Neither the eggs or penguins require ice... And if there is no ice, the penguins would surely go on to land, eg nearby Rothschild island.
I don't get it - lack of ice doesn't kill things.
> Emperor penguin colonies rely on sea ice between April and January to breed, but any change to their habitat impacts whether chicks develop waterproof feathers, and ultimately survive.
AIUI they breed on sea ice. If the ice melts before the chicks have developed waterproof feathers they drown.
Of course there is also the issue that no information about Antarctica can be confirmed by citizen journalists as the whole world (US, UK, Russia, China, etc) all agreed to preserve this continent and Antarctica can never even be felt explored by the public. Anyway, Antarctic information is certainly mediated for us.
Emperor penguins can be breed in captivity, btw. So it can't be that ice is required. It must be that the environment needs to be stable. But then the article says it was the lack of ice that did it, not the changing of the environmental conditions.
You think the technology to create ice has not been invented, yet?
I probably should have said that the temperature in captivity isn't likely to be the same as that in Antarctica. I might be wrong, but I don't see them dropping the temperature to -70 degrees or whatever in captivity.
In Antarctica, they usually live on the coast, where average temperatures are around -10C to 10C, not as extreme as in the interior (-40 to -60C).
Evolution is trial and error. Maybe eventually they would change their breeding behaviors to rely less on ice in the wild. Or maybe a rapidly changing environment will cause enough members of this endangered species to go the “error” route, and trigger a population collapse.