On Friday sunrise , locals in South Africa came across a bewildering batch : dozens of endangered African penguins laying deadened on a beach , surrounded by a sprinkling of dead bees . Just as they no doubt suspected , post - mortems of the seabirds give away the mien of stings – it appear the colony was attack by a cloud of angry bee .
South African National Parks(SANParks ) report that the body of 63 penguins were receive along a beach in Simon ’s Town , near Cape Town , on September 17 . The penguin were fellow member of the Boulders African penguin colony who were feature inPenguin Town , a Netflix documentary series count at the super - cunning species ' engagement against extinction .
“ Preliminary investigations paint a picture that the penguins died because of being burn by a swarm of Cape honey bees,”SANParks - Table Mountain National Parksaid in a assertion .
A exclusive drained penguin was also found on a beach in Fish Hoek beach , the next town over less than 6 kilometers ( 3.7 mile ) off , and was found to have been sting multiple fourth dimension .
A catastrophic blow to this universe is the last the species needs . Under theIUCN Red List , the African Penguin ( Spheniscus demersus ) is consider endangered and has experienced a rapid universe decline in recent decades , largely due to food shortages from overfishing andclimate change .
The organic structure were take to the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds ( SANCCOB ) who carried out a post - mortem of the penguins and postulate biological samples for testing . While no obvious injuries were discovered , post - mortems break that all the penguins had multiple bee stings . Biological sample were sent for disease and toxicology testing to harness out any other possibilities .
African penguin can be found along the coastal neighborhood of South Africa , Namibia , Angola , the Democratic Republic of the Congo , Gabon , and Mozambique . Although sure enough on the humble side , the species are sometimes know as jackass penguins , due to their tawdry , Equus asinus - same bray . Stranger still , they also usesimilar “ speech ” patternsas man to communicate .
In 2020 , scientist studied the display Song of African penguin in captivity and found they commune using shorter sounds for the sound they use most often and long vocalisation with more syllables for more complex messages – distinctly similar to lingual principle find in human speech around the world .
It ’s think theAfrican penguin are specially vulnerable to multiple stings fromCape honey bees due to their little stature , standingat just 60 centimeters ( 24 inches ) tall and press an norm of 2.2 to 3.5 kilogram ( 4.9 to 7.7 pounds).Nevertheless , it ’s exceedingly unusual to hear of mass - sting events wipe out a important portion of a tempestuous fauna population .
