Linguistic Speculative Cryptozoology

They all were. That was the joke. :wink:

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If you’re looking for a more modern, avant-garde pigeon, look no further than the Vaporwave Dove

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… and how many Ant-hill-opes (Antelopes turning out to be ant-hills) have I tried to identify?

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Ah, time for the assfishes (https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/788543-Neobythitinae) to shine.

The existence of Rock Pigeons implies intransitivity in the ordering of pigeons.

Rock Pigeon beats Scissors Pigeon. Scissors Pigeon beats Paper Pigeon. Paper Pigeon beats Rock Pigeon.

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Ah, time for the assfishes (https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/788543-Neobythitinae ) to shine.

:flushed: That is an odd-looking fish. Perhaps, there is a Nice Guy fish in it’s lineage.

They aren’t butterflies, but there is an exclamation damsel, adding to the pantheon of punctuation insects.

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Yes, my husband found question mark a really odd butterfly name. Of course, I’d argue that question mark should be the name of any unknown organism.

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Obviously they’re the opposite of dead oaks!

Oh, one I forgot that’s an old favorite of mine

Antelope => Posilope

More of a pronunciation pun as the spelling doesn’t work out exactly right.

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I know USA lost ash trees, and we are losing oaks.
But USA must have a LOT of dead oaks to get excited about - that one, is, live.
It sounds so odd if you haven’t grown up with ‘live’ oaks.

I know them as beautiful trees from Texan garden blogs. Don’t they deserve a ‘better’ name?

Early farmers in South Africa (the colonial settlers that is) planted an oak and a palm. Across our national parks they become a cultural history reminder of Once Was A Farm Here.

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As someone from south Louisiana and southeast Texas, I think of live oaks as survivors. So they aren’t just “live” because they have leaves in winter (there are lots of non-oak trees here that are evergreen), but also because they are still alive after a hurricane. They are less likely to get blown over because of their low profile.

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Ah - that - graceful yielding profile - that makes more sense to me than evergreen

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Of all the troubles that plagued them on the high seas, 18th century whalers complained especially of the so-called “wrong whale,” named for its habit of putrefying and sinking almost instantaneously after being harpooned.

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The Agreeable Tiger Moth implies a Contrarian Tiger Moth.
The Superb Dog-Day Cicada implies an Unexceptional Dog-Day Cicada, or possibly even an Unexceptional Cat-Night Cicada.
The Serval implies the Single.

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