Difference between revisions of "Adélie penguin"

Adélie penguins are faced with extreme osmotic conditions, as their frozen habitats offer little fresh water. Such desert conditions mean that the vast majority of the available water is highly saline, causing the diets of Adélie penguins to be highly saline. They manage to circumvent this problem by eating krill with internal concentrations of salt at the lower end of their possible concentrations, helping to lower the amount of ingested salts. The salt load imposed by this sort of diet is still relatively heavy, and can create complications when considering the less tolerant chicks. Salt glands also play a major role in the excretion of excess salts. In aquatic birds such as the Adelie penguin, nasal salt glands excrete an extremely concentrated sodium chloride solution, reducing the load on their kidneys.