Drones spot supercolony of 1.5 million penguins in Antartica
New Delhi : The scientists have discovered two huge colonies of penguins with the help of drones in the plain sight of Antartica.
The newly discovered penguin family, also known as Pygoscelis adeliae, were believed to be living on the Danger Islands, near the tip of the West Antarctic Peninsula.
They were first spotted in 2014 by NASA satellites. Now, with the help of drones, a team led by Heather Lynch of Stony Brook University in New York surveyed the birds, leading to the discovery.
Before this, it was claimed that the population of penguins is on a decline but the discovery has given some relief.
A 1.31-minute clip of these newly discovered penguin colonies surfaced on the Internet, and it soon went viral with more than 35,000 views at the time of writing this article.
With the new discovery, the total population of penguins has reached 8 millions. An article in Futurity quotes Heather Lynch saying, "Until recently, the Danger Islands weren’t known to be an important penguin habitat."
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