Month: November 2023

Sloth Bear Has Something to Say…

Christina Wilsdon

Editor’s Note:

Hello! Today’s guest post is brought to you by Ursula, a sloth bear who is determined to show, despite her species’ common name, that sloth bears have a lot of get-up-and-go. In that interest, she has learned to read and write.

“Greetings. Yes, I am a sloth bear, and yes, I wrote this myself, though the editor had to type it up for me because my claws are too long to make use of a keyboard.

I am writing because even way off in my homeland on the continent of Asia, I have heard that many North American bird species will be getting new names. And this raised my hackles because I have long chafed at being called by my English-language name, ‘sloth bear.’

Sloth bear! As if! No offense to my fellow mammals, the sloths of Central and South America, who can’t help but move slowly and hang upside down from tree limbs. But I can run faster than one of you human beings if I’ve a mind to, and I am fully aware that you consider the trait of ‘sloth’ to be a deadly sin.

If you think I’m overreacting, listen to this. This is how I am described by a prominent geographical institute online: ‘Shaggy, dusty, and unkempt.’ (It also says I emit ‘noisy grunts and snorts.’ Can I help it if my snout is made for hoovering up termites and ants?)

Visit Wikipedia, and you’ll see me described again as having a coat that is ‘long, shaggy, and unkempt.’ (Again with the unkempt!) Plus it says that when I walk, my feet are set down ‘in a noisy, flapping motion’ and that I appear ‘slow and clumsy.’ Sheesh! (At least it acknowledges that I run and climb well.)

And a prominent zoological organization says that I am ‘a bit messy in appearance,’ as if I were a badly decorated cake being judged by Paul Hollywood on ‘The Great British Baking Show.’ It adds that my hair is ‘unruly.’ Well, I guess that’s a step up from ‘unkempt.’ But then it gets in one last dig by noting that my walk is ‘a bit awkward.’ Way to boost a bear’s self-confidence!

Just take a look at the other bears of the world and their glorious names.

Black bear? Totally sensible, even though they can also be brown or white. Brown bear? A-OK. Polar bear? Sure, why not, they live way up there around the northern pole. Moon bear and sun bear? Heavenly! Spectacled bear? Spectacles are pretty nifty. Panda? A name derived from a Nepalese name for “eater of bamboo.” (Well, it’s not snazzy, but it’s accurate—I dined out with a panda once, and believe you me, our choice of restaurants was pretty limited.)

You’ll notice none of those guys are named after an undesirable feature.

How did I get this undeserved name? It’s all because of this zoologist guy George Shaw who lived way back in the 1700s. He thought we bears were sloth-like because of our claws and our missing front teeth. So he called us bear-sloths. Which at some point got swapped around and became sloth bears. George, Pshaw!

So what would I like us to be called? Well, the Hindi word for ‘bear’ is ‘Bahlu,’ and I rather like that (and it would right the wrong done to my species in ‘The Jungle Book’ where a lumbering brown bear is usurping the spotlight from my kind of bear). But the scientific moniker you’ve given us, Melursus ursinus, basically means ‘honey bear,’ and I can totally live with that, especially if that honey’s got some termites in it.

OK, think about it, humans. Then you can get to work on the Dumb Gulper Shark and the Bone-eating Snot-flower Worm.

Yours truly,

Ursula ‘Way Too Busy to Be Slothful’ Bear”

Name That Bird!

Christina Wilsdon

Feathers are flying now that the American Ornithological Society has decided to rename all bird species in the Americas that are named after people. The main reason for this decision is to eradicate names of people with racist or colonial associations. It paves the way for the creation of new names that focus on the birds themselves.

I’ve always idly thought I’d love to have a job naming racehorses or paint colors, so I’m interested in seeing what the AOS comes up with. (If they put votes out to the public, I hope they take care not to repeat the actions of the British agency that enlisted the public in naming a research vessel back in 2016, or we’ll end up with a lot of birds being called Birdy McBirdface.)

The bird enlisted in many articles to showcase the changes to come is the Wilson’s warbler, Cardellina pusilla, a lively little bird clad in bright yellow and olive green. The male sports a jaunty black cap, the female a paler version that is typically olive.

What to call this sprite?

Male Wilson’s Warbler (photo courtesy of Alaska Science Center, photographer Rachel M. Richardson)

It’s not like its name hasn’t changed in the past. For a start, its scientific name wasn’t always Cardellina pusilla. (Cardellina derives from an Italian word that refers to the European goldfinch, and pusilla is Latin for “very small.”) Naturalist Alexander Wilson, who first described the bird scientifically in 1811, called it Muscicapa pusilla (Muscicapa translates to “flycatcher”).

The bird was subsequently shuffled between genera for the next few decades until it became Wilsonia pusilla in 1899. And there it perched until another relocation in 2011 put it into the genus Cardellina. A lot of other warblers also found themselves alighting in new genera at that time–you can read about that here.

But the warbler doesn’t stand on ceremony, so it’s not going to insist you call it by its scientific name. Wilson himself called it the “green black-capt flycatcher.” Many people in online comment sections suggest “black-capped yellow warbler,” though some point out that this name sidelines the female bird (a tendency that’s not unusual in common bird names).

Past common names for this species aren’t exactly an exciting treasure trove of monikers: green black-capped warbler, Wilson’s blackcap, Wilson’s black-capped flycatching warbler (a lot of name to stick to a bird that weighs 0.4 ounces, or less than an empty soda can), and golden pileolated warbler (pileolated being a schmancy word for “crested”).

Well, Wilson’s Warbler, one can only hope great things are in store for you with your new name. Maybe the official name-granters will channel the imagination and zest of whoever named the hummingbirds. Some hummers are named after people, but most of them flaunt dazzling, descriptive names: Amethyst Woodstar, Black-billed Streamertail, Green-Backed Firecrown, Turquoise-Throated Puffleg, Booted Racket-Tail, and Spangled Coquette, just to name a few.