On December 3, 1959, Richard L. Penney, a pioneering penguin researcher, snatched five male Adélie penguins from their rookery on Wilkes Land, in eastern Antarctica. He affixed numbered bands to their flippers, placed the Adélies in cloth bags, and had them flown halfway across Antarctica to McMurdo Sound, on the Ross Sea. There, they were released.
Ten months later, three of the five returned to the Wilkes Land colonies from which they had been taken. The penguins had swum 2,400 miles along the Antarctic coast, passing many Adélie rookeries along the way. Their average speed was eight miles per day. What was most remarkable was that the birds managed this feat after being flown overland and turned loose in a place they had never been before. They had made a beeline for their natal colonies and, following a route they had never traveled, wound up in the same rookery where they had been abducted nearly a year earlier.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Heat Exhaustion: Has the Adelie Penguin Met Its Match?: Scientific American
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