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FACTOID!!
Each year millions of birds are strangled to death because they are caught in plastic six-pack holders. Always collect six-pack holders and cut them into very small pieces and place them in a plastic recycling bin.


The Emperor's Eggs


The Emperor's Eggs
"Science is a big thing if you can travel a Winter Journey in her cause and not regret it". These are the words written by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the sole survivor of a winter journey in Antarctica in 1911. The expedition was organised to search for penguin eggs. At that time, the head of the scientific party was convinced — wrongly, as it turned out — that emperor penguins were the most primitive of all birds. It was reasoned that by obtaining embryos, it might be possible to trace penguins' ancestry, even finding the missing link between birds and reptiles. Gabrielle Walker, nearly 90 years later, retraces their steps the modern way—by helicopter. The eggs lie on a bed of cotton wool in a glass-lidded box at a tiny outpost in the Hertfordshire village of Tring, England. Why are the eggs so important when they told us so little? Perhaps because of the efforts that they represent in the time before helicopters, radios and snowmobiles. They set the stage for scientific research in Antarctica.
17 APRIL 1999, P. 42-47
New Scientist
17 APRIL 1999, P. 42-47

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