{"id":704,"date":"2002-11-16T01:16:51","date_gmt":"2002-11-16T09:16:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2002\/11\/16\/704.html"},"modified":"2018-07-29T18:32:10","modified_gmt":"2018-07-30T01:32:10","slug":"names-for-the-nameless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2002\/11\/16\/names-for-the-nameless\/","title":{"rendered":"Names for the nameless"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<figure id=\"attachment_17402\" class=\"thumbnail wp-caption alignright\" style=\"width: 266px\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2002\/11\/nameless-profile1.jpg\"><img src=\"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2002\/11\/nameless-profile1.jpg\" alt=\"Nameless beastie in profile\" width=\"256\" height=\"192\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17402\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"caption wp-caption-text\">Nameless beastie in profile<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<p>Here are the candidates so far for naming my latest stuffed animal.  If you have other suggestions, please <a href=\"mailto:logos-nameless@kith.org\">drop me a note<\/a> sometime in the next day or two.<\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n<li>Boxy (because it arrived in a box)<\/li>\r\n<li>Cerebus<\/li>\r\n<li>Cubert (because it arrived in a cube-shaped box)<\/li>\r\n<li>Eleanor<\/li>\r\n<li>Engelbert Humperdink<\/li>\r\n<li>Gertrude<\/li>\r\n<li>Gustav\/Gus<\/li>\r\n<li>Helmut<\/li>\r\n<li>Herbert<\/li>\r\n<li>Hoffa<\/li>\r\n<li>Hopeful<\/li>\r\n<li>Horrible<\/li>\r\n<li>Hortense<\/li>\r\n<li>Hugh<\/li>\r\n<li>Jasper<\/li>\r\n<li>Mister Lumps<\/li>\r\n<li>Mortimer<\/li>\r\n<li>Nosey<\/li>\r\n<li>Pamplimoose<\/li>\r\n<li>Portnoy<\/li>\r\n<li>Scruffy<\/li>\r\n<li>Sebastian<\/li>\r\n<li>Stan<\/li>\r\n<li>Stomper.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<figure id=\"attachment_17404\" class=\"thumbnail wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"width: 266px\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2002\/11\/nameless-ear.jpg\"><img src=\"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2002\/11\/nameless-ear.jpg\" alt=\"Nameless beastie with emphasis on ear\" width=\"256\" height=\"192\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17404\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"caption wp-caption-text\">Nameless beastie with emphasis on ear<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<p>Some of these definitely presuppose certain species; for example, most of the H names assume it's a heffalump, while \"Cerebus\" assumes it's an aardvark.<\/p>\r\n<p>It's hard to see the ear shape in most of these photos.  It's not a very elephant-like ear shape.  I did find some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.angelfire.com\/mo2\/animals1\/aardvark\/aardvark.html\">aardvark facts<\/a> online (and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ultimateungulate.com\/aardvark.html\">more aardvark facts<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu\/accounts\/orycteropus\/o._afer$media.html\">even more aardvark facts<\/a>); also an <a href=\"http:\/\/irving.lps.org\/About\/about.html\">aardvark photo<\/a> (and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hunts4africa.co.za\/aardvark.JPG\">another aardvark photo<\/a>).  All of the evidence suggests that there's some aardvark ancestry here.<\/p>\r\n<p>Biologists to the rescue. Jean, who has a biology degree, says:<\/p>\r\n<blockquote><p>It's a rare short-haired pentapod. Or in Latin: Cilia pentapodios.<\/p>\r\n<p>Everyone knows pentapods are omnisexual.<\/p><\/blockquote>\r\n<figure id=\"attachment_17405\" class=\"thumbnail wp-caption alignright\" style=\"width: 266px\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2002\/11\/nameless-profile2.jpg\"><img src=\"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2002\/11\/nameless-profile2.jpg\" alt=\"Another angle on nameless beastie\" width=\"256\" height=\"192\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17405\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"caption wp-caption-text\">Another angle on nameless beastie<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<p>And indeed, the profile photos do suggest that this creature is some sort of a pentapod, and the short hair would indeed point to it being a short-haired pentapod.  And omnisexual sounds like a good idea.<\/p>\r\n<p>And yet, I can't help but think that that's a trunk or nose, perhaps even a schnoz, rather than a foot.<\/p>\r\n<p>Other biologist to the rescue. Cat, who has a biochem degree, says (in her brief monograph \"The natural history of the heffalump\"):<\/p>\r\n<blockquote><p>Heffalumps are part aardvark.  And part elephant.  Which explains \r\nwhy this heffalump reminds you of both.  It's obviously a heffalump.<\/p><\/blockquote>\r\n<figure id=\"attachment_17406\" class=\"thumbnail wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"width: 187px\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2002\/11\/nameless-sad.jpg\"><img src=\"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2002\/11\/nameless-sad.jpg\" alt=\"Sad-looking nameless beastie\" width=\"177\" height=\"204\" class=\"size-full wp-image-17406\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"caption wp-caption-text\">Sad-looking nameless beastie<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<p>As this evidence provides confirmation for my existing prejudices, I'm inclined to count it heavily.  (That's the way science works, yes?)<\/p>\r\n<p>So I'm not quite ready to definitively declare this a heffalump, but I'm leaning pretty heavily in that direction.  Perhaps heffalumps are distantly related to pentapods?  Further research is clearly indicated.<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here are the candidates so far for naming my latest stuffed animal. If you have other suggestions, please drop me&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-heffalumps"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17407,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions\/17407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}