It started with a simple question: Why would a skunk and a dove share the same name?
I was reviewing photos for Sky Island Alliance’s FotoFauna project one afternoon, focused on a camera with many pictures of hooded skunks (Mephitis macroura) and mourning doves (Zenaida macroura) moving around in the night. After some time I began to wonder, as you might too, why two animals so different would share a same part in their scientific name. What could be the unifying “macroura” tying these two species together? I headed online to investigate.
Before I reveal what I learned that day, it’s important to clarify the relationship between the two species in question. In scientific naming convention (“binomial nomenclature” if we’re being fancy), the first of the two names given is the “genus,” equivalent to the surname for a species. The latter of the two is the “specific epithet,” unique for each species in a given genus, and more akin to an individual first name. This means that the hooded skunk and mourning dove’s shared name isn’t like two cousins from the same “macroura” family (and what a strange family it would be). It’s more like two friends from different families who both happen to go by “Mac.”
So why the same name? Did the scientists simply run out of new ideas and hope we wouldn’t notice? Not so! That epithet macroura refers in ancient Greek to a trait shared by both animals. “Macro” means large (think of a macro lens in photography), and “oura” means tail. Combined, these words describe something that becomes evident when looking at the two species.
Seeing how these word roots refer to a real trait about the animals helped the complicated scientific names click for me. With a little more reading, I found that “Mephitis” (the genus of skunks) comes from Latin for “noxious gas from the ground,” which is pretty apt for a mammal with a scent gland! Literal traits about species show us scientific names at their most useful, helping to identify species and creating a shared language that scientists and naturalists around the world can use. Taking a moment to learn a scientific name is a good exercise in learning more about the natural world, even if the translation you find is silly (Nasua narica for coati being Latin for “nostril nose”) or just plain confusing (Simmondsia chinensis for jojoba).
Learning names for animals and plants gives us a lot of insight into history. For example, the genus name Zenaida for the mourning dove comes from the French princess Zénaïde Bonaparte, the niece of emperor Napoleon. This tells us something about the interests of the people who had the power to coin its scientific name. Compare this to the Spanish-language name “huilota,” derived from the Nahuatl “uilotl,” which saying aloud imitates the bird’s mournful call. This is closer to the English common name “mourning dove” and shows how different people interpret the call of the same animal. While these names describe animals, plants, and other forms of life, their etymology tells us more about our fellow humans than anything else.
Next time you go for a walk or scroll through pictures online, take a moment to think about the words we use for wildlife. Spotting friends in desert and Sky Island ecosystems becomes easy when you can greet them by name.
Oskar Anderson is a wildlife intern with Sky Island Alliance and an undergraduate in the University of Arizona’s School of Natural Resources and the Environment. He works with SIA to process camera data for FotoFauna and the Border Wildlife Study.