PARIS, France (AFP) — Scientists observing penguin populations in Antarctica had expected breeding to occur a little earlier but were “very surprised both by the scale and the speed of the advance,” Ignacio Juarez Martinez, who studied the animals’ breeding patterns, told Agence France-Presse.

“The scientist from the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University said gentoo penguins demonstrated the greatest change with the timing of their breeding season brought forward 13 days between 2012 and 2022 and up to 24 days in some colonies. Adelie and Chinstrap penguins also advanced their breeding season by an average of 10 days.