Penguin plumage may look like adorable lilliputian tuxedos , but new inquiry has shown they service a very hardheaded function too . It seems Africanpenguinsand two of their close relation use the Elvis on their bellies as “ name tags ” that enable them to name one another , even amid a bustling throng of other penguins .
homo are not alone in their power to identify individuals from among their species based on specific sign and equipment characteristic . former enquiry has shown that primates are able of this , but so are others . Paper wasps , for representative , can recognize the faces of other wasps , while some parrot appear to give their young names which are enunciate as specific squark .
In skirt , the ability to identify person has largely been based on audio sign , rather than ocular ones . This makes sense if you think that , in most cases , the brute will be hiding in trees and so may not be soft to distinguish visually . However , it seems there are some exclusion to this .
For example , it is known thatBewick ’s swans , a particularly diminutive species of swan found in Europe , identify one another via sight . But it is not presently known how they do so . Well , that was until the penguin toddle onto the investigator ' radar .
It seems a dependency of African penguins ( Spheniscus demersus ) held at the Zoomarine Italia , a marine common near Rome , may well hold a clue as to how birds agnise one another .
According to Luigi Baciadonna , a psychologist who conducted the piece of work while at the University of Turin , the little dot on these boo ’s chests are strike , reportsScience . The pattern seem to be unequalled to each penguin , allowing zookeepers to describe and keep an eye on the beast they look after . So do the dame utilize these markings for the same role ?
To test it , Baciadonna and colleagues set up a simple test at the park to explore it . At alimentation time , a penguin would be gently ushered into a small enclosure . At the ending of the quad were two living - size photographs of other penguin – one of the enclosed penguin ’s mate and the other of another fellow member of its settlement .
The objective was to see if the shut in penguin would pass more time looking at its Ilex paraguariensis than it did the other image , which , they believe , would suggest the animal recognized the paradigm .
The researchers regain that the penguins did indeed pass longer looking at the photo of their mate ( 23 seconds on average ) than they did the other penguin and that they spend almost double the time standing next to them .
Finally , in a third test , the penguins were shown two photos similar to the first test ( with a photo of their mate and another fellow member of their settlement ) , only in this version the researcher remove the dot from both effigy . And , as you may have guessed , the birds did not seem to discern their teammate .
It seems then that the ability to make out other person from the same species is an ability held by more fauna than previously thought . We bet you wo n’t look at penguins the same way again .
The study is published inAnimal Behaviour .
[ H / T : Science ]
