King penguins can detect two odours associated with conspecifics
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Recent studies on olfaction in penguins have focused on their use of odours while foraging. It has been proposed for some seabirds that an olfactory landscape shaped by odours coming from feeding areas exists. Islands and colonies, however, may also contribute to the olfactory landscape and may act as an orienting map. To test sensitivities to a colony scent we studied whether King penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) could detect the smell of sand, feathers or feces by holding presentations beneath their beaks while they naturally slept on the beach. Penguins had a significantly greater response to the feathers and feces presentations than to sand. Although only a first step in exploring a broader role of olfaction in this species, our results raise the possibility of olfaction being used by King penguins in three potential ways: (1) locating the colony from the water or the shore, (2) finding the rendezvous zone within the colony where a chick or partner may be found, or (3) recognizing individuals by scent, as in Humboldt penguins (Spheniscus demersus).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".