Kerguelen Islands

The Pygacelus kerguelensis was previously unknown to scientists.

It lives on the Kerguelen Islands, a series of islands in the Indian Ocean.

And apparently, there are... multiple Gen 2 penguin species that live on this island, but this one has some kind of very specific DNA differential.

Yeah, I see here it says Northern Gentoo, Southern Gentoo, Southeastern Gentoo, and Eastern Gentoo all been discovered, but Southeastern, previously unknown.

We learn a lot of new stuff here.

Um, so this is, uh, part of the gentoo penguin sort of, uh, category, um, and discovered on this little island in the Indian Ocean called the Kerguelen Islands.

Very, very remote.

They have named it the pygoscelis kerguensis.

So this is part of the Gen 2 penguin sort of category.

And discovered on this little island in the Indian Ocean called the Kerguelen Islands.

Very, very remote.

They have named it the...

Um, but the, they did a deeper dive into the DNA on some of the penguins there, and a lot of the articles say these penguins have been hiding in plain sight for a century because they look almost [laughs] identical to their cousins, uh, the gentoo, the southeastern gentoo, the, well, penguin.

But it has a different, um, com, makeup, and they live in a very isolated part of the world, the Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean.

It's nicknamed the Desolation, uh, Desolation Islands, and, um, they basically live, like, thousands of, of kilometers from any civilized land.

But, uh, they, they look very similar to their cousins, but so nobody really knew.

Yeah, that's right.

So these penguins were found in the aptly named Desolation Islands in the Subantarctic region-

Yeah

... very hard to get to, uh, which kind of helps explain why it took so long for scientists to genetically test these animals.

The new species, which has a name that is really long that I can't pronounce.

lives on the remote Kerguelen Islands in the Indian Ocean, about 1,200 miles north of Antarctica.

It's the first time a species has been discovered by scientists in more than 100 years, with the last one being the northern rockhopper penguin in 1921.

So this penguin is cute, kind of small, white belly and chest, and a grayish-black head.

But no one ever saw the kites fighting together for the possession of the prey so stolen.

On the Kerguelen Island, Dr. Koues saw the gulls to Buffogus, the sea hen of the sealers, pursue, make them disgorge their food, while on the other side the gulls and the terns combined to drive away the sea hen as soon as it came near to their abodes, especially at nesting time.

Open footnote.

Dr. Elliot Koues, Birds of the Kerguelen Island, in Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Volume 13, Number 2, page 11.

Close footnote.

The little but extremely swift lapwings, open bracket, Vanidus cristatus, close bracket, boldly attack the birds of prey.