By DPA
Sydney : Penguins pick their best friends for fishing trips rather than teaming up randomly once they get going and are in the ocean, an Australian researcher said Thursday.
Andre Chiaradia also said mature penguins excluded the young and the old from the group because they want the best fishers to stick together rather than have to accommodate the less proficient.
Over four breeding seasons, Chiaradia and his team used microchips to track the hunting behaviour of a colony of fairy penguins on Phillip Island near Melbourne.
They found penguins came back to the beach with the same five or 10 fishing partners they left with. Penguins were less choosey about their mates if food was scarce – possibly because then they tended to hunt alone.
The research, published in the latest issue of the journal Animal Behaviour, was reported by Australia’s AAP news agency.