BY today’s way of thinking, showing no fear of humans ought to be an endearing, if rare quality among wild species. Not so in the past. During the breeding season, if a gannet’s nest site could be reached, the young of our largest seabird was easily seized and killed. This naive trust led Carl Linnaeus to classify its genus as Morus, ancient Greek for ‘stupid’. However, the Swedish taxonomist redeemed himself somewhat with the full 1758 classification Morus bassanus, acknowledging that Bass Rock, the steep-sided volcanic lump lying a little more than a mile offshore in the Firth of Forth, was home to the world’s largest gannet colony. It still is. Gannets were first recorded there in 1493.
The manner of the gannet’s hunting is one of Nature’s marvels
The same unfearing nature is found in the gannet’s close relative, the booby of temperate, meaning ‘foolish’. It was applied to the birds because, in centuries past in the southern seas, they often settled on passing sailing ships, where crews gratefully received them to relieve a monotonous menu. It may well be that the notion of fortuitous food greedily consumed by hungry sailors led to our traditional notion that, in public, a glutton has the appetite and manners of a gannet.
