The Gentoo Penguin Is Actually Four Distinct Species We Mistook For One – ScienceAlert

Birds are one of the most well studied groups of animals in the world, and yet, we’re still finding new species, some of which we’ve never seen before and others that have been hiding in plain sight for hundreds of years.
The gentoo penguin (Pygoscelis papua) was first discovered in the cold Southern Ocean in 1781. In the years since, scientists have split populations into two subspecies, one that lives in the Falkland Islands (P. p.papua) and one that lives in the South Shetland Islands and Western…

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