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Round components of Antarctica final 12 months, entire colonies of emperor penguins misplaced all of the chicks that they had stoically incubated via weeks of darkness, minus 50 levels Celsius temperatures and 160 kilometers-per-hour winds.
This unhappy discovery got here through a mix of business and authorities satellites that scientists tailored to spy on the penguins. These iconic birds rely on sea ice as a platform for breeding and elevating chicks, however because the globe is warming, ice is melting too early. The chicks, too younger to swim, are drowning.
Final 12 months, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the emperor penguin as endangered. The truth that they and different penguin species are in hassle brings up a thorny philosophical query: Why ought to folks care about disappearing species? Typically when confronting the general public with critically endangered frogs or disappearing rainforest vegetation, scientists will warn those that some helpful compound, perhaps a treatment for most cancers, could possibly be lurking inside them. However what if an animal doesn’t have any apparent use? What if penguins aren’t useful to people?
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