Great auk
The great auk was a large bird, that could not fly. People hunted it for meat and feathers. It grew rare, because it was too easy to kill, and the ones left could not breed fast enough to make up for the lost ones. The last known great auks (there were two auks) were killed on June 3, 1844 in Iceland.[1] It lived mostly in the water, like a duck.
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| Great auk by GE Lodge | |
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| Genus: | Pinguinus Bonnaterre, 1791
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| Pinguinus impennis | |
Penguins got their name from the great auk. The word "penguin" was the Celtic word for "great auk".[2] When sailors saw penguins for the first time, they thought they looked like great auks.
The great auk was covered in black feathers, but had white feathers on its chest and abdomen.[2] It had very short wings, like stubs, which meant it could not fly. On land it stood upright and was about 75 cm tall.[2] They spent most of their time at sea, coming to shore in the summer to breed. They lived in large breeding colonies on low rocky islands in the north Atlantic Ocean from Canada to Norway.[2] Females laid one egg on bare rock. In winter they went as far south as Florida and southern Spain.[2]
Great Auk Media
Fossil humerus of the Miocene relative Pinguinus alfrednewtoni
Turnaround video of Specimen No. 57 and a razorbill, Naturalis Biodiversity Center
The "Great Auk, Northern Penguin, or Gair-Fowl", wood engraving by Thomas Bewick in A History of British Birds, 1804[a]
Summer (standing) and winter (swimming) plumage, by John Gerrard Keulemans
Stac an Armin, St. Kilda, Scotland, one locality where the great auk used to breed
Great Auks by John James Audubon, from The Birds of America (1827–1838)
Great auk eating a fish, by John Gould
Nesting ground with juveniles and eggs, by Keulemans
Cast of an egg, Museum Wiesbaden
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References
- ↑ Fuller, Errol (2003). The great auk: the extinction of the original penguin - Google Books. ISBN 9781593730031. Retrieved 4 October 2010.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 "Recently extinct animals - Species Info - Great Auk". petermaas.nl. Archived from the original on 15 August 2018. Retrieved 4 October 2010.
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