Of course, of course

[urbpan]

Yesterday's zebra post, all of three sentences, took way too much effort. I got stuck on wanting to refer to the Grevy's zebra as the largest horse. I knew that if I did that, it would cause some discomfort among certain of my readers. But all living equids (ugh, that's so unsatisfying) are not only in the same Family (the way that foxes and dholes are in the dog Family) but they are in the same Genus (the way that wolves and coyotes are in the same genus as domestic dogs). So donkeys, domestic horses, wild asses, and zebras are all in Genus Equus, and there should be a single word to refer to them--and there is, it's Equid. No one gets upset when you refer to lions and jaguars and pumas and snow leopards as "cats."

It's complicated, and it has to do with the great closeness humans feel for domestic horses. They are to be elevated above all others in their Genus, the lowly asses and burros. And just look at the brouhaha that ensues when you suggest that they are as edible as cows.

There's also the complication of taxonomic correctness, the itchy brows that people get when you call a beetle a "bug" or a gorilla a "monkey." There's really no danger in calling a non-hemipteran a "bug" or calling a great ape a "monkey." (The animals that are "correctly" called monkeys are in two widely divergent groups that really have no business sharing a name. Why should a marmoset and a mandrill get the same common name and not share it with a siamang or a sifaka?) Calling a whale a "fish" is more egregious, as it betrays an ignorance of the animal's essence, and serves to unjustly distance the creature from its kinship to us.

I reserve the right to call a fox a "dog," an ocelot a "cat," and a zebra a "horse." To resist is to succumb to arbitrary convention, my least favorite convention.

Comments

[nutmeg.livejournal.com]

Hey... if flies are flies and beetles are beetles and they are just ORDERS than you can call all the extant equids horses.

I'm an entomologist and I call insects generally bugs... but usually I get a little twinge about it.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

If you work with something all the time, you will come up with a one syllable word for it. Too bad that "bug" has both formal and informal meanings.

[mperrotti76.livejournal.com]

Mmmmm... Horse (McDonalds) OM NOM NOM!

[vampyrusgirl.livejournal.com]

Well, just don't say that at work! A lot of the reason we wouldn't say that, especially to the public, is to get across the domestic horse, donkey, etc. from the wild ones that are extremely dangerous - zebras. It's not really nit-picking, so much as differentiating them from their nature et. al.

The ape/monkey one does bother me, personally. I know that tamarins and marmosets are not really 'monkeys', but they're less well-known, in general, while everyone knows what a gorilla is.

A lot of it isn't necessarily about taxonomy as it is image. Make any sense?

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

are not even domestic horses rather dangerous? aside from the kicking angle, there's the biting. they bites lots.

i seem to recall looking up bite statistics when i had ferts (carpet sharks) that cattle (cow), and horse were very much in the top 5, even higher than dog and cat, and ferrets weren't even on the list. so much for ferrets are baby killers/etc :)

course, when i went back to find that list recently (us agricultural list?) i couldn't find it.

horse feathers i say! :) "what? they're birds now?"

#

[vampyrusgirl.livejournal.com]

Domestic horses can be very dangerous, but when they are, it's considered a fluke compared to the number of human/horse interactions. Horses are used to having interactions with people, while zebras aren't. They're more likely to spook and/or attack somebody. It's not so much the damage as the likelihood of damage.

Once when I was grooming on of the 'ponies' at Children's Zoo (they are techinally ponies, but the size of smallish horses) and was picking their back hooves, so I was facing his rear. He did little reach over and mouthed my boob! I almost went to HR! :)

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Clearly he didn't read the zero tolerance harassment policy!

[vampyrusgirl.livejournal.com]

I know! I forget if it was Sage or Brownie, but I think he got written up for it.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Hm. I see.

Not that the average member of the general public is going to get itself into a place where mistaking a zebra for a domestic animal will cause a problem. (There was, however, a little girl way past the barrier fence with her hands through the enclosure fence at Serengeti crossing yesterday...)

[vampyrusgirl.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've seen people putting their fingers in the kea cage to pat him. And they caught people behind jaguar, on the back road which is not a public area, with their fingers through the mesh. Unfortunately, they didn't lose any fingers.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I'd rather pat the jaguar than a kea. Those things look like they could slice right through you.

[vampyrusgirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they could. Luckily, they just tend to pull on your pants and/or your water bucket and/or you radio. In New Zealand, they're known for stripping the sealant from around people's windshield and stealing windshield wipers. And they can take down sheep! Mind you, it has to be a few of them, and a sick or slow sheep, but still! Ew!!

We get to pet the cats during knockdowns. Snow leopards are the softest. :)

Snow leopards

[frith]

And the crankiest.

Re: Snow leopards

[vampyrusgirl.livejournal.com]

Not ours. Ours are super-mellow and the female is very sweet. She rubs her head and neck against the mesh for you to scratch her. :)

Re: Snow leopards

[frith]

We have three. Our pair complain and pace constantly the whole time they're in the holding area. The male snarls and makes full-body grabs towards you in the wire mesh if you stay still. The old female (separate from the pair) "talks" a lot, rubs the mesh but complains bitterly if you actually touch her through the wire. We have testy leopards.

regarding the nomenclature of academic snobbery

[sin-agua.livejournal.com]

Our favorite entomologist at UofA here, Carl Olsen, gives fantastic talks about insects, arachnids, arthropods, etc - but he relishes using the common word "BUG" to describe everything from earthworms to lobsters. He says some/many of his colleagues cringe at the word, and want to leap in with their taxonomical obsessive-compulsivity, but he speaks to the public all the time, and he needs to speak in a way that most people will understand, so he feels just fine with "bug." If you want to get specific beyond that, he's completely able to go there; otherwise, it's all BUGS. ;) He's like a populist rebel entomologist.

Re: regarding the nomenclature of academic snobbery

[sin-agua.livejournal.com]

That said...as a bit of a "nerd" myself I also completely understand the position of those who feel it's very important to Get These Things Right, and the public at large be damned. ;)

Re: regarding the nomenclature of academic snobbery

[matthewdh.livejournal.com]

in written chinese 'housefly', 'lobster', 'shrimp', 'crab', bug, ant, 'earthworm', 'snake', 'snail', 'centipede', 'gnat', 'mosquito', 'butterfly', 'moth', 'beetle', 'grub', 'dragonfly', 'bee', 'spider', 'scorpion', 'louse', and 'bug' share the same ideographic root essentially meaning 'bug'

Re: regarding the nomenclature of academic snobbery

[matthewdh.livejournal.com]

oh, I left out 'lizard'

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

I tend to be strict about the taxonomy of apes because it's a politically sensitized subject: "do you really believe humans were descended from *monkeys*" is a rhetorical challenge, rather than a colloquial use of precise taxonomic terms; so part of my response to the sloppiness of that particlar rhetorical line is to emphasize, for myself, that humans are apes, which I think gets diluted when you start lumping together related groups of primates.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Right. And as I said above, "monkey" is almost meaningless. I had an argument on an evolution board about it. No, humans didn't evolve from any existing monkey, but surely one of our ancestors was a tailed primate.

I'm also insistent on referring to humans as one species of ape.

[nutmeg.livejournal.com]

This common descent thing causes problems also, due to a general (and understandable) lack of knowledge about phylogeny... specifically that common ancestors aren't extant. Not that THAT is usually the major sticking point, as the major sticking point is largely a complete and total ignorance (a la ostriches with heads in the sand) of the science.

Rhinos=Equids?

[shellynoir.livejournal.com]

Duuude, don't ferget about the rhinos and the tapirs. Don't tapirs bite the arms off people?

My boyfriend's mom called a nephew's iguana "the bug". One day we got a frantic phone call, "THE BUG! The bug is dead! The boy is crying all the time now."

Rhinos =/= equids

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Rhinos, tapirs, and equids are grouped together in Order Perissodactyla, as dogs and cats (and bears and raccoons and weasels) are grouped together in Carnivora.

And hey, you're right, a tapir did bite someone's arm off!

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

I do rather like the push to call starfish sea stars, and jellyfish sea jellies, because the names are more "true." I think that the public knows so little about animals that any way we can guide them to knowledge is useful - most people don't even read the signs at the zoo. They'll walk right up to an otter habitat and say, "oooh, look at the seals!" Half the time their KIDS correct them.

[pipu.livejournal.com]

You know, I would have agreed with you on the last distinction on your list, but now having read Moby Dick, I'm completely comfortable with calling whales "fish".

[hissilliness.livejournal.com]

Do you like "Equines" any better?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Not really. the -ine suffix suggests that the word is an adjective: feline, canine, bovine, ovine, etc.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I go the other way, and call all the cetaceans (including dolphins and other toothed whales)"whales."

[hannah-jane.livejournal.com]

I'm one of those...bug drives me crazy, as does calling an ape a monkey. I'm not as bad as I used to be about it. There's only so many times a day I can correct guests about the siamangs and not lose my mind. But sharing a genus, that's different.

I've heard zebra is quite tasty.