agouti

[prettygoodword]

agouti (uh-GOO-tee) - n., any of a dozen rabbit-sized rodents (genus Dasyprocta) of Central and South America and the West Indies; a grizzled fur pattern produced by alternate bands of light and dark color on each hair shaft.



Thanks, WikiMedia!

The Central American agouti (D. punctata) shown is a typical agouti, looking kinda like an oversized, leggy guinea pig, though they're less closely related than guinea pigs are to capybaras (obligatory earworm). The brown between our young tabby's dark stripes is agouti, which startled me. The name comes via French agouti, either directly from Old Tupi akuti or via Latin American Spanish agutí from Guaraní acutí.


And to avoid laboring your patience with another week of these, here's some bonus Tupian animal names: coati (from Old Tupi kua'ti, lit. belt-nose), tapir (from Old Tupi tapi'ira), toucan (from Old Tupi tukana), tanager (from Old Tupi tangara), and macaw (supposedly from Nheengatu aka Modern Tupi makawana but evidence is weak). Which clears the deck for the second week of Tupian words in other domains, next week.

---L.

Comments

[oracne]

So cute!

[prettygoodword]

Very!

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Another one of the animals that the Swiss Family Robinson EAT on their blessed island. I recently listened to an abridged version of that book and was horrified by the many animals they ate (and tamed) most of which could not possible co-exist on the same continent much less the same island.

[prettygoodword]

Natural history wasn’t Wuss’s strong point?

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Yeah, an onager, an ostrich, flamingos, tigers, iguanas, eagles, buffalo, tortoises, agouti, it was a 'come and be slaughtered' party. It made me rather ill, actually, with the hefty dollop of Christian 'dominion over everything' mixed in.

[prettygoodword]

That's such a diverse habitat ...

[petsohp]

Due to my location, I just had to do a deep dive into the word 'tapir'. It really is interesting that the word 'tapir' comes from south america culture, but the tapir I know is from central america. This is how I learned that 'Tapir' is the official nexus colloquial word of the species, and that the tapirs in central america and south america are different subspecies.

Now I wonder, why did the word 'tapir' ended up as the dominent vocabulary...

[prettygoodword]

How which of alternate possible names becomes dominant is interesting -- it's frequently whichever one gets transmitted out first, but not always.