![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/western-meadowlark-4668-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"western-meadowlark-4668-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nAnd the problem with common names.<\/p>\n
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1\/6400, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n Western Meadowlarks are beginning to sing reliably around here again but they’re still fairly difficult to approach so I don’t have any recent shots of them singing on territory. This photo was taken slightly more than a year ago on Antelope Island. This time of year we still don’t have any spring colors but I think that makes the bright yellows of this bird pop even more.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yesterday I posted a photo of a Horned Lark and said they’re the “only member of the lark family that is native to the Americas.” That statement sort of became the elephant in the room because some readers immediately wondered \u2026 What about meadowlarks? Aren’t our native meadowlarks in the lark family?<\/p>\n In truth they aren’t. Meadowlarks are in the blackbird family, more closely related to Red-winged Blackbirds and grackles than Old World larks like the skylarks. Meadowlarks acquired their common name from their lark-like song prowess.<\/p>\n One of the problems with common names (as opposed to scientific names that are much more precise) is that they can be extremely misleading and confusing, even “irritating” as Lyle Anderson pointed out in yesterday’s post. Common names tend to be colloquial and based on “normal” language of everyday life. Another name for common names is “farmer names” so that should tell you something.<\/p>\n To impress upon my zoology students the value of scientific names and one of the weaknesses of common names I used to require them to memorize nine different regularly used common names for the mountain lion (there are actually many more than that) in addition to their single scientific name, Felis concolor.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The list of misleading common names is endless but it includes examples such as “starfish” (they aren’t fish), “sea horse” (they aren’t horses), “koala bears” (they aren’t bears), “ringworm” (it’s a fungus, not a worm) and “guinea pig” (they’re rodents, not pigs)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Image in Public Domain<\/em><\/p>\n One of my favorite examples is “horny toad” for horned lizards. Juvenile humor was a valuable tool for me while I was teaching high school so I used to tell my students that horny toads not only aren’t toads (they’re reptiles, not amphibians) but they’re presumably not unusually horny, at least in one commonly used sense of the word. That was a lesson my teenaged students nearly always remembered.<\/p>\n Jerry Seinfeld forged a mega-career out of pointing out some of the absurdities in our words and names, especially with his “What’s the deal with…? jokes. Here’s one of my favorites:<\/p>\n \u201cWhy do they call it a \u2018building\u2019? It looks like they’re finished. Why isn’t it a \u2018built\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n Gotta love Jerry.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Note: The cougar or mountain lion is listed in dictionaries under more names than any other animal in the world. Many of them can be seen here under “The Cat of Many Names<\/a><\/span>.”<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" And the problem with common names.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Greater_Short-Horned_Liazard.jpg\")
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