Penguins gift ‘fish’ to scientist for saving 4 penguin chicks
- By Web Desk -
- Jan 07, 2026
In a recent social media viral, a man shared a heart-warming encounter with a colony of penguins outside his tent.
The video features the penguins giving gestures to the man for needing his help to rescue four babies of their group.
The social media users quickly engaged with the video and shared their reactions.
The viral video was shared by a climate scientist with the account yamatosenseii on Instagram with the caption narrating his encounter with the penguins and his love for the Inuit communities.
You can watch the viral video below.
Penguins ask for help from a climate scientist
The viral video features a colony of penguins outside the man’s tent, who soon senses something off.
The penguins take him to a spot, and he observes an unusual glimpse with the help of his binoculars. The man is a climate scientist who notices that a large piece of ice gets broken from the main piece, which has four penguin chicks.
The scientist Yamato quickly rescues them as some leopard seals were revolving around the smaller ice piece. Yamato further gives the babies back to the group. What stands as a highlight is the fish placed outside his tent, which most likely were given as a gift by the colony.
Viral video of Climate Scientist’s encounter with colony of penguins
Earlier, the news reported that endangered penguins living off South Africa’s coast have likely starved en masse due to food shortages, a study said Friday, with some populations dropping by 95 percent in just eight years.
Fewer than 10,000 breeding pairs of the small, black and white African Penguin are left globally, according to scientists, and the species was listed as critically endangered last year by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Two of the most important breeding colonies near Cape Town had collapsed between 2004 and 2011, with some 62,000 birds estimated to have died, the study by the UK’s University of Exeter and the South African Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment said.
In those eight years, sardine populations in South African waters — a main food source for penguins — were consistently below 25 percent of their peak abundance, said co-author and biologist Richard Sherley.
This drop in sardine stocks was due to fishing practices combined with environmental causes such as changes in water temperatures and salinity.
This “appears to have caused severe food shortage for African penguins, leading to an estimated loss of about 62,000 breeding individuals”, Sherley said.
The global population of the species had declined by nearly 80 percent in the past 30 years, the scientists said.
Conservationists say that at the current rate of population decrease, the bird could be extinct in the wild by 2035.
For 10 years, authorities have imposed a commercial fishing ban around six penguin colonies, including Robben and Dassen islands, the two sites observed in the study.
Other initiatives underway include artificial nests and creating new colonies.
The birds are a strong attraction for tourists to South Africa, with thousands of people visiting colonies each year.
But the pressure from tourism also disturbs the birds and causes enhanced stress.