Some nice photos of penguins in flight, from a story about a zoo in Germany…

Interesting to note that a German zoo report from last year revealed that they were having difficulty convincing their penguins to mate. The problem seemed to be that male “relationships were apparently too strong.”

A keeper confirmed that the male couples had adopted rocks which they were guarding like eggs in their caves.

The zoo has said that it will try again in Spring 2006, because the penguins are an endangered species and need to be encouraged to breed.

That might seem odd, until you consider some recent research published by the Royal Scoiety called “Sex allocation theory aids species conservation“:

Supplementary feeding is often a key tool in the intensive management of captive and threatened species. Although it can increase such parameters as breeding frequency and individual survival, supplementary feeding may produce undesirable side effects that increase overall extinction risk.

The very nature of the birds, right down to the gender of their offspring, seems to be significantly affected by the habits of their captors. Or as Daniel Blumstein explained (dead link, see also Royal Society):

The problem is that by feeding kakapos to increase the chance that they’d breed, managers had increased the condition so much that females produced only sons. By selectively feeding those kakapos only in particularly poor condition, and thus not over-feeding all the kakapos, they were able to manipulate offspring sex ratios and thus produce females.

It’s like quantum mechanics of captivity. Wonder if the German zoo will try altering their own behavior in order to generate the results they want in the penguins? Makes you think twice about where and what you are fed, doesn’t it?