From the New Zealand Herald:
Scientists use penguins to do research for themPalaeocene fossil Waimanu penguins: here.By Simon Usborne
He is used to marching across the frozen expanse of Antarctica, his sleek silhouette and monochrome plumage marking him out from the harsh, windswept landscape.
Plunging hundreds of metres into the dark, icy depths of the Southern Ocean and spending weeks on end expertly hunting fish is just a way of life for him. But waddling along on an adapted treadmill inside a rickety Perspex box, Roy the king penguin looks far from majestic.
Although he might not have appreciated it at the time, he and his friends were recruited as scientific researchers in an ambitious project to gauge the effects of overfishing and global warming on the Southern Ocean ecosystem. …
The Birmingham team travels thousands of kilometres from the Midlands to the tiny Indian Ocean island of Reunion, before taking a week-long voyage to the Crozet archipelago, a French territory of islands about halfway between Madagascar and Antarctica.
