Penguins from Space: A New Satellite Census Doubles the Known Population of Emperors

A group of geographers and ecologists from three continents has taken an unprecedented look at Antarctica's emperor penguins. Using very high resolution (VHR) images from satellites 450 kilometers above Earth, the team has come up with the first total population count for an entire species. With a whopping 595,000 penguins, they found nearly twice as many emperor penguins as did previous studies, and they counted 46 colonies, up from the earlier total of 38. Their results were published today in PLoS One . [More]

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