Bumblebee Poison Dart Frog

[guppiecat]

Species naming is largely a matter of luck. If taxonomy had evolved starting in central America, we’d probably have things like “Non-poisonous Poison Dart Frog Bumblebees.”

Originally posted at stories.starmind.org.

Comments

[kerkevik_2014]

What do the local people call them? That should be the final arbiter for me. Of course this may mean an uncomfortable period where I am calling them by the wrong name simply because that is the name my brain knows and refuses to process to the contrary, but that's my issue.

Bumblebee?

[guppiecat]

As a general rule, the local native people do not classify things the way we do. All frogs of this type, would likely have a word that indicates that they're a frog that is unsafe to handle and eat. I do not know if that is true of the native people where this particular frog lives, but I've seen it often enough that I would say that it is generally true for all languages that have not been tainted by the Western taxonomic tradition.

I have also found that in places where the animals are named in other non-native languages, like Spanish in Central America, the local name is a fairly close translation of the English common name (or vice versa).

In this particular case however, I don't know the specific local name and how it may translate.