A team of scientists have come to
Penguin Beach at London Zoo, installed a hi-tech track and are now trying to
lure Puddle and his penguin pals across it. They have a very upright posture
like a human, but they also have very short, crouched legs - it is very
comical. But when I see an animal do something weird, as an evolutionary
biologist, I want to know how that evolved, how it got that way. Previous
studies of the penguin's ungainly gait have revealed that the waddle is in fact
the most energy efficient way for them to get about on land. But what is not
known about penguins is how the legs do that, how big are the sideways forces
on penguin legs and how that compares to other waddling birds.
But it turns out that penguins
didn't always waddle. Fossils reveal that their ancient ancestors moved in a
different way. We have all kinds of fossils as far back as 60 million years ago
from the Southern Hemisphere, says palaeo biologist James Proffitt, who has
come from Texas to study the birds. They probably moved about differently on
land based on the anatomy of their legs and hip bones
That gives us a chance to understand
how these unusual anatomies and behaviors have evolved in deep time and how we
have all these bizarre things we see today. The bird bones show that the first
penguins were a varied bunch: some were tiny, but others grew as tall as
humans, hunting large fish with their spear-like beaks. A combination of some
dangling string, a tennis ball on a stick - or some fish - is proving hard for
some penguins to resist. Some of the youngsters are really inquisitive:
anything new in their enclosure is almost like a challenge and they want to be
the first ones to try it out, she explains. She's hoping all this hard work
will shed light on these birds. I work with them every day, and I wonder about
their way of moving - their distinctive waddle is just amazing.
