14 DAY TRIAL // Whenever scientists want to conduct studies of wildlife, they catch a few members of their targeted species, and tag them with collars, bands, GPS transmitters and so on. But a report says that doing so with penguins harms the creatures in more ways than one.
Generally, penguins that are caught by researchers are outfitted with metal identification bands, that are attached to their flippers. A decade-long research that monitored animals with these tags found that they harm the penguins in the long-run.
In addition to the physical damage, the tags may also play a never-accounted-for role in the end result of studies conducted using them. In other words, their effects could reverberate into the conclusions scientists extract from the data they collect.
The metal bands are applied to penguins so that the research team surveying them can determine which tuxedoed bird is which. This is close to impossible to do without assigning an ID number to each of the creatures.
According to the researchers behind the new monitoring survey, it would appear that the penguin population who got the bands fared a lot worse than their peers who didn't in both reproduction and survival success rates.
The adult penguins that were tagged in this manner had 39 percent fewer chicks overall, as well as a 16 percent lower chance of surviving over a ten-year period. The metal bands are usually attached the narrow part of the flipper near the creature's shoulder.
This is just one of the options that researchers have available. Teams can opt to use electronic tags, for example, which are smaller and also do not interfere with the birds' activities in any way.
The announcement was made in the January 12 issue of the top journal Nature, Science News reports.
Flipper-banded penguins also exhibited a worrying trend when it came to the time they spend foraging for food away from their homes. An average individual spends 11.6 days doing so, whereas the tagged ones were away for an average of 12.7 days.
“One day or two days is a huge difference,” explains University of Strasbourg ecologist and study coauthor Claire Saraux, who also holds an appointment at the CNRS research network, in France.
“From an ethical point of view, I think we can’t continue to band,” Saraux goes on to say, drawing attention to the fact that parents being away for longer reduces their offspring's chances of survival through their first winter.