I am posting this out of sheer cuteness! I know I have a lot of readers that knit, so i'm sure you can appreciate this. In January 2000, there was an oil spill in Australia that threatened Little penguins, or Fairy Penguins, lives. The oil reduced their natural insulation, and when they tried to preen they were poisoning themselves by ingesting the oil. Then came Penguin Jumpers Project, and 15,000 tiny sweaters were hand knit, by knitters around the world, for the penguins! You can read more about that here and here, but now for more cute pictures!
Oh, and they required that all the penguin sweaters be wool, because they needed to be insulated. Sigh... don't you just love wool? ;)
ETA: Another interesting wool fact in this story, is that salt water causes wool to break down faster. As these penguins were recovering and getting better, their sweaters were breaking down and falling off of them, in perfect timing. Now I don't know if acrylic yarn would have fallen off of them in the same timing or not, but I do know that the ocean is better off with bits of biodegradable natural wool, than acrylic!
