so we all know the image of the cat covered in packing peanuts from the static cling page on wikipedia, right?

ALT

you know, this delightful little guy? an image from 2017?

not only is it on the static cling page, it's also on the pages for static electricity, triboelectric effect, electric field, eletrostatics and electrostatic induction (and you can also find it on this user page captioned "my fav photo", which i thought was delightful, and way down on this user's page)!

it's full description on wikimedia also reads:
"Styrofoam peanuts clinging to a cat's fur due to static electricity. The triboelectric effect causes an electrostatic charge to build up on the fur due to the cat's motions. The electric field of the charge causes polarization of the molecules of the styrofoam due to electrostatic induction, resulting in a slight attraction of the light plastic pieces to the charged fur. This effect is also the cause of static cling in clothes."

except, i left out the last bit. the last bit reads:
"Image cropped losslessly from File:Cat and styrofoam – electrostatic charge (235112299).jpg using cropgtk"

now, this means this isn't the full image.... so what is the full image? it's this!

ALT

now, what i find really endearing about this photo, is that, while this file was uploaded to wikimedia in 2015 (as opposed to the cropped version being done in 2017), the original picture is actually from february 2006! you can see this in the summary!

ALT

the picture itself actually originates from flickr, and it has a DELIGHTFUL little description:

ALT

unfortunately the original source and picture is long gone, but we can delight in the fact that it was preserved a decade ago on wikimedia after being transferred via Flickr2Commons :]