This is, I'm

This is Scientific American's 60 Second Science.

I'm Christopher Intagiyata.

Antarctica is known for its great expanses of white,

and not just snow.

If it's fresh, it can either be still white or pinkish and eventually it all turns

brown, muddy brown.

Steph Bocherst is an ecologist at Vria University in Amsterdam,

and the initially white stuff he is talking about is

Penguin poop. The first thing you notice of it is the smell. Basically you're squishing

through puddles of what your first thing is mud but it's actually just poo and

that produces that really strong ammonia smell

which you can really smell from miles away.

But it's not just the smell that travels on the wind.

Ammonia contains nitrogen, a valuable fertilizer, so the winds carry nourishment to nearby

mosses and lichens.

And that in turn supports teeming communities of the largest fully terrestrial animals in

Antarctica,

invertebrates, like springtails and mites.

Boghurst and his colleagues took air and plant samples around the poop piles

and found this airborne ammonia fertilizer

enrich his life as far as a mile away.

...