Penguins continue diving long after muscles run out of oxygen

Emperor penguins routinely dive for tens of minutes before returning to the surface, but about 5.6 minutes into a dive, the birds switch from oxygen-fueled aerobic metabolism to anaerobic metabolism. So what causes this change? Researchers show that emperor penguins' dive muscles trigger the switch to anaerobic metabolism and set the aerobic dive limit when they run out of oxygen.

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