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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
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More articles by PZ Myers can be found on Freethoughtblogs at the new Pharyngula!
Galápagos Album: Of course there are penguins at the equator!
Category: Galapagos
Posted on: September 17, 2008 12:13 PM, by PZ Myers
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Comments
Posted by: Chris Swanson | September 17, 2008 12:19 PM
I want a pet penguin I can train to be my valet. I know this won't ever happen, but I can dream, damn it! I CAN DREAM! :)
Posted by: Randy | September 17, 2008 12:28 PM
Most of your penguins are from warm regions. I worked with penguins for 4 years and they ARE NOT HAPPY FEET!!!! Smelly little slapping, snapping critters. Instaed of a valet train one as a guard dog. Other than that they were great to work with!
Posted by: Richard Harris | September 17, 2008 12:34 PM
Of course it's a penguin. It doesn't look a bit like a feckin' nun.
Posted by: Trica | September 17, 2008 12:35 PM
I want one as my merkin.
Posted by: ThirtyFiveUp | September 17, 2008 12:36 PM
Off Topic, but relates to your SF movie post of September 9.
The Fly, short story and two movie versions has now become an opera. I went last night and I liked it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fly_(opera)
Posted by: Glen Davidson | September 17, 2008 12:38 PM
Most species, but I don't know if that's true for total numbers of individuals.
That's areas with warm air temperatures, by the way, not warm water temperatures. Penguins are found where water is cold.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: SEF | September 17, 2008 12:50 PM
One penguin but rather a lot of crabs (one looking as though it had very boggly eyes).
Posted by: God | September 17, 2008 1:12 PM
Yes, there are penguins there, but they are sodomites.
Posted by: roddg | September 17, 2008 1:18 PM
Would it be blasphemy to nominate God for a Molly?
Posted by: Craig Helfgott | September 17, 2008 1:25 PM
I once heard a very funny, but probably apocryphal, penguin story. It seems this guy was studying penguins (in Antarctica), and specifically was studying the ticks and lice that live on them.
Very difficult to collect ticks from a penguin. In fact, the easiest way of doing so is to get a trash bag, put some flea powder in it, drop a penguin in, and shake for about a minute. Then you take your penguin out and let it go. Obviously, the penguins were not too pleased by this process. The released penguin would stand there in shock for a while, then waddle furiously after the perpetrator of this indignity. So eventually this guy wound up with a horde of a hundred angry penguins surrounding his tent/trailer/whatever, warking day and night.
Posted by: Azdak | September 17, 2008 1:28 PM
BURMA!
Posted by: Darth Wader | September 17, 2008 1:34 PM
So a comic book writer saw one of these and thought to himself "now theres a menacing archenemy"
Posted by: Junx | September 17, 2008 2:00 PM
@ Darth Wader
Of course he did. Look at it, those cephalopod-biting jaws would make anyone scream in terr...
Awwwwwwwww
Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip | September 17, 2008 2:08 PM
Well, I guess that whole Noah's Ark story was true after all. *converts to Biblianity*
Posted by: Michelle | September 17, 2008 2:09 PM
Is it lost??
Posted by: themadlolscientist, FCD | September 17, 2008 3:24 PM
No, they're a native species.
Posted by: Ichthyic | September 17, 2008 3:39 PM
anyone recall what the current theory is as to why penguins aren't found in the Arctic?
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | September 17, 2008 3:53 PM
Until quite recently, the Arctic had its own very penguin-like denizen, the Great Auk.
Posted by: Azdak | September 17, 2008 3:54 PM
Ooh! Ooh! I know this one! It's because God is tilting the earth!Posted by: Mike the Englishman | September 17, 2008 4:20 PM
I used to be one of those. It's true. I was a Great Auk in a school play at the age of 8 or so.Posted by: Darth Wader | September 17, 2008 4:25 PM
#19
Psh... don't be dense. Its because when Noah was dropping all the different species in the different continents he ran out of penguins before he got to the arctic. The arctic was the last stop. Thats why polar bears are white, they just got pale from too much time below deck.
In accordance with Poe's Law I am adding this happy face so yall know I am joking :-)
Posted by: Lilly de Lure | September 18, 2008 6:49 AM
Ichthyic said:
IIRC current thinking suggests that it would be rather hard for large flightless birds to avoid ending up inside a hungry Polar Bear for very long so, although there are several arctic bird species that fill the same niche as penguins do, all of them have retained the ability to fly.
Basic biogeography however has not stopped the Norwegian army from adopting and recently knighting one that currently resides at Edinburgh Zoo.
Posted by: Sili | September 18, 2008 9:34 AM
Would it be horribly wrong to start a collection to get the North Pole populated with penguins?
I thought Michelle said "lost" because it's all alone.
Posted by: amphiox | September 18, 2008 9:43 AM
Did not the Great Auks once essentially occupy the penguin niche in the arctic, polar bears notwithstanding?
Which is to say that if a population of penguins managed to migrate to the arctic, or were transplanted there by some mad ecologist, would they not have at least some chance of successfully establishing themselves there?
Posted by: Dahan | September 18, 2008 10:00 PM
Darth Wader @ 12,
"So a comic book writer saw one of these and thought to himself "now theres a menacing archenemy"
You actually think Opus is a manacing archenemy?
Posted by: Lynnai | September 18, 2008 10:21 PM
Frank Zappa comes to mind somehow
"Like a Penguin in bondage.
BOING!"