For anyone who’s interested, there was a movie made that was loosely based on this story called Oddball: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3401748/
fewer than 10
“Welcome… to Super Inbred Penguin Island.”
🎵DOO DOO DOO doo doo🎵
It’s a small enough number you think they could have just said exactly how many there were.
Fewer than 10 … So, 9? 8, perhaps? Surely not 7!
My god, that’s fewer than 5.
Also that’s getting really close to “Adam & Eve” level inbreeding. Those penguins have a family wreath, I wonder if they can develop a Hapsburg beak.
There are other colonies of these penguins, although their numbers have been declining all over Australia and New Zealand for a while now. In some areas they’ve dropped 70%, in others the colonies have been completely lost.
So it’s good that they have one safe space to breed at least.
RIP foxes
I mean, the foxes would have also died shortly after consuming the last 10 penguins. Not like those last ten would be the feast that keeps that population going for centuries.
Good point.
