Amongst other remarks on the Chamberlain case and the unfriendliness of various things of the wide brown land, Cecil remarks;
Surely someone has been having a lend. I know that a man’s head turned up in a cod the other week and that the score at South Australian beaches in the past 24 hours is sharks 2, humans nil, but fairy penguins are 18 inches high. They are cute, and surely harmless. They are the one piece of fauna that none of us has ever made up stories to frighten the tourists about. So, could someone provide me with a link to the alleged maulings?
Are fairy penguins the same as the dwarf penguins I saw at Phillip Island, Vic.? Ugly little things, no bigger than a football (American, that is). Sorta cute, though, in that penguin-y sort of way.
Each night, at dusk, they march up out of the surf to their burrows on the beach. It’s quite a sight, and a popular tourist destination. I had one waddle right between my legs, Bill Buckner-style, not caring a whit that I was standing there, snapping a photo of it.
If one were to “maul” a tourist, I can imagine a bit ankle, and that’s about it.
What about koalas? From all I here, they’re naturally socible, have no enemies, and have no purpose in life save eating eucalyptus and snuggling. Is there some darker side to these affectionate fuzzballs?
The koalas you see at wildlife parks are used to humans. You would be most unwise to try and pick one up in the wild. They have very sharp claws and are solid muscle.
Thanks for the effort beatle. The jumping sounds plausible enough. The mauling I’m still having trouble picturing, but if true it would make sense that you’d keep quiet about it (which is close to the way Cecil put it).
Interns?!! Cecil has interns? I wanna be an intern. I could bring coffee and provide massages and moral support. And he could practice his stinging witticisms on me. I’d clap every time. Sigh. It would be a dream come true. How does one apply for these positions?
When I read the fairy penguin reference I thought someone was coming the raw prawn too (having a lend). A quick search through our records failed to turn up a fairy penguin mauling. Geez, they’re simply not large or quick enough.
Though they haven’t mentioned Dropbears yet picmr…
I did a web search on “Fairy Penguins” and didn’t find anything either. That’s because that name was created by the Australian Tourist Board public relations people about a year ago. If you want to learn more about this species, you have to search under the Latin name: Eudyptula Minor. You’ll find a number of sites there referencing the more historically common name for this breed, the Predaceous Ravagebird. Not a true penguin at all, it has teeth like a barracuda and can strip the meat and organs out of most mammals in no time, starting at the ankles and whittling its way up to the head. The first sight of this small bird is deceiving, giving it the edge in an attack. The Australian PR machine has taken advantage of the fact that pictures of this bird evoke cuddly feelings in most people, so they’re always trying to promote tourism by using “Fairy Penguin” photos and cartoons on visitor brochures. Oh, like they’re gonna show box jellyfish, sea snakes and saltwater crocs instead? Yeah, right. Good thing they got the Olympics… that’s all I can say.
Cecil also claimed the dingo has been in Australia for 30,000 years. This is almost certainly wrong.
While the first humans reached Australia 45,000 or 50,000 years ago, the dingos arrived much, much later than that. A book I read earlier this year, A Very Elegant Animal: the Dingo, suggests the dingo’s introduction was as recent as 3 or 4 thousand years ago.
Encyclopedia Britannica was a little more generous, but still puts it no earlier than 8,000 years ago. Cecil’s claim for 30,000 years is way off base.
I for one am shocked at the general carelessness with which Cecil approached this column.
I got this from the 1998 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, which I think came free with the CD-ROM drive. I cheerfully concede that this was not the most exhaustive job of research I ever did. However, I was merely attempting to establish that the dingo had been in the land down under since antiquity. As a matter of fact, I did notice that the EB pegged the dingo’s arrival at 5-8,000 years ago, but I also knew that (a) the EB had fumbled the origin of “drawn and quartered,” and (b) one of the EB’s contributors was Little Ed. (I’m serious.) So in my book the EB’s credibility was pretty much in the toilet. Now, you want to tell me the dingo arrived in Australia last Wednesday afternoon, then I’m worried. Otherwise let’s not sweat the details.
