By Richard Black, BBC News

The king penguin is the second largest species

媒體英語(yǔ)(論壇)會(huì)帶大家一起學(xué)習(xí)BBC撰稿人在報(bào)道世界大事時(shí)常用到的單詞和短語(yǔ)。

Background: 生物學(xué)家多年來(lái)一直通過(guò)給企鵝做標(biāo)記的方法來(lái)監(jiān)視企鵝的行蹤。法國(guó)科學(xué)家近日指出，此舉動(dòng)不僅會(huì)給企鵝的健康帶來(lái)危害，而且還對(duì)已收集到的有關(guān)氣候變化的數(shù)據(jù)產(chǎn)生質(zhì)疑。

For decades scientists have been following penguins by putting bands around their flippers .

This allows individual birds to be identified at a distance.

But there have been concerns that flipper bands might harm the birds by slowing them down as they swim.

The latest study, reported in the journal Nature, confirms it. Scientists from Strasbourg University followed a colony of king penguins for ten years.

Birds fitted with bands died younger, started breeding later in the year, took longer to forage for food and over all raised about 40 per cent fewer chicks .

The researchers suggest that using flipper bands would now be unethical in most situations.

Scientists in the field would now have to find other tagging methods but in the meantime there are also concerns that some data gathered on penguins down the years, in this ecological crucial part of the planet, may now be worthless .