Do you know what a cheval is?

Do you know what a cheval is?

No??? Okay.

Perd?

No? Alright.

Hest?

Beygir?

Hestur?

Are you sure? Because we are sure that you have seen this animal… Yes, its an animal and you have seen it. Now can you imagine what it is?

No?

Okay… Have you seen a ghoda? We mean a horse?

There! Now you are saying yes, when it was the same animal we were asking from the beginning. Why did you say no then? Because you didn’t know that a perd means a horse in Afrikaans, the South Indian language. Or that all other are the names for a horse in different languages round the world.

Now think about it for a moment. There are a lot of people from various countries, speaking different languages who are trying to study animal kingdom. How will they understand that they are speaking of the same animal even if they all have a different name for it? This was a problem faced by scientist and students of Zoology many years ago.

There was another problem they were facing. That was of the classification of animals. Some animals look similar but are in fact quite different. Some animals look different and yet have many characteristics in common. So how does one classify them?

It was absolutely necessary to classify animals before they could be studied any further without creating chaos due to truckloads of information. And therefore, the idea of classification and scientific nomenclature of animals came up. And it did indeed solve all the difficulties.

Visit the following link to understand scientific names of animals.

https://animaldiversity.org/animal_names/

Did you find a horse there?