In people's general impression, penguins are the representatives of cuteness.
is like this.
like this.
or something like that.
It is no wonder that penguins have almost occupied all the cute spots of and human . Not to mention their cute appearance, they also sway when they walk. Seeing this image makes people think of Q (Q) .
But penguins are not always black and white, and sometimes their fur is stained with some pink "paint", for example.
So what are these "paints" made of?
You may not believe it, but it's from Penguin... Baba.
Actually, penguins' excrement will be pink, which has to start with their diet. Because on the penguin's menu, there is usually krill, and the astaxanthin in the krill is like a dye, which causes the penguin's cake to turn red.
Not only penguins, but other krill-loving animals' droppings are also easily dyed red.
like whale.
But pink Baba doesn't just ignore it as feces just because of its cute color. Since
is feces, the fact that it stinks is inevitable.
The expedition team members who have been to Antarctica should remember this smell for life. On the glacier that looks romantic and girly, the large tracts of penguin feces form a fishy and pungent odor.
At first glance, penguin feces seem to have no other effect except to look good, but for scientific expedition team members, penguin feces have high research value.
First of all, because feces are difficult to dissolve in water, they become sediments on the seabed. According to the time of these sediments, historical changes can be understood.
For historians, this feces can tell what happened here during this time, when the penguins arrived and continue to reproduce to this day.
Even the amount of krill in this area during this period can be known from the penguin's droppings.
And if 's main food is silverfish penguins, their feces will be blue, research shows that the growth rate of penguin cubs that eat krill as the main food is far less than the penguin cubs that eat fish as the main food .
The dung of penguins and other animals living in Antarctica also waters the barren soil, allowing the moss to flourish here, and also allowing some microorganisms such as springtail and mites to live.
Steff Bohorst from the Department of Ecological Sciences at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam:
“We saw that part of the feces produced by seals and penguins evaporated into ammonia. The ammonia was then blown inland by the wind and into the soil, Provides the nitrogen that primary producers need to survive on this land."
On the Antarctic continent, where there is hardly any greenery, moss has become another symbol of life.
Of course, feces are also a very useful resource for the penguins themselves.
Because female penguins will go out for food after laying penguin eggs, so the burden of hatching little penguins falls on male penguins.
The temperature in Antarctica is very low. If penguin eggs fall directly on the ground, they may be in danger of freezing and cracking, so they will open up soil and feces before laying eggs to form a "cave", which can not only keep warm, but also protected from some potential predators.
And the temperature of penguin feces can also melt part of the ice and snow, which allows them to better nest and lay eggs.
What's even more funny is that penguin feces are not "pulled", but directly "sprayed".
Male penguins cannot move their nests when they are hatching, so when they want to excrete, they will be directly on the spot.
Manure spray is not only convenient for action, but also you don't have to worry about feces getting on your body, which saves you the step of cleaning your hair, after all, they don't have toilets and paper towels (no).
is very convenient for itself, but it is easy to hurt others by mistake.
Now you know why penguins look dirty sometimes.
About penguin spraying dung, some people have done scientific research, which eventually won the 2005 Ig Nobel Prize in Fluid Mechanics.
Prof. Meyer Rochow and Prof. Jozsef Gal calculated the required rectal pressure based on the measured penguin feces ejection distance.
Here, uncle will give you some popular science. Generally, the distance that penguin feces can spray is 30 to 40 cm. If the penguin's nest is located in a higher position, the distance can even reach 4.39 feet, which is 1.34 meters.
However, when the two professors calculated the rectal pressure, they did not take into account the position of the penguin, but took the value on a horizontal plane, and estimated that the distance from the penguin's anus to the ground was about 20 cm.
Then estimated that the maximum diameter of the penguin's anus was about 0.8 cm when it sprayed feces.
In this way, a complete pressure value can be obtained, and the penguin rectal pressure value is finally calculated to be 10-60 kPa.
What is this concept?
The human anal canal resting pressure is about 6.7 kPa to 9.3 kPa, systolic blood pressure is about 13 kPa to 24 kPa.
Penguin's value goes well beyond this limit.
From this point of view, the penguin's reproductive cavity is under too much pressure.
It is worth mentioning that penguin feces also play a crucial role for researchers to study changes in penguin living area size and diet.
Because penguins often live in places similar to "human restricted areas", it is difficult to track them manually, and even satellite is difficult to find.
And the pink penguin feces can be clearly displayed in satellite cameras. In addition to calculating the approximate number of penguins living here based on the area of feces, researchers can also distinguish different types of penguins according to the color of penguin feces.
In 2014, scientists discovered from satellite images that there may be a huge penguin colony on the dangerous archipelago near the northern end of the Antarctic Peninsula.
This is a huge discovery for Penguin's research.
In December 2015, the expedition team boarded the Dangerous Islands. Through manual counting and drone detection, it was analyzed that there were more than 750,000 pairs of Adelie penguins nesting and breeding on the Dangerous Islands. There are even more Adélie penguins in the rest of the Antarctic Peninsula.
Before this, due to abnormal weather in the Antarctic region and frequent storms, the number of Antarctic penguins, especially Adelie penguins, dropped sharply. If the weather does not improve in the short term, Adelie penguins may disappear from the earth within ten years. disappear.
The discovery of the Dangerous Islands has directly increased the number of Adelie penguins, which have become the "most common penguins" in Antarctica in terms of numbers alone.
We also believe that there are still many penguins living on small islands in Antarctica that are inaccessible to humans, like the Dangerous Islands. We can learn this from the penguin feces in satellite images. The world of
is really interesting. Who would have thought that simple excrement could have so much to say.
Human curiosity and technological progress are pushing us to explore the past and the future step by step, and such exploration will never stop.
This is probably the meaning of life.
feel good friends, please help to click like, thank you for your effort!
