They are also an air-breathing mammal fully capable of drowning in the wrong circumstance.
Piano springs were sometimes made of baleen.
When did we first learn that whales sing?
Early whaling crews could hear them through the hulls of their ships.
The “solution” in the link I posted claims that “Orca” is Latin for whale - and presumably this is a play on words.
I saw this riddle in some science magazine (Discover?) in the 1980s/1990s/, and “orca” was the best guess they had, and that it being a play on words.
Maybe OMNI? In the link I posted - there is a reference to that magazine.
Yeah, probably.
A flower?
You might narrow it down to Orca… The Finest colours.
Its not clear why dark is so dangerous, but of course all life requires the suns energy
I don’t know the answer, but let’s keep in mind that Bishop Samuel Wilberforce was a fierce opponent of Darwin’s theories, enjoyed streaking, and looked like this when he was making up riddles.
It may be possible that the answer to this riddle is something ridiculous.
Darkness is what created the demand for whale oil (to burn in lamps) and hence led to commercial whaling.
You don’t have to believe in evolution to recognize that a whale is a mammal, do you? :dubious:
I wasn’t trying to make the point you’re taking from my statement. I was saying the guy was nutso so based on his belief system the answer could be “A magic thing that meets all these criteria. Ha! Hahaha!”
It could be ‘whale’ but that seems like an attempt to find something that can be twisted around to fit despite it requiring a lot of imagination and a forgiving interpretation of the language.
Not the life clustered around deep sea chemical vents. Life around hydrothermal vents, where all energy ultimately comes from the Earth itself, not the Sun. Some black smokers have giant tube worms and I’m apparently still twelve years old.
“Gay plumage”? It’s hard to think of an animal that phrase fits less than whales. Even those insects and mammals that are not gaily colored are closer to plumed than the sleek whales.
The - rhyming - answer here says “and as for gay plumage, my feathers be one – / The plume from my blowhole, iridescent in sun.” Sounds a little far-fetched, but hey.
I’m convinced it’s a whale/orca but damn if that’s a disatisfying answer.
“Feather” used to mean (a) (Naut.) To make the water foam in moving; in allusion to the ripple which a ship throws off from her bows. (b) To make one’s self conspicuous.[Colloq.] (Webster’s, 1910)
As for “bird” (also 1913, which is what the above post should have said but I missed the edit window):