Summary: <p>Let’s learn about the great auk this week, along with some lookalike birds, penguins!</p> <p>A great auk, as painted by Audubon:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-739" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/great_auk_6-300x189.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="189"></p> <p>A razorbill, the auk’s closest living relative:</p> <p><img class="size-medium wp-image-740" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/razorbill-300x185.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="185"></p> <p>A fairy penguin, so tiny:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-741" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Sheepdogs-to-Guard-Endangered-Fairy-Penguin-Colony-2-300x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="300"></p> <p>An emperor penguin, so big:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-742" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/emperor_penguin_flickr_lin_padgham_1.content.jpg" alt="" width="180" height="240"></p> <p>Tony Signorini wearing his Hoax Shoes:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-738" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/fakepenguinfeets.png" alt="" width="267" height="201"></p> <p><strong>Show transcript:</strong></p> <p>Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.</p> <p>This week’s topic is one I’ve had on my list to cover for some time, and a couple of people whose names I forgot to write down also suggested. It’s the great auk, and while we’re at it we’re going to learn about penguins too.</p> <p>Picture this bird in your mind. It’s big, close to three feet tall, or 85 cm, black with a white belly and white spots over the eyes during breeding season. It has a big dark bill and eats fish and crustaceans. Its feet are webbed and it’s flightless, because instead of flying, it swims, fast and agile in the water but clumsy on land. It’s social, nesting in big colonies and laying one egg, which both parents incubate. Both parents also help feed the chick when it hatches. Pairs mate for life. And it lives in cold waters of the North Atlantic from eastern Canada to Greenland and Iceland over to the western coast of Europe.</p> <p>Wait a minute, you say, knowledgeably, because you know a thing or two about penguins. Penguins live in the southern hemisphere. What is going on??</p> <p>The great auk is going on, my friend. And while the similarities between the great auk and the various species of penguin are striking, they’re not closely related at all. The great auk’s scientific name is Pinguinus impennis, and it was sometimes called a penguin, but the <em>penguin</em> is named after the <em>auk</em> because of the similarities between the two. The most obvious difference between the great auk and the penguin is the bill. Penguins </p>
