Cape Adare - Ecology

Ecology

Cape Adare is the site of the largest Adelie penguin rookery in the world. The only study of this particular colony was done by George Murray Levick, who was member of the 1910–13 Scott Antarctic Expedition and observed it for an entire breeding cycle in 1911 and 1912. He was reluctant to publish it due to the unusual mating habits of penguins that he recorded, among them homosexuality, sexual and physical abuse of chicks, and mating with dead female penguins, nowadays ascribed to the lack of experience of young penguins. He described it as "depraved". The report was considered too shocking for public release at the time, and was suppressed. The only copies that were made available privately to researchers were translated into Greek, to prevent this knowledge becoming more widely known. After it became lost, it was rediscovered and published in the journal Polar Record only in 2012. The discovery significantly illuminates the behaviour of the species that some researchers believe to be an indicator of climate change.