PENGUINS work in teams to herd fish in the same way that sheepdogs chivvy sheep into a pen, scientists have found.

Tracking devices attached to Magellanic penguins have revealed that they will swim in ever decreasing circles to herd schools of fish into balls.

As the penguins tighten their circles the fish crowd together until they get so squashed up that the ball loses it shape and breaks up. The penguins then target those fish that stray and snatch a meal.

Sensors also revealed that the penguins are among the Earth’s greediest creatures, stuffing themselves so full that a grown man would have to consume almost 600 quarter-pounder burgers in eight hours to match them.

Professor Rory Wilson, of the University of Wales in Swansea, developed the tracking devices that have been tested on Magellanic penguins, Emperor penguins, badgers, lemon sharks, mussels and imperial cormorants to cast fresh light on animal behaviour.

The devices, the size of a pager, can measure heart rate, direction, height and depth, muscle movement, humidity, speed, temperature and the GPS location.

When Professor Wilson used the devices on Magellanic penguins, the direction records showed that the penguins swim in ever tighter circles while the muscle movement detector indicated each time that the animals opened their beaks to snatch a fish.

Sensors were also able to detect every breath the penguins took when on the surface and showed that they calculate how much air they need for each dive. “What they are doing is counting their breaths,” said Professor Wilson. “They even calculate how many breaths to add on for how many fish they expect to catch.”

Recordings of beak and bowel movements underwater showed that the penguins will eat when the opportunity arises and consume far more than their bodies can digest. Over eight hours the 9lb (4kg) penguins ate 5.5lbs of fish. “They are all eating more than they need,” said Professor Wilson. “It can be by a factor of three times more than we previously thought.”

Tests on other animals have yielded further information about animal behaviour that is difficult or impossible to see.

Emperor penguins, the sensors showed, dive up to 1,300ft (4,000m) into the sea to search for food.

Similarly, sensors strapped to badgers in Britain, as part of a study by Oxford University’s Wildlife and Conservation Research Unit, revealed that the animals do virtually nothing but sleep once in their setts.

Professor Wilson, who yesterday received a Rolex Award for Enterprise worth more than £50,000 to help to develop the sensors, believes that tracking animal movements will vastly increase scientific understanding of the natural world.

They will provide far more detailed and accurate data on energy expenditure and consumption which, he said, will help conservationists to understand how much and what type of habitat and resources species need to survive.

“It gives us eyes where we never had eyes before,” he said.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• UK regional accents thrive against the odds
• ‘Scarecrow’ wind farms put rare birds to flight
• What an anti-climax: G-spot is a myth