Decoys and blinds are common tools used by hunters so it only follows that those trying to study wild animal populations can use similar techniques for gathering data without spooking their subjects. A team of international scientists employed just such an approach in their field research on emperor penguins. They dressed a small, remote-controlled rover equipped with tracking chip sensors to look like a penguin chick so that it could get close to the penguins, gather data, and minimize the stress evoked in the birds.

The new method, described as “a less invasive and stressful way to collect data on these species,” was published online on Monday in the journal Nature Methods. The objective of the study was to develop a way to investigate the penguins in their natural habitat while minimizing disturbances caused by the proximity of human beings.

The team, led by Yvon Le Maho of the National Centre for Scientific Research in Strasbourg, France, set out to replace tags put onto the penguins’ flippers. Instead, they used chips embedded under the skin of the birds, much like the “identichips” microchips used for keeping track of pets. The penguins under study were a colony of king penguins on Possession Island in the South Indian Ocean.

Reading data from the microchips requires that a scanner be placed in proximity to the birds.

“I wondered if it might be possible to use a technological device to do this, and I thought about a rover,” Le Maho said in a statement.

Le Maho and colleagues assessed the birds’ heart rates when they sent a rover in to read the chips and compared the results to those collected when human beings approached to collect the data.

“There was a very high increase in heart rate with the human – much more than in a rover,” he explained.

Le Maho and his team also found that by dressing the rover as a penguin chick, they could send the rover into the crowd of penguins for ongoing observations of nesting. The birds would snap and lunge at the rover, but their heart rates did not increase above what they typically did in response to other penguins drawing near.