Penguins are not birds

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We were just studying this in my thinking and problem solving class. The error your co-workers made is actually rather understandable: The penguin is a bird--but it's not a very typical bird. When we categorize things, we associate each category with "typical" traits. So with "bird", we might associate "Feathers; flies; has nests; sings; lays eggs." So we perceive the penguin as a very atypical bird, and a robin as a very typical bird. Penguins are among the least bird-like birds.

Your co-workers' mistake is actually rather interesting for what it reveals about the way we think. Categories are useful because instead of associating every single characteristic of "bird" to every bird individually, we associate the characteristics of birds with the category "bird" and associate the category itself with individual birds. It's a mental shortcut that your co-workers were using, and it explains why they were so much more likely to make that mistake with penguins rather than with robins. With an atypical group member like Penguin (Bird), you have to specifically learn exceptions to the rules of category membership; if you never learn them, you take your best guess based on the information you do have and might very well come up with "A penguin is a mammal."

It's worse than useless to try to reason with people when they're just enforcing the pecking order. Note pecking hurts---in order to hurt, the more unreasonable and misguided what they say is, the better! Being factual wouldn't show who's boss.

I agree with everything you said above, Callista.

Still, I find it curious that anyone would not recognize a penguin as a bird. When seen on documentaries, their beaks, feet, eggs, chicks, and down mark them as birds in my head, even back when I was a child.
Sure, they're very strongly adapted to below-surface swimming, but so are cormorants and certain ducks. Sure, They've lost the ability to fly, but so have ostriches and kiwis.

I'd find it more undrstandable if people were led to think that whales were fish.

A greater mind-blower is probably the notion that crocodiles are more closely related to birds than to lizards or snakes. They share a common ancestor that branched off from other taxons we conveniently group together as 'reptiles'.

'Reptile' basically means 'amniotic tetrapod that isn't a bird or a mammal'.

It's understandable if you remember they're not exactly trying to be reasonable. It's no use to expect them to keep their factoids and answers consistent, either.

Penguins don't happen to fly too well.

Chickens don't fly too well, either.

Ostriches can't fly at all.

All are 100% bird.

This is a red fox: http://www.debenhams.com/webapp/wcs/sto ... 6400046_-1


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That reminds me of the time that I was in a bird park and two adults standing next to the huge board with the description were arguing about how given that storks "hatched only with one leg or whether the leg fell of at one point after that."

While staying with friends at their second home down in Ft. Lauderdale Florida I meet a Black Jamaican lady ( a one time school teacher I am told)who rented a room in that house. While my friends were away this lady and I hung out at the house talking about our respective back grounds. She was shocked when I mentioned my family's white bread White Anglo Saxon Protestant background.

She said "I thought that all White people were Jewish!"

She was seriously stunned when I explained to her that "about 75 to 80 percent of the American population is White, but only about two percent of Americans are Jewish."

"Is that all???" she replied. I nodded while biting my tongue.

Later that day when I was riding around town with my friends away from the house I told them "what your room mate said today", and all three of us started to laugh our asses off at the notion that "all White people are Jewish".

But then someone said "well, this IS south Florida. Half of the White people around here probably ARE Jewish. So maybe she should be forgiven for thinking that."

So maybe I should be more forgiving of folks who think that "penguins are mammals".

New Zealand has several species of penguin, the most unusual being this forest-dwelling species, the Maori name for it is Tawaki:
http://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-an ... in-tawaki/

Some people want to disagree just for the sake of arguing. They just don't care how stupid they sound. Penguins have feathers, which is something all birds and only birds have. I know it look more like fur but that's because the feathers are small. Someone needs to get a life.

In one home I used to live in I suggested we make tacos for supper sometime that week. The staff thought that was a good idea but this guy who lived there and always rubbed me the wrong way kept saying, "That's junk food, that's junk food!". This same guy drank about twenty cans of Coke a day and weighed maybe 500 lbs. He wouldn't have argued with us if the staff at the time was also a guy, it was when they were female that he'd act up like this.