Penguins have long been pioneers in the fashion field, bringing tuxedos to the masses, but now they're doing their bit to make wearable tech cool in the animal world.
Penguin researchers at Phillip Island in Victoria have made a groundbreaking discovery about the travel, fishing, and feeding habits of the Little Penguins.
Researchers from around the globe teamed up to attach trackers to 10 Little Penguins over an entire breeding season. Previous studies have only ever tracked penguins on a single feeding trip.
Doctor Andre Chiaradia, who has contributed to 70 works in peer-reviewed journals, said the trackers did not quite look like human pedometers.
"It's looks more like a little matchbox, we attach them on the back of the penguins with this super-duper sticky tape," he said.
The data found drastic changes in the penguins' feeding patterns: when incubating eggs, penguins took longer trips. When the eggs hatch, the length of their trips reduces as the penguin papas rush home to feed their chicks before dusk.
Not only do the trackers follow the penguins' journeys hundreds of kilometres across the sea, they also follow them down into the inky depths.
"Rather than dive and get the fish from above, they go from below; when they go from below, the fish look down and all they see is the dark back of the penguin," Dr Chiaradia said.
He said the incremental knowledge gain would be used to better conserve penguin food supplies during critical parts of the breeding cycle.
"That kind of information is a building block to understand the life of penguins at sea, the ultimate aim is to look at how can we protect the food supply of penguins in the future," he said.
The work has been published in the German Journal of Marine Biology, but the data will also contribute to a global study on the effect of coronavirus lockdowns on the marine ecosystem.
"How human behaviour during the pandemic, how lockdowns, commercial shipping reduced, commercial fishing reduced, how this has an effect on the marine system," he said.
