Penguins Not As Adorable As We Thought
We probably should have known that though, right? I mean penguins aren’t fuzzy and cute. They’ve got oily feathers, they eat fish so they smell awful, and they shit in high pressured white streams. Penguins: not actually that cute. But this latest report pretty much seals the deal.
Necrophilia, rape, masturbation — it’s just another day for an Adélie penguin, in the eyes of a gentleman scientist.
That’s what George Murray Levick, a doctor who journeyed alongside Captain Robert Scott to the Antarctic, recorded when his expedition spent almost a year in 1911-1912 at Cape Adare, on the Ross Sea. Levick recorded these observations — which he deemed evidence of “astonishing depravity” on the part of the penguins — and attempted to share them when he returned home to Britain, but the Natural History Museum of London ultimately deemed the report too salacious for publication.
“Too Salacious for Publication” was also the subtitle of an adult themed picture book series from the period called “School Girls of Reckless Abandon.” It featured drunken English youths performing immoral acts while on vacation during a break in their spring school term.
It would have been pretty great to see George Levick present his pervert penguin findings to the Natural History Museum board of curators.
“That penguin is doing what! Oh my… oh MY!… OH MYYYYYY!!!!!” (*everyone’s monocles fall out*)
According to the story, the findings were discovered buried deep in the archives of the Natural History Museum of London by a museum curator while he was searching for something else entirely. The folder containing Levick’s report was stamped “Not For Publication” in bold letters. Those stuffy old Brits really didn’t want the public to know that some birds in the most remote location on Earth were banging each other’s dead bodies, huh? It was a more innocent time after all, when madmen butchered cockney hookers and people poison gassed each other on the battlefield. Ah the good old days.