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It was the sight of a young male Ad lie penguin attempting to havesex with a dead female that particularly unnerved George MurrayLevick, a scientist with the 1910-13 Scott Antarctic Expedition. Nosuch observation had ever been recorded before, as far as he knew,and Levick, a typical Edwardian Englishman, was horrified.Blizzards and freezing cold were one thing. Penguin perversion wasanother. Worse was to come, however. Levick spent the Antarctic summer of1911-12 observing the colony of Ad lies at Cape Adare, making himthe only scientist to this day to have studied an entire breedingcycle there. During that time, he witnessed males having sex withother males and also with dead females, including several that haddied the previous year. He also saw them sexually coerce femalesand chicks and occasionally kill them. Levick blamed this "astonishing depravity" on "hooligan males" andwrote down his observations in Greek so that only an educatedgentleman would understand the horrors he had witnessed. Back inBritain he produced a paper (in English), titled Natural History of the Ad lie Penguin. However, the section about the animal's sexual proclivities wasdeemed to be so shocking it was removed to preserve decency. Levickthen used this material as the basis for a separate short paper, Sexual Habits of the Ad lie Penguin , which was privately circulated among a handful of experts. Two Ad lie penguins with a chick. Steve Bloom/Alamy In fact, Levick's observations turned out to be well ahead of theirtime. Scientists had to wait another 50 years before the remarkablesexual antics of the Ad lie were revealed. By this time hispamphlet and its detailed records of Ad lie shenanigans had beenlost to science. But now a copy of Sexual Habits of the Ad lie Penguin has been unearthed, thanks to sleuthing by Douglas Russell,curator of birds at the Natural History Museum , who discovered a copy among records of the work of Scott'sexpeditions and has had it published in the journal Polar Record , with an accompanying analysis of Levick's work. "The pamphlet, declined for publication with the official Scottexpedition reports, commented on the frequency of sexual activity,auto-erotic behaviour, and seemingly aberrant behaviour of youngunpaired males and females, including necrophilia, sexual coercion,sexual and physical abuse of chicks and homosexual behaviour,"states the analysis written by Russell and colleagues WilliamSladen and David Ainley. "His observations were, however, accurate,valid and, with the benefit of hindsight, deserving ofpublication." Levick's lost masterpiece certainly has its eye-watering momentswith its descriptions of male Ad lies who gather in "littlehooligan bands of half a dozen or more and hang about the outskirtsof the knolls, whose inhabitants they annoy by their constant actsof depravity". Injured females are mounted by members of these"gangs", others have their chicks "misused before the very eyes ofits parents". Some chicks are crushed and injured, others arekilled. It is startling stuff, though Russell told the Observer that recent studies have helped understand the behaviour of these"hooligan" penguins. "Ad lies gather at their colonies in Octoberto start to breed. They have only a few weeks to do that and youngadults simply have no experience of how to behave. Many respond toinappropriate cues. Hence the seeming depravity of their behaviour.For example, a dead penguin, lying with its eyes half-open, is verysimilar in appearance to a compliant female. The result is theso-called necrophilia that Levick witnessed and which so disgustedhim." In addition, the penguin is the most humanlike of all birds in itsappearance and its behaviour is most often interpreted inanthropomorphic terms, added Russell. For this reason, Ad liebehaviour, when it was observed for the first time in detail,seemed especially shocking. "Levick was also a gentleman,travelling with a group of men in very difficult circumstances,witnessing behaviour he neither expected nor understood," saidRussell. "It is not surprising that he was shocked by hisfindings." The discovery of Levick's paper is important because its helps shednew light on a species that has been called the bellwether ofclimate change. "The Ad lie needs pack ice from which to dive toget fish. When that ice disappears, numbers may crash and wewill have a clear warning that things are getting bad," saidRussell. Levick's experiences with the Ad lie penguins were not the onlyroot of his suffering in the Antarctic. In February 1912, he andfive other members of Scott's team were waiting to be picked up bythe expedition ship, Terra Nova, but found that pack ice hadblocked its route. The men had to spend an entire Antarctic winterhuddled in an ice cave with no provisions and only an occasionalseal or penguin to eat. "They ate blubber, cooked with blubber, hadblubber lamps," recalled one expedition member. "Their clothes andgear were soaked with blubber, and the soot blackened them, theirsleeping bags, cookers, walls and roof, choked their throats andinflamed their eyes." Remarkably, the men all survived and Levick returned to England in1913 in time to sign up for the first world war. He served inthe Grand Fleet and at Gallipoli, and after the war founded theBritish Schools Exploring Society in 1932, of which he waspresident until his death in June 1956. An obituary described himas "a truly great English gentleman". Levick's notebook is on display at the Natural History Museumuntil 2 September as part of the Scott's Last Expedition exhibition. I am an expert from industrialpanel-pc.com, while we provides the quality product, such as China Industrial Panel PC , China Industrial LCD Displays, Industrial LCD Displays,and more.
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