Science in Sanskrit

  Carnivoran Taxonomy This will be a huge project. The order Carnivora include famous predators such as felids, canids, bears, seals, racoons, etc. Yes, in this one blog post, I will conver all the lineages of Carnivorans as much as possible. The Sanskrit name I choose for Carnivora  is  मांसाहारिन् .  To add to the cat person and dog person rift, the clade Carnivora itself is elegantly divided into cat-like and dog-like carnivorans. The Feliformia  will be known as बिडालाकृति , while Caniformia  is शुनकाकृति .  We will start with the Feliformia: The most basal of these is the Nimavidae , which are the false saber tooth cats. I will call them "dagger fang" or  कृपाणदंष्ट्रि मय​ .  We now move onto the Aeluroidae , which include typical cats, civets, and hyenas. Like the cats we know and love, many members of this clade groom themselves, thus I can call them मार्जार .  Of these, the basal one is the African Palm Civet of Nandiniidae , mak...

Broader Mammal Taxonomy While I am busy coining Sanskerit names for many lineages of mamamals, such as whales, elephants, rodents, etc, I think it is best I also work on the higher order groupings of mammals. These include clades like Theria, Eutheriua, Laurasiatheria, etc.  The basal group of mammals are the Monotremes , known for being the only mammals alive to lay eggs. These groups include the Platypuses  and Echnidnas. As such, I will call them "egg nourishers" or  अण्डपोषक​ . Next clade is Theria , which includes marsupials and placentals. While the clade means "beast", I will just call them "good mammals" or  सुक्षीरद​ . Then the Marsupials, noted by their belly pouches, thus उदरस्यूतिन् /  स्यूतोदरिन् . Marsupials and related relatives are a part of a larger clade called Metatheria,  which I will call "resembling marsupials" or  उदरस्यू तिदृश् . The Marsupialiformes are  उदरस्यूत्याकृति . Next we have the clade Eutheria  which is...

    Elephant Taxonomy Salutations to Lord Ganesha, because in this blog I will be naming the taxa of elephants both alive and extinct. The cool things about elephants is that they were not always the giant creatures with a hand for a nose. They started off small but evolved to their current state. Even more remarkable was that their taxa were found even in northern Eurasia and the Americas until humans came on the scene and wiped them out.  The Elephants belong to the order Proboscidea, which literally means "having a trunk", even though the earliest members of this order had no trunk. Therefore. a more neutral name will be chosen. I propose गज​ , or elephant (without any reference to their trunks).     Now before I continue, I want to name the clade formed by Deinotheriidae and Elephantiformes, because these set of elephants have an actual trunk  proper . Therefore this clade will be called with the famous Sanskrit word:  हस्तिन् . Then the suborder...

 General Sanskrit Animal Names This blog post is not going to too deep, rather it is going to assign Sanskrit names to common animals without going too much into taxonomy. This is merely to provide a framework for when we do coin more specific taxonomic names later on. The way this works is if there is a specific species of a generic animal group, say Indian carp of the carp family, then the specifici Sanskrit word for the species becomes the generic name. To specify the specific Indian species, we add the word "Indian" ( भारतीय​ ). I will also actively borrow from other languages if I can't find a Sanskrit name for the bird. Other times I will make up a name.  Dr.Raghu Vira has done a great job in coining Sanskrit terms for Zoology and for other STEM disciplins, and I may have unknowlingly derived from him. However, I want to improve upon his works by either being more simple, more accurate, or reducing ambiguity. For example, he renders "lemur" as "night ...