this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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Science Memes

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Penguins ๐Ÿง (mander.xyz)
submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[โ€“] coyootje 53 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I recently learned about the great auk, it's so sad that they no longer exist. Humans really suck, so many species went extinct because of us. And in this case it wasn't even necessary for survival, they just killed a ton of them for their feathers to make fancier pillows (and other stuff) but they weren't eaten I believe...

[โ€“] [email protected] 21 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

We made the dodo extinct despite it being so gross they Dutch sailors nicknamed it the "walgvogel" or "revulsion bird".

[โ€“] halcyoncmdr 15 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Were they as annoying as seagulls? Because I could see that being a fairly valid reasoning back in the day.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

By most accounts, iirc, they were large and slow, but also curious me friendly birds that would waddle over to check what sailors were doing.

[โ€“] T156 10 points 2 weeks ago

In fairness, that was mostly accidental, unlike with the Great Auk. They were driven to extinction by inadvertently-introduced predators, as opposed to being actively hunted.

[โ€“] T156 14 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

It's particularly sad, since the last of them were hunted down, and killed off for their feathers. The final egg got trampled by people chasing down its parents.

[โ€“] Allonzee 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

The ones we just hunt to extinction are the lucky ones.

We put the ones we find cute when we "develop" their land into cages, and force them to breed despite being effectively extinct solely so we can gawk at them for our amusement.

We pump the ones we find delicious with laboratory hormones to make them freakishly obese, and cramp them in factory farms until they're obese enough to kill.

As far as the rest of the natural world is concerned, we are the monster under the bed.