Question 1

How do you say Great Auk?

Accepted Answer

It is pronounced GRAYT AWK. The first word rhymes with 'late' and the second word rhymes with 'talk' or 'walk,' because the letter L in 'auk' is completely silent. A good trick is to think of it this way: say 'great' like you are complimenting something awesome, then say 'awk' like the sound of surprise you make when something goes wrong. Put them together and you have GRAYT AWK, and you will never forget it.

Question 2

What does Great Auk mean?

Accepted Answer

The name simply means 'large auk,' which is a type of North Atlantic seabird. 'Great' comes from Old English meaning big or large, and 'auk' comes from the Old Norse word 'alka,' which was a general Norse name for this family of diving seabirds. The scientific name Pinguinus impennis is even more descriptive: Pinguinus comes from Latin meaning fat, and impennis means without flight feathers or without quills, perfectly describing a chubby, flightless bird.

Question 3

Is the Great Auk a dinosaur?

Accepted Answer

Not exactly, but all birds, including the Great Auk, are technically the direct living descendants of theropod dinosaurs, so in that deep evolutionary sense, yes it is a dinosaur. However, the Great Auk itself evolved in its modern form only about 400,000 years ago, which is incredibly recent compared to ancient dinosaurs that lived over 65 million years ago. Scientists classify the Great Auk as a bird, specifically a member of the family Alcidae, but its dinosaur ancestry is real and not just a metaphor.

Question 4

Why did the Great Auk go extinct?

Accepted Answer

Humans hunted the Great Auk to extinction, plain and simple. European sailors discovered the massive breeding colonies on islands like Funk Island off Newfoundland and slaughtered the birds by the millions for their downy feathers, their meat, their fat, and their eggs. Because the Great Auk had no natural land predators, it had no fear of humans and was extraordinarily easy to catch, fishermen could literally walk up and club them. The last confirmed pair was killed on Eldey Island, Iceland, on June 3, 1844, by three fishermen hired by a bird collector who wanted specimens.

Question 5

How big was the Great Auk?

Accepted Answer

The Great Auk stood about 75 to 85 centimeters tall, which is roughly the height of a two-year-old child, and weighed around 5 kilograms, about the same as a large house cat. It was the largest member of the auk family that ever lived. On land it waddled upright and looked almost exactly like a modern penguin, with the same black-and-white coloring and the same lurching, penguin-like walk.

Question 6

What did the Great Auk eat?

Accepted Answer

The Great Auk was a fish hunter, diving to depths of at least 75 meters in the cold North Atlantic to chase fast-moving schools of fish including Atlantic menhaden, capelin, and sand lance. It used its small stiff wings as underwater flippers, exactly like a penguin, and its large webbed feet as a rudder to steer with precision. It was an incredibly powerful swimmer and could outmaneuver fish in freezing dark water, making it one of the top seabird predators in the North Atlantic for hundreds of thousands of years.

Question 7

Are Great Auks related to penguins?

Accepted Answer

No, Great Auks and penguins are not closely related at all, even though they look almost identical. The Great Auk was a member of the family Alcidae, making it a cousin of puffins, razorbills, and murres. Penguins belong to a completely separate order called Sphenisciformes and evolved on the other side of the planet. Both birds evolved flightlessness and their similar body shapes independently through a process called convergent evolution, where different animals develop the same solutions to the same environmental challenges. Confusingly, penguins were actually named after the Great Auk, not the other way around.

Question 8

How many Great Auks are left?

Accepted Answer

Zero. The Great Auk is completely extinct. The last two known living individuals were killed on Eldey Island, Iceland, on June 3, 1844. Today fewer than 80 preserved stuffed specimens and about 75 eggs survive in museum collections around the world, making each one worth a staggering amount of money to collectors and scientists. A single Great Auk egg sold at auction in 1971 for 9,000 British pounds, and values have risen dramatically since then.

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