RE: 🐧 TIL Penguins Are Not Penguins 🐧

Another one of your posts that sent me down a rabbit hole. Get ready to be disgusted.

The last of the Great Auks was slaughtered on an Icelandic island. This was done for the vanity of a collector, a certain Carl Siemsen. This man sent hunters in search of the extraordinarily rare bird. What is believed to have been the last (nesting!) pair was chased, caught and slain. Their single egg was crushed. Here's the paragraph describing the scene:

The birds’ wings had long ago evolved for the water rather than the air. On land, where they came to lay their eggs, the birds could only waddle toward the water, wings tucked close to their bodies, in an attempt to escape. “They uttered no cry of alarm,” one of the hunters later recalled, “and moved with their short steps, about as quickly as a man could walk.” It was easy to catch the birds and break their necks. They had been caring for an egg, already crushed by the time the hunters found it.

If you keep a catalogue of rogues, Mr. Siemsen's name might be added to that list. The names of the hunters? I don't know.