Cape Town: People are well aware of the pain of bee stings, but there has been a unique case of bee stings in South Africa.
According to a report published in Al Jazeera, bees have stung 63 rare African penguins off the coast of Cape Town. The dead penguins were recently found dead on the shores of Boulder, a popular tourist destination south of Cape Town.
David Roberts, a zoologist with the South African Foundation for the Protection of Coastal Birds, said the post-mortem of the dead penguins showed multiple bite marks on their bodies and eyes. Some penguins were stung more than 20 times. “It’s usually rare, and we didn’t expect it,” he said. Dead bees were also found at the scene.
South African Conservation Authority spokeswoman Lauren Clayton said the post-mortem samples had been sent to a laboratory for further testing. Authorities are now trying to determine the motives behind the bees’ attack on the penguins.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) red list, these African penguins were part of a colony living in natural habitat. The area is part of a natural park and the bees that kill penguins are part of the same ecosystem.
These penguins, also known as the Cape, are found in South Africa and Namibia, and in the last three decades, the number of these penguins living in South Africa has dropped by 73% to 10,400 pairs, while in Namibia The number of pairs is reduced to 4,300.
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