more sensible than we thought.
When an aircraft flies overhead, they do not topple over like dominoes, as some Royal Air Force pilots have reported.
A scientist who recently watched king penguins react to aircraft said yesterday that the birds do the practical thing: shut up and try to get away from the noise.
"Not one king penguin fell over when the helicopters came over Antarctic Bay," said Richard Stone of the British Antarctic Survey.
The claim that penguins fell over backward while gawking at aircraft got worldwide exposure last year, following a report in a London newspaper.
Stone went to the remote sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia in December to study how the penguins reacted to British Lynx helicopters.
He compared the actions of a breeding colony at Antarctic Bay, where Royal Navy aircraft flew over, with another at nearby Possession Bay where planes did not fly over.
"As the aircraft approached, the birds went quiet and stopped calling to each other, and adolescent birds that were not associated with nests began walking away from the noise," he said in an interview.
"Pure animal instinct, really."
Stone said the birds resumed their normal behavior within minutes, "usually by the time the helicopter was out of audible range." Breeding adults stayed by their nests, and he observed no egg or chick losses.
Stone also noted that during the experimental period, the number of incubating birds in the colony increased at the same rate as that of an undisturbed control colony at Possession Bay.
He concluded that flights over 1,000 feet caused "only minor and transitory ecological effects" on king penguins.
Stone said he will now conduct a computer analysis of videos he made of more than 100 penguins. "It may be that there have been changes to the birds' behavior that we didn't notice before," he said.
Environmentalists and scientists have been concerned that increasing aircraft activity in the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic could be disturbing wildlife, including driving penguins off their eggs.
The Ministry of Defense wasn't surprised.
"The story of penguins falling over backwards when watching aircraft has been around for at least 18 years and is a complete myth," the ministry said.
