Aardwolf
Well-Known Member
It's all American birds named after people, regardless of who they were. It was decided that would be easier than judging every person with a bird named after them on a case by case basis.
Are zebras "ABC" animals?
- Thread starter La Cucaracha
- Start date
And I think the ultimate intention is for this to go for birds worldwide… if anything clearly ornithology is a profession with much time to spare.
La Cucaracha
Well-Known Member
I don't think it's really "woke" to try to decolonize common local names for animals, but truthfully I'm not invested either way.
I digress...
I digress...
Though I will share some of my thoughts on the matter....
I will say that if you intend on changing the names of the birds on the North American continent... you better put some thought into other continents as well. Otherwise you become rather America-centric... lest that the young birders of Europe are next to feel left out that their birds have no name change...
But I do find it a bit strange that there is an official body for common names in the first place. I would understand if it were for scientific names - as those change over time with scientific findings... but in the case of common names they are arisen culturally in many cases... and they are different on where you live.
I do think a fair compromise for this is for major authorities to use the names they prefer in their communication and official media... but still note what the bird's original name was. I do feel that there will always be people who call Swainson's Hawk and Anna's Hummingbird as that - simply because that's how it was for many, many years - for better or worse. Common names I feel do not require a stringent consensus.
The logical ultimate of this I feel would be to make note of how many ornithologists make note of how Audubon himself was a slave owner... but who knows if the Society itself will ever feel uncomfortable to the point that they change their name!
Common names essentially are scientific names when it comes to birds - they have much more stability than the binomials (at least up until now) and it isn't uncommon to hear only the common name even in scientific circles.
For the love of God can we not use the word woke here? That's so overused in political discussions. I come to this site to get away from that crap.
I recently looked into this myself.
I used the Internet Archive to do, in a similar vain to one man's venture I had seen some years back, a sample of 49 books. From there I gathered each animal listed in the book for each particular letter, and then catalogued whichever one was the most frequently-appearing in said book.
I have tried to avoid 'localised books'; which focus on a particular area or group of animals; and stick to more 'general' books of general animals [mostly mammals, by any rate].
If the letter has no matching object worth including in the book, it does not take a part of the sample.
And if there is more than one animal depicted in the book for a given letter it is counted individually. So although I have sampled 49 books, most of them have more than 49 different animals listed. X had only 48.
And this is the list produced:
ALLIGATOR [ANT]
BEAR [BUTTERFLY]
CAT [CAMEL]
DOG/DUCK [DOLPHIN]
ELEPHANT [EAGLE/EGRET]
FROG [FOX]
GIRAFFE [GORILLA]
HIPPOPOTAMUS [HORSE]
IGUANA [IBIS]
JAGUAR [JELLYFISH]
KANGAROO [KOALA]
LION [LLAMA/LADYBUG]
MONKEY [MOUSE/MOOSE]
NEWT [NIGHTINGALE]
OWL [OCTOPUS]
PENGUIN [PANDA]
QUAIL [QUETZAL]
RABBIT [RHINCEROS]
SNAKE [SEAL/SKUNK/SQUIRREL]
TIGER [TURTLE]
UNICORN [UMBRELLABIRD]
VULTURE [VOLE]
WHALE/WALRUS [WOLF]
X-RAY FISH [XENOPS]
YAK [YELLOWJACKET]
ZEBRA [ZORILLA]
So the most common animal is that which immediately appears; and the second-most is in brackets.
But this is in no way proportional. In the case of 'E', for the fifty-six different animals [and perhaps other objects] listed, Elephant appeared 50 times; so 89% of the 'E' inclusions were elephant. On contrast, Eagle and Egret were only threefold each.
Some letters seemed to have 'clear majority'; with the most common animal appearing 50% of the time of more; namely - G, J, K, L, Q, T, V, Y, and Z.
And of these, Yak was the most commonly-appearing animal proportionately speaking; of the 50 entries for 'Y', Yak appeared 43 times. [89%!] And for the 54 entries under Z, there were 44 Zebras.
Part of me wonders whether period of time would have effect on what animals would be present, but part of me also thinks not ... as even throughout different time periods you can see variety of different animals used. Unicorn for sure being most common; but some writers had the decency to use animals of the physical realm.
For 'X' there is some tendency to avoid the subject - one thing that becomes apparent doing this most of all is that these authors have tendency to copy each other. E is for Elephant because that's how it's always been, Y is for Yak since the time of my Great Grandfather. So there is plenty of X-ray fish in the sea for sure ... and also 12 'non-answers' - amongst them, fox, ox, X-ray, Xavier, or some animal the author made up. And possibly a thirteenth - one book I found listed 'Xoona Moth' as its 'X' animal, but I haven't found much about this particular animal ... outside of another animal alphabet book that is. So it may very well be again a case of someone copying someone else.
n.b. No it wasn't - apparently that is the name of this moth [Owl Moth] used by the Tsonga Tribe of Mozambique ... very well then!
One thing I was also interested in was whether one book had this particular lottery list of 26 animals - to which I found that was not the case. The authors did seem to steer clear of the total average!
I used the Internet Archive to do, in a similar vain to one man's venture I had seen some years back, a sample of 49 books. From there I gathered each animal listed in the book for each particular letter, and then catalogued whichever one was the most frequently-appearing in said book.
I have tried to avoid 'localised books'; which focus on a particular area or group of animals; and stick to more 'general' books of general animals [mostly mammals, by any rate].
If the letter has no matching object worth including in the book, it does not take a part of the sample.
And if there is more than one animal depicted in the book for a given letter it is counted individually. So although I have sampled 49 books, most of them have more than 49 different animals listed. X had only 48.
And this is the list produced:
ALLIGATOR [ANT]
BEAR [BUTTERFLY]
CAT [CAMEL]
DOG/DUCK [DOLPHIN]
ELEPHANT [EAGLE/EGRET]
FROG [FOX]
GIRAFFE [GORILLA]
HIPPOPOTAMUS [HORSE]
IGUANA [IBIS]
JAGUAR [JELLYFISH]
KANGAROO [KOALA]
LION [LLAMA/LADYBUG]
MONKEY [MOUSE/MOOSE]
NEWT [NIGHTINGALE]
OWL [OCTOPUS]
PENGUIN [PANDA]
QUAIL [QUETZAL]
RABBIT [RHINCEROS]
SNAKE [SEAL/SKUNK/SQUIRREL]
TIGER [TURTLE]
UNICORN [UMBRELLABIRD]
VULTURE [VOLE]
WHALE/WALRUS [WOLF]
X-RAY FISH [XENOPS]
YAK [YELLOWJACKET]
ZEBRA [ZORILLA]
So the most common animal is that which immediately appears; and the second-most is in brackets.
But this is in no way proportional. In the case of 'E', for the fifty-six different animals [and perhaps other objects] listed, Elephant appeared 50 times; so 89% of the 'E' inclusions were elephant. On contrast, Eagle and Egret were only threefold each.
Some letters seemed to have 'clear majority'; with the most common animal appearing 50% of the time of more; namely - G, J, K, L, Q, T, V, Y, and Z.
And of these, Yak was the most commonly-appearing animal proportionately speaking; of the 50 entries for 'Y', Yak appeared 43 times. [89%!] And for the 54 entries under Z, there were 44 Zebras.
Part of me wonders whether period of time would have effect on what animals would be present, but part of me also thinks not ... as even throughout different time periods you can see variety of different animals used. Unicorn for sure being most common; but some writers had the decency to use animals of the physical realm.
For 'X' there is some tendency to avoid the subject - one thing that becomes apparent doing this most of all is that these authors have tendency to copy each other. E is for Elephant because that's how it's always been, Y is for Yak since the time of my Great Grandfather. So there is plenty of X-ray fish in the sea for sure ... and also 12 'non-answers' - amongst them, fox, ox, X-ray, Xavier, or some animal the author made up. And possibly a thirteenth - one book I found listed 'Xoona Moth' as its 'X' animal, but I haven't found much about this particular animal ... outside of another animal alphabet book that is. So it may very well be again a case of someone copying someone else.
n.b. No it wasn't - apparently that is the name of this moth [Owl Moth] used by the Tsonga Tribe of Mozambique ... very well then!
One thing I was also interested in was whether one book had this particular lottery list of 26 animals - to which I found that was not the case. The authors did seem to steer clear of the total average!
Birdsage
Well-Known Member
Are you referring to this?
An admittedly cursory and not very scientific Google search offers no such documentation of this. Where’s your source?
In fact, I’d like a full data sheet for this survey, as I’m as interested in this subject as you are.
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Z Is For Zebra — 90 Percent Of The Time
And this also.
The other book xP
'African Animals ABC', 1995
TLDR
Zebras are very much ABC animals ...
but you could very much argue as well that yaks are even moreso.
biggest_dreamer
Well-Known Member
Looks like you didn't leave a link for column AF. I was really wanting to see the source for that one, it's a really fun list!