A Hippogriff Post for World Penguin Day · 10:15pm Apr 25th, 2018
In my recent short Going Aquatic, Skystar tells the story of how the hooved ancestors of whales of dolphins moved from land to sea, and says this gave the evolutionary-biology-nerd Queen Novo the idea to turn the hippogriffs into seaponies.
After watching Surf and/or Turf, it occurred to me that there was just as much inspiration from the avian side of their family.
The hippogriffs of Mount Aris are cliff-dwelling and fish-eating relatives of sea eagles. These birds snatch their prey from just under the water’s surface. Perhaps they have also met other species such as gannets, which dive into the water at speeds approaching 100 kilometres per hour to reach fish 15m underwater. And they would surely know of the birds who have evolved to be best adapted to life underwater—the penguins.
Penguins have lost the ability to fly in the air, but their strong wings propel them through the water with impressive speed and agility.
While Scootaloo has been called a dodo or a chicken many times, it seems to me to be now clear that her true inner-bird is a penguin.
Source: World penguin day and the march of the Adelie penguins
For more penguin pictures, check out one of my favourite citizen science projects: Penguin Watch
Wonder if Dash can go fast enough to Hypercavitate the water like she does the air?
The bubbletunnel reminds me about a project to create an 200-knot torpedo traveling through bubbles for decreasing resistance (air has lower viscosity than water).
VA-111 Shkval
Scootapenguin
Oh, also, most breeds of chicken can fly at least well enough to get to the roof of the barn for the whole cock-a-doodle-doo routine, even if long-distance flight was evolved away from.