CET 2026 Slot 5 · MBA CET 2026 Attempt 1 Slot 5 · Verbal – Page 3

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below.

The second-largest colony of emperor penguins in the world appears to be collapsing, after rough seas drowned all of its babies three winters in a row. The Halley Bay colony once accounted for 5 to 9% of the global emperor penguin population, according to the British Antarctic Survey (BAC), which reported the catastrophe. That amounted to about 15,000 to 24,000 adult breeding pairs. But in 2016, the sea-ice platform on which the colony was raising its babies collapsed during rough weather, throwing infant penguins unable to swim into the frigid water. In 2017 and 2018, the rough weather pattern repeated itself.

The birds arrive at the site from their summer sea jaunts each April to breed; for the resulting chicks to survive, the site has to remain stable throughout the Southern Hemisphere’s winter, which lasts until December.

By 2018, a handful of adults — a "few hundred," or about 2 percent of the original population — turned up at the Halley Bay site, the researchers reported. The remaining colony appeared in disarray, with adults moving closer to the ice edge than is typical, and was difficult to count scattered among the roughened chunks of ice.

The good news is that at least some of the colony appears to have moved, rather than died out. The DawsonLambton Glacier colony 34 miles (55 kilometres) to the south has significantly swelled in numbers since the devastation of Halley Bay, the BAC reported. That colony, which had hit a low of just 1,280 pairs in the 2015 season, swelled in each succeeding year. In 2016, it reached 5,315 pairs. In 2017, there were 11,117 pairs. And by 2018, a full 14,612 pairs set up camp at the site.