Hermit Crab - what kind of hermit would be so obsessed with real estate deals?
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Almost like those names were made for morphological categorization rather than a phylogenetic categorization where we use a completely different naming scheme.
It May Fly, but does it???
Does it????
Prairie oyster: Not an oyster
See also: Rocky Mountain Oysters
That one's to catch out foreigners. I'm convinced.
Source: foreigner that will never be caught out but might very well have if he didn't know a South Dakotan.
Do they actually serve those anywhere?
If you look at the Wikipedia pages for many of these animals, they'll use terms like, "true eel," "true goat," and "true cobra." I guess that's how they generally handle animals that share common names despite not technically being in the correct family or whatever.
Not sure what the original source of this was, other than an old tumblr post 
Forgot to include the Blue Tit
Mayfly indeed may fly, give it a pass!
I'm pretty sure when a snake has 'king' in it's name, that's because it eats other snakes.
A mountain goat is a goat, it's just not in genus Capra.
Fun trip and interesting trip through taxonomy, though, in addition to the gags. A collection of wikipedia articles would be a nice companion.
it's just not in genus Capra
That's definitionally what goats are. It's close, being in the same subfamily, but then so are sheep.
I think words like "goat" should have a generic and unstudied applicability: if it looks like a goat, and acts like a goat, it's a goat.
A mountain goat looks like a goat and acts like a goat, therefore it is a goat.
A sheep neither looks like a goat, nor acts like a goat, therefore it is not a goat.
All semantics, of course. If you want to understand goat to mean "member of genus Capra", you certainly can. If you want me to make goat mean that, you're out of luck.
I'm willing to grant you the distinctions between goats and true goats, in deference to the science of biology. I am not a monster.
I'm willing to grant you the distinctions between goats and true goats, in deference to the science of biology.
Well that's my point: this post is about how common names contrast with actual, rigid taxonomical definitions. :p
Like the colloquial word "goat" fits, but your comment read to me, given the context of the post, like you were saying goats can exist outside Capra via a technical definition, which isn't true.
now do it with fish!
- Horseshoe crab β Not a crab.
- Hermit crab β Not a crab.
- King crab β Not a crab (but, in fact, a hermit crab).
- Porcelain crab β Not a crab.
Weβre headed toward a weird collision of memes, where everything becomes crabs, but nothing is one.
No Such Thing As A Fish
Camel spider - Not a camel, Not a spider.
Coconut crab - Not a coconut
Cocconut tree - Not a tree
Wait... What are they then? Really tall shrubs?
I thought they were ferns but I was wrong, turns out they are grass.
Palm trees are angiosperms, which means flowering plants. They are monocots which means their seeds produce a single, leaf-like cotyledon when they sprout. This makes palms closely related to grasses and bamboos.

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