Lets play the Tautonyms game!

Tautonym is when the genus and species are the same, write below an example! And try not to use google! :wink:

I start!

Curaeus curaeus! Austral blackbird, which is also, triple tautonym :P

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Bufo bufo, a toad

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Bison bison, a bison :laughing:

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Tautonyms are surprisingly common, a couple examples include:

Honorable mention: Gekko gecko, which is only one letter off from being a tautonym.

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Bison bison bison is even better

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Damn. I thought so but I didnā€™t want to use Google and break the rules.

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Ariadne ariadne, a butterfly

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Vulpes vulpes red fox

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Fun fact, tautonyms are actually forbidden in plant names, but that doesnā€™t stop people from trying:

Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, which translates from first Greek and then Latin as something like bear grapes bearā€™s grape

Araucaria araucana is pretty confusing

and then we have these suffixes -opsis and -oides which both mean ā€œlikeā€ as in ā€œsimilar to.ā€ I canā€™t think of it off the top of my head but I am pretty sure there was some plant that was cheating by just taking the genus name and adding the suffix to make the species epithet.

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Gulo gulo : wolverine

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Gorilla gorilla gorilla. As Sam Oā€™Nella so eloquently put it, ā€œitā€™s the gorillest gorilla that ever gorilledā€

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Unrelated, but i thought of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo

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If I remember correctly there is a Rattus rattus.

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You may have been thinking about Thalictrum thalictroides perhaps? And Iā€™m sure there are others like that.

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Grus grus
Pyrrhula pyrrhula ssp. pyrrhula
Spinus spinus
Regulus regulus ssp. regulus
Curruca curruca ssp. curruca
Ciconia ciconia ssp. ciconia
Gallinago gallinago ssp. gallinago
Tadorna tadorna
Oenanthe oenanthe ssp. oenanthe
Buteo buteo ssp. buteo
Vanellus vanellus
Apus apus ssp. apus
Ok, Iā€™m done, take any bird and thereā€™ll be it.

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Gorilla gorilla gorilla (oh, itā€™s been mentioned already)

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Boops boops, even knowing the etymology it will never stop being funny to me.

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I complained about this one, but, Linnaeus had it in a different genus before, so it was ā€˜like an ericaā€™ Must keep the old, first, name however wrong and UNhelpful it is.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/584815-Erica-ericoides

Golden, first in Greek, then in Latin
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/129068-Chrysocoma-coma-aurea

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Grus grus is a fine example. When I was young, I was convinced the word ā€œGrusā€ meant both ā€œcommonā€ and ā€œcraneā€ before I learned scientific names didnā€™t always apply to common names.

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Shakira shakira? :wink:

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