Changing weather isn't just an inconvenience for them

The vulnerable chicks of the Magellanic penguins are dying because of severe rainstorms and extreme heat caused by climate change, according to a new study conducted over 27 years on the world's biggest colony of Magellanic penguins on the arid Punta Tombo peninsula. in Argentina.

As you can see in the photos above and below, the Magellanic penguin chicks are pretty big but don't have waterproof feathers yet. This puts them in a delicate situation, because they are too large for their parents to sit on them and protect them from the weather and keep them warm. This makes them very vulnerable to rainstorms, which usually means death if they get drenched. On the other extreme, they can also die from too much heat because they cannot yet go cool off in the ocean water... Basically, they've evolved to live in certain conditions, but climate change has pushed things off-balance and the poor penguin chicks are paying the price

Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0Above is the range of the Magellanic penguin.

Wikimedia/CC BY-SA 3.0