Study: Penguins Don't Topple Watching Planes

Feb. 2 -- After years of reports that Antarctic penguins fall onto their backs when aircraft pass overhead, The British Royal Navy says tests prove — it just ain't so.

British servicemen serving in the South Atlantic during the 1982 Falklands War with Argentina were the first to report a strange phenomenon among the local penguin population.

Servicemen claimed that when helicopters and airplanes flew over colonies of King penguins, the transfixed birds would look up, follow the line of flight with their eyes and then all topple over backwards.

Although scientists have always been careful to note there was never any scientific evidence to support these reports, the British Royal Navy sent a $36,000 mission to Antarctica to find out just what was happening to their fine tuxedoed friends.

With the help of the Royal Navy's ice patrol vessel HMS Endurance and two Lynx helicopters, a team of scientists filmed the earthbound birds' reactions to planes above the island of South Georgia at heights of between 1,500 and 6,000 feet for five weeks.

Dr. Richard Stone, of the British Antarctic Survey, said the birds seemed to move away from the noise, but "not a single bird fell over after 17 flights."

A Topple on April 1

Although the study found no evidence of penguins toppling over, it did establish a low-flying aircraft can cause the birds considerable distress.

"We found that penguins do react to flights by going quiet when the aircraft approached," said Stone. "Some moved away from the source of the noise but they resumed their normal activity very quickly."

Over the past few years, The Royal Navy and the project became the object of many jokes as the story caught the fancy of the British media who even nicknamed the phenomenon "penguin topple."

The latest findings came as no surprise to officials of Britain's Ministry of Defense. "The story that penguins topple over while watching planes is a complete myth," said a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Defense. "Every April First, for the past 12 years, there has been at least one report about toppling penguins. I know of no pilot who has actually seen penguins topple."