Scientific Names

Quiz Time Let’s see how much you know about animals. If I asked you what kind of animal is a poodle, you would say it’s a dog. So, let’s see how much you know about some other animals.

Question 1What kind of animal is a slow worm?

The answerIt’s a lizard.

Question 2What kind of animal is a Ceylon frogmouth?

The answerIt’s a bird.

Question 3What kind of animal is a killer whale?

The answerIt’s a dolphin.

Question 4What kind of animal is a koala bear?

The answerIt’s a marsupial.

Question 5What kind of animal is a galliwasp?

The answerIt’s a lizard.

Question 6What kind of animal is a horned toad?

The answerIt’s a lizard.

Question 7What kind of animal is a mudpuppy?

The answerIt’s an amphibian.

Question 8What kind of animal is a striped burrfish toad?

The answerIt’s a fish.

Question 9What kind of animal is a roach?

The answerIt’s a fish.

Question 10What kind of animal is a red bishop?

The answerIt’s a bird.

Furthermore•a flying fish and a flying squirrel can’t fly•Panda bears are not bears, but are related to raccoons…

•Groundhogs are not hogs and guinea pigs are not pigs•Prairie dogs are not dogs•A sandfish and a starfish are not fish•A seahorse is not a horse…

And a Tasmanian devil is not the devil.

It can be very confusing because many animals and other organisms have misleading names.

Scientific Names

To eliminate any confusion, scientists use scientific names for organisms. These names are the same no matter where a scientist lives or the language they speak.

To get a scientific name, you take the name of the genus that the organism belongs to and combine with the species name.

Example: A wolf belongs to the genus called Canis and its species is lupus. The scientific name for a wolf is Canis lupus.

There a few ways you can recognize a scientific name when you see one.

First, it will be written in italics, or underlined if written by hand.

Second, it has two parts (Genus & species).

Third, the genus will start with an uppercase letter and the species will start with a lowercase.

Finally, the name may sound strange because it is in Latin. Scientists, along with doctors and lawyers, use Latin because it is a dead language.

That means no one uses it as their everyday language so the meanings of the words don’t change.

Some examples

•Canis lupus – wolf•Canis familiaris – dogNotice that wolves and dogs belong to the same genus. This means they are closely related.

More examples•Felis domesticus – cat•Felis concolor – mountain lion

They share the same genus, too.

Last exampleThe scientific name for humans is Homo sapiens.