Curated Tumblr

This is just because English sucks, or English speaking people suck at naming things. Let me show you how it's done:

In Dutch:

Horseshoe crabs are called "dagger crabs", and look what it's dragging behind.

Cuttlefish are called "ink fish", and tadaa.

Jellyfish are "kwallen", which means roughly "annoying person", and they're pretty annoying.

Bald eagles are "American Eagles", you're welcome.

A sand dollar is called a "sea coin", because of where it lives and what it resembles, which is way more accurate.

And a fly is still a fly.

Secretarybird: refuses to schedule my meetings

king cobra - not a true cobra & snakes are largely self-organizing without monarchs

Animals that live up to their acronym:

• Goat

Change my mind

Bat (useless as a blunt weapon)

In my town there's a shop that sells rocks and crystals etc. They also sell sand dollars for $1. That's right, there's a 1:1 conversion rate between sand dollars and USD.

Animals that live up to their names ;

• Sea cucumber
• Woodpecker
• Babadook

Animal that does not live up to its name:

cuttlefish - is not a fish

Animal that does live up to its name:

woodpecker

This leads me to one of my favourite dad jokes:

What do you call a fly without wings?

A walk

I was wondering, why it's called "vampire squid". I guess, due to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_squid

Praying mantis had me rolling haha.

Animal that does not live up to its name:

Red Panda. Not Red, not a panda

Animal that lives up to its name:

Sloth

I'm pretty sure ca. 50% of peacocks have one.

Bearded dragons do have beards! Just made of spikes instead of hair.

Peacocks have cocks. Peahens do not.

Also:

Spider (doesn't actually spy)

AWAIL (A while ago I learned) that butterflies are named that because they like to drink the fatty cream that form atop of fresh milk that's used to make butter.

This also goes for german. The Schmetter in Schmetterling has ethymological connections to Schmalz

Bird that does not live up to its name: tit.

Estonian edition (I'm not a native speaker): viinamäetigu. Not related to any alcohol (viin), does not live on mountains (mäe), mostly found outside of vineyards (viinamäe). At least it is a snail (tigu).

Bald Eagles have no hair. Ergo, bald? /S

Im 99.9% certain that whomever named the ping pong tree sponge was high, drunk or both at the moment of inspiration 😄

The sunfish checks out, though, since it likes sunbathing.

What about a roadrunner? They do occasionally run on roads in real life, so they do live up to their name.

Hermit crab - I would not expect hermits to spend so much time and effort on acquiring bigger houses.

I can’t believe it’s not butterfly

Elephant shrew: not an elephant, not a shrew

Golden mole: not a mole

Otter shrew: not an otter, not a shrew

Not every praying mantis is atheist some worship the moon