A friend and I were recently discussing a certain dachshund of our acquaintance, when I began to wonder what kind of hound, exactly, a dachs hound was. So, consulting my dictionary, I learned that "dachs" refers to badgers, and that dachshunds were used to hunt badgers. Upon reading this information aloud to my friend, we were simultaneously struck by the same thought: Ha ha ha! Badger hound? More like badger lunch!

We speculate that dachshunds are probably well suited to hunting European (also in Asia) badgers, Meles meles, but can't envision a small dog readily taking on the American version, Taxidea taxus. American badgers are sizable, going 2.5 feet in length, and mean.

And the point of this ramble is: "badger" is one of the many words which british immigrants applied to flora and fauna in North America which were only similar to the European species. And, my dictionary informs me that "wombat" and "bandicoot" are Australian versions of badgers, but without further elucidation.

What other animals and plants are known by the same name in the various English-speaking nations, but are not the same creature? What species are the same, but are known by different names?

Around here, a black-and-white member of the weasel family with an extraordinarily powerful stink gland is known as a "skunk," but I believe that in the southern states it is also called a "polecat." Those prickly animals are porcupines around here, but are called hedgehogs elsewhere (are they the same? merely related?) A groundhog is the same as a woodchuck. Why two names?

Have we a zoologist in our midst?

What other animals and plants are known by the same name in the various English-speaking nations, but are not the same creature?

That which we in NZ call flax ain't. That's also plumbing the depths of my botanical knowledge.

Those prickly animals are porcupines around here, but are called hedgehogs elsewhere (are they the same? merely related?)
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I always thought that hedgehogs were small, brown and vaguely sweet, with spines of no more than about 2cm long. If found in your garden, then the correct protocol used to be to feed them on bread and milk. Also, they're sufficiently docile that you can pick them up and handle them (although, they're supposed to be rather flea-infested, so perhaps not such a good idea).

Porcupines I understood to be much larger, with very long quills, that they can bristle at you threateningly and even ? shoot at you. Decidedly undocile.

rkay, the porcupines I know definitely have longer quills than your hedgehogs. It seems to me that they are related but different. Porcupines, like most creatures confident of their defense, are not irascible but I think are less docile than hedgehogs. They cannot throw their quills. They will, however, strike at a threat with their tails, impaling the victim with nasty barbs which are very painful to get out (as more than one local dog can attest) and leave him looking like he's lost a fight with knitting needles.

rkay wrote : Porcupines I understood to be much larger, with very long quills, that they can bristle at you threateningly and even ? shoot at you. Decidedly undocile.
Ohmygoodness, porcupines seem to be getting a bad rap! They are indeed large and can shoot those long quills quite a distance.
(As anyone who has ever rushed their dog to the Vet to have the quills removed from the dog's curious nose can attest.)
How-some-ever, in general, porcupines are rather shy and tend to run away ... I have a porcupine who visits my yard occasionally on a summer evening and when I turn on the exterior lights "Pete the Porci" lumbers away!
If you persist in annoying them, porcupines give you warning. If come upon in the twilit woods, my little pal, Pete, sort of stands still to give you a chance to back off. (it is his living room after all.) But if you come upon a porcupine and annoy them they turn their back to you and ... LOOK OUT!
I'm sure any Zoologist can give you more scientific information but Pete and I have a modus vivendi that seems to work. Perhaps Pete is more used to having people invade his woodsy environs ???
wow

Porcupines in NY can't throw their quills-- and they are usually docile-- like a skunk try to avoid meeting people-- and they like to climb trees-- the one in the zoo hangs out on an upper limb of a tree-

I don't see skunks in my neighborhood-- (i used to see them in the Bronx) my neighborhood is suburban/small town-ish; with single house on a plot of land-- i am less than ½ mile from a large, "undeveloped" (read wilderness) park, and about 1 mile from coast (long island sound) There are still undeveloped lots in the area.

I have seen possum* (opossum) and raccoons in my yard, and in the park, a red fox (vixen). there are also red tailed hawks, and all sort of birds- ducks, geese, (not to many) swans, cormorants, and egrets- and once in while i have seen a quail..

the common small birds in NY are called "sparrows"-- but i am told they are not-- and i don't know the difference between a sparrow and a wren--and would use both words interchangeable to define small, grey song birds-- as do most in NY.

starlings are recognizable, and cardinal, oriels (well Baltimore oriels-- with their orange plumage--named for Lord Baltimore) and blue jays, and blue birds-- very different birds. I am not really a bird watcher-- but i sit in gazebo-- and see them--

* possums are US marsupials-- do you have possums in Australia? SA has an other marsupial--a sloth i think, and it might be found in souther/Mexico border states. Possums are found as far north as souther Maine-- WOW do you ever see?

and i second that hedgehogs are cute-- and silly--like gerbils-- they have teeth-- but little mouths, so unless you stick your pinky finger near their mouth they can't get mouth open big enough to really bite.

Snappers are common-- does anyone else have "snapping turtles?" they have sharp jaws, and when the close them hard, they make a snapping noise--a really loud noise! kids are warned at some lakes, not to dangle bare feet in the water-- since snapping turtles (about 8 inch long) are strong enough and aggressive enough to snap off toes!
Some times you'll see a little duckling with damage web feet bitten by a turtle-- or worse, see a duckling snapped and dragged under the water to be a lunch for a turtle.

I have never seen any other turtles in NYC-- but 25 miles away (state parks in lower parts of Adirondack's-- part of Appalachian mountains) have seen "box turtles" and other turtles.

This is kind of related...I just thought it was such a neat fact that everyone might appreciate...

I now live on the island of Newfoundland, and there are no snakes, skunks, or poison ivy on the island. Coming from the Prairies where there are scads of all those things, I find this VERY weird.

However, moose near the roads are a big problem. Their belly is just the height of a car windshield and people die every year on the highways here, after hitting a moose. They completely destroy cars. You're actually advised not to drive outside of the cities/towns at night for that reason. They're so dumb that they (apparently) just stand there, and then tend to run across the road, rather than away from it. (I'm a bit disappointed that I haven't seen a moose here, yet.) Apparently there are 100,000 moose on the island. When you consider that the human population is about 500,000 - WOW!

So this brings to mind, what's the difference between a moose and an elk? Name only? I looked it up online with Webster's and it said elk is European. It also says that some zoologists consider it to be the same species as the North American moose, or "wapiti". Now THERE'S a cool word I haven't heard recently.

A friend and I were recently discussing a certain dachshund of our acquaintance, when I began to wonder what kind of hound, exactly, a dachs hound was. So, consulting my dictionary, I learned that "dachs" refers to badgers, and that dachshunds were used to hunt badgers. Upon reading this information aloud to my friend, we were simultaneously struck by the same thought: Ha ha ha! Badger hound? More like badger lunch!

The dog poster at my vet's office indicated that their body shape was ideal for chasing animals into burrows - and if the British badgers are also smaller this makes sense. I looked it up on Webster's online and it concurred. However - I agree that they don't LOOK very fierce!

BAdgers? Badgers? We don't need no ...

Bean enthuses: Apparently there are 100,000 moose on the island. When you consider that the human population is about 500,000 - WOW!

CapK, polishing his fingernails on his shirt, replies:

In Zild there are

3.9 million humans
Approx. 40 million sheep (down from about 60 million a few years ago.
AND, wait for it, NINETY million opossums.

We're happy with the first statistic.
We're okay with the sheep - they're farm problems anyway.
We're miserable about the last one.

Since possums are an endangered species in their home country, Oz, I have long since advocated that every Australian coming here on business or on holiday should be forced to repatriate about 10,000 of the little sods on their way home.

I wonder how closely related the North American and Australian opossums are? My dictionary says that they are "similar." It also says that the word is Virginian Algonquian. Have you other American Indian words in New Zealand?

There is a terrific children's book, the name of the author escapes me at the moment, called Possum Come A-Knockin'. Written in verse, it exhibits a wonderful sense of rhythm, infused with humor. I can't encounter a possum any more without thinking, "possum come a-knockin' at the door, at the door; possum come a-knockin' at the door."

wapiti". Now THERE'S a cool word I haven't heard recently.

Wapiti were introduced to NZ around the beginning of the 20th century, and were hunted out of existence by around 1950. There may be a few left, some guy down South is on a Grail-quest for them. What brought a smile to face on seeing the word "wapiti" written out was its similarity to "rapiti" - a Maori transliteration of rabbit used in an old kid's song here. There used to be many of such transliterations in Maori, but now there is an effort being made to either modify existing maori words, or coin new ones. So, while Queen Victoria is still Kuini Wikitoria, the Maori Queen is "Te Arikinui" - the big chief, the highest of the highborn. Aeroplane has been translated as "sky canoe", that's one of my favourites, and it's been a long time since I've heard anyone mention that kotanga is the Maori word for car aerial.

Elk and moose are in the same family, but there's no mistaking one for the other, even at a distance (unless the light is very poor).
Elk are smaller overall in size, though a large bull elk probably is close to the size of a moose cow. But the shapes are easily distinguishable. Elk essentially look like large deer, but broader in the shoulders and with bigger and different-shaped racks. Moose, now...moose look
like they were put together in some grand drunken fantasy.
Their shape is like no other animal's. Their shoulders are
over-wide in proportion to the rest of their bodies, they have a wattle, and their ears are comically large and tend to flap out to the sides. They have huge, spatulate antlers, not slim and pointy like deer and elk (wapiti is the Indian name, but I don't know which tribe). There are some low mountains in Wyoming called the Wapiti Range, at least by the locals.

Speaking of local-speak: could you phoneticize for us the local prounciation of Newfoundland, please? I've heard it as something like Nfnln.

Bean asks: what's the difference between a moose and an elk?

An elk is a deer on steroids. A moose is a deer on steroids drawn with a crayon.

We pronounce our Newfoundland, "Jeffrey." [joke falling flat because no one here knows we have a Newfoundland dog named Jeffrey emoticon]

>An elk is a deer on steroids. A moose is a deer on steroids drawn with a crayon.

which explains why a moose looks more like a cartoon character than it looks like a deer. (cf. Bullwinkle)

and it's been a long time since I've heard anyone mention that kotanga is the Maori word for car aerial.

O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-h! [agony-mixed-with-mirth emoticon]

Now Max, you are just going to have to explain that one! Unless, of course, it was a trap laid for moi which moi has just fallen into up his neck.

Unless, of course, it was a trap laid for moi which moi has just fallen into up his neck.

Put simply, it was intended as a trap for you, mon ami, but I was delighted that at least one other person got the joke. This is the text of a private message I received today, unedited, but without reference to the identity of the sender:
kotanga is the Maori word for car aerial"

Thanks for my best laugh of the day, Max. It sounds like the Maori are intimately acquainted with my history of car ownership. My car repair kit used to consist of a hammer and duct tape.

As my 5th form English teacher was fond of saying: Quite Enough Done.

The best I can manage would be "noofn-LAND" when used as a noun, and "NOO-fnland" when used as an adjective. That is,

I live in "noofn-LAND", and Sparteye has a "NOO-fnland" puppy.

It is absolutely NOT, NEVER, EVER, "noo-FOUND-lnd". (I had an Ontario friend who couldn't get past that.)

And, I appreciate the numbers of NZ sheep (I've actually read it somewhere before) but I think the sheep are there on purpose. Aren't they kept in fields, behind fences? I also think they're unlikely to kill you if you hit one with your car. The oppossums - well, that's a bit much. But let's not go into the number of mosquitoes in Manitoba during the summer!

The moose, however, are just plain everywhere. They do taste very, very good!

the identity of the sender

Got to be Rhuby! And thanks Max, simply the best!

O R I E L S

O Ledasdotter, the Baltimore birds aren't and don't have, bay windows.

possum eradication

You need more automobile traffic. When we moved into our house in 1976, possums (also raccoons, which made pests of themselves getting into the garbage cans) were to be seen all the time. However, since possums are extremely stupid, like squirrels, they were always getting run over in the streets, so that I haven't seen one for the last 15 years or so. The raccoons went the same way, but there are still plenty of squirrels; they must be much more prolific.

Dear Bob: I recall fondly hanging nests so cleverly contrived over fifty feet up in parasol elm canopy border, with bright plumaged parents coming and going. Now, alas, elms destroyed by disease, no orioles to be seen. Nothing equally beautiful here in California that I can think of. wwh

Moose
You may remember the extensive news coverage 5 or 6 years ago of the moose in New England somewhere who became enamoured of a domestic cow and kept hanging around her pasture. The farmer didn't want to shoot it, and it wouldn't go away. The media loved it. People kept sending in suggestions, but none worked. Eventually the moose left when winter came on, and he didn't come back the following year.

. The raccoons went the same way

Racoons have spread way north, even into Canada, taking rabies with them. wwh

O R I O L E S
Lucky you. I've lived in Baltimore nearly 50 years and have never seen an oriole (avian, not the baseball variety) except once, when we were on vacation in Yucatan, where they winter, along with the golden oriole, which is nearly all orange.

Byb-- you did see that cute little poem about spell checking didn't you-- ??

I have seen an oriole in my yard-- but unfortunate i was swatting my daughters cat with a broom-- I resucued it from the cats mouth and picked it up. the poor little thing lay for a minute trembling, and then died-- The is now living with my daughter (i don't hate animals-- but i hate having them live in my house.) and i doublely hated the cat since i love birds (but don't want to have them in my house either)

In the spring i plan to add a bird bath to the yard so that i can see more of the birds-- I refused to do it while the cat lived with me.

Ummmmm... Canada has had rabies and raccoons for a long, long time already (I'm not sure if that's GOOD news, either!). There was even a raccoon character in a Canadian kids' nature magazine, called Ranger Rick (both the magazine and the raccoon). Just for the record!

Canadian kids' nature magazine, called Ranger Rick (both the magazine and the raccoon)

Ranger Rick is actually a US mag - published by the National Wildlife Federation - but perhaps the Raccoon was Canadian

Wow, do I suddenly feel disillusioned! It was published here by the Canadian Wildlife Federation, so you can understand my confusion. However there were/are still raccoons here, magazine or no!

Nay. 'Twasn't Rhuby. 'Twas I, reliving my poverty-stricken student days. My ride is blingin' now: got a Saturn!

Raccoon is another fine word brought to you by Native Americans (Algonquin in this case). As is chipmunk (most likely). (Did I do dat right?)

And, are North American and Northern European elk different? I know the bison are - European bison are smaller than their North American cousins.

And as to those lovely NZ sheep - their fleeces are the most luscious for spinning into yarn on my Ashford spinning wheel!

My ride is blingin' now: got a Saturn!

Respect! (and with a cool electric aerial, I bet)

That moose had half of his impressive rack shot off by a crazed media person who couldn't get an interview. Regis walked up to the moose and asked, "Is that your final antler?"

And, are North American and Northern European elk different? .
Moose are widespread throughout Canada and Alaska, where the largest animals, which stand as high as seven to eight feet at the shoulder, are found. Slightly smaller moose are also found in parts of Europe and Asia, where they are known as elk.
Source: www.ris.net/

My turn:

Regis walked up to the moose and asked, "Is that your final antler?"

Whereupon the Reege promptly seized the remaining antler:
you see, it was a chocolate mousse.

>An elk is a deer on steroids. A moose is a deer on steroids drawn with a crayon.

Stop, you're killin' me. Faldage, that is the most hilarious thing I have ever heard, the best part is that it is true.

Newfoundland is pronounced Terreneuve here, Bean .

Newfoundland is pronounced Terreneuve here, Bean

Trés funny, Bel!

I was told that dachshund was actually the German translation of duck hound! Who lied to me?

German translation, eh? JazzO... have you been spreading the niebelungen again?

A dachshund is half a dog high and two dogs long, so they are built right for attacking animals that live in holes.
I have also read about their being used for turning spits on which large roasts were being cooked. Not sure what the rig looked like, or what the incentive was to have the dachshund cooperate, yet keep it from eating more than its share.

Hmm. . .you guys seem to think I'm an expert on German. Yeah, I live near a city originally settled by Germans, but I've only taken up to German 3 in high school.

As far as I know, Dachshund translates literally as "roof dog", which makes absolutely no sense. "Dach" means roof and "Hund" means dog.

A couple side notes about Germans in Cincinnati.
-The Cinci Oktoberfest is the largest outside of Germany
-There were once several beer companies in Cinci, but because they were able to make enough money just from local business none of them expanded and most of them went down when that darn Milwaukee company expanded.
-In the 1930s they built a subway system, but eventually ran out of money, it being the Depression and all. Now we have empty subway tunnels under the streets of Cincinnati because they've never found in necessary since for Cinci to have a subway system.

According to the OED, dachshund means literally badger-dog in German. I've never heard anything about their being roof dogs. The ones with cleft palates don't survive to adulthood, so all dachshunds say woof instead of roof.

Goodness, y'all need to go back to the beginning of this thread. N.B.: the neuter gender noun Dach plural Dächer means "roof'; the masculine noun Dachs plural Dachse means "badger" and Dachshund means "badger dog." Any German-English dictionary will tell you this.

But I lost my Muret-Sanders fifty years ago.

Lost your Muret-Sanders?
Are there no Heaths? Are there no Cassels? I use a Heaths which is at least 50 years old (I bought it second-hand). The German section is printed in Fraktur type, which is what I learned to read in German I back in the 50's.

There was a woman who bred Dachshunds in a nearby town and on the sign for her kennel she had the words :
Dachshunds - get a long little doggie.
For those unfamiliar with the song it's a cowboy ditty
"Get along, little doggie" In cowboy lingo a doggie is a calf and the song told of a cattle drive.
wow

Here dachshunds are often referred to as sausage dogs, but I think they're just stringing us along. If you have one that goes "woof" then I think you're warped.

...a doggie is a calf...(wow)

A dogie, dogy, or dogey is a calf without a mother, according to my Encarta World English Dictionary.

RighteeO Jeffrey, I was using the doggerel lyric in the old song, sung about a trail drive, "Get along little dogie, get along, get along ..."
I will note the correct spelling for future .
Thanks
wow

and daggy is something else entirely--

it is a word i only know from the ozzie song "Here we're in New South Wales"