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Feather coat! (mander.xyz)
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[-] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 9 points 20 hours ago

Hypothetically, how many penguins would one have to sneak out of the zoo in order to fashion themselves a penguin coat?

[-] halloween_spookster@lemmy.world 17 points 20 hours ago

Nice try Cruella

[-] MacGuffin94@lemmy.world 117 points 1 day ago

I knew they were birds so of course they have feathers but for some reasons I thought they would look more like seals with lots of fat.

[-] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 76 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

They have that too, but less of it.

The feathers work almost like a dry suit. Trapping a layer of air to insulate their bodies and keep them exceptionally warm, even as they swim into water that's below freezing temps.

They can't dive as deep though. Air is compressibly by the quickly increasing water pressure, so the cold will sap their body heat faster as a penguin dives deeper.

Fat isn't compressible, so seals don't suffer the same problem.

[-] tryitout@infosec.pub 59 points 1 day ago

Fat isn't compressible

How disrespectful to yoga pants

[-] trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago

It's true though, the pants can push it into a different shape, but not make it smaller.

[-] DaTingGoBrrr@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

If the water is bellow freezing temps wouldn't that mean that the water is ice? Or can it go bellow freezing in the ocean because of the salt?

[-] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 4 points 23 hours ago

Yes.

Ocean water can also be supercritical. You can find videos on youtube of under-ice water flash-freezing out from a nucleation site.

[-] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 17 points 1 day ago

So the black coat is actually fluffy?

[-] 20cello@lemmy.world 44 points 1 day ago

Did they hurt the penguin to get that sample?

[-] Agent641@lemmy.world 64 points 1 day ago
[-] C8r9VwDUTeY3ZufQRYvq@sopuli.xyz 33 points 1 day ago

Death is the most stable condition.

[-] FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

Baseline obs haven't changed in a hundred years

[-] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 45 points 1 day ago

This is a very old sample of penguin skin in a museum. But to answer your question, yes, they killed the bird.

[-] AeroNaut@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Not before torturing him first. How else would he give up his insulating secrets.

[-] Nima@leminal.space 53 points 1 day ago
[-] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 45 points 1 day ago

It died peacefully after a life that was longer and happier than average, surrounded by loved ones, and having come to terms with its mortality beforehand.

[-] Opisek@piefed.blahaj.zone 12 points 1 day ago
[-] xylol@leminal.space 42 points 1 day ago
[-] turtlesareneat@piefed.ca 46 points 1 day ago

Yes they just borrowed its skin for a while, it was happy to be involved

[-] brave_lemmywinks@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago

It would be interesting to know their internal temperature at -60°C ambient.

[-] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 31 points 1 day ago

I bet the locals will give you looks coming all the way to Antarctica to put thermocouples up penguin butts, but hey, science.

[-] trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world 41 points 1 day ago

The locals on Antarctica are all scientists. I'm sure they would understand.

[-] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 3 points 1 day ago

I'm pretty sure they are already doing it for fun anyway. The more the merrier!

[-] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago

damn it, now I want to pet a penguin

[-] apotheotic@beehaw.org 5 points 1 day ago

Can we like, nsfw tag images of splayed out penguin skin?

[-] krolden@lemmy.ml 1 points 18 hours ago

I work in a penguin museum

[-] TwilightKiddy@programming.dev 5 points 1 day ago

Well, it looks more like leather and as terrible as this practice is, society very much encourages displaying leather.

[-] apotheotic@beehaw.org 2 points 23 hours ago

Just because something is normalised doesn't mean it should be, or that we don't have the capacity to do things differently or more compassionately :3

[-] TwilightKiddy@programming.dev 3 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

Yes, but as much as I despise people wearing dead animals, I also don't think it's that awful to see something like that in a scientific context on the internet.

[-] apotheotic@beehaw.org 1 points 20 hours ago

This isn't a scientific context it's a social media site :/ and I'm not asking them not to post it or cancelling them for it - I'm asking that they slap a nsfw tag on it or a content warning or something

[-] TwilightKiddy@programming.dev 2 points 18 hours ago

For me NSFW is something that can get me fired if somebody sees it on my screen during working hours or something that can put the consumer of the content at risk, like gore images making hemophobic people faint. I can see how this image can be a bit disturbing, but I don't think a piece of leather should be censored, as it dilutes the meaning for the tag too much.

I'd then click on something NSFW thinking there is just another piece of leather with feathers under the tag... I don't think I need to explain this one.

[-] apotheotic@beehaw.org 1 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

I mean yeah but Lemmy doesn't have other tags that blur the image so we gotta make do. And if you pair the nsfw tag with a content warning like "CW: penguin skin" then nobody is confused as to what they'll see if they unblur

[-] TwilightKiddy@programming.dev 1 points 16 hours ago

Systems built on unspoken rules break outside of isolated communities, considering this is very much a global community, I doubt such a system would work in the first place. Would be actually cool to have various degrees of warning tags to then choose on the client side what to unblur automatically and what not to, though.

[-] apotheotic@beehaw.org 1 points 13 hours ago

I'm not asking for a system, or a standard. I'm speaking to one person about one post and asking for compassion. Lemmy features would be cool, wider adoption of content warnings would be cool, but neither are what I'm asking for

[-] ramble81@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 day ago

So do we have extreme weather gear based on similar principles and layout, or have we discovered a configuration that works better?

[-] autriyo@feddit.org 7 points 1 day ago

Most wearable insulation works pretty similar, right?

Its a layer of air, trapped in some kind of matrix, so that it can't move, with some sort of inner and outer shell.

[-] trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

I think it would be too fragile for most purposes. Unless you can make missing feathers grow back like a living penguin it would wear out quite fast.

[-] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago

Not yet but hopefully soon because penguin coats are really expensive.

[-] prex@aussie.zone 4 points 1 day ago

Ever Mr Burns has to make do with real gorilla chest:

this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2026
477 points (99.4% liked)

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