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?