Do Not Google These Animals

This is not my week to be mature, so we’re going to point and laugh at animals with funny names.

Great Tits

Image by Ken Billington at Wikimedia Commons.

The great tit (Parus major) is a common songbird throughout Eurasia. There is actually a whole family of tits, which also includes the less-fortunately named ashy tit (Melaniparus cinerascens), and the strip-clubbing cousin, the stripe-breasted tit (Melaniparus fasciiventer). “Tit” also means small, which is likely the origin of using it to describe a small bird that doesn’t even have nipples.

Brown Boobies

Image by Muriel Gottrop at Wikimedia Commons.

Brown boobies (Sula leucogaster) are large seabirds that commonly breed on the islands in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Like the tit family, there is also a booby family, including the more commonly known blue-footed booby (Sula nebouxii). Boobies were named using the Spanish word bobo, which means “stupid” or “clown-like”, due to their clumsiness on land and lack of fear of humans.

Slippery Dick

Image by Brian Gratwicke at Wikimedia Commons.

The slippery dick (Halichoeres bivittatus) is a small fish in the wrasse family that lives in reefs in the tropical western Atlantic Ocean. The name of this unfortunate species apparently predates the present use of the term. "Slippery dick" was mentioned as early as 1859 in John Jones’ The Naturalist in Bermuda as the name fishermen commonly used for this wrasse species. It apparently is difficult to hold onto and easily slips through your fingers. “Dick”, at the time, was the common nickname for Richard and was commonly used to refer to any “fellow”. It was not used to refer to a body part until the late 1800s, and this latter use of the term is attributed to British army slang.