🐧Great Auk

Pinguinus impennis (Linnaeus, 1758)

The great auk, also known as the penguin or garefowl, is an extinct species of flightless alcid that first appeared around 400,000 years ago and was driven to extinction by human exploitation in the mid-19th century. It was the only modern species in the genus Pinguinus. It was not closely related to the penguins of the Southern Hemisphere, which were named for their resemblance to this species.

Text: Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Videos

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Photos

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Measurements

Conservation status

EXExtinct

IUCN Red List assessment, 2021.

Key measurements

Body mass: not recorded
Body length: not recorded
Shoulder height: not recorded
Top speed: not recorded
Bite force: not recorded
Maximum lifespan: not recorded

All measurements ↓

This animal is extinct

Assessed Extinct on the IUCN Red List, 2021. Everything on this page — the measurements, the photos, the videos — is a record of an animal that is gone.

Facts and figures

Everything we know about the Great Auk

Typical adult figures. Where a value is an estimate rather than a measurement, it says so.

Standing height

0.7 mnot stated

Details ↓

"Great auks stood 70 cm tall and weighed up to 5 kg." Other compilations state 75-85 cm, usually attributed to Livezey 1988 (Auk 105:681), which is paywalled and was not verifiable; the 70 cm ADW figure is the one directly checked.

Source: Dewey 2009, Animal Diversity Web account: Pinguinus impennis, https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Pinguinus_impennis/ · see citation

Not recorded for Great Auk yet: body mass, body length, shoulder height, top speed, bite force, maximum lifespan.

Where it sits