“After nosing about in guano [GWAH-noh, bird poo] for several hours, one goes completely cuckoo.”
This was the problem faced by Professor Bo Elberling and his team on South Georgia Island, as they tried to uncover links between global warming and penguin colonies. They couldn’t conduct the research without getting high.
Fish and krill, the main penguin foods, contain large amounts of nitrogen. When the birds poo on the ground, this reacts and forms a gas called nitrous oxide.
When inhaled, nitrous oxide can cause numbness, dizziness and laughter (it’s sometimes called ‘laughing gas’). Doctors and dentists often give it to patients to help relieve pain, but it’s also taken as a drug. Professor Elberling and his team ended up with a similar high as they studied the penguin poo.
Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas, and is 300 times worse for the environment than carbon dioxide. Penguins don’t produce enough to really be a problem, though – unless you’re a scientist trying to study it.
Lachlan Writes Science 