Penguins Again!

Last month we told you a story about Scottish rescue services and deflated inflatable inanimate penguins being mistaken for debris from a non-existent aircraft crash. It seemed to us at McBugle ‘Lagavullin Castle’ that this was a story that was going to be hard to beat. But, never underestimate the Scots, and/or penguins, especially if a Norwegian uncontrolled variable is added to the mix. In August, a penguin who was previously made a Colonel in Chief of the Norwegian Army was knighted at Edinburgh Zoo. Too much information which was way too surreal followed in the international press, so here are just some highlights: Nils Olav (penguin in question) has been an honorary member of the Norwegian King’s Guard since 1972. Given that penguins don’t have as long a flipper life as one might hope, the current Nils Olav is not the same Nils Olav as the original penguin. When one Nils goes to that great iceberg in the sky, another Nils wings its way in.

Anyway, after our current Nils had inspected the troops, he was knighted—dubbed with a sword over where his shoulders could have been if he wasn’t a penguin and a testimonial from King Harald of Norway was read out which described Nils as a penguin ‘in every way qualified to receive the honour and dignity of knighthood’. Why oh why? I hear you cry. Well apparently Norway donated a king penguin to Edinburgh Zoo in 1913, the year that the zoo opened, and the tradition has continued ever since. From our initial research it is not entirely clear why Norway had a spare penguin to give away to the Scots in the first instance (a polar bear would have been more appropriate, surely?) - but should we find out more, we will let you know!

Frogs and Magpies

It may or may not surprise you to know that frog elocution is a topic that has figured prominently in pages of certain newspapers in recent weeks. In Britain, a rare species of frog that ‘croaks with a northern accent’- extinct in the wild since the 1990’s - is now being reintroduced to selected sites in Norfolk. Scientists have established through genetic research and analysis of mating calls that the northern accented frog was once part of a special Viking group of frogs that included animals from Norway and Sweden (Norway again!). Archaeologists have also unearthed remains of the frog at various Saxon sites in East Anglia. To facilitate the reintroduction of the pool frog to the wild the frog has been given special legal protection by the Minister of Wildlife, Joan Ruddock. As a totally unconnected aside, the Bugle team has just learnt that plans are afoot to schedule a return of the Muppet Show on TV after an absence of 27 years. Seriously, though, the reintroduction of the Northern Frog to Britain, which forms part of the UK Biodiversity Plan is obviously a step (leap?) in the right direction, which we at the Bugle whole-heartedly applaud.

Our next story goes out to all those who have been losing sleep wondering how high a magpie’s IQ really is. For those of our international readers who aren’t familiar with the magpie, it’s a black and white bird, scientific name Pica pica. (‘Magpie’ was also a children’s TV programme in the 1970’s that competed with ‘Blue Peter’, but here we are getting into Muppet territory again). Magpies have always had the reputation of being cunning and wily birds with a sharp eye for shiny objects. Up until now, though, there has been little systematic research to investigate the relative intelligence of these birds. So we were interested to read the following in the Independent Online: ‘A study has shown that a magpie can recognise themselves in a mirror as well as any chimpanzee’. On reading further we established that this does not mean that magpies are uniquely wired so that they are able to remember the name of each and every chimpanzee they may have come across at a cocktail party. Anyway, moving rapidly on…. Gertie and Goldie, magpies at the Goethe University of Frankfurt have apparently exhibited self-recognition in a ‘mirror task’ The discovery that magpies demonstrate self-recognition in this way is an exciting one, as this is the first time that this type of cognitive skill has been identified in a non-mammalian species (now we understand why the chimpanzees were relevant). This finding, if replicated, clearly has some important implications for evolutionary theory — watch this space!