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Penguins Stuck In Infinite Loop
mjd writes "All dressed up and nowhere to swim! ABC News reports that "the penguin pool at the San Francisco Zoo has been a daily frenzy of circle swimming by all of the 52 birds at once. The penguins start swimming in circles early in the day and rarely stop until they stagger out of the pool at dusk.""
Circle swimming happens every so often in the penguin exhibit at the Omaha Zoo. They have a very nice display, which happens to include a penguin webcam. I think for the most part the Omaha penguins are more laid back than their San Francisco inmates. Also, here is a map of the aquarium where the keep the penguins. Enjoy.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Except in the wild, they don't swim all day from dawn to dusk. It depends on the species, but most penguins spend most of the day sitting around on the ice, or meandering about lazily.
Swimming around in circles all day could be a sign of a problem.
The penguins already stopped, back in March.
But it was amusing while it lasted...
UserAdvocate: The voice of the user
This is old news. In fact they stopped swimming about a month ago.
This all started when some new pengies were added to the exhibit. They started on their little migration and the rest just followed them.
I think they are done now. We'll have to wait till next year and see what happens then.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
This isn't the same species, but how about swimming for 18 days at a time, and diving to 500m. That doesn't sound terribly idle. (http://www.penguins.cl/king-penguins.htm)
For this species, they migrate from Tierra Del Fuego to Brazil. That's got to be a decent swim.
http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/acco
Or how about "The satellite data have already revealed that some penguins swim up to 300 miles from their nesting area to find food while their mates sit in the nests on their eggs. Such a foraging journey can take nearly three weeks, leaving the penguins' newborn chicks at risk of starving before the parent returns. This is particularly worrisome since the number of Magellanic penguin chicks surviving to adulthood has declined in recent years."
from
ttp://www.artsci.washington.edu/ne
Discover magazine just ran an article about some research in this directly with lab animals.
This is extremely common in lab animals, its called stereotypical or stereotype actions. Mice will spend hours turning backflips or jumping up and down in the same spot. We're talking rep rates of 10's of thousands of times a night.
This is of course a bad thing from an animal rights perspective, its like lifetime solitary confinement in a ultra-max prision. But these animals are very bad test subjects, their brains don't work right, their immune systems are weak, all their body chemistry is off. One test showed that animals kept in 'enriched' cages (cages with a few simple toys like cardboard tubes) would tolerate 60 times the toxins of their neurotic peers, and can overcome deleberate genetic failures relating to memory more easily.
These are the kind of animals we are doing brain research on and testing potential new drugs in. Not only is it inhumane, its bad research.