Study: Penguins Don't Topple Watching Planes

Feb. 2, 2001 -- 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."

It’s No Joke

But Stone insists his study is not a $36,000 operation to ascertain an April Fools' joke. "We didn't go down [to Antarctica] to look at penguins topple," he said. "We went to study the effects of flying altitudes on penguins in the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic."

The preliminary findings of the study, which were released today, found penguins do react to flights and there could be long-term implications of their responses.

"When planes approach penguins, some of them move away from the source of the noise," said Stone. "It could affect reproduction and breeding patterns as penguins could abandon the eggs they have been incubating and there is a threat of losing unguarded eggs to predators."

The team of scientists did not, however, observe any loss of eggs in the course of the five weeks.

He concluded that flights over 1,000 feet caused "only minor and transitory ecological effects" on King penguins.

Arriving at Flight Guidelines

However, Stone said the team still needs to make a computer analysis of over 100 hours of video covering more than 100 penguins that was captured by four video cameras.

The findings would then be used to arrive at guidelines for aircraft activity in the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic regions.

South Georgia is home to large colonies of wildlife, including about 400,000 pairs of breeding King penguins.

Environmentalists have been concerned that the dramatic growth in commercial air operations by travel companies to the region could be disturbing wildlife, including driving penguins off their eggs.

Like the rest of the world, the British love penguins and apparently neither the government nor the Royal Navy wanted to be blamed for doing harm to one of the world's best-dressed birds.

ABCNEWS.com's Leela Jacinto and Lucrezia Cuen contributed to this report.