Counting penguins from space

(Image: DigitalGlobe)

Counting emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) cannot be easy. They spend much of their time in the Antarctic Ocean and when they do come on land it's for winter in some of the remotest, coldest and windiest places on Earth.

Fortunately, a team from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), University of Minnesota, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Australian Antarctic Division have found an easier way to keep tabs on the penguins - satellite images.

Using images of the colonies like this one, the team counted a total of 595,000 birds, much higher than previous estimates of 270,000 to 350,000. The satellite images also helped the researchers to find seven previously unknown colonies, taking the total to 44.

Peter Fretwell from BAS said: "This is the first comprehensive census of a species taken from space."