animal gender

[tali122]

i am aware elephants, seals are known as bulls and cows for gendering- what other animals are refered as such?- and why are some just refered as male /female instead?

thx

[logman]

I hope someone comes along with an answer for this but i doubt it. It becomes even more confusing when you look at deer for example, which can be refered to as- harts, hinds, bucks, bucks, does.stags, etc,acording to the particular species of deer

[orange-gnome]

I think most animals have different names for male and female dont they? Stag and doe - deer, buck and doe - rabbits and rats,
tom and queen- cats, dog and bitch - dogs, man and woman - human : ), bulls and heffers - cows, boars and sows - pigs.
Who knows why?? Not me...another thing that has always bothered me is why have so many different names for a group of animals - herd of cows, flock of sheep, pack of wolves, murder of crows and isn't it a a tower of giraffe?? How bizarre!!!!

[Drusilla]

Well, I know that doe comes from the old English word da, This is related to deon, which means 'to suck'. I think it's easy to see how that developed into doe for the female deer.

http://www.anapsid.org/beastly.html#coll

This site has lots of examples.