When I ask someone if they know what a nightingale (https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/13079-Luscinia-megarhynchos) is, they tell me “of course”. But if I ask them later what it looks like, they don’t know what to say.
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I keep thinking of examples and ask myself, is it really something that should be common knowledge, or is it something I know because I have a deep-rooted interest.
Stuff that comes to mind are people thinking shieldbugs, Jewel Bugs, Burrowing bugs and other members of Pentatomoidea are beetles. Or how the paper wasps flying around in their backyard belong to several different species, not just a few.
But if there was something I wish more people knew about, it would be Siphonophores because of how ethereal some of them can be and how they stray from our typical idea of “organism”.
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I would say most of what we naturalists might consider to be “common knowledge” about organisms is really not so common. In fact it’s rare. The majority of people have no clue about scientific classification of organisms, and probably can’t even offer a rough definition of what a species is. If an insect looks kind of beetle-like, it’s a beetle … why would you argue with that? Most people don’t give a second thought to biodiversity; they have other interests and priorities in their lives. Even professional biologists can be limited in what they know about many organisms if they specialize in one narrow field of study, although they do have the “framework” of knowledge to properly fit new information about unfamiliar organisms into their thinking.
I used to be surprised by what people do not know about nature but I’m not anymore. Of course, that’s why iNaturalist exists, to help cultivate that interest.
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Here in Mexico everything with six legs is automatically called ROACH (cucaracha in Spanish)…
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Many years ago, a coworker saw a marine mammal (probably River Otter) peeking out of the water, and commented, “There’s some kind of sea-rodent.” I don’t think they literally thought it was a rodent; “rodent,” I think, was a placeholder in their vocabulary for mammal in general, or maybe “mammal that doesn’t look like a hoofed mammal or large carnivoran.”
In a past thread, I made a remark to the effect that a Solenodon is just a very big shrew. In reply, someone educated me as to the phylogeny of the Eulipotyphla, in which the Solenodontidae are not near the Soricidae. Well, sure; but “shrew” was just the placeholder in my vocabulary for any critter in what I used to know as Order Insectivora. A mole is a burrowing shrew, a desman is an aquatic shrew, a hedgehog is a prickly shrew, you get the picture.
And your javelinas may not be Suidae, but they are Suina, which is close enough for some purposes.
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It is his use name, but he gets it because as a youth one of the first true names he learns is that of sparrowhawks. When he was herding goats he would call them down out of the sky to land on his hand. Other people in his village on Gont (the island he lived on) saw this from a distance and nicknamed him ‘Sparrowhawk’. At the time his given name was Duny, and later when Ogion comes to take him away to teach him magic he gives him his true name of Ged, but warns him to keep it a secret, and Ged decided to keep the Sparrowhawk nickname as his public name. This stuff about the sparrowhawk in the first chapter or so of the first book, the part where he becomes Ged comes a few chapters later.
So, yes, it is the protagonist’s name, but it comes directly from the bird and the Ursula K leGuin makes a point of describing in detail why he has that name.
This is like the toddlers that used to live next door and often came over to play with my cats. When their parents took him to the aquarium and they saw the river otter exhibit, they squealed “water kitty, water kitty”. I think they may have called squirrels tree kitties for a bit, too.
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When I was a toddler, I apparently called all animals “kitties” (or the closest thing I could say) - even insects and birds and stuff.
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State of Matter Life is very educational. On every page, I am amazed by what people imagine that they see.
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There was a funny experience where a group of people were all starring up at a large black bird perched in tree. Both adults and children stood in awe and confusion wondering what it was. Some discussed it while others took pictures. This went on for a while. I even heard someone ask “is it a vulture?”. It was a Double-Crested Cormorant. Worst of all, it had its wings open, a behavior almost completely unique to cormorants.
I knew they where wrong, but I commend the effort to try and understand it. They talked about it rather than simply labeling it ‘bird’. Nice to see people engage with nature.
Still, it took me just a few minute to find the exact species through Googling and that was before I got into birding. You people had phones, use them!
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I’ve also been surprised to see people on iNat suggesting broad ID’s (waterfowl, Ducks, Geese, and Swans, etc) for male Mallards.
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Big oof on my part…
Welp, that person may have been onto something.
Rodents of unusual size, perchance?
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Yep, Turkey Vultures (and probably others) and Condors often warm up in morning by spreading their wings, cormorant style.
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Here in Mexico also, bats are inevitably called rodents, these people really are weird. I’ve even seen reports on TV calling bats as ‘‘rodents’’.
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I don’t believe they exist.
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Not surprising – they are all so different from one another.
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That’s very sweet!
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Capybaras are rodents of unusual (atypical) size.
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