641: raccoon Sep 9, 2016

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Even though it is quite possible to invent words when necessary, it is much simpler to just adopt existing ones. European explorers when arriving in modern day Virginia, saw raccoons for the first time and used the Algonquian 'aroughcun'. Nevertheless, scientific names do not originate from indigenous American languages, so something else had to be done. 'Lotor', which is the scientific name comes from Latin meaning, ‘one who washes’. Raccoons are not, as you may now think, know for being especially clean, but they do utilize their front feet to obtain food in water.

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