[ursuscamp]

The article says that it belonged to a species of deer called “wapiti”. Since I never heard of it, I looked it up and it’s just an elk. Why didn’t the article just say “elk” which is the much more common term?

[chmod775]

Two reasons:

- Elk is ambiguous. There's an Elk/Wapiti in North America, Central Asia, and East Asia, and another species of deer referred to as an "Elk" by people in Eurasia, but which is known as a "Moose" in North America.

- Because journalists these days don't have time to look these kinds of things up. The original paper only refers to it as wapiti/cervus canadensis/deer. If the whoever wrote that article knew it refers to an elk, they'd have pointed that out for the reader.

[dan-robertson]

Elk is pretty ambiguous — it refers to different species depending on the context (in Europe, ‘elk’ refers to what in north America is called a moose. Wapiti is a name for what ‘elk’ refers to in North America). You get a similar problem with the words ‘hawk’ and ‘buzzard’

[jhbadger]

And badger -- In Europe they are small adorable members of the Meles genus. In the Americas, Africa, and Asia the word refers to larger and more aggressive animals in the Taxidea and Mellivora genera that just look superficially like Meles.

[bregma]

The wapiti is the animal on the reverse of the Canadian 25 cent definitive coin. Perhaps the folks who write the article are just educated and worldly.