• coyootje@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    14 days ago

    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…

    • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      20·
      14 days ago

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

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
        15·
        14 days ago

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

      • T156@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        14 days 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.

    • Allonzee@lemmy.worldEnglish
      175·
      14 days ago

      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.

  • loaExMachina@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    10·
    13 days ago

    In French, the “correct” word for “penguin” is “manchot” /mãʃo/ , and “pingouin” /pɛ̃ɡwɛ̃/ stayed the word for “great auk” for longer… But translating “penguin” as “pingouin” has grown more and more common. First as a mistake, but at that point it’s not clear anymore what is correct or not. Someone a bit pedantic might correct you if you say “pingouin” instead of “manchot”, but is a linguistic mistake still a mistake when it’s understood by the majority?