Etymology corner (part 2)
Linguistic puzzles
Here's another etymology-based puzzle, still about birds.
Meleagris gallopavo
The word "gallopavo" is a mishmash of two Latin words -- "gallus," meaning rooster, and "pavo," meaning peacock. What kind of animal would a rooster-peacock be?
Click on the gray box when you've figured out the answer to see if you got it right!
Turkey!
(The word "Meleagris" means guineafowl. Guineafowl really do look like polka-dotted turkeys.)
Source for this etymology
This animal is part of the order Galliformes, which means "chicken-shaped birds." I find it amusing that birds are divided into what kind of bird they vaguely look like -- "chicken-shaped," "pigeon-shaped," "sparrow-shaped," "crane-shaped." The more you look at it, the more animal classification seems like just random guesswork.