Penguins may sniff out relatives

Zoo study sees hints of odor-based kin recognition

Penguins may be able to smell some feathery, waddling whiff of kinship on others of their kind.

Humboldt penguins live long and in the wild return to their natal colony to breed, so the ability to determine kinship and avoid inbreeding via smell could come in handy. Jim Schultz/Chicago Zoological Society

In some sniff tests, Humboldt penguins (Spheniscus humboldti) in the Brookfield Zoo outside Chicago could discriminate between the odor of birds they knew and birds they weren’t familiar with, says Jill Mateo of the University of Chicago.