Flipper tags have been extensively used in the study of penguin population dynamics.

Due to the shape of penguin ankles, leg bands that are commonly used for songbirds cannot be used, and instead bands are placed on penguin flippers. Gautier-Clerc and colleagues identified and followed 100 adult King Penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) in a colony of 25,000 breeding pairs for five years. To 50 of these birds they attached standard flipper tags. To the other 50 birds they inserted a transponder tag below each bird's skin. They also buried antennae under paths between the water and the colony, which recorded each time individual birds crossed the paths. Over five years, the 50 banded birds produced 28 chicks, while the unbanded birds produced 54 chicks. Additionally, each year the banded birds arrived to the breeding colony several days later than unbanded birds, which may have negative consequences for mate selection. In a related study in which researchers inserted transponders into 300 chicks (their prior results led them to conclude it would be unethical to place flipper bands on any more penguins), they found survival rates nearly twice as high as those in published studies that used banded chicks (Gauthier-Clerc et al. 2004). Taken together, these data strongly suggest banding these penguins can have significant negative consequences for the fitness of the banded birds, as well as altering the structure of the population being studied.