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Queensland has both Australian Crows and Australian Ravens. The tropical north and Western Australia has Australian Crows, and the south-east has only the Aust
by caf 5y ago
Queensland has both Australian Crows and Australian Ravens. The tropical north and Western Australia has Australian Crows, and the south-east has only the Australian Ravens.
They're often confused, but this video is in Canberra so a Raven it is.
- chrismorgan 5y agoThe confusion is made worse by the fact that the bird supposedly called a raven (though whether it’s Corvus coronoides or Corvus mellori or something else I can’t certainly say right now) is, at least in Melbourne and the part of western Victoria where I now live, exclusively called a crow. If you called it a raven, many, perhaps most, people wouldn’t know what you were talking about, because we simply don’t have any bird called a raven, though we might have some vague sneaking notion that they’re a northern hemisphere version of our crows or something like that. I can’t confidently speak further than that, but I’m under the impression the same is true in Sydney. If taxonomists call them ravens but everyone else calls them crows, I wish the taxonomists would accept the reality that usage defines language, not encyclopædia, and give up on trying to pretend they’re ravens and not crows.
- kragen 5y agoZoologists don't care what random Australians think of them; they want to communicate successfully with other zoologists.
- chrismorgan 5y agoThat’s what scientific names are for. If the supposed “common names” is not what anyone calls it other than them, then that common name is wrong and should be retired.