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We thought we knew emperor penguins – robots are proving us wrong

For decades, we studied only a tiny number of Antarctica's emperor penguins. Now robots and satellites are revealing surprising secrets about how they live

By Colin Barras

8 January 2025

Emperor penguins (Aptenodytes fosteri) colony with chicks, age 9-12 weeks, Antarctica. Bookplate. — The emperor penguin breeding season is fraught with danger
Stefan Christmann/naturepl.com

A rover quietly surveys the forbidding icy landscape. Suddenly, it whirrs into life: it has spotted an emperor penguin. With its antenna set to scan, the 90-centimetre-long robot trundles towards the bird, searching for a signal from an RFID chip beneath the penguin’s skin – recording crucial information that may help us finally understand this enigmatic species.

The emperor penguin is instantly familiar as the star of countless nature documentaries and the . This media exposure might give the impression that we have a…

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