Penguins picky about fishing trip buddies

JUST like humans, penguins are choosy about the buddies they take along on fishing trips, new research has found.

Penguins at Phillip Island Nature Park, a popular tourist attraction in Victoria, were discovered to be selecting other penguins to take on long fishing trips, instead of grouping randomly.

The park's penguin biologist, Dr Andre Chiaradia, and his research team tracked the little penguins - also known as fairy penguins - using microchips over four breeding seasons.

They found penguins left and returned to the beach with the same fishing partners, New Scientist Magazine reports.

The penguins move in groups of five to 10 as they cross the beach to help them evade predators, but scientists did not know until now whether their grouping was random.

The researcher suggested one reason for the cooperation could be the benefit from buddying-up with penguins that share knowledge of particular feeding sites.

But they found penguins were less choosey about their companions in years when food was scarce, possibly because they were crossing the beach with companions but then fishing alone.

And the behaviour was only found among middle-aged penguins.

Older and younger penguins, who are less likely to be good fishers, were never picked as part of the fishing team.

The research is being published in the latest issue of the journal Animal Behaviour.

From News.com.au

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22567037-29277,00.html?from=public_rss

Contributed by Tim Hochgrebe added 2007-10-10