Ice age emperor penguins hit hard by the cold: Study

This undated handout picture released by the Australian Antarctic Division on March 2, 2015 shows an emperor penguin walking on ice in the Ross Sea region of Antarctica. - AFP

“They live through life in minus 30 degrees Celsius (-22 Fahrenheit) now so they are pretty cold adapted.”

By examining the genetic diversity of modern and ancient penguin populations, scientists from the universities of Tasmania, Southampton and Oxford in Britain, and the Australian Antarctic Division were able to estimate their numbers over time.

They found that numbers began increasing over the last 12,000 years when temperatures rose by an average of about 15 degrees Celsius and as the amount of sea ice around Antarctica began to reduce.

Younger said the warmer temperatures likely gave penguin chicks a better chance of surviving the winter -- when temperatures would have dropped to minus 45 degrees Celsius.

A reduction in sea ice gave would have allowed them easier access to the open ocean to feed.

“We were actually really surprised by this. What we had thought was that the ice age, because there was so much more sea ice which they need (to breed) and because they are so cold-adapted, that this would probably be a good thing for them,” she said.

The researchers believe a population survived in the Ross Sea region because an area of ocean was always kept free of sea ice by wind and currents, according to the study published in Global Change Biology.

“The Ross Sea is probably really important,” said Younger of the area on the Pacific Ocean side of Antarctica which is considered the world’s most intact marine ecosystem.

“They have survived there for at least the last 30,000 years and even when the environment has been really unsuitable in a lot of other places the Ross Sea has been kind of a safe haven for them.