WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, GLENN GRANT
Huddle ’round, penguins
Emperor penguins living in Antarctica are known to huddle close to survive subzero winter temperatures and gale-force winds. New research suggests that within those huddles, the penguins continuously shift the formation and give all individuals time in the warm interior. Though the huddles may look too tight to allow any movement at all, physicist Daniel P. Zitterbart from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, and his colleagues found that the penguins coordinate their movements in periodic waves, observed by shooting high-resolution videos that tracked the movements of individual penguins over the course of several hours. According to the results, published in PLoS ONE on June 1, the waves occur every 30-60 seconds and travel at a speed of 12 centimeters per second. Though ...
