RICHARD FREEMAN: SILLY THINGS BEING MISTAKEN FOR MONSTERS

Here is one of the most comical cases of human stupidity. I mean, what were these people thinking?

In the 1930s scientists speculated that penguins could be introduced from the Antarctic to the Arctic. They thought that the emperor penguin might fill the same ecological niche once occupied by the great auk (Pinguinus impennis) before it was hunted into extinction in 1844.

To this end in 1936 a team from the Norwegian Nature Protection Society led by Carl Schoyen released nine emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) in northern Norway. In 1938 a separate group released several macaroni penguins (Eudyptes chrysolophus) and jackass penguins (Spheniscus demersus) into the same region. The experiment was not a success. The birds were unable to cope with the warmer climate and plethora of land-based predators that were unknown in the Antarctic. Most died out quickly but some of the emperor penguins lingered on into the 1940s. The one that met the strangest end was an individual who was moulting. A local farmer saw a shaggy-coated, upright beast four feet tall with what looked like a long, pointed nose. The scared woman killed it with a shot gun; apparently she had mistaken it for a troll!