Patrick Foote of Name Explain compiled an amusing list of different animals that have very misleading, if not completely confusing names.
Lots of animals have pretty easy to understand names. Take the tree frog, named that because it’s a frog that lives in a tree…even the three toad sloth which is a sloth that has, well you guessed, it three toes. However, not all animals have names this obvious. In fact there are plenty of critters out there that have names that in no way shape or form represent what the creature actually is.
His examples include the guinea pig, the turtle dove, the bearcat, and the frog known as a mountain chicken.
These frogs are pretty big guys and it’s believed to be that’s where their name came from as they are a similar size to a chicken however there is another theory that theory being that they have this name because they actually taste somewhat like chicken this might sound odd, but a lot of things out there do taste like chicken. …The mountain part of the name is however accurate as these guys are found in the mountains.
