Speedy drones count Antarctic penguin colonies in record time

Counting penguins is tough work: On Antarctica’s Cape Crozier, it takes scientists two full days to map the location of 300,000 nesting pairs of Adélie penguins, using helicopters and hand-flown drones. Meanwhile, brutal winds, freezing rain, and snow limit the flight windows for these laborious surveys. Now, scientists have cut that time to just 3 hours, by equipping their drones with a new flight path algorithm. Previously, scientists piloted single drones back and forth over swaths of land, similar to