Where on Earth Did the King Penguins Go?

In 2017, aerial photos of Île aux Cochons, an island between Madagascar and Antarctica showed vast spaces of rocks. A few years before, king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) stand flipper to flipper on the same island with an estimated crowd of some 500,000 pairs of nesting king penguin and their chicks. It appears that ninety percent of the penguins unexpectedly disappeared without a trace from their home. Researchers Henri Weimerskirch and ecologist Charles Bost of French national research agency CNRS traveled to the island to investigate.