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In Brief

30 December 2015

Penguins filmed in epic underwater fight stealing a large squid

THERE’S no honour between penguin thieves. An underwater fight between three gentoo penguins has been captured on camera, and it has revealed them stealing food from each other.

“This is completely new behaviour, not just for gentoo penguins but for penguins in general,” says co-author Jonathan Handley of Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

The penguins were fighting over a squid, which was eventually torn in two (Polar Biology, “It is interesting that the interaction was over a squid: a large and difficult-to-capture prey item that is clearly worth fighting for,” says Norman Ratcliffe of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK.

We already knew that penguins stole pebbles from each other’s nests and have records of seabirds fighting over food above water. So why do they steal?


“Individuals able to acquire more resources, including both food and nesting material, will be able to provide better parental care for offspring, thus increasing the offspring’s chance to survive until fledging,” Handley says.