A Portmanteau That Really Fits the Bill

What a fun portmanteau word; however, according to Australian-Wildlife.com, there is no other type of platypus so the term "duck-billed" platypus is redundant.

Another linguistically interesting fact from Australian-Wildlife.com is that "there is no agreed term for the plural of platypus, with platypus, platypoda and platypuses all being used."

Animal Plurals

Yesterday's post about a single bear, a plural pronoun and pronoun agreement brought to mind the fact that it can be very tricky to determine which animals require a suffix to mark plurality and which don't.

According to The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, "The absence of –s in the plural form of animal names (hunting for bear, a herd of buffalo) probably arose by analogy with animals like deer and sheep whose plurals have been unmarked since the earliest beginnings of the English language."

Here is a list of animals whose plurals are not marked by a suffix:

alpaca
antelope
bass
buffalo
cattle
codfish
deer
eel
elk
grouse
guinea fowl
hag moth
jellyfish
mackerel
moose
quail
regal moth
salmon
sheep
snipe
swine
teal
trout
vicuna
walrus

Thank you to Melissa Kaplan's Beastly Garden of Wordy Delights.