Dogs that protect little penguins (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Dogs that protect little penguins (2015)

bbc.com

Could you imagine living with a creature 10+ times your size who keeps you alive? It's basically The Iron Giant in nature.

> Could you imagine living with a creature 10+ times your size who keeps you alive?

So, a child with a parent?

That's a reasonable analogy, yes.

I quite enjoyed the movie: Oddball, though definitely biased as I grew up in Warrnambool. Every scene was a familar place but weirdly shuffled.

You used to have to wade out to the island when I lived there in the mid 90's. Even back then they tried to cull the foxes around the surrounding sand hills and Lake Pertobe but it was never effective.

We have a Maremma, as do some of our friends. They are incredibly dogs, extremely smart and independent. Also stubborn.

I was unaware they were no longer called Fairy Penguins.

Fun fact, one of these were actually Linus's inspiration for the Linux penguin mascot: https://web.archive.org/web/20060507115127/http://www.linux....

Anyone could clarify what's politically incorrect about that name? English is not my native language.

The word is occasionally used to mean gay, although the meaning of small imaginary creatures is still much more common.

I wonder if it's more commonly used that way in Australia?

The Australian usage is more along the lines of an weak or effeminate man, similar in usage to pansy.

Source: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1615908/posts

tl;dr Someone dolt at the Queensland zoo thought fairy penguin would offend the gay community so they changed the name to little penguins. The gay community responded to the change calling it ridiculous. No one was offended. It was NOT an issue but merely and amusing footnote.

Why the BBC author chose to dredge up a 13 year old political non issue is beyond me.

Especially when there's a town called Port Fairy not ten miles west. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Port+Fairy+VIC+3284

Wikipedia states:

'In Australia, they are often called fairy penguins because of their small size.'

So it appears to be an Australian term.

Why don't the dogs kill the penguins?

if only English didn't bring the foxes to Australia...

Obviously yes, but heck if only humans had never gone to Australia in the first place it would still be populated by innumerable species that simply no longer exist.

We were destroying ecosystems long before there was anything that could reasonably be called a nation state.

The foxes weren't any kind of accident or incidental to human arrival though - they were deliberately introduced so that fox hunting could be engaged in!

The combustion engine was deliberately mass produced for vehicles so that people could move faster!

In my opinion there's a relevant distinction between the development of a technology that caused incidental and largely unforeseen environmental degradation, and an act of deliberate alteration of the environment that resulted in entirely foreseeable degradation.

aww

I'm baffled why they didn't just dredge the channel to make it a few feet deeper, keeping the foxes from crossing?

The foxes know the penguins are there now and they’re perfectly capable of swimming across a ten metre channel for some food. Also, dredging would need to be repeated every ten years minimum. The dogs may be cheaper as well. Dog food is cheap.

How is dredging a channel an easier, cheaper or more intuitive way than a dog to keep foxes away?

Sending your dog out there occasionally seems monumentally cheaper and easier than dredging

Foxes can swim?

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