• samus12345@sh.itjust.works
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      22 hours ago

      Per Wikipedia:

      Despite its vernacular name and both genera being in the same subfamily (Caprinae), the mountain goat is not a member of Capra, the genus that includes all true goats (such as the wild goat (Capra aegagrus), from which the domestic goat is derived); rather, it is more closely allied with the other bovids known as “goat-antelopes”, including the European chamois (Rupicapra), the gorals (Naemorhedus), the takins (Budorcas) and the serows (Capricornis), of Japan and eastern South Asia.

  • T156@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Equally confusing is the hen of the woods, which is not a hen, nor, in fact, is it an animal at all.

  • Fushuan [he/him]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 days ago

    so Ibexes are european “mountain goats”, and are true goats, but “mountain goats”, are american mountain goats and not goats. Okay. Fuck your english. All my mountain goats are goats.

    So yall basically decided that since your fake goat was already named “mountain goat”, all the actual mountain goats in europe couldn’t be names as such and used a weird ass name for them. Goooot it.

    Looking it up, the “ibex” name comes from them being from the iberian peninsula, which is true for some of them but there’s goats in every mountain, not only in the iberian peninsula… Shame… Shame.

    • DeltaWingDragon@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      Penguins are penguins. [citation not needed]

      Penguins are not extinct. [1] [2] [3]

      While it is true that great auks are extinct, and that the word “penguin” originally referred to them, the word possibly comes from Latin pinguis (fat) or Welsh pen gwyn (white head). [4]

      Penguins do have fat, and some penguins have white heads, so the word applies to them just as much as it applies to great auks. [citation not needed]

      The word “penguin” was used to refer to flightless aquatic birds of the order Sphenisciformes as early as the 16th century. [4]

      Also, auks other than the great auk are not extinct. The closest living relative to the great auk is the razorbill, Alca torda, in the family Alcidae, the auks. Other auks include the little auk, the parakeet auklet, and the puffin.

      • Deconceptualist@leminal.space
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        22 hours ago

        You didn’t watch the video 🤦 Wikipedia is not a superior source to an actual expert. And species are not categorized based on etymology (which wouldn’t work here anyway as some “penguins” have all-black heads).

        The video is from a PhD Biologist & Zoologist who has made a ton of content on the joys and challenges of phylogeny, and he clearly has a love for these creatures. It’s worth a watch if you enjoy this stuff.

        Yes, Great Auks were the original “penguins” and they lived in the northern hemisphere. He makes the point that those are more closely related to hummingbirds than they are to what we now call penguins. And the modern “false penguins” (to be a bit cheeky), which live almost exclusively in the southern hemisphere, are more closely related to flamingos and other colorful flighted birds than they are to any auks.

        So in terms of avian ancestry they are not even very closely related. So yeah, (original) penguins are extinct. Long live (new) penguins!

        • DeltaWingDragon@sh.itjust.works
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          19 hours ago

          Nowhere did I claim that Sphenisciformes were related to Alcidae,

          This debate boils down purely to word usage and prescriptivism vs descriptivism; which order/family of seabirds does the term “penguin” refer to? Who cares! This is entirely Argumentum ad Dictionarium!

          • Deconceptualist@leminal.space
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            17 hours ago

            I didn’t consider it a debate in the first place, but yes, I’m aware of how the words have changed in their application. That seemed to be a central theme of the entire post 🤷

      • roz@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 days ago

        Essentially there was a species of birds called the great awks which most people called penguins, the ‘only modern species in the genus Pinguinus’ that humans hunted to extinction in the late 1700’s mid 1800’s. What we call penguins today were only named that because of their resemblance to these extinct birds

  • El_guapazo@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I remember reading Safari Cards as a kid and found the Monkey Eating Eagle.

    Turns out it’s not a monkey that preys on raptors.