Mongooses or mongeese?
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by Batfan
Just found this by 'hacking' to see if the mangabey I'd seen in the previousl clip was still present here. Thought I'd just flag it up as it's quite a nice shot of the mongooses / mongeese. It's also made me wonder what the plural of mongoose is - an internet trawl seems to throw up both variants so I'm still none the wiser. Is there one that's more correct than the other?
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by AnLand moderator
Very nice find! I was always grateful that we use the singular for species only exactly because of this question. I have no idea!
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by Boleyn moderator
You're not alone with this question, Jane 😃 Maybe this article can shed some light to this:
I think the term has nothing to do with "goose" but I really don't know where it came from. The german word for mongoose is "Manguste" and for "goose" it's "Gans". so we'd never even think of something gooselike here 😃
In German these animals are also called "Mungo". Now maybe this might have lead to the englisch expression?
Funny also: if you look up the translation of Manguste in latin, what do you think is the answer? Mongoose!Posted
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by Batfan
Thanks both for your replies. I'm glad its not just me who's confused 😃 From your link, Heidi, it definitely looks like mongooses wins, so that's what I'll use in future.
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by MimiA scientist, moderator
nice multispecies 😃 very cool!
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