KING penguin chicks are remarkably adept at hearing their parents鈥� voices
over the din of the colony, researchers have found. This ability, which is
shared by humans, is known as the 鈥渃ocktail party effect鈥濃�攖he brain鈥檚
capacity to filter out irrelevant background noise.
King penguins breed in colonies of up to 300 000 couples. But they do not
build nests, so when parents return from foraging they must find their chicks
among hundreds of others. 杏吧原创s still don鈥檛 know how they do it, says
Thierry Aubin at the University of Paris in Orsay, since the combined noise made
by hundreds of penguins can reach 70 decibels.
Aubin and his colleagues broadcast recorded king penguin calls at different
volumes in a colony. They found that a chick can recognise its parent鈥檚 call
even when the combined sound of other penguins honking is 6 decibels louder
(Proceedings of the Royal Society B, vol 265, p 1665).
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