Friday, March 2, 2012

I think we owe dogs an apology.

"Carbon dating? Fossils? Strata?
It was all my doing! Mwa ha ha ha!"

-The Prince of Darkness
Paleontologists (you know, the people who lie to us about the dinosaur bones the Devil buried to trick us) have made a kick ass discovery in the field of giant-god-damn-penguins. They've named it Kairuku.* It stood 4 feet 2 inches tall and lived 26 million years ago (or 25,994,000 years before Kirk Cameron thinks the universe blinked into existence). The ramifications of this find could take years to sink and will undoubtedly revolu-oh, wait, they just sunk in: there used to be really big penguins in New Zealand. Ok, well. It's still kind of interesting though. Big penguins and all. Oh and now New Zealand is famous for two things.

Only one extant species, the rare Rogue's Gallery Penguin
(o. cobblepotus), comes even close to Kairuku at just under 4' tall.
Still pretty deadly though...
When we humans look back on our ancestors we find smaller, less threatening ape-like creatures who spent most of their lives outrunning saber-toothed tigers and selling car insurance. You might say, we've come a long way (then again you might not). But with birds the evolutionary process that transformed us from cave man to the be-thumbed inventors of internet porn took the terrible thunder lizards of the cretaceous period and reduced them in size, ferocity and awesomeness. Now, when you trace the once proud lineage of creatures like the Spinosaurus, Velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus Rex down through the eons it ends up in a bucket full of their progeny baked in 11 herbs and spices. 

Sucks to be birds right? And don't even get me started on dogs. What about about dogs? Fine. Get me started. I like dogs and all, but when you stop to think about it they started out as grey wolves but thanks to human interference many now exist as docile, purse-sized abominations. It's a good thing we bred them stupid, because they should HATE us.  


*Fun fact: Kairuku is startlingly close to the word 'kakairu' which I accidentally googled instead. Turns out 'kakairu' is Japanese for gay-manga porn or something. Now you know.

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