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Sunday, November 22, 2009

Photo: Penguin Chicks Frozen by Global Warming?


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A gentoo penguin chick (center) is drenched by rain at Port Lockroy on the Antarctic Peninsula in January 2008. Unlike adult penguins, chicks lack water-repellent feathers and so become drenched during rainstorms. The chicks are then susceptible to freezing to death during nighttime's below-freezing temperatures.

Increasing rain in penguin habitats may be caused by global warming, making the precipitation one of many human-caused ills affecting the seabirds, a July 2008 paper says.

Photograph by Fiona Stewart via Jon Bowermaster