Woodland Animals in Spanish, iQué Bien! Quiz

Answer: owl

"The owl has big eyes and hoots all night long.

The word búho comes from the Vulgar Latin variant 'bufus', the accusative of 'bufo', a corruption of the Classical Latin 'bubo'. This original Latin word bears NO relation to the Greek word 'boubōn' ("groin, swelling") from which we get the Late Latin 'bubo' (also the English word) meaning an inflamed, tender swelling of a lymph node, such as one gets in the "bubonic" plague.

Another word for "owl" is 'lechuza'. This is usually for barn owls, while 'buho' is for horned owls or eagle owls of the genus Bubo. So for example, for "Harry Potter has a white owl", you would more likely say "Harry Potter tiene una lechuza blanca" than "un búho blanco". Unlike Spanish, English doesn't have a word to distinguish these two visibly different kinds of owls, other than to say "horned owl" or "barn owl" when necessary, or even more specific with common names like "snowy owl", "great horned owl", etc.

(Having said all that, "el búho" is also used to referred to owls generally).

The Spanish for "to hoot" is 'ulular', and an owl's cry is "un ululato". It's from the Latin 'ululāre' ("to howl"), from the noun 'ulula' which specifically named the screech owl. The Indo-European root is *u(wa)l-, from which also comes the Anglo-Saxon 'ule', which gives us the modern word "owl"! (And also the word "ululate".).

In English, the owl says "hoo-hoo", but in Spanish it's "uu-uu".

Answer: she-bear

"There is nothing more fierce than a she-bear protecting her cub."

'El oso' or the feminine 'la osa' comes from 'ursum' the accusative (objective) form of 'ursus', for "bear", which in turn came from the Greek 'arktos', from the Indo-European root '*rtko'. (The Germanic and many Slavic languages lost this root because Northern European hunters had a taboo on naming wild animals.)

This word is an excellent illustration of how Vulgar Latin evolved in to Spanish. As Spanish developed, 'ursum' lost its final 'm', and the short 'u' was opened to an 'o', thus 'orso'. Then in what is called assimilation in phonetics, the 'r' took on the identical sound of the neighboring 's', becoming 'ossu'. Spanish abhors most double consonants, so the repeating sound was simplified to 'osu'. Finally, the final sound opened again to an 'o', and we have 'oso'!

A bearcub specifically is 'el osezno'. A teddy bear is 'un osito'.

Perhaps a closer translation for the constellation Ursa Major (called La Osa Mayor in Spanish) would be "The Great She-Bear"!

Answer: wolf

"The wolf hunts prey in packs, and it howls"

The Spanish 'lobo' comes from the Latin 'lupus'. The ultimate root of this is the Indo-European '*lwlkwo-'. This root could be applied to wolves or foxes (being onomatopoeic for howling), and variations of it eventually differentiated into the Latin 'lupus' and the Greek 'lykos' for "wolf" on the one hand, and the Latin 'vulpes' and Greek 'alopex' for "fox" on the other. The Italian for "fox" is therefore 'la volpe', whereas a form of 'vulpes' did not make it to Spanish to name the animal, though the adjective 'vulpino' ("vulpine") did.

(Interestingly the English and German 'wolf' both came from the same branch as 'vulpes', not 'lupus'! Again, this is because the Indo-European word was indiscriminately applied to wolves and foxes.)

To howl is 'aullar', which sounds a little like a wolf's howl (ah-uuuuu).

Answer: rabbit

"The rabbit has long ears and likes to jump."

The word 'conejo' comes from the Latin 'cuniculus' and Greek kyniklos. The 'cul' part became 'j' through a process known as syncopation, or shifting of meter, which occurred throughout the development of Spanish from its Latin roots, during which the /cl/ or /cul/ sound tended to become gutturalized. Similarly, 'speculum' became 'espejo' ("mirror") and 'peduclus' became 'piojo' ("nit" or "burr"). [However, the medical instrument "speculum" in English is 'el espéculo' in Spanish as it has more recent origin.]

But wait... 'kyniklos' and 'cuniculus' were actually Greek and Roman transcriptions of a pre-Roman native Iberian word, since the rabbit was originally an animal strictly of the Iberian peninsula, unknown to the Greeks and Romans! (We have lost this original word, unfortunately.) In fact, the Roman name 'Hispania', from which we get 'España' ("Spain"), arises from the Carthaginian 'Ispania' for "land of the rabbits"!

Answer: fox

"The fox is very sly".

This is an example of a Spanish word in which the feminine emerged first, in the 15th century, namely 'zorra' ("vixen"), of unclear origin. It may come from the Basque 'azaria', meaning "a sly animal", which in turn may have come from an Arabic word. A popular but unconvincing etymology is that it is onomatopoeic to the sound a fox makes crawling on the ground when it does not want to be discovered on its way to the henhouse.

Cunning and craftiness are characteristics attributed to the fox. Indeed, as an adjective 'zorro' or 'zorrero' means "cunning" or "sly". As a noun, 'el zorrero' is "the foxhunter". A skunk is a 'zorrillo' (a "little fox"). In Spain, another word for fox is 'el raposo' (or 'la raposa'), which also means "sly person", though it is used more in Spain than in Latin America. 'No tengo ni zorra idea' means "I have no bloody idea", which may well sum up the linguistic consensus on the origin of 'el zorro'!

Answer: deer

"Bambi is a deer in the woods."


'Venado' refers to deer as "that which is hunted" the way 'pescado' refers to fish as "that which is fished". It comes from the Latin word 'venatus' ("game, hunted animal, product of the chase"), past participle of the verb 'venari' ("to hunt"). You can see the root in the word "venison" (deer meat) and also in the Spanish word 'venatorio', meaning "pertaining to hunting". (There is an uncommon cognate in English, "venatory" or "venatorial").

The Indo-European root is *wen-, which means "to desire, strive for". From this we get Spanish words like 'venerar' ("to venerate, worship"), 'veneno' ("venom") and 'envenenar' ("to poison"), not to mention 'viernes' ("Friday", or rather, "Venus's Day"). We also get the English words "win" and "wean" from this root. In Spanish, there's 'el venablo' ("dart"), and 'la venia' is "consent" or "authorization". "Venial" is a word in both English and Spanish meaning "forgivable".

Another word for deer is 'ciervo', from the Latin 'cervus' for "deer", and in English "cervine" means "pertaining to deer" and also refers to a dark, yellowish-brown color ('amarillo oscuro' in Spanish). The North American white-tailed deer is 'el ciervo/venado de cola blanca'. English has various words for male deer (stag, hart, buck) and female deer (doe, hind), while Spanish is much easier with 'ciervo/a' and 'venado/a'. But there's one exception: a "roe deer" -- a particularly small, graceful species-- is 'un corzo', while a "roebuck" (male roe deer) is 'un corzo macho'.

Answer: raccoon

"The raccoon appears to wear a black mask over its eyes."


The word 'mapache' comes straight from the Nahuatl language spoken by the Aztecs, which is not surprising when you consider that the raccoon is exclusively a North American animal. The Nahuatl word 'mapach' means "that which has hands" and referred to both raccoons and thieves! Indeed today in Mexico, a 'mapache' is the term for someone who steals or defrauds an election!

The English "raccoon" comes from the Algonquian (specif. Powhatan) word arahkunem ("he who scratches with hands"), not so different from the Aztec thinking! Another Spanish name for the raccoon is 'el oso lavador', which means "the washing bear", parallel to the Norwegian 'vaskebjørn ("wash-bear").

Answer: turkey

The word 'pavo' comes directly from the Latin 'pavus'. Originally it referred to 'los pavos reales', which are peacocks (lit. "royal turkeys"). Not until Europeans encountered America did 'pavo' refer to the native bird of the New World, which necessitated the retronym 'pavos reales".

Of course, if you find a turkey in the woods, it is a wild turkey, or 'un pavo salavaje'. Another word for wild turkey is 'gallipavo', although this can also refer to the turkey buzzard (also known as the turkey vulture).

In Mexico some folks call the turkey 'el guajalote'. This comes from Nahuatl 'hueyi' ("big, ugly") and 'xólotl' ("monstrous"), a combination which appears in the Aztec myth Legend of the Suns.

The "gobble-gobble" sound of the turkey is rendered "gluglú-gluglú" in Spanish.

Answer: bird

"The bird flies through the air and sings."


The word 'pájaro' is a corruption of the Vulgar Latin 'passar', from the Classical Latin 'passer', meaning sparrow, which in modern Spanish is called 'el gorrión', a word of uncertain origin. From this we get "passerine" in English, referring to songbirds or smallish birds about the size of a sparrow, also called "perching birds".

Now 'pájaro' can specifically mean "passerine", as in the following:
'El gorrión es un pájaro, pero el avestruz no.'
"The sparrow is a passerine, but the ostrich is not."

'El ave' (from the Latin 'avis' for "bird") also means bird, but it is generally reserved for larger birds, as in 'los aves de presa' ("birds of prey"), or to refer to fowl (chickens, turkeys, peacocks, etc.), or for enormous birds like the ostrich.

"From a bird's eye view" is 'a vista de pájaro'. "To take a quick peek" is echar un vistazo a ojo de pájaro'. But in Mexico, a corn on your foot is also 'un ojo de pájaro' (a bird's eye).

Answer: moose

"See the majestic moose. A moose once bit my sister..."
(My apologies to Monty Python. Mind you, moose bites can be really nasty...)


"Moose" is the North American name for the very large species of deer with distinctive palmate antlers and the scientific name Alces alces. As you see, 'el alce' is direct from the Latin. But...the moose is an inhabitant of more northern climes, and the Latin 'alce' and the Greek 'alke' were actually loanwords from Germanic languages, the Proto-Germanic root being '*elkh'.

But wait, doesn't all this look a lot like "elk", which in North America is a completely different animal? Yes, and if you want the whole story, keep reading...

It's a tad confusing because of a mis-identification by English colonizers of the North American continent. What folks in the USA and Canada call in English "moose" (Alces alces), the people in Britain call "elk", and the rest of Eurasia names like it ('älg' in Sweden, 'Elch' in Germany, etc.) What norteamericanos call in English "elk" (Cervus canadenis), the British and really just about the rest of the world call 'wapiti' after the Shawnee/Cree word meaning "white rump".

The problem is that the English colonists of America really were unfamiliar with the Alces alces on either side of the Atlantic Ocean, for it is native only to the continent (Scandinavia, Poland, the Baltic, Russia). But they did of course know their red deer (Cervus elephas). Now the Cervus canadensis of North America (and also East Asia) is bigger than this, so when they saw that imposing deer, they gave it the name "elk", thinking it must be that great Scandinavian deer they had heard about. Then of course, when the colonists ran into the even greater creature which looked especially strange to them, they borrowed the Narraganset 'moos', from 'moosu' meaning "he strips", referring to the moose's habit of stripping trees of their bark.

In Latin America (including Mexico, which is in North America!), they've disregarded their anglophonic neighbors' confusion and follow the European Spanish model, calling the moose/elk 'el alce' and the elk/wapiti 'el wapití', sometimes spelled 'el uapití'.

That was a long walk. ¡Muy bien! ¡Qué perseverancia!