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You might think it would be difficult to miss one and a half million penguins. However, after living in obscurity on the Danger Islands off the Antarctic peninsula, a “supercolony” of Adelie penguins has been discovered by scientists.

The birds were detected on the rocky and remote islands after patches of their excrement were picked up by NASA satellites in 2014, and a team of scientists later calculated the vast number using drone technology.

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The team launched an expedition in December 2015 to the Danger Islands, which were so-called in 1842 by James Clark Ross, the explorer, for being thickly encrusted in ice.

Dr Tom Hart, of Oxford University, one of the expedition party, told The Daily Telegraph: “This is the biggest colony discovered recently. It is a huge number of penguins.

“The weirdest, most surprising and incredible thing is that, in this day and age, something so big can go unseen.”