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Tuesday, April 3, 2012

We are little children of the sea Polliwogs and golden fish are we We could never frighten anyone We're too busy swimming in the sun

The librarian at NOAA describes this composite image as "Good depictions of certain types of fish and crustaceans, a bad whale, and what appears to be a very bad penguin." I think that's the penguin at top middle but it is well disguised.
Penguins are well-known for their abilities at disguise and concealment. Especially the criminal ones. They start small -- stealing stones from neighbouring nests -- and work up from there.

One group of penguins formalised their stone-stealing behaviour to the point that it was governed by an elaborate set of rules, essentially a re-invention of the rules of chess. The best of the group translated his name from your actual Welsh "Pen-gwyn" to the Spanish equivalent, and successfully disguised himself as the world chess chanpion Capablanca. Not many people know that.

Other captions from the NOAA Image archive are equally judgemental:

14 comments:

  1. Thanks for pointing me over, thundra. Life has come full circle.

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  2. Not quite full circle, Jennifer.

    Did you know I posted that thunderstorm video, after all?

    And as soon as I link to your post in the comments at my place, we will have full circularity.

    ;-)

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  3. Which post? My original Bad Ronald post? Or just linking to posts today?

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  4. Do bad penguins wear glasses like these?

    Drag-&-drop accessories for bad penguin will follow once I am sufficiently caffeinated.

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  5. I'm pretty sure the captioning was outsourced to India.

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  6. I got your very special penguins right here.

    http://wileywitch.com/2012/uncategorized/zomg-these-penguins/

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  7. That is NOT DAVID ATTENBOROUGH in that video, wiley, so I do not trust it.

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  8. A recognizable cheetah or leopard, a unicorn, and a very strange demon herding lemmings or some other small animal.

    It looks like a very pedestrian demon to me!

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  9. There's no such thing as a bad creature, only lethal and non-lethal ones. Penquins are completely non-lethal unless you swallow them whole.

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  10. Dat dere's Feathers McGraw... love the drag-and-drops!!

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  11. a very strange demon herding lemmings

    Yeah, that was me.

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