Seven-centimetre-long lobster krill look like easy prey for 90-centimetre-tall gentoo penguins, but they don’t go down without a fight. Cameras mounted on the penguins to study their hunting behaviour reveal that the krill fight back with their tiny pincers – and they often succeed in deterring their attackers.
Jonathan Handley of Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and colleagues attached cameras and depth recorders to 38 gentoo penguins in the Falkland Islands as they set out on foraging trips early in the day. “We were hoping to discover what’s happening in the underwater lives of …