Scott’s Antarctic Expedition Learns from Nature.

George Levick was the scientist with Scott's ill fated quest to reach the south pole. George was appalled at what he saw as depraved sexual behaviour by male penguins, describing some males as hooligans. To fulfil his obligation to record his findings but to hide his embarrassment, he wrote of the penguins in Greek. His notes have now been released. From a 2012 perspective, inserting moral judgement into a scientific record of the behaviour of animals is extraordinary and laughable. So have a laugh.

 

In far away Antarctica

George Levick wrote in Greek

“Male penguins there are hooligans

No morals, so to speak”.

“They go around that frozen waste,

Those base bi-sexual lads,

And stick it into anything!

Alive or dead, the cads!”

And so Scott’s men decided they

Would stay until next season

To give them time to teach those penguins

Moral sense and reason.

Alas, a hundred years has passed

And none has been converted

In fact it seems, the men who stayed

Became themselves ‘perverted’.

For look around and you will see

Behaviour that they learned

Has now become so commonplace

It is no longer spurned.

Homosexuals walking free-

Being gay’s an institution,

And penguins of Antarctica

Are safe from retribution.

Ref:  http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100163919/gay-straight-or-necrophiliac-a-penguin-isnt-a-human-being/

First published at Poetry 24. Image from Google.