I was watching one of those ‘ahh-inducing’ animal rescue programmes the other day, and noticed a rather fun, and cute, word for the young of a particular species (I can’t tell you what it was, as it’s in the quiz below).
Anyway, it set me thinking. We’re all familiar with terms like cub, pup, kit and calf, but do you know how many different species they can relate to? It’s actually a lot more than I would have thought; some of them pretty much to be expected, others a bit of a surprise.
So just for fun, see if you can put these into the right groups of pup, kit, calf and cub:
guinea pig dolphin giraffe raccoon walrus
bat chinchilla hippopotamus skunk
giraffe badger rabbit seal bat
How did you get on? The answers are shown below.
What about other words for animals’ young, though, including the one that caught my interest the other day? Well, see if you can work out what these babies would be called:
crocodile hedgehog gorilla alpaca
peacock possum owl pigeon
cockroach eel hare squirrel
(I should point out that there is some disagreement on the ‘right’ term to use for some of these – particularly some of the pup / kit / cub ones – depending on what reference source you use. I’ve gone for the most common usage, but if you got something different, you’re probably right somewhere!)
It’s fascinating, though, that animals which seem so different – a cat and a squirrel, or a dolphin and a giraffe, for example – can have the same word for the name of their young. And whilst a baby dolphin is a calf, a baby shark is a pup (Yes, I know, mammal versus fish, but even so). There are some really quite appropriate-seeming names too though – a baby snake can be called (among other things) a snakelet, a baby spider is a spiderling, and a baby platypus is a puggle (sounds like something JK Rowling might have come up with!).
Of course, we call our own young anything from baby to bairn to tot, toddler or urchin, so I suppose it’s not that surprising that there are so many words out there for offspring.
pup kit calf cub
guinea pig chinchilla dolphin badger
bat rabbit giraffe raccoon
seal skunk hippopotamus walrus
Email this Post
crocodile – hatchling hedgehog – hoglet gorilla – infant
alpaca – cria peacock – peachick possum – joey
owl – owlet pigeon – squab cockroach – nymph
eel – elver hare – leveret squirrel – kitten