#its NOT just because they live at my favorite freedove spot and theyre a joy and a pleasure every time I see them

[catboybiologist]

Alright if I'm confessing my benign sins, one of my toxic traits is that I absolutely fucking refuse to recognize the indo-pacific "leopard shark" as a "leopard shark".

For those of you who don't know, there are two different species of shark that are called leopard sharks. If you hear leopard shark in Australia or other English speaking parts of the indo-pacific, they're referring to this:

Like okay fine. It has spots, spots that look nothing like a leopards spots, but sure. Whatever. Animal naming has been done over worse connections (looking at you, killdeer).

Except, people in other parts of the world, particularly North America, don't call these leopard sharks. They call them zebra sharks. Why? Well, two reasons: one, because their babies look like this:

Which, in addition to being absolutely fucking adorable, is the most zebra like pattern you could ever ask for out of a shark. Like yeah I know they grow out of it but cmon. It's too perfect.

The other reason is because the name leopard shark is ALREADY FUCKING TAKEN, and it's by a shark living off the Pacific coast of North America that has WAY more leopard like markings:

And also, these sharks don't have alternate English names! Whereas zebra sharks are well known the world over as zebra sharks! So the option with the most clarity would be to use leopard shark for the north American ones and zebra shark for the indo Pacific ones!!!!!!!!

Fuck you Australia, there's not many things the US gets right, but this is one of them