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Flares117

The government actually tried to prevent the extinction, at least on paper 0 In 1553, the great auk received its first official protection. In 1794, Great Britain banned the killing of this species for its feathers.[19]: 330 In St. John's, those violating a 1775 law banning hunting the great auk for its feathers or eggs were publicly flogged, though hunting for use as fishing bait was still permitted.[50] On the North American side, eider down initially was preferred, but once the eiders were nearly driven to extinction in the 1770s, down collectors switched to the great auk at the same time that hunting for food, fishing bait, and oil decreased.[50][19]: 329 The great auk had disappeared from Funk Island by 1800. An account by Aaron Thomas of HMS Boston from 1794 described how the bird had been slaughtered systematically until then: If you come for their Feathers you do not give yourself the trouble of killing them, but lay hold of one and pluck the best of the Feathers. You then turn the poor Penguin adrift, with his skin half naked and torn off, to perish at his leasure. This is not a very humane method but it is the common practize. While you abide on this island you are in the constant practice of horrid cruelties for you not only skin them Alive, but you burn them Alive also to cook their Bodies with. You take a kettle with you into which you put a Penguin or two, you kindle a fire under it, and this fire is absolutely made of the unfortunate Penguins themselves. Their bodies being oily soon produce a Flame; there is no wood on the island.[9] **The other last pair elsewhere MEANUNG NOT in Britain were killed in 1844 by 2 very cruel people** The last pair, found incubating an egg, was killed there on 3 June 1844, on request from a merchant who wanted specimens, with Jón Brandsson and Sigurður Ísleifsson strangling the adults and Ketill Ketilsson smashing the egg with his boot.[56][c] Great auk specialist John Wolley interviewed the two men who killed the last birds,[59] and Sigurður described the act as follows: The rocks were covered with blackbirds [referring to Guillemots] and there were the Geirfugles ... They walked slowly. Jón Brandsson crept up with his arms open. The bird that Jón got went into a corner but [mine] was going to the edge of the cliff. It walked like a man ... but moved its feet quickly. [I] caught it close to the edge – a precipice many fathoms deep. Its wings lay close to the sides – not hanging out. I took him by the neck and he flapped his wings. He made no cry. I strangled it"" A copy of the interview also has a few other cruel statements imo, the merchant wanted the eggs destroyed as any more Auks would devalue his prize of having the LAST Auk specimens. He felt no remorse. That merchant, based on the last name, continued his lineage and his descendants are pretty well off today. They donated part of it to the museum as an apology. Only part, they kept some


ClosetsByAccident

What's the name?


Flares117

Kjartansdóttir They donated specimen number 3 https://eatmorecookies.wordpress.com/2008/07/15/the-great-auk-egg/


Atillawurm

I hope his soul is tortured for all eternity.


Critical_Moose

Not disagreeing, but why exactly?


NorthernGrower99

Kjartansdóttir means "daughter of Kjartan", and she would not go by that name. People would have called her by her first name or full name. Never by last name alone. Same goes for anyone from Iceland.


TheDumbass0

Yes exactly the if "... Kjartansdóttir" had a child it would not have the last name Kjartansdóttir, unless the father's name were "Kjartan"


Some_Endian_FP17

A patronymic? So children go by their father's first name, like Kjartansdóttir or Kjartansen?


Captain_Kab

Kjartansson


Kjartanski

-son for a son, -dóttir for a daughter, usually Patronymic but its increasingly common to be Matronymic as Well


KyllikkiSkjeggestad

Usually, but sometimes people will take the mother’s name too, so it will be her name with dóttir or son on the end. It’s fairly uncommon though


einsibongo

You can thank the Danes for that, they made it illegal for Icelanders to have family names or own shops.


NerdFromDenmark

We were bored man, i don't know what to tell ya


einsibongo

We are still forced to learn your language to this day... We in turn do a bad job at it.


greendog66

Remember the name when we eat the rich.


BrokenEye3

Wasn't this back when some conservationists (yes, *conservationists*) believed that it was impossible to stop a species from going extinct, so you might as well stuff and mount as many as you can kill so future generations will still be able to see it once it's gone?


EunuchsProgramer

My wife works in Endangered Spieces Monitoring and protection. They have similar debates now about collecting DND for future cloning/hybrid breeding.


annuidhir

That has got to be the greatest typo I have seen in a while. Thank you friend. May the clicky clacks bless you with big numbers!


EunuchsProgramer

How dare my phone think I type DND more than DNA!


Mystecore

So the d20 system will never truly perish.


Enoonmai21

Roll for initiative, endangered critters!


spudmarsupial

I have heard that argument against climate change. God made the world, so it is arrogant to think that man can damage or change it. Aparently these people have never encountered a city.


No_Price_6685

If anything, it is arrogant for Man to destroy what God provided as our dwelling place.


paganbreed

Right? Why don't they think it's rude to shit up the house God made? Even if you can destroy it, that's extremely disrespectful.


haveweirddreamstoo

Because the Bible says that god made the animals FOR us. They’re basically our property to do with as we please if you believe in that


No_Price_6685

God has given Man the Earth to live on and to do as we please, but what is given is a gift, and to abuse a gift is ungratefulness.


paganbreed

Was I a worse Christian than I knew? I seem to recall being taught Adam and Eve were made to look after Eden and its creatures, not turn it into their personal rave slum?


right_there

The term in most Bible translations is "stewardship." Humans were given stewardship over the earth, but many Christians interpret that as humans having total dominion over it.


paganbreed

TIL, thanks. That's in line with the vibe I was taught, yes.


Miasmatic_Mouse

To be clear dominion really relates to the bringing of order from chaos, it's not a totalitarian domination over creation. We have more rights and responsibilities than other animals, because we have the imago dei, but we can't just do what we like with the Earth.


Miasmatic_Mouse

It's bad Christian theology to say that God made the animals as our property. * See Colossians 1:16 "*For by him \[Christ\] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created* ***through him*** *and* ***for him****.*" \[My clarities.\] It's through Jesus, and ultimately for Jesus, that God created creation, and because we Christians are joint airs with Christ, we share in some of God's authority over creation. * See Romans 8:17: "*Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory*." So, yes, while humanity does have authority over animals, they actually belong first to God, and so no we cannot do with them as we please.


Vermouth1991

Probably the biggest "Could vs Should" Jurassic Park type fiasco.


Old_Promise2077

Or remember the story of the Flood. Where God looked at the earth and saw that "it was ruined".


DisputabIe_

Which is kind of weird if he was all powerful and all knowing you'd think he would have known he was fucking it up and wouldn't need to kill a bunch of shit to fix his own problems.


Emotional_Burden

Yeah, but it was all according to his plan, which is beyond our understanding, which makes it ambivalent, somehow. Just have faith or whatever.


Ferelar

Yeah, and the concept of an omniscient omnipotent entity creating an entire worldstate while knowing the future already... that sorta precludes the concept of free will, I would say.


Zirowe

Then they built the Halo array, but it still wasnt enough to stop the Flood..


conquer69

> Aparently these people have never encountered a city. They never reached their religious stance through evidence but brainwashing, so evidence means nothing to them.


Maxcharged

Remember that those people vote in almost every election.


metalconscript

One of the first commands was to tend to the ‘garden.’ Capitalist Christians ran with the dominion bit and still do. People think we have no effect on climate as we cut rivers (canals) and level mountains.


Poro_the_CV

> Aparently these people have never encountered a city. Or even smaller, a fucking house.


Hermitian777

Well, they weren’t exactly wrong.


Words_are_Windy

Bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, innit?


Future_Green_7222

Well fuck now I'm depressed


TrumpersAreTraitors

Boy do I hate people 


pingpongtits

I read about this as a little kid because my older siblings left a Scholastic Book Club-type book about it laying around. It made me cry and taught me that humans are the evil devils, not the imaginary monster uner my bed. It still makes me weep if I think about it too much.


Termin8tor

This is a tragedy on so many levels. I hate what we do to other species and it doesn't help that I have a particular fondness for penguins and that great auks were very similar. The depravity of humans really knows no bounds. There's also something deeply disturbing about the idea of someone strangling one of these birds and then stomping on its eggs to end the species. That final act of human depravity ending the last of a once successful species is really disturbing. I hate what we do to nature. I know this happened a few centuries ago but still, the human story seems to be an almost uninterrupted trail of slaughter, carnage and environmental destruction and that makes me sad.


DeadpoolLuvsDeath

Yep fuck humans the world will be better off once we're gone unless it goes with us......


QFugp6IIyR6ZmoOh

Earth is a factory of suffering.


SataiThatOtherGuy

>The great auk had disappeared from Funk Island by 1800. And so, Funk Island became a little less funky.


Historical_Salt1943

Well yes, but because by that time they outlawed all slap and pop bass riffs.  


ghostdokes

Ive noticed that with humanity, you cant have nice things. Everything needs to be protected if you want it to remain untouched, whether its animals, art, or even your front lawn.


Thefrayedends

And in many cases, protective measures drive up the value, causing the destruction and exploration to rank up, no accounting of details and severe cruelty.


joanzen

I was wondering how before the internet we were so organized and had completed enough surveys that we knew the exact population of a bird species around the planet. Of course when I read it was all about someone wishing to claim they had the last bird of the species well then it all logically made far more sense.


thunk_stuff

> The last pair, found incubating an egg, was killed there on 3 June 1844, on request from a merchant who wanted specimens, with Jón Brandsson and Sigurður Ísleifsson strangling the adults and Ketill Ketilsson smashing the egg with his boot. I read your post, specific this, when I got up this morning. All day I haven't been able to get it out of my mind. Everything about it just horrible, and to be the last of their species, to go out that way.


sand_sjol

The Geirfugl. Another bird who met the same fate


nik-nak333

The Carolina Parakeet met the same fate. It was the only endemic parrot in North America.


Supplyin_Da_Man

Why would we kill a species of parakeet off? They don’t seem to have the intrinsic value like oil and meat that made the auk a target.


nik-nak333

Their feathers were sought after for fashion


Supplyin_Da_Man

I’m surprised beaver made it…


Soltea

It's just the Nordic name for great auk.


sand_sjol

Really? TIL indeed


roidweiser

The Auk disappeared from Funk Island?


[deleted]

[удалено]


DefenestrationPraha

It is not as if other Nordic nations treated the Great Auk better. Our ancestors were pretty fucked up when it came to killing animals. Here in the middle of the continent, they hunted aurochs to extinction, and made a lot of other species at least locally extinct (bears, wolves etc.)


jonathanrdt

What a piece of work is man: jumping at shadows and fictions right into the modern age. We shall be so much better off when we shed our superstitious trappings.


LadnavIV

Isn’t 1840 pretty late for literal witch hunts?


IndexationDewey

Morons on instagram are dogpiling on Dojacat accusing her of witchcraft to this day because she dresses weird. I assure you there's a fuckton of braindead masses that would gladly hunt for witches today. And with smiles on their faces..


FingerTheCat

People get beaten for having loose clothing.


0xffaa00

People get beaten for having tight clothing too.


poopellar

People get beaten for wearing perfect fitting clothing too.


lallapalalable

And if you're nude, believe it or not...


SheemieRayVaughan

Good clothes. Jail. Bad clothes. Jail. No clothes? Believe it or not, straight to jail.


SwissQueso

Cant make anyone happy!


suitology

Rape


Freud-Network

You're probably also beating something?


Emotional_Burden

Women*


mcpickledick

Very insightful comment... a little too insightful... he's a witch guys get him!


Old_Society_7861

“If you don’t believe in god, what’s stopping you from killing, raping, and eating your neighbor?”


right_there

Have you seen most Americans? I bet they taste terrible.


DeadpoolLuvsDeath

90% fat


Bae_the_Elf

Doja Cat is a horrible person on her own without people making up conspiracies 


_curious_one

Why


Bae_the_Elf

Why is she a horrible person? Such existential mysteries are beyond my capabilities u/_curious_one but if you're curious about what she did that makes her a horrible person, there's a long list. Generally speaking, she's extremely rude to her friends, other artists at times, and she has a history of hanging out with extremely toxic and racist people. There's a lot of information available if you look it up, but most recently, she has just been absolutely terrible to people on social media in a really toxic way.


_curious_one

I’m not sure why I got downvoted but thank you for letting me know. I hadn’t heard much about Doja being bad.


Bae_the_Elf

On Reddit people often make assumptions about what the intentions are of someone posting a comment, I assume you got downvoted because Doja being toxic is common knowledge and people thought you were trolling by asking why I'm also getting downvoted by Doja stans so it's whatever lol


_curious_one

I’m unfortunately not very aware of pop culture past the very surface level, so I very much appreciate your response.


jermster

People killed family members over an eclipse last week. People are stupid.


Thefrayedends

Holy fuck she threw her 8 month old baby out of a moving car, and later hit a tree doing 100mph. Her nine year old survived, that poor kid, I hope things get better for them.


W0gg0

wut. I did not see this. People are dumb.


hasdunk

we still have literal witch hunts today. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_witch-hunts It's just what happens when you have uneducated masses. That's why better access to education is the only way to stop backwards belief.


OlyScott

People will believe what it feels good to believe, even if they've been to college.


ThingsAreAfoot

Slavery too, of course. It’s technically illegal in every country but still practiced in certain areas. Also casual reminder that even in our totally enlightened United States, the 13th Amendment specifically allows for slavery in the prison system: > Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. And that’s how we get “forced labor” in so many prisons here. Cool stuff.


GammaGoose85

We still have witch hunts and an alarming amount of slaves to this day. Witch Hunting was more about having an excuse to get rid of people you didn't like more than believing they were a witch in alot of cases back in the day. We don't tolerate killing people because of it in Western Society which is definitely a step forward. We still however use the same methods in attempts to Ostrocize people socially and wreck them career wise. A good example is the Red Scare in America where people would be accused of being a Communist and would be often times fired from their work. The same could be said about false accusations of being a Racist, Nazi, Pedo or Homophobe, although those accusations don't hold as much weight since they are used so frequently these days. People usually want proof before ostrocizing or get fired. But shout that at someone in a protest while everyone is riled up and enough people believe it and that person accused is gonna have a real bad time whether they are one or not.


big_whistler

Witch hunts occur to this day


Zealesh

Pawnee’s an incredibly superstitious town. A traveling magician came through one time, and he pulled a rabbit out of a hat, and the mob burned him at the stake for being a witch. The year was 1973.


taste1337

Fuck Eagleton!!


DefenestrationPraha

In Saudi Arabia, you can be executed in the middle of literal skyscrapers [for witchcraft](https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/saudi-arabia-executed-four-people-28556538). Our lovely allies, infinitely better than ISIS... /s


Tall_Process_3138

They still happen just on a local level (small village's, etc) than what it been like for centuries before.


CactusCoin

The last British one was caught on an extremely isolated island off the coast of Scotland named St. Kilda. The inhabitants were centuries behind mainland Great Britain


Bacon4Lyf

The ones that killed them weren’t British though, they were Icelandic so the inhabitants being “centuries behind” isn’t relevant


CactusCoin

Nope the very last ones were killed by Icelanders of the coast of Iceland. The last British one was killed by St. Kilda natives because the never had seen that kind of bird and thought it was a witch


conquer69

> the never had seen that kind of bird and thought it was a witch It gets dumber the more I read it.


StrangeCharmVote

> Isn’t 1840 pretty late for literal witch hunts? Lots of people alive *today* think magic is real. People are dumb.


anoeba

Lots of people alive today think the earth is flat. Straight up, believing in witches makes more sense than that.


EunuchsProgramer

Have you read a Q post about Satanic Democrats sacrificing children for eternal youth/immortality. Or read some of the Daycare cases from the 80's Satanic Panic?


King_Chochacho

To be fair it did weigh the same as a duck.


frostymugson

The importance of education, you got got people believing this shit today in western countries


YanLibra66

They're pretty common till this day in Africa or Asia


WhySSSoSerious

Regardless of the time period and advancements in science and technology etc, moronic humans will always be abundant


Faulty_english

My mother in law believes in witchcraft


chronoslol

People are being hunted for witchcraft today


ProfessorWednesday

Did you read the self immolated trueanon's manifesto? Have you seen what Russian "nothing is true and everything is possible" thinking has done to the idiots of the world today? I have an ex-colleague that believes Bigfoot is real and thought people were being raptured during the eclipse. No 1840 isn't late for literal witch hunts


haveweirddreamstoo

OP’s comment says that a merchant wanted to own the specimen of the last Great Auk, and that’s why it was killed, so idk where this witchcraft story even comes into play unless that was an excuse that they used to kill the Great Auk? Idk.


Flares117

The last one in Britain was killed for being a witch in. 1840. ' The last last one NOT in Britain was 1844 by the merchant


zack189

Who looks at a short creature with a beak and webbed feet and fucking wings and thinks "that must be a witch" Have they never seen a bird before?


mindrover

idk, have you seen a witch before?


doomgiver98

Sure, she was teaching second grade when I was growing up.


Freddan_81

But does it float? If it float it is made of wood and therefore a witch!


[deleted]

Sadly I don’t think we’ve moved much farther past beating animals to death because we blame them for our problems


Wolkenbaer

The government actually tried to prevent xyz*, at least on paper *Climate Change, Social Inequality, Hunger, War, Pollution 


DefenestrationPraha

Hunger isn't a real problem in the developed world nowadays. It is not completely non-existent, but ranks, huh, maybe 30th on the ladder of developed world problems. Compared to the situation 100 years ago, the share of people suffering from hunger is a tiny fraction of the share of people suffering from overeating. You can buy a shitload of calories anywhere in the EU or US or Australia etc. for approximately 5 USD.


Sckaledoom

Yeah calories qua calories are no longer the problem. Now it’s the quality of nutrition. Back before processed foods it could be expected that if you had enough food you were getting your proper nutrients outside of maybe a few rarer ones.


Rebelgecko

I mean, has there been any witchcraft in the UK since the auk went extinct?


Lovestonk

I wish, it was a Monthy Python sketch.


Flares117

Add a scientist in trying to save the Auk from being killed by the idiots and it'll be great ' Its a WITCH' ITS LITERALLY A PENGUIN'


RegorHK

Does it float like a duck? Witch! Witch!


formerlyanonymous_

This witch is dead. It is no more!


CactusCoin

The Great Auks position was always more perilous than that of the penguins of the Southern Hemisphere: Due to land predators like polar bears their available breeding grounds were always extremely limited. In historic times only 7 places were known were the birds came to breed. Nevertheless some breeding colonies were enormous with numbers of birds measuring in the hundreds of thousand. Sadly the bird´s abundance in relatively small areas made it even more attractive to human hunters.


candb7

This is just victim blaming


Acto12

How is it victim blaming to explain why the Great Auk was more vulnerable than similar species to human exploitation?


candb7

It’s a joke bro


Bali4n

Humans did it, not the polar bears. > The Little Ice Age may have reduced the population of the great auk by exposing more of their breeding islands to predation by polar bears, but **massive exploitation by humans** for their down drastically reduced the population,[47] with recent evidence indicating **the latter alone is likely the primary driver of its extinction**. By the mid-sixteenth century, the nesting colonies along the European side of the Atlantic were **nearly all eliminated by humans** killing this bird for its down, which was used to make pillows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_auk#Extinction


sadrice

That… is exactly what they said?


Greedy_Researcher_34

And the birds commonly known as penguins are named after the great auks, and are not true penguins.


Maocap_enthusiast

And we haven’t had a single storm since. I rest my case


S4mb741

"If you come for their Feathers you do not give yourself the trouble of killing them, but lay hold of one and pluck the best of the Feathers. You then turn the poor Penguin adrift, with his skin half naked and torn off, to perish at his leasure. This is not a very humane method but it is the common practize. While you abide on this island you are in the constant practice of horrid cruelties for you not only skin them Alive, but you burn them Alive also to cook their Bodies with. You take a kettle with you into which you put a Penguin or two, you kindle a fire under it, and this fire is absolutely made of the unfortunate Penguins themselves. Their bodies being oily soon produce a Flame; there is no wood on the island" It's awful what humans will do to animals for money. All that for pillows.


LucianoThePig

This is what Eiscue is based on https://m.bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Eiscue_(Pok%C3%A9mon)


EunuchsProgramer

A witch causing storms? People back then were so dumb. We've come a long way... what's that Marjorie Taylor Greene posted? Oh, shoot.


[deleted]

What the fucking h*ck did I just read. We don't deserve birds.


Bart-MS

Funny that you self-censor the word heck but not the word fucking.


Aggressive_Sky8492

That’s the joke


Occupiedlock

I mean, it's obviously a storm witch. British penguins don't exist.


Diamond4100

We are the worst thing on this planet. Worse than all the earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and floods that have ever happened.


an2lal2

In case you're interested, they are the reason why actual penguins are called that way: "Penguins" of the north The original English name for the great auk was 'garefowl', which comes from the Norse geirfugl, a name given by the Vikings when they first encountered it in Scotland in the 8th century. The name was possibly something of a joke - a perverse reference of the nightless bird to that superb flyer the gyrfalcon. More importantly, the pioneer Basque whalers called the great auk 'grand pingouin', easily corrupted to penguin - there are several Pengouin Islands off Newfoundland still today. It is a reasonable assumption that the southern hemisphere penguins got their name by way of the earliest Portuguese seamen when they discovered the jackass penguins of South Africa and explored southern South America to find the Magellanic penguins. They transferred their auk version 'pingüim' of the only flightless bird they knew to this newly discovered family of flightless birds with an upright posture like the familiar great auk of the north. The northern hemisphere auk family, whose members, quite apart from the extinct great auk, seem today to be on the evolutionary road to flightlesness, is not related to the penguins. The similarity between them is a classic example of convergent evolution, in which animals which live the same lifestyle tend to look like each other even though they are not related.


Aggravating_Sense183

I want Britain's penguins back and I want them back now


chaospudding

Call me crazy, but causing the extinction of a species should result in the death penalty. Like it should be viewed on the level of genocide.


teabagmoustache

You'd have to sentence practically the entire human race to death. The human population is responsible for the death of numerous species and there are another million or so on the brink of extinction. There's no one person to pin the blame on.


chaospudding

The guy who pulls the trigger on the last elephant doesn't get to blame humanity.


teabagmoustache

Species don't just die out because someone shot the last one. They are driven to extinction by the human race existing. We've taken over their habitats, destroyed their ecosystems and interrupted their food chains.


a_man_has_a_name

Then you should punish the person who kills the second last, or the only remaining female or male one. Because after that point they are already doomed.


big_whistler

Okay crazy, everyone who did it is dead so how you gonna punish em


bikeridingmonkey

Humans are idiots


Cakeordeathimeancak3

She turned me into a newt!


ornitorrinco22

Well, storms are dangerous


DwedPiwateWoberts

The stupid will always be the majority


Vix_Satis

I cannot think of a single thing which is more 'human' than beating the last of a species to death with sticks because it's believed to cause storms.


ItsOnlyaFewBucks

Humanity and their ignorance.


Pattoe89

Has there been any storms since it was beaten to death? You can't argue with results. Or we'll beat you to death.


WingsOfBuffalo

Holy hell, people are so stupid.


_PukyLover_

Cool, 😎 the human race will disappear within the next two hundred years 😊


-Celador-

“The last pair, found incubating an egg, was killed there on 3 June 1844, on request from a merchant who wanted specimens, with Jón Brandsson and Sigurður Ísleifsson strangling the adults and Ketill Ketilsson smashing the egg with his boot.” Jesus. Christ. Is it only me that wishes to do the same to those sailors, merchants, and their spawns?


Hilltoptree

…… i felt at least kill it for food not over witchcraft.


TheDevilsAdvokaat

Aukward.


Empty_Ambition_9050

More evidence in my case than man is the invasive species that needs to be eradicated.


xRetz

They weren't the 'first penguins', they're just the northern hemisphere's equivalent of penguins.


goodayrico

They’re the first penguins in that the word ‘penguin’ originally referred to them, and the animals we today call penguins were named for similarity to them.


ThebesSacredBand

I'm starting to suspect humans aren't very good for Earth's ecosystem


JohnBarleyMustDie

Everyday I pray for the meteor. Time to give this rock back to the animals (minus the humans of course)


SordidDreams

>Scientists in the 1600s noticed and tried to prevent it through numerous laws, it failed. In 1840 the last auk in Britain was beaten to death with sticks as the men thought it was a witch causing storms. This is exactly why I don't buy the whole "ancient people knew the Earth was round" thing. Yeah, the philosophers knew what was up, but the masses of illiterate peasants that comprised 95% of the population believed all kinds of dumb shit.


_ZiiooiiZ_

Anyone with half a brain looking up at the moon can figure out it is round and whatever covers it on a near nightly basis is round too. Only people who make no attempt to understand what is around them would be daft enough not to figure it out, like they did 5000+ years ago. With just the time of day, the distance between 2 cities and a well in each city you can figure the entire circumference of the earth. This was calculated 2000 years ago by Eratosthenes.


Cakers44

Auks are different from penguins, not the original penguin


LeroyThinkins

Yeah, auks are different from what we call penguins today, but they are the original "penguin." This is explained in the first paragraph in the linked wikipedia entry.


ProtectionContent977

A witch?


jbeeziemeezi

Yeah but what if it was a witch causing storms??


ElGuano

“It’s raining!” “Aggh, kill the witch!!” Penguin: “…”


RawrRRitchie

Ahhh gotta love scientists.. Trying to conserve stuff by destroying it Like the old school archeologists, can't find stuff without explosives


Quarantined_foodie

I mean, it did float in water..


Neat-Foundation-320

Humans, so smart. Some build rockets, others.... Yea


Mistabushi_HLL

Beaten with sticks thinking it was a witch. That’s very British thing to end a species


ZealousidealLettuce6

Yes ok but did the storms stop? Can't argue with that. Good riddance says I.


Stopikingonme

Did they ever find out who was causing them storms then?


EngineersOfAscension

There is a fascinating story about this done by my favorite story teller. Well worth the listen. Jay O'Callahan Spirit of the Great Auk https://www.ocallahan.com/digital-downloads-category/product/80-spirit-of-the-great-auk-download


Wonder_Dude

Jfc humans suck


Twiddleypops

You cannot make this up


Boomshockalocka007

This was pretty sad and depressing. Man oh man.


Technical-Dentist-84

This is just sick


redditcreditcardz

The common denominator for most awful things in this world is mankind. I really wonder someday what is the actual point of all this. Suffering? I don’t get it some days


keestie

Maaaan, I really hate it when those dang witches disguise themselves as birds and cause storms again.


MmmmmmKayyyyyyyyyyyy

Well ladies…


QueenOfQuok

The Wikipedia article does not mention the last two being blamed for causing storms.


CharlieBoxCutter

Humans are so alpha. Totally owns this planet


5319Camarote

She’s a witch! Burn her! Burn her! Or we could beat an Auk with sticks…