Most of the time, when scientists come up with the names of animals, they include in the name some information about the animal’s looks or behavior or another thing characteristic of them. But sometimes scientists let their imaginations run wild and come up with funny sounding names or names that have nothing to do with reality.
For example, let’s have a look at guinea pigs. These cute little fellas come from the same group as beavers, squirrels, and hamsters. Natives of South America, they have nothing to do with either the country of Guinea or pigs, and yet, this is the name they are known by in daily life. In some countries they are called “sea pigs,” which makes even less sense.
But if you thought this was a funny animal name, wait until you meet the fried egg jellyfish and tasselled wobbegong. While the first sounds like the person in charge of naming it was hungry at the time, the second one could have easily come down from the pages of a Lewis Carroll story. To be fair to the scientists though, very often those weird names are very much justified by nature’s creativity. What else are you supposed to call a screaming hairy armadillo if it’s… well, hairy, and also screams when you touch it.
Another thing you will often find scientists doing is creating long animal names. The longest one presently recorded belongs to the soldier fly. Its scientific Latin name, although only two words long, consists of 42 letters.
In this article we have collected animals with funny names. What other funny animal names have you heard that made you chuckle?
