Etymology corner
A home for linguistic puzzles
Today's linguistic puzzle is about etymology. The goal is to figure out what type of animal a certain species is, given the meaning of its scientific name.
Struthio camelus
When the ancient Greeks were naming a bunch of animals that were familiar to them, they decided to name this funny little animal "strouthiokámēlos" (στρουθιοκάμηλος), which means "sparrow-camel," because they thought it looked like a mix of both.
Hint: Sparrows were often thought of as the default kind of bird. So really, the name of this animal is more like "bird-camel."
Click on the gray box when you've figured out the answer to see if you got it right!
An ostrich!
Source for this etymology