Friday, August 26, 2011

Susan Milius, Penguins' IDs may impair survival, Science News, February 12, 2011, page 10

As Susan Milius describes in her article, there is a certain effect of the metallic band causing the King Penguin to lag behind. Therefore, the band wrapped around the penguin's flipper, near the shoulder, weighs them down. Although, the band is needed for scientists to figure out how the climate's constant changing impacts life. The development of the banded King penguins slowed down, meaning that they would take about 12.7 days on their way back to the colony; an unbranded King penguin normally took about 11.6 days on heading back. One day can cause a huge difference in the lives of it's family. For example, a baby chick could die if they didn't come back in time. Not only that, but the metallic band can cause harm to the penguins and also the research. Including that they would have fewer chicks and a much lower survival rate. They experimented the band on an Adelie penguin, which used more energy than an unbanded penguin. Furthermore, they canceled the metallic band in order to cause no more damage since the climate changes would affect the banded birds more than the unbanded birds because it weighs on them.

This experiment was an example of a hypothesis based science because it all had to do with deductive reasoning. Meaning, they couldn't observe them, they used guesses and more.
In my opinion, the importance of this research has little to do with humans, except that we are the ones causing the harm to them.

1 comment:

Gian Toyos said...

Make sure your bibliography is on the body of your analysis not on the title.