Yvon Le Maho of the University of Strasbourg in France and his colleagues wanted to study the heart rates of emperor penguins. They equipped monitors on 34 penguins for that purpose. To collect data, they needed to enter the penguin colony daily. A human presence would cause the penguins to become anxious and would likely skew the data.
So Le Maho and his colleagues built this rover that looks like a penguin chick. They sent it into the colony many times to approach the tagged penguins, gather data, then leave. This rover did not disturb the penguins.
via Neatorama
Image: Frederique Olivier, John Downer Productions, Le Maho et al., Nature Methods
