FROM AMUSEMENT TO AMAZEMENT

 

My beloved Assie and I spent a few days on a Free State farm last week.  During the day, from the outside verandah of our cottage, we enjoyed the breathtaking view of the open expanse of the African savannah.  At night, Assie proved himself to be polished pyromaniac with enviable engineering skills in building remarkable fires in our indoor fireplace.  

Assie is a keen and pretty knowledgeable bird watcher, and although I will likely never share his passion for this particular pastime, I have taken some interest in observing the feather-winged creatures of the sky.  Often, I find myself more amused by the perceived paradoxical ambiguity and/or lack of consistency in bird naming convention and the translation thereof into either one of the two languages in which I am proficient.  I have noticed that it would appear that, sometimes, when initiative lacks, the term CAPE is slapped on as a prefix to an English bird name, and more interestingly, then translated into Afrikaans as GEWONE (regular), with absolutely zero relation to the geographically applicable South African Cape provinces.  Another fascinating observation is the assignment of colour to the description of physical features.  I have long suspected that, among bird experts, there seem to be significant confusion about the characteristic appearance of my favourite colour, RED.  Last week my suspicion was confirmed, not only applicable to birds, but also to other animals in nature.

At first glance of a cute little weasel-like animal on its hindlegs in the dry grass one afternoon, I was immediately reminded of Timon from The Lion King.  Assie informed me that our Timon is called a yellow mongoose, and thanks to good internet connectivity, I embarked on an entertaining journey of research.  Is a yellow mongoose really yellow in colour?  Why, then, is it called a rooimeerkat (red meerkat) in Afrikaans?  Does it mean that it is, actually, not yellow, but rather red in colour?  Hostziza only serves to further complicate matters by listing witkwasmuishond (white paint brush mongoose) as an alternative Afrikaans translation, but ChatGPT disagrees.  According to Wikipedia, the Latin name for both yellow mongoose and witkwasmuishond is Cynictis penicillata and the term rooimeerkat is incorrect.  Is it yellow?  Is it red?  Or, is it white?  ChatGPT, however, insists that it is a rooimeerkat in Afrikaans.  I then asked ChatGPT to which species Timon from Lion King belong to and I was informed that Lion King’s Timon is a meerkat (Suricata suricatta).  At this point I decided to stir things up a little, and I asked ChatGPT about the accuracy of calling LK’s Timon a stokstertmeerkat (stick-tail meerkat).  ChatGPT was adamant that it would be incorrect to call LK’s Timon a stokstertmeerkat, and that the term correctly applies to the yellow mongoose, our little Timon.  I proceeded to define the specific characteristics of stick-tail, and by implication thereof, proved that our bushy-tailed Timon render ChatGPT’s classification as incorrect, while also highlighting ChatGPT’s glaring contradictory answers.  ChatGPT relented, apologised for the confusion, and gave in to calling LK’s Timon a stokstertmeerkat and our Timon a rooimeerkat in Afrikaans.  ChatGPT considers the correct English term for witkwasmuishond to be a striped polecat and disagrees with Wikipedia about it belonging to the Cynictis penicillata species.

The above-mentioned entertaining journey reminded me of the Rooivalk military helicopter which was aptly named after a bird with the same Afrikaans name.  I was unable to locate rooivalk in Assie’s Roberts Bird Book, so again, I took to Google, Wikipedia and ChatGPT for help.  First I Google’d “rooivalk bird” and the very first entry listed the name and picture of a rock kestrel as English term (Latin Falco rupicolus).  Wikipedia lists kransvalk as primary Afrikaans translation, but rooivalk/kransrooivalk as acceptable alternative translations belonging to the Falco rupicolus species.  ChatGPT translates rooivalk into red-footed falcon in English, belonging to the Falco vespertinus species and found in parts of the world where Afrikaans is most certainly not spoken!  I Google’d a picture of the red-footed falcon, and to my delightful amusement, none of the pictures showed red feet!

The colour conundrum, in turn, reminded me of something else.  Many years ago, upon the birth of their little girl, friends of ours sent out an announcement message which included a reference to her hair colour as strawberry blonde.  Assie’s confounded response was, “Why can’t they just say she’s a redhead?” No amount of debate could change his mind about what he believed to be an unnecessary colour complexity.  Over the years, his witty sense of humour has overruled his confounded indignation about the different shades of blonde hair to the point where he now defines ALL hair colours as shades of blonde.  With my help in our own internal sense-of-humour-pact, he considers himself to be a silver-pepper blonde and I am his chilli-chocolate (referring to the chilli-infused Lindt dark chocolate) blonde other half. 

I think that I have stumbled upon a possible (tongue-in-cheek) explanation for the contradictory deficits in animal name calling:

“Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals…..”

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭2‬:‭19‬-‭20‬ ‭NIV‬‬

The above-mentioned portion of scripture precedes the part where God created Eve (Gen 2:21-22).  Therefore, it is reasonable to accept that Adam had to name the animals all by himself.  One can argue, of course, that this could be the definitive explanation for the name inconsistencies and complex colour mismatches when it comes to animal names today.  Nudge-nudge-wink-wink.

So, whether it is a mongoose, meerkat or skunk;  whether it is a falcon, kestrel or hawk;  whether it is red, yellow or white, I simply stand in awe of the intricate detail of the natural world we live in, designed and created by our Almighty God, the Creator and Ruler of the entire universe.  Not even the smartest of us (with REAL, NATURAL intelligence, not FAKE, ARTIFICIAL intelligence) will ever be able to comprehend the fullness of His Creation, at least not on this side of eternity!

“Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens. Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭8‬:‭1‬-‭9‬ ‭NIV‬‬