Penguins can sniff out the odour of lifelong mates, helping them reunite in crowded colonies, and also can identify the scent of close kin to avoid inbreeding, scientists said on Wednesday. Some seabirds have previously been known to use their sense of smell to find food or locate nesting sites but the experiments with captive Humboldt Penguins at Brookfield Zoo near Chicago proved, for the first time, that the birds use scent to discriminate between close relatives and strangers.
“Other animals do it, we do it, so why can’t birds?” said Jill Mateo, a biopsychologist at the University of Chicago, who worked with graduate student Heather Coffin on the research published in the journal PLoS ONE. “Their sense of smell can help them find their mates and perhaps choose their mates,” Mateo said.
“Seafaring birds that travel long distances in the ocean use odours to find food and use odours to recognise nests but we didn’t know what odours or the extent to which they could use odours to recognise kin,” Mateo said.
“This was the first study to show they can use odour to recognise genetic differences,” she said. Researchers worked with two groups of endangered Humboldt Penguins raised at the zoo, totalling 22 birds. Their behaviour was recorded as the birds examined scents emitted by oil from the birds’ preening glands. The gland near the bird’s tail excretes oil used to keep them clean but also has an olfactory purpose.