Oh, squirrels. The adorable, fuzzy-tailed rodents we all know and love, unless you're a racist. A squirrel racist.
Their tails are SO fuzzy, in fact, that that's actually from when they acquired their name! Modern English 'squirrel', from Anglo-Norman 'esquirel' from Old French 'escurel' from the Lat 'sciurus', which you already know since their biological family is called Sciuridae (not to be confused with an ice cream sundae) which in turn comes from the Greek 'skiouros', meaning shadow tailed. Presumably the 'ski' part is the shadow, and I would assume that 'ouros' is the same as in 'ouroboros'.
Oh, it's funny how etymology works. That does explain why there are so many different species of squirrel, though; evolution had to go nuts (excuse the pun) to stop them from eating themselves to extinction, to the point where now, in the modern age, a happy, healthy, wild, average squirrel can merrily survive to the ripe old age of six.
Other interesting things I learnt today:
- Clouds have three stages of development
- The rate at which cane toads are killing off goannas is much higher than I previously thought
- President Obama would make an excellent stand-up comedian
No comments:
Post a Comment