Hacker News Reader

Comment by Memosyne | Hacker News Reader

When I was a child, a school teacher showed me this hoax video of flying penguins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dfWzp7rYR4.

Unfortunately, for a brief period of my childhood, I was under the assumption that penguins could indeed fly. By the time I had uncovered my teacher's subterfuge, I had already made a fool of myself by publicly positing that such penguins existed.

Admittedly, my teacher was only playing a prank on me -- but ever since that incident I have been distrustful of penguins. I genuinely hope that one day I can overcome this irrational view and appreciate the flightless birds.

View on HN

Yeah, it turns out that those birds were not flying but were actually launched from catapults. One of them even landed in a pig sty and was the inspiration behind the game "angry birds."

You should definitely update your friends on social media now that you know.

You're talking about a different hoax. This was most likely CGI (more info in the wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_penguin_hoax)

I think that was the joke. projectramo was spreading misinformation while encouraging the op to share it, thus reliving the previous experience of repeating hoaxes as facts

In French, "pingouin" is the name for a flying bird[0] though very few people know it and most mix up pingouins (auks) with manchots (penguins, literally "armless"). Saying that penguins can fly is technically correct but people will laugh at you unless you are prepared to spend a long time explaining it.

I think it's a shame that a teacher would mislead a child the way yours did.

Having worked with penguins (the flightless ones) though, I have to say that while they are funny they didn't strike me as the most interesting or intelligent birds ever. I was quite disappointed, they regularly die by getting stuck in seaweed lying on the beach, and just keeping trying to walk straight until they get exhausted and fall. You get more meaningful interaction with a crow or even a common blackbird.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razorbill

I wouldn't say that "very few people know it", it's just that people don't think about it. Just tell them "pingouin, not manchot. Pingouin flies but not manchot. Manchot is called penguin in english".

Also, the confusion is greater from the fact that the Grand Pingouin (extinct in the XIX century) did not fly

> I think it's a shame that a teacher would mislead a child the way yours did.

I had a really good teacher who would sometimes tell us particularly absurd things to see if we would figure it out and contradict her. When we did she would remind us that we should think for ourselves and not accept at face value claims just because they were presented by an authority figure.

I do this with my son all the time to see if he’s listening / get him to think critically. I always let him know if he doesn’t catch on though so he’s not misinformed.

Crows seem in a relative sense very intelligent, I'm impressed with them. I think penguins main appeal is there cuteness.

> but ever since that incident I have been distrustful of penguins

Shouldn't you be distrustful of school teachers?

I think that might have been the punchline

That's not rational either. Perhaps to be distrustful only of that particular one. That might be sensible.

This just made me think of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OB8EYKXAys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cky5SQCeVJc

Based on this I would definitely distrust penguins, because this and this is definitely a reason for this.

Reminds me of an incident in my early education when I happened to catch a documentary spoof about Stonehenge on TV that depicted whales building the ancient wonder. (I think Steve Martin was involved.)

Coincidentally, a few days later the topic of Stonehenge came up in class and my teacher asked if anyone knew anything about it. I immediately raised my hand and, when my teacher called on me, smugly announced, with full sincerity, that whales had built it.

She simply said, "No." Then turned to the next raised hand.

Edit: I can now confirm that my teacher was simply not informed by the latest research at the time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVz53dQ1Eyg

There is evidence to suggest that the stone came from Wales, so perhaps you weren't too far from the truth. ;)

"When I was a child" [posts video from 2008]

Ouch. Now I feel really old...

Back in the 80's Penguins were used to illustrate a classic reasoning challenge associated with belief systems - non-monotonic reasoning [0]. The story went like this: you are an AI building a cage for a bird called Tweety. You reason that the cage will need a roof and perhaps a tree or two for Tweety to perch in. After having built the cage, Tweety arrives and you discover that he is a Penguin.

So I have also been somewhat distrustful of Penguins, especially those appearing in AI teaching examples. Tweety actually appeared in a load of other AI examples, although I can't recall his specific escapades now.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-monotonic_logic

I know we're talking about penguins here, but watching the BBC video made me remember a flat mate at uni who told me about the BCC covering the Spaghetti-Harvest in Ticino. (Yes that's right. Spagehtti-Harvest.) He was really disappointed to learn later in life that 'Spaghetti don't grow on trees'. https://youtu.be/tVo_wkxH9dU

One of the top comments on the penguin video is

"The bastards destroyed the entire spaghetti crop last year. I don't see why anyone still fawns over them."

British humour at its finest!

Released 31 March 2008 :)

Did he happen to show it to you on April 1st? xD

To that end, the dollop did a podcast that talked about the harrowing experience of penguins on an island off Australia: https://thedollop.libsyn.com/207-the-animal-horror-of-macqua...

I've listened to it 4 times so far, it's amazing.

For some reason I thought they could sort of fly. Not high or great distances. Less then a turkey, but still in the range of a few feet.

Their wings evolved into flippers more or less. Optimizing for that meant that flight was no longer possible.

I think they posted on March 31st for April 1st? (April fool's day?). Just the fact that it's an advertisement for BBC.

Correct, the BBC has a long tradition of presenting a fake documentary clip on April Fool's day. Not sure if it was the first one, but you can find a very old BBC April 1st clip on the "traditional yearly harvesting of spaghetti", where you see villagers pick fresh and ripe spaghetti from the spaghetti trees, carefully laying them in the baskets they carry...

Not sure if this is the best clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU

And context:

"At the time (1957) spaghetti was relatively little-known in the UK, so that many Britons were unaware that spaghetti is made from wheat flour and water; a number of viewers afterwards contacted the BBC for advice on growing their own spaghetti trees."

> so that many Britons were unaware that spaghetti is made from wheat flour and water

I doubt many Britons know that now to be fair. I could easily imagine this jape catching people out today.

Really? I suspect many people wouldn't know the exact ingredients or manufacturing process, but I think almost everyone knows that it doesn't grow on trees!

Your teacher should not have told you something she knew was patently false. Teachers should not play pranks on students.

At least they didn't drop a bunch of them out of a helicopter.

https://youtu.be/p00nBSNIPwg

... as God is my witness, I thought penguins could fly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com