What the ‘trash heap’ penguins of Argentina are teaching us about survival
For more than 60 million years, penguins of all kinds—including the opportunistic Magellanic penguin—have been driven by an evolutionary urge to reach beyond their boundaries. Today, many are surfacing in the most unlikely places.
When Pablo “Popi” Borboroglu first visited a remote stretch of shoreline along the eastern coast of Patagonia, in 2008, the National Geographic Explorer was surprised to find penguins making a home there. The Argentine biologist was responding to a call from a nearby rancher who had seen several of the flightless birds on his property. When he arrived, Borboroglu found trash, broken glass, abandoned cars, and burned-out campfires on the ground. “The place was a disaster,” he recalls. “It was full of garbage.”
Amid the squalor, however, under bushes and in small, cavelike burrows, he discovered something astonishing: 12 Magellanic penguins living among the debris. Each seabird was about one and a half feet tall, with a distinctive white band encircling its eyes and neck. While Magellanic penguins are known to breed in and around South America on rocky, sandy beaches before migrating each winter to the open ocean as far north as Brazil and Peru, the nearest established colony was located more than 80 miles south. Yet these intrepid travelers had arrived and coupled up, a sign that they were breeding on a beach teeming with hazards.
Borboroglu worked quickly, assessing the condition of the colony and freeing one bird that was entangled in plastic, and began the longer process of painstakingly cleaning and securing the area. The emerging colony not only survived but raised chicks, returning the next spring. Scientists have various theories as to why a so-called founder group like this ventures beyond familiar nesting grounds. But for Borboroglu, who went on to create the Global Penguin Society, an international conservation group, the new colony exemplifies the adaptability and resilience of all 18 penguin species, which inhabit some of nature’s harshest environments, even as they continue to face new challenges in our changing world. “They are so brave and determined,” he says of penguins as a whole. “They’re amazing.”
Penguins are indeed amazing creatures. Their comical waddle, tuxedo-like appearance, and endearing parental instincts make them quintessential conservation icons. But these same characteristics also point to some of the ways they’ve evolved to confront extreme conditions with remarkable adaptability and grit. The first penguins appeared roughly 60 million years ago on what is now New Zealand. Some scientists believe the absence of natural predators allowed the birds to evolve away from flight and toward more agility in the ocean. Over time, they developed ample stores of fat and a dense, impermeable layer of feathers to withstand the cold; stunted wings serving as flippers to propel them underwater with stunning speed and efficiency; and distinctive black-and-white feather patterns to confuse predators.
Early penguins rode the currents across oceans, adapting to the new places where they landed. Emperor and Adélie penguins, for instance, settled in the unforgiving climate of Antarctica, and they have a thicker layer of body fat, scalelike feathers, and clawlike feet especially suited to gain traction on the ice. Galápagos penguins ended up on a chain of islands off the coast of Ecuador, becoming the only species found at the Equator. They now have smaller frames and thinner layers of plumage, which serve them well in the warmer climate. Historically, Magellanic penguins lived on islands off the coast of South America, but after sheep ranchers eradicated mainland predators such as pumas and foxes, the birds established colonies there too. “Penguins vote with their feet,” says National Geographic Explorer Dee Boersma, a renowned penguin expert at the University of Washington. “They go where the food is.”
Discover more about these most resilient animals
But no matter how far they roam, many of the animals now face the same issues. About half the world’s penguins are threatened with extinction, and last year the African penguin became the first to be classified as critically endangered. Today the threats come from sea and land alike. In the ocean, penguins must run a gauntlet of oil spills, algal blooms, fishing nets, and plastic pollution while warming waters and overfishing deplete their prey. On shore, where penguins mate and raise their chicks, they encounter hazards ranging from declining Antarctic sea ice to coastal development and introduced or resurgent predators. Over the past century, as penguin numbers faltered, the global conservation community and individual nations moved to safeguard the birds, banning egg harvesting and creating protected areas, allowing embattled populations a chance at continued survival. In the years since, conservationists like Borboroglu and Boersma have lobbied to create more protected areas for nesting and regulate shipping routes to reduce penguins’ potential exposure to oil spills.
LIMITED TIME OFFER
(How a penguin "massacre" led to historic new protections in Argentina.)
One startling finding among scientists is that penguins are no longer evolving as fast, limiting their ability to keep pace with the world around them. A recent study showed that penguins now have the slowest evolutionary rates of all birds. Still, some appear adept at leveraging their best traits and behaviors to continue pressing into new territory. Researchers have discovered that emperor penguin colonies relocate when sea ice in one area is no longer reliable, and satellite imagery recently revealed previously unknown colonies in Antarctica. Meanwhile, king penguins, smaller cousins to the emperors, are in decline in some of their habitat but rebounding in other places, after decades of being harvested for oil. And gentoos, closely related to Adélies, are following available food as the Southern Ocean warms and sea ice clears, allowing them to more easily hunt and nest in new areas of the Antarctic Peninsula. “We’re seeing new colonies established further and further south,” says Gemma Clucas, a researcher with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
The handful of Magellanic penguins that once popped up on the trash-strewn beach in Patagonia appear to have inspired others to settle in the colony. As Borboroglu worked with landowners and the local government to create a 35,000-acre wildlife refuge, more and more penguins arrived each year. Over 8,000 penguins now nest here. “Its growth has been remarkable,” he says. “It shows that nature can thrive if given a chance.”
Hannah Nordhaus, a Boulder-based National Geographic Explorer, has written for outlets such as Scientific American and Smithsonian. In last month’s magazine she wrote about imperiled sturgeons.
The nonprofit National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, funded Explorer Pablo Borborgolu's work. Learn more about the Society’s support of Explorers.
