As well as looking really cute, it means the penguins don’t get disturbed by human scientists.
A human going up to penguins in the wild could stress them out and change their behaviour. Then all you have is unhappy penguins and unreliable results.
In one experiment involving emperor penguins the scientists camoflaged a rover as a penguin chick.
Le Maho et. al. / Via Nature
Scientists tagged 34 king penguins with external heart rate monitors that could be read by an antenna fixed to a rover. The next day they sent a rover (not dressed up as a baby penguin) into the group of penguins.
And it worked! The king penguins' heart rates increased less and returned to normal quicker than when compared to humans approaching them.
In the next experiment scientists dressed the rover up as a penguin chick and sent it to take readings from a group of emperor penguins.
The rover managed to infiltrate an emperor penguin huddle.
Le Maho et. al. / Via Nature
