Researchers get “Cuckoo” around Penguins Poop
King penguins emit so much laughing gas, scientists get… comic relief!
Antarctic King penguins are not only known for being the second largest species of penguins and skilled divers, reaching depths of 300 meters (900 ft). Now, these tuxedo-clad wobblers living in large colonies are getting their minute of fame for pooping out so much laughing gas to make researchers go cuckoo!
How do we actually know this?
Scientists at the University of Copenhagen were interested in understanding the effect of glacier retreat and penguin activity on greenhouse gas emissions. To do so, they decided to travel to South Georgia, an island north of Antarctica, to study one of the world’s largest colony of King penguins, numbering around 150,000 breeding pairs.
Based on the results of their study, King penguins produce extremely high levels of nitrous oxide (also known as laughing gas) via their feces.
And here is the high-light of the story. After snooping for many hours around penguins and their guano (aka poop), field researchers start exhibiting some side-effects like feeling a little dizzy and growing increasingly… cuckoo!
Nothing to be too surprised about considering that nitrous oxide has an effect that it’s very similar to the sedative laughing gas used in a dentist’s office. Some folks also use this chemical for its psychoactive effects that induce euphoria, relaxation and laughter.
So, get enough whiffs of penguins’ poo fumes for a few hours and there you go, you are on your way to getting high!
The nitrogen comes from the penguins’ diet rich of krill, squid and fish. Released in their poop, this substance is converted by soil bacteria into nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas. And there is not too much to laugh about this gas, considering that it is 300 times more polluting to the environment than carbon dioxide.
Fortunately, King penguin droppings are not really enough to affect the Earth’s overall energy budget but they do impact the local environment. This can have consequences as colonies of these animals grow and move to adapt to a changing climate. As the study points out: “a future expansion of penguins into newly available ice-free polar coastal areas may markedly increase the local (greenhouse gas) budget.”
Maddalena Bearzi has studied the ecology and conservation of marine mammals for over twenty-five years. She is President and Co-founder of the Ocean Conservation Society, and Co-author of Beautiful Minds: The Parallel Lives of Great Apes and Dolphins (Harvard University Press). She also works as a photo-journalist and blogger for several publications, including the National Geographic. Her latest book is Dolphin Confidential: Confessions of a Field Biologist (University of Chicago Press).
