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| - Fact Check: How can penguin pee make 3% of Antarctic ice when they can't pee at all!
An Instagram account shared a supposed factoid that nearly three per cent of the ice in the Antarctic glaciers is made of penguin urine. AFWA's probe found the claim to be inaccurate and misleading.
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India Today Fact Check
Penguins, like other birds, can't pee. So, three per cent of the Antarctic ice cannot be made of penguin pee.
If you're on social media, chances are, you’ll come across viral fact pages sharing "interesting facts" or "weird facts" that are anything but that. Often, these "facts" are outrightly incorrect or at least distorted to a certain degree. Regardless, these accounts garner a massive following of hundreds of thousands.
One such account on Instagram shared a photo of penguins, alongside a supposed factoid that said penguin urine makes up three per cent of Antarctic ice.
But is that true? AFWA’s probe found the claim to be inaccurate and misleading. Because penguins cannot urinate.
AWFA Probe
It's a known fact that all avian species are primarily uricotelic. In simpler means, organisms that excrete nitrogenous waste in uric acid form from their bloodstream. This excreted uric acid is a semi-solid mass. Unlike mammals, birds cannot release urea or ammonia; nor do they have a urinary bladder. However, there are a few exceptions, like ostriches. So, we searched for scientific literature to figure out if penguins were also an exception.
According to the New Scientist, a scientific journal, penguins feed on small marine animals and expel unabsorbed nutrients as faeces. PenguinsBlog, a blog dedicated to trivia on penguins, also notes that these creatures are seabirds and cannot urinate, just like all other birds.
Penguins, however, are notorious poopers and can excrete up to six to eight times per hour. This is thanks to their super-fast metabolism. According to Popular Mechanics, penguins gush out faeces with such high pressure that they propel their waste up to four feet away.
According to an estimate, the Antarctic Ice Sheet comprises 27 million square kilometres of ice, with a sea level equivalent of about 58 metres.
The penguin population has been dwindling due to anthropogenic challenges. Only 30-31 million penguins are left in the world. So, penguin “urine” making up three per cent of the total ice of Antarctica, which roughly holds 90 per cent of the glaciers on earth, is clearly not only a product of far-fetched imagination but also an impossible feat — after all, penguins cannot pee.
(Written by Vikas Bhadauria)
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