Image of the Day: Chinstrap Penguins on Slippery Slope
The 2005 film March of the Penguins sparked an Emperor penguin fever. Now, because of the earth’s rising fever, their feathered cousins, the chinstrap penguins, are in trouble. According to a BBC Nature slideshow, the Natural History Museum in Madrid found that within the past 20 years, more than 30 percent of the chinstrap penguin population in Antarctica has disappeared. The research team traces this decline to a lack of food. Chinstrap penguins feast almost solely on krill, a shrimp-like species that is also declining because of higher ocean temperatures and less sea ice, among other possible causes. Another possible threat to the penguins could be too much interaction with the tourists that come to see them.
Credit: UnofficialSquaw.com/flickr
