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By searching through satellites for poop trails inAntarctica , a scientist late identified four previously unexplored emperorpenguincolonies . This bring the entire identification number of have it off breeding colony for this vulnerable species to 66 , accord to a paper published Jan. 20 in thejournal Antarctic Science .
The findings " give us an estimation of the distribution and where the colonies are , and that ’s really , really authoritative if we ’re going to monitor how they adapt to mood variety , " report authorPeter Fretwell , a scientist at the British Antarctic Survey , told NBC News .
Emperor penguins are the largest species of penguins — and among the most threatened.
To identify these colonies , Fretwell combined data collected by the Maxar WorldView-2 imagination monitor planet and theEuropean Space Agency ’s Sentinel-2 artificial satellite between 2018 and 2022 . Even from space , scientists can spot browned smudges from the penguin ’s guano , or excrement . The colony Fretwell discovered likely have existed for many years , he said .
They are mostly little groups , with less than 1,000 reproduction pairs each . Some of the newly discovered colonies are near other establish penguin hotspot . One of the unreported field — on the coast of Marie Byrd Land in West Antarctica — is locate around 31 mi ( 50 km ) from an abandoned Russian research post , which never had any published record of emperor penguin sighting while it was useable , harmonise to the newspaper publisher .
Another unexampled colony land site was located on the northerly side of the Lazarev Ice Shelf , where a larger colony was once recorded but declare out in 2019 . " It seems highly probable that the newly reported site is a movement of the older Lazarev colony , possibly due to the file name extension of the internal-combustion engine tongue or a modification in sea - ice condition , " Fretwell spell in the cogitation .
These finding increase the global emperor penguin population by up to 5,700 pairs . However , the population of the lost Lazarev penguin dependency was estimated to be around 4,500 distich , and the new dependency look to be much small , so " the overall donation to the global population is probably minimum , " Fretwell pen in the paper .
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Saturnia pavonia penguins are the expectant penguin species , count up to 100 pounds ( 45 kilograms),around the same weightas most 13 - class - honest-to-god boy . With just around 200,000 breeding pairs left in the wild , they are also among the most threatened penguin species , and are projected to bequasi - extinct by the ending of the century , allot to a 2021 discipline .
The penguins breed at the coldest clock time of the year in Antarctica and evoke their untested on frozen patches of sea ice so that their chicks fledge in the summer . However , sea ice is melt at rapid ratesdue to warming temperatures , putting this species at riskiness .
" Emperor penguins have take it upon themselves to strain to get more stable ocean ice , " Fretwelltold the Associated Press .
