Penguin

I have long been an admirer of the behavioural ecologist. Animal behaviour, as most people know, is important but not easy to study.

I couldn't quote a better example than the recent white-flippered penguin story from the Science magazine. Those noisy penguins often squabble over their colonial territory, fighting with each other mano a mano. When it comes to fighting, the scientists were not particularly interested in whether it's a fist fight (of course, penguins can't) or flipper bash. Rather, the researchers paid attention to the triumph displays after the penguin's beating an opponent. The victory calls were recorded using a microphone and played back to bystander penguins. Each of the bystander penguins - there were 43 in all - were monitored when they listened to winner's victory call.

Monitoring bystander penguins' response is reputed to be difficult and unreliable - and the researchers had found it so - but it was solved by a trick: they temporarily swapped out the penguin eggs with an infrared egg. The fake eggs were used to count the brooding penguins' heart rate, as a barometer of stress levels.

As things turned out, male penguins were more stressed in the apparent presence of of a winner's vocal signature, and they were more likely to challenge an approaching loser by calling. The penguins' triumph display to make their victory known and build a "reputation" within the colony, of course, is not new, and certainly not unique to them. My guess is that birds do it, reptiles do it, mammals of all kinds do it. In fact, I myself made similar "victory dance" not long ago, when my colleague was proven wrong after arguing with me the diagnosis of a sick patient.