🐧 TIL Penguins Are Not Penguins 🐧

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Here's something super interesting I learnt today.

Turns out we have been lied since forever! Even for simple things, like penguins.

Yes penguins. They are actually all dead. Yes, penguins don't exist any more. It's all lies!

So, here's the thing.

Since 1871, the Latin word Pinguinus has been used in scientific classification for the genus of an animal known as the great Auk, aka Pinguinus impennis.

And it looked something like this:

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Looks like a penguin if you ask me 😄

Long story short, the great Auk is no longer with us as it has gone extinct since the mid-19th century thanks to human related activities, including hunting.

The birds we call today penguins were discovered later and sailors called them that way due to their similar looks.

However, they do not belong in the genus Pinguinus, not even the same family. And hence not related to auks let alone the great Auk.

And that's pretty much why what we refer to penguins today.. Is nothing but a penguin 🐧🙃

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Another one of your posts that sent me down a rabbit hole. Get ready to be disgusted.

The last of the Great Auks was slaughtered on an Icelandic island. This was done for the vanity of a collector, a certain Carl Siemsen. This man sent hunters in search of the extraordinarily rare bird. What is believed to have been the last (nesting!) pair was chased, caught and slain. Their single egg was crushed. Here's the paragraph describing the scene:

The birds’ wings had long ago evolved for the water rather than the air. On land, where they came to lay their eggs, the birds could only waddle toward the water, wings tucked close to their bodies, in an attempt to escape. “They uttered no cry of alarm,” one of the hunters later recalled, “and moved with their short steps, about as quickly as a man could walk.” It was easy to catch the birds and break their necks. They had been caring for an egg, already crushed by the time the hunters found it.

If you keep a catalogue of rogues, Mr. Siemsen's name might be added to that list. The names of the hunters? I don't know.

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Yeah I read that too. We can be quite disgusting creatures

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Very cool! I think they still look like a penguin so I'll call them penguins. If it looks like a duck and quakes like a duck, must be a duck.

Too bad they went extinct, but that happened a lot back in those days, just look at the dodo bird!
!BBH
!LOL
!DOOK

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I would think that they would be Penguin but I guess we just keep calling them that. It's less confusing.

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