While this post was referring to (colloquial) usage in English, and this post is more for funny but rather rare names, here I want to ask you to share names of (common) species in your language that are just great or funny when giving it a second thought. I love the peculiarities and diversity of l…

Talking about french names, I learned that the genus name Lycoperdon of puffball mushrooms is literally translated into French (vesse-de-loup) and Spanish (pedo de lobo) - all three terms have the meaning ‘wolf’s fart’. (As a side note, that mushroom is edible but maybe many people in those countri…

Oh, that reminded me - Bovista in Lithuanian is vilktabokė: wolf’s tobacco. And generally all kinds of puffballs are often called kukurbezdalis - also a word derived from farting.

lol, that is awesome!!! I have no idea what the connection to wolves are, but people are apparently obsessed with wolves. I did a quick search, and Tom Volk (a mycologist) says the following here : The pinkish spheres to the back are Lycogala , the wolf’s milk slime mold, likely so named for its re…

Well, then we have the Wolf’s bane for Aconitum, and in German, the members of the Genus Euphorbia (spurges) are generally named Wolf’s milk (because of the poisonous milky sap)

Inspired by the thread Funny, long, or just plain weird animal names , which contains mostly English names, I thought I’d create this thread for sharing memorably weird names from other languages as well (with translations of course, so every one can enjoy). I’ll start with some of my Danish favouri…

Two of my favourite German ones are: Schnurrbart-faulvogel (“Moustached lazybird”) - Malacoptila mystacalis Palmendieb (“Palm thief”) - the Coconut crab

Cool! We also call the coconut crab palm thief (“palmetyv” in Danish).

I just today discovered the existence of Minute Pirate Bugs. https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/174592-Anthocoridae

I’ve always felt Little Nipple Cactuses had an unusual name.

The flies from the subfamily Phlebotominae (in english are called Sandflies; they are biting flies that transmit diseases like Leishmaniasis) are called “beatas” or “beatillas” in spanish, meaning something like “female saint” or “holy” in english. Very weird and/or ironic.

Great, funny, or weird species names in other languages

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Great, funny, or weird species names in other languages

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