Penguins Ride Air Force Jet South By TALES AZZONI, AP
SAO PAULO, Brazil (Oct. 6) - More than 370 penguins that mysteriously washed up on Brazil's equatorial beaches were flown south and released closer to the frigid waters they call home, environmentalists said Monday.
Onlookers in southern Brazil cheered as the young Magellanic penguins entered the ocean and quickly swam away, the International Fund for Animal Welfare said in a statement. It called the penguin release the largest ever in South America.
The penguins were among nearly 1,000 that have washed up on Brazil's northeastern coast in recent months, said group spokesman Chris Cutter. About 20 percent of the penguins died and the rest were not healthy enough to send back.
The penguins, which had been kept at an animal rehabilitation center in the northeastern city of Salvador, were flown on an air force plane to southern Brazil and released into the ocean on Saturday.
Experts hope a small group of older penguins released along with the young ones will help guide them south to the Patagonia.
Magellanic penguins breed in large colonies in southern Argentina and Chile and migrate north as far as southwest Brazil between March and September.
Environmentalists say it is not know why the penguins were stranded so far north, but suggest they could have been carried beyond their usual range by a flow of warm water.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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aol _________________ Blame it on a simple twist of fate. ~ Bob Dylan
I wonder how they got there! I hope they didn't have a purpose, only to get there and have it foiled by environmentalists _________________ They say home is where the heart is, so your real home's in your chest. --Captain Hammer
The penguins, which had been kept at an animal rehabilitation center in the northeastern city of Salvador, were flown on an air force plane to southern Brazil and released into the ocean on Saturday.
Experts hope a small group of older penguins released along with the young ones will help guide them south to the Patagonia.
They just released them into the ocean hoping they would find their way home? What if they were wrong? And they call themselves environmentalists. Tisk tisk. _________________ "Enter, stranger, but take heed
Of what awaits the sin of greed,
For those who take, but do not earn
Must pay most dearly in their turn."
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