Scientist Heather Coffin said ‘smell is likely the primary mechanism for kin recognition to avoid inbreeding within the colony’.
Penguins live in colonies made up of thousands of birds and they live in monogamous pairs – making them ideal subjects of this study. Penguins have the ability to find their mate after days of travelling foraging food in the ocean and despite the large community groups.
This is the first study to provide evidence for odour-based kin discrimination in birds. Research on other sea birds has shown that smell helps guide birds to their home territory and helps them forage for food. Other research has shown that birds could use sound and sight to recognize each other, but no other studies have shown that smell might be used in connection with kin recognition.
Researchers took odour samples from glands near the penguin' tails, where an oil that the birds use for preening is secreted. They put the oil on cotton swabs and rubbed the odour inside dog kennels, similar to the enclosures penguins at a zoo use for their nests. They also put the odour on paper coffee filters and placed them under mats inside the kennels.
When the penguins were released to the area containing the kennels, the researchers found that the penguins spent more time in the kennels with familiar odours. The penguins were able to distinguish between the odours of birds they spent time with and the odours of unfamiliar penguins.
The ability of birds to be able to recognise familiar scents and thus be guided to their home territory also has potentional value to naturalists, 'You could imagine that if you were trying to reintroduce birds to an area, you could first treat the area with an odour the birds were familiar with. That would make them more likely to stay'.
Story taken from Futurity, Friday 23 September 2011
http://www.futurity.org/top-stories/birds-may-identify-their-kin-by-smell/
(Photograph Credits: Jim Schulz/Chicago Zoological Society)
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