The plight of penguins in Antarctica

A new study shows penguins are breeding earlier than ever https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2656.70201 in the Antarctic Peninsula. This region is one of the fastest-warming areas of the world due to climate change, and penguins time their breeding period to environmental conditions. That’s everything from the temperature outside and whether there’s ice on the ground to what food is available. Changes in those conditions could contribute to mating changes. Plus, answers to a debate about how ice melts and how dirty diapers train parents in the art of disgust. Have a scientific question you want us to answer? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave http://plus.npr.org/shortwave. Listen to Short Wave on Spotify https://n.pr/3HOQKeK and Apple Podcasts https://n.pr/3WA9vqh. This episode was produced by Jason Fuller and Rachel Carlson. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and Christopher Intagliata. Tyler Jones checked the facts. The audio engineers were Kwesi Lee and Hannah Gluvna. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:18Speaker 00

  You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.

• 0:23Regina Barber?

  Hey, Short Wavers. Regina Barber here. And Emily Kwong. With our biweekly science news roundup, featuring the hosts of All Things Considered. And today, we have the glamorous, the brilliant Elsa Chang.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  Aw, thank you, guys.

• 0:36Regina Barber?

  Hi, Elsa.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  So glad to be here. Okay, so I heard that we are talking about penguins adapting to climate change in the Antarctic today?

• 0:44Regina Barber?

  Yes. And we're going to get into a debate about ice skating that may now have an answer.

• 0:49Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 0:50Regina Barber?

  And how dirty diapers train parents in the art of disgust.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting. Can't wait.

• 0:57Regina Barber?

  All of that on this episode of Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

• 1:11Speaker 00

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• 2:28Speaker 02

  Okay, kick us off with the Antarctic penguins. What's going on with these guys?

• 2:33Regina Barber?

  So, a new study in the Journal of Animal Ecology found that they're breeding earlier than ever in the Antarctic spring. Adelie and chinstrap penguins are breeding an average of 10 days earlier. And gentoo penguins, almost 2 weeks earlier. Over the decade, the researchers observed them.

• 2:50Emily Kwong?

  And while 2 weeks may not seem like a lot of time, researchers say it's actually a radical shift in the penguins' breeding season.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  Wait, so what's causing this shift?

• 2:58Regina Barber?

  So, penguins time their breeding period to environmental conditions, like temperature outside, or whether there's ice on the ground, or what food is available. And with climate change, the Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest-warming areas of the world, and that could be a driver.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Interesting. So, how did they collect all of this data? Like, 10 years feels like a very long time to be in Antarctica.

• 3:21Regina Barber?

  Yeah. So, one of the study's authors, Tom Hart, says they set up 77 cameras across 37 penguin colonies, and each camera took photos every hour for a decade.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  Surveillance system.

• 3:34Emily Kwong?

  Yes. It was very clever methodology. We spoke to another penguin researcher who wasn't involved in the paper, Bill Fraser, and he said this camera method is a great way to get long-term data in Antarctica, because a lot of work in this region is restricted to human observations.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Huh. Okay, so then what does all of this mean for the future of Antarctic penguins, you think?

• 3:54Regina Barber?

  Well, Tom says that's something they're trying to figure out for future work. Some penguins might thrive. For example, the gentoo penguins are suited for warmer climates and eat a wider variety of fish. So, it seems that gentoos are doing better than the other species, which could struggle with warmer temperatures.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  Okay, going from Antarctic penguins to the Winter Olympics, which are just a few weeks away.

• 4:16Emily Kwong?

  Yes.

• 4:17Regina Barber?

  Yeah.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  And I think, like, this would be a great time, then, to talk about ice science. Tell us, Emily, what is new about ice?

• 4:24Emily Kwong?

  Well, since Victorian times, there's been this idea that ice has a thin layer of water on top, which makes it slippery, and physicists have been arguing about it ever since. Is there a thin film of water, even at temps below 0 degrees Celsius? And like, how thick is this layer of water?

• 4:41Regina Barber?

  And there might be an answer now, published in the Journal of Chemical Physics this week. Luis Gonzalez-McDowell, a chemist at Complutense, University of Madrid, looked at research all the way back to the 1930s to address this debate. He also ran computer simulations to see how ice freezes or melts, really looking at what happens to that surface.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Hmm, and what did he find? Like, is that thin film of water there?

• 5:04Emily Kwong?

  Uh, drum roll. There is a very, very thin layer of water on the ice, even though the ice itself is frozen. And this is true down to negative 10 degrees Celsius. That layer of water is about a nanometer thick. And to put that in perspective, a sheet of paper is 100,000 times thicker than that layer of water.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 5:24Emily Kwong?

  Uh, here's Luis.

• 5:25Speaker 05

  The surface of ice, which is solid, is always lubricated. You have always, before you start sliding, already a lubrication layer.

• 5:34Regina Barber?

  And this is interesting because some past theories thought that maybe the pressure from like, let's say, an ice skate, maybe the thing creating that layer of water on the ice. And he says it's always there, down to negative 10 degrees Celsius.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  Okay, so then to apply this to the Winter Olympics, say, what does this mean for winter sports like ice skating or hockey?

• 5:54Emily Kwong?

  Yeah, well, ice skates, they put pressure on the ice. And when that happens, the water layer actually gets thicker because the friction of the skate blades causes more melting.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 6:03Emily Kwong?

  Yeah.

• 6:04Regina Barber?

  And Luis's computer models also took into account humidity and found that humidity levels can also affect the formation and thickness of that water layer. Looking ahead to the Winter Olympics in Italy, there's already been some concern about the ice rinks and whether the ice is smooth enough to skate on. And according to Luis's work, if the humidity isn't quite right, that could also affect the slipperiness.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Hmm, okay, going from the pristiness of ice surfaces to dirty diapers.

• 6:30Emily Kwong?

  What a pivot.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  I am so glad to be child-free. What do we got here on this front? Dirty diapers, talk to me.

• 6:37Regina Barber?

  This is inspired by the psychology of disgust. So disgust is really important to our survival as humans because it helps us avoid all kinds of substances that would otherwise make us, like, sick. Remember, disgust was one of the five basic emotions in that movie Inside Out?

• 6:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:53Regina Barber?

  Caution, there is a dangerous smell, people. Yucky!

• 6:57Speaker 06

  I just saved our lives. Yeah, you're welcome.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  I love disgust.

• 7:02Emily Kwong?

  She's an icon. However, there are some kinds of disgusting things that people can get used to, like the contents of their kids' diapers.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  No.

• 7:11Emily Kwong?

  Scientists call this habituation. When you're repeatedly exposed to something, you're less sensitive to it.

• 7:16Regina Barber?

  Especially if you're a parent, which I am. And scientists at the University of Bristol and Whitman College wanted to know, how long do parents hold on to their tolerance for these gross things?

• 7:27Speaker 02

  OK, I can't help but feel a parallel to owning a dog, because the amount of times I have gotten stuff on my hands, like, I just don't even care anymore, you know?

• 7:37Emily Kwong?

  Yeah.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  So I am curious.

• 7:38Emily Kwong?

  Do it for love.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. But if I were a human parent, I mean, a parent of a human, like, even after my kids have grown up, would I retain this superpower, this resistance to disgust?

• 7:51Emily Kwong?

  Yeah. So to study that very question, the research team recruited 99 parents and 50 non-parents. And they showed them two photos at once on a computer screen. On one side, a photo of something neutral, like a stack of towels or a clean sink. And on the other side, photos of gross things, like vomit on a sidewalk and, of course, dirty diapers.

• 8:11Speaker 07

  They're all produced by my children, by the way, so big shout out to my kids.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  Aww.

• 8:16Emily Kwong?

  This is the study's lead author, Edwin Dahlmeier, who published these results in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology.

• 8:22Regina Barber?

  By tracking the volunteers' attention as they, like, looked at these photos, his team found out that the non-parents tend to avoid the disgusting photos, whereas the parents showed little to no avoidance. They would look at those pictures of soiled diapers with little aversion, including parents who hadn't changed a dirty diaper in decades, which is, like, similar to me. I am not bothered.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. So you're, like, habituated for life once you have a child?

• 8:46Regina Barber?

  Maybe.

• 8:46Emily Kwong?

  This superpower does seem to last a while, according to this work.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  I mean, if I had to pick my superpower, this is probably not the one I would pick. But, big picture, why does this work matter? What would you say?

• 8:58Regina Barber?

  Yeah, I mean, disgust habituation is actually a good thing in all kinds of jobs. Think about nurses or surgeons or custodians. Edwin would love to see his work be used in those professions.

• 9:10Speaker 07

  Even if we can reassure people, hey, it feels a bit gross now, but you'll get used to it over time. Hopefully, that ultimately either helps or can lead to things that do help.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  This is fascinating. I wonder if it applies to people who are annoying. You just get used to them over time and they stop bothering you.

• 9:27Regina Barber?

  I don't know, but you, Elsa, are always welcome and not annoying us. So thank you so much for coming on the show.

• 9:34Emily Kwong?

  You're so welcome.

• 9:39Regina Barber?

  You can hear Elsa on Consider This, NPR's afternoon podcast about what the news means for you.

• 9:44Emily Kwong?

  And for more science stories just like this one, follow Short Wave on whatever app you are listening to. I'm Emily Kwong.

• 9:52Regina Barber?

  And I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

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