Yeah they use seal, but they also heavily use Caribou fur, not sure if they could survive only with the smaller seal furs.
Someday the millennia-long saga of the quest to rid Faermane of penguins will be told.
I think the ratio of caribou to seal varied depending on where they lived, with some Inuit being more Seal Inuit(that being theiractual name) and others being more Caribou Inuit. I also don’t doubt that different skins were preferred for certain items based on characteristics like water resistance, warmth, toughness etc. (although they’d also use either for the same item…).
And of course, it’s not just sealskin - seal oil was a primary lamp fuel.
I think you might have an underestimation about the size of Antarctic seals relative to Caribou. A serious underestimation. Elephant Seal bulls are the largest extant carnivore. Bigger than polar bears. Bigger than walruses. Much bigger than caribou.
?
Sperm whales.
Edited: I guess you were talking about the Order. nm
It would be unbearable for the penguins.
Strangely, it was the opposite. The penguin was given it’s name as it looked like a Great Auk, which was the original “penguin”. So the southern flightless bird is the quasi-penguin!
More than that, the different countries impose environmental conditions on each other. The competition is partly because of the overlapping claims, and partly because it feeds each countries sense of superiority.
Dogs are banned by international agreement. Dogs had a long presence on Antartica, with a demonstrated lack of impact. It was a trade off: you want us to restrict this destructive building program, you’re going to have to give up something too. Trying to use a scientific explanation for banning them is like trying to find a scientific explanation for the details of a free-trade agreement.
The etymology of the word penguin is still debated.
(Etymology section)
Unless the Polar Bears died it would most likely be the end of the Emperor Penguin which is already on the threaten list of endangered species. While the adults may be able to form a powerful protective unit while huddled together (which would be a amazing adaptation) and prevent mass slaughter, the chicks must be left on their own on the ice pack and there would be no defense for their time alone and their trek to the sea and bears would certainly eat lots of them. The energy required to make a chick is enormous, which involved the parents trekking back and forth from sea to land and starving themselves for months during the land portion to regurgitate a bit of seafood for the chick to develop (along with a form of milk that IIRC both sexes can produce). There simply is not any ‘room’ I can see for them to create more chicks to offset predation, except if the journey was shorter, which perhaps due to climate change more nesting grounds closer to the sea will become available.
Other penguins may have more of a chance.
Altho where the original word came from is somewhat of a mystery, there’s no doubt that:The word penguin first appears in the 16th century as a synonym for great auk.[1] In other words, the Great Auk was the first “penguin” and “real” penguins were named after the now-extinct bird.
Not quite.* Near Threatened *