The emperor penguin breeding season is fraught with danger Stefan Christmann/naturepl.com
A rover quietly surveys the forbidding icy landscape. Suddenly, it whirrs into life: it has spotted an emperor penguin. With its antenna set to scan, the 90-centimetre-long robot trundles towards the bird, searching for a signal from an RFID chip beneath the penguin’s skin – recording crucial information that may help us finally understand this enigmatic species.
The emperor penguin is instantly familiar as the star of countless nature documentaries and the 2005 movie March of the Penguins. This media exposure might give the impression that we have a…
