Penguins can sniff out the door of lifelong mates, helping them reunite in crowded colonies, and also can identify the scent of close kin to avoid inbreeding, scientists said.
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.
Photo: AFP
照片：法新社
“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 odors to find food and to recognize nests but we didn’t know what odors or the extent to which they could use odors to recognize kin,” Mateo said.
(Reuters)
科學家表示，企鵝能靠嗅覺找出通往終身伴侶的大門，協助牠們在擁擠的棲息地團聚，以及能辨識出近親的氣味，避免近親交配。
過去就知道有些海鳥會利用其嗅覺來覓食或鎖定巢穴位置，但這些針對豢養在芝加哥附近的布魯克菲爾德動物園內的漢波德企鵝的實驗，首度證明這些鳥兒使用嗅覺來鑑別近親與陌生客。
芝加哥大學生物心理學家吉兒‧馬特歐說：「其他動物也會這麼做，我們人類就會，憑什麼這些鳥不會？」這份由馬特歐與研究生海瑟‧寇芬一同進行的研究已發表於《公共科學圖書館—綜合》期刊。
馬特歐表示：「牠們的嗅覺能協助牠們找到牠們的伴侶，以及可能（協助牠們）選擇伴侶。」
馬特歐說：「在海上長途旅行的海鳥利用氣味覓食，以及利用氣味來辨識巢穴，但我們過去不知道牠們用什麼氣味辨識親人，或牠們能利用氣味來辨識親人到什麼程度。」
（路透／翻譯：張沛元）
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