Re: badgers

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
> > These two hypothesis are quoted by Delamarre in his "Dictionnaire
> > étymologique de la langue gauloise". Of course, the traditional one
> > is a mere "lookalike" and thus rejectable. I think Katz's proposal
> > is very interesting, although it actually points to a different
> > animal, the skunk <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk> or polecat.
> > But as in the case of other carnivores such as 'weasel', 'marten',
> > etc., this kind of semantic shifts are rather common.
>
> I think your proposal is much more interesting than Katz's
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Skunk_genera_ranges.png
> It opens whole new vistas for the study of the history of the IE languages.
>

Good point, as there're no skunks in Eurasia. Green areas actually belong to the stink badger (Mydaeus), an animal usually linked to true badgers but now linked (after DNA analysis) to the skunk family.

However, odouriferous genital glands are found in other species such as cats, so they aren't exclusive of badgers.