A fox is not a raccoon, and an alligator is not a crocodile? How did the ancients name animals?

If you ask people what their favorite animal is, some people will answer kittens and puppies, some will answer majestic beasts like lions and tigers, and some will answer agile falcons or clever snakes. Everyone has their favorite animals, and it is no problem to name a few catchy animal names. Although these animal names are catchy, in the context of modern Chinese, a name may not be the name of an animal, but a general term for several animals.

For example, the character "蛇" represents snakes, which is a large family with more than 3,000 species. But in ancient times, a character or word often represented only one animal. In order to explore the world around them, our ancestors racked their brains to create many characters to name the animals they saw.

01What kind of monkey is the Monkey King?

Recently, "naughty monkeys" in places like Mount Emei have repeatedly snatched tourists' belongings, sparking heated discussions among netizens.

Many netizens believe that the temperament of these monkeys is far from the heroic image of the Monkey King - Sun Wukong in mythology. The elegant and dignified golden monkey is more suitable as the prototype of Sun Wukong. Moreover, Sun Wukong is often called "golden monkey" and the fur color of Sichuan golden monkey is also golden.

So, is the Monkey King really a golden monkey? The answer is no.

Sichuan golden monkey

In the ancient context, the word "monkey" specifically refers to macaques, while golden monkeys are called "maremma". Li Shizhen recorded in "Compendium of Materia Medica" that marmosets have golden hair and long tails, which is exactly the same as the image of modern golden monkeys.

However, in Journey to the West, Sun Wukong is a "stone monkey" rather than a "stone marmoset", and his image in the original book with yellow eyes, a bump on the forehead, a flat nose, a thunder god's mouth, checked ears, a hairy face, a crooked face, reversed bones and flesh, and protruding fangs is more similar to the appearance of a macaque when it is angry.

From this we can see that the prototype of Sun Wukong should be an ordinary macaque.

The prototype of Sun Wukong should be a macaque

0 2 “Foxes” are not one family

In daily communication, people often mention "fox". If placed in the ancient context, it should be called "fox", and specifically refers to the red fox species, while "raccoon" is not the same as it.

The Song Dynasty's Er Ya Yi records that the raccoon is similar in size to a fox, with black and yellow spots similar to those of a leopard, and it is speculated that its prototype may be the leopard cat today. Since both are small carnivores of similar size, ancient people often referred to them together when calling them, and over time, the two have been confused and are still used today.

The "fox" mentioned by the ancients mostly refers to the red fox

The prototypes of fox demons and fox fairies in various legends are also them.

"Raccoon" may refer to leopard cat

0 3The Yangtze alligator is not a crocodile?

The Yangtze alligator is the only wild crocodile species in China and, like the giant panda and the crested ibis, is a national treasure of China. Our ancestors have encountered this cute little crocodile many times.

In the days when the number of alligators was large, our ancestors sometimes worshipped them as fairy beasts, believing that the morning fog in early spring was the breath of alligators. In the novel Journey to the West, the little alligator is the nephew of Ao Run, the Dragon King of the West Sea. Our ancestors also made drums out of alligator skins, and left behind such verses in the Book of Songs as "The drums of alligators are played. Meng Xi plays for the Duke."

Chinese Alligator

From these documents, we can see that the Yangtze alligator was called "鼍" by the Chinese ancestors. The Han Dynasty's "Huainanzi" once recorded that the alligator in the Yangtze River would not harm people, while the crocodile in the South China Sea was a vicious beast that ate people. These records not only show the relatively docile habits of the Yangtze alligator, but also reveal a surprising news: in the eyes of the Han Dynasty people, the alligator was not a crocodile, they were completely different animals.

So, what kind of animal was the crocodile in the eyes of the ancients? In 2022, scientists named a crocodile skeleton that died in Guangdong during the Shang and Zhou dynasties as the Chinese Hanyu crocodile. This terrifying giant crocodile can be up to 6 meters long, and its distribution range is very consistent with the "South China Sea" mentioned in "Huainanzi".

Scientists speculate that this giant crocodile may not have been extinct during the Tang Dynasty. Therefore, the "crocodile" recorded by the Han people and the "Chaoshan crocodile" expelled by the Tang Dynasty writer Han Yu are most likely this giant crocodile.

A reconstruction of the Chinese Hanyu crocodile, a "big crocodile" that is now extinct

0 4“Shark” is actually a small fish?

We often talk about sharks, which are a huge family with hundreds of species. Among them, the great white shark, the tiger shark, and the sharp-nosed mako shark are all well-known predators. But if you tell an ancient person that sharks look like this, they may find it incredible.

Great White Shark

The "shark" recorded in the ancient book "Tongya" of the Ming Dynasty is a small sand-blowing fish with yellow skin and black spots, which has nothing in common with the domineering appearance of the great shark. Some scholars believe that the "shark" recorded in the ancient book should refer to a kind of goby today.

Yellowfin goby, the "shark" in ancient books may be its close relative

As for what the sharks we talk about today were called in ancient times, some people would say "�". This statement is correct, but also incorrect. There are ancient books that record "�" as having a hard skin with pearl patterns, a tail three or four feet long, and a poisonous tip that stings people. This image is similar to the various stingrays with poisonous spines on their tails today.

The "�" mentioned by the ancients may refer to the stingray with thorns on its tail.

The ancients preferred to call what we call "sharks" today "sandfish" because the scales on the shark's body are densely arranged shield scales, and touching against the direction of the scales will feel like sand, so the ancients gave them this name.

Shark scales under a microscope

0 5Tapir returns to the origin

If you type the word "tapir" into a search engine today, you may get a photo of a strange animal that looks like a cross between an elephant and a wild boar. This animal, called "tapir," actually belongs to the order Perissodactyla, and is more closely related to horses than pigs and elephants.

Just like the strange appearance of this animal, the evolution of the meaning of the word "貘" is also very strange. The word "貘" already appeared in oracle bone inscriptions, and it is obvious that this word has a long nose, which refers to today's tapirs. It can be seen that the ancestors of the Shang and Zhou dynasties had already seen this "monster" and left a "portrait" of it in the text.

Some people may ask, today tapirs are only distributed in Southeast Asia and Central and South America, how could there be tapirs in China? In fact, China during the Shang and Zhou dynasties was warmer than it is today, and elephants may have lived in the Yellow River Basin. In addition, the population was not large, so China was also the home of this animal.

By the Qin and Han dynasties, with human activities and climate change, tapirs quickly became extinct from the Chinese land. As a result, the literature on tapirs became: "It resembles a bear but is yellow and black, and is found in Sichuan."

In other words, the Han people believed that tapirs looked like black, white, and yellow bears, and lived in today's Sichuan Basin. Does your DNA feel moved when you see this description? Yes, this is the giant panda!

In the Han Dynasty, tapir referred to the giant panda.

By the Tang and Song dynasties, the giant panda had become an "endangered species." At the same time, as the tribute system became more complete, the Chinese saw the Malayan tapirs that were tributed from Southeast Asia and found that this strange animal was the same as the "tapir" recorded in ancient books of the Han Dynasty.

So "tapir" began to be used to refer to long-nosed Tapirs, and this meaning has been used until now. So when you see giant pandas and Malayan tapirs in the zoo, you should know that they not only have the same color scheme, but also have the same name!

Malayan tapir

END

Author: Qianxi Jun

Editor: Dong Xiaoxian

Reviewer: Liu Ying, Li Peiyuan