Names Can Kill Animals
Just like the names of products and companies, animal monikers can affect how we feel about them. Take the tricolored dogs of Africa. At the turn of the 20th century, ranchers regularly shot them because they feared the dogs were slaughtering livestock, and disdainfully started calling them wild dogs. The name stuck and the canines’ population declined. Their name was later changed to painted dogs and their genus was revived, proving that changing the name of a species can actually save it. Narrator Kate Yoshida presents some other examples of negative animal names and their affect in this episode of Minute Earth.
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