QUESTION: 
Do the penguins in the rookery act any different when 
people are around?

                Courtney and Sarah
                4th Grade at the University of Memphis Campus School
                Memphis, Tennessee
                

ANSWER from Donna Patterson, Research Assistant to Dr. Fraser
            Palmer Station, Antarctica
            Wed, 12 Feb 1997 00:21:14 -0500


Hello Courtney and Sarah,

Sometimes penguins do act differently when people are around, but 
this seems to be mostly young birds that are pretty new to breeding.  
Young breeders and birds that nest on the edges of colonies are of 
special concern to us since they might be exposed to more disturbance 
such as predators, elephant seals,  or even lots of traffic from other 
penguins.  When a penguin is on a nest, it will want to defend that 
territory from intruders.  If a person gets too close, the penguin 
will sometimes act angry- they show the "whites" around their eyes, 
they raise the feathers on the backs of their necks, and some growl.  
Most of our observations are done from a distance so that we do not 
change the penguins' behaviour from our presence.    At Palmer, we 
have tourists visit the rookeries during the breeding season and part 
of our work is to see if this has an effect on the penguin breeding 
success.  So far, it looks like the number of tourists that we have 
visiting us does not cause a drop in the nesting success of penguins. 
We are always very careful not to alarm the birds, especially when 
they are building nests or feeding their chicks.  

Thanks for your question!

Donna Patterson