Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/01/06/this-penguin-escaping-from-a-c.html
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You do know penguins can and do regularly swim right?
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I’m thinking the penguin didn’t want to get it’s tux wet.
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It might not have wanted to- I suspect a break like that could create a lot of water turbulence and maybe an undertow.
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I’ve spent quite some time around penguins in the wild. They have no problem getting in and out of the water during high surf events. This is no more remarkable than a city pigeon having to scurry out of the way of a pedestrian rather than flutter.
I mean it’s cute and all, but no suspense.
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IKR They are basically fish with wings.
Now if posted was a video of polar bears starving to death because their ice sheet walkways to food sources are melting away…
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Hooray for this one particular bit of wildlife, who was spared a brief swim in the waters she was evolved to swim in…
As for the larger crisis, it’s time we considered the possibility that humans -collectively- do not possess any more self awareness or control of our own collective fate than this penguin. Maybe our sense of being alone among all the animal kingdom in our ability to consider and alter our own futures… maybe that’s just an illusion.
If this is indeed the case-and if it were widely understood to be true- then all this nonsense about holding title to the natural world and having the god-given right to do whatever we want to the land and its plants and animals… that might go away like the custom of bleeding sick people, or forcing children to work for a living, or chattel ownership of other human beings.
I think we should keep the idea of, “original sin”, but shift it away from disobeying God or the church, and instead apply it to this notion that humans are uniquely qualified among all the animals to grow our range and our numbers without limit.
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What do you call a glacier that is over water? Is it still a glacier?
Once it breaks off it is sea ice, or an iceberg, but if formerly over-land glacial ice slides down to the sea, when does it cease to be a glacier? When it is no longer over land, or when it breaks off and starts floating away?
/pedantry
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Jeez: it’s not a glacier; penguins can swim just fine; and climb on and off the ice easily, and this one was never in danger; this specific piece of ice probably didn’t break off because of climate change: sea ice forms and melts every summer/winter cycle. (Also glaciers have been melting since the end of the last glaciation event, and bits of glaciers–had this been a glacier–would be breaking off even without human-caused climate change, albeit not as often as they do now.)
Given that climate change is very real and very terrifying and very bad news and very much the fault of idiot humans with apparently no ability to change their habits even when they are told how disastrous the long-term effects are, I’d say that posting a cutesy uplifting video of a penguin with misleading information about what is going on and a happy ending probably ranks worse than sitting on your ass and doing nothing for climate change.
Other than that, great post Thom!
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It reminded me of this escape.
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…Okay then.
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Also, you
It is like a 39 second video… are you ok?
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It’s a “sheet” and then it’s a “shelf”.
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Ok, sorry I was a dick. You’re cool.
Moses sure knows how to handle a pickup truck.
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Then transforms to ice burg, then ice glob and finally ice cube. (pardon the technical terms)
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Then it would be similar. Polar bears are such good swimmers that they are classified as a marine mammal rather than a terrestrial.
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Wet tux, it’s a bad look.
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