In yesterday’s newspapers, the Führer read an item regarding the changes of name ratified by the German Society for Mammalogy on the occasion of its 15th General Assembly. The Führer subsequently instructed me to communicate to the responsible parties, in no uncertain terms, that these changes of name are to be reversed immediately. Should members of the Society for Mammalogy have nothing more essential to the war effort or smarter to do, perhaps an extended stint in the construction battalion on the Russian front could be arranged. Should such asinine renamings occur once more, the Führer will unquestionably take appropriate measures; under no circumstance should terms that have become established over the course of many years be altered in this fashion.[...]
The systematic placement of the shrew, or Spitzmaus, is determined in much the same way. They, too, fail to possess the mouse characteristics in question, although they do share traits with moles and hedgehogs, as well as with the solenodon (meaning “slotted tooth”), which is a venomous critter native exclusively to the Caribbean islands. They are now situated under the wondrous designation Eulipotyphla, but only since 1999. How they are related—along with ties to an array of other mammal families, such as tenrecs, desmans, and golden moles—has not been conclusively explained, however, and an overwhelming glut of designations is assigned to various combinations of these animal groups. Dating back to Carl Linnaeus’s 1758 coinage, the most widely used term for shrews, hedgehogs, moles, and all manner of more or less exotic animals is Insectivora, or insect eater. The idea that they can be traced to a common ancestor—that is to say, the idea that Insectivora comprises a natural, evolutionarily justifiable unit—is viewed today as improbable. Unquestionably, however (and this is what’s of greatest interest to us here), shrews are not connected to either rodents (even muroids) or bats. [...]
Pohle’s article, which predates the society’s 15th General Assembly and Hitler’s emotional veto by more than a year, is a particularly interesting source because he also shares his actual motivations for the suggested changes. His emphatic objective is to see “the term ‘Maus’ disappear, responsible as it is for laypersons’ wont to lump the animals together with actual mice.” In the estimation of these laypersons, mice are something “ugly and destructive that must be fought, or ideally exterminated.” Shrews and bats, harmless as they are to humans, are thus subject to the same brutal fate. Pohle hopes for a “shift in perspective” to occur, once the endangered animals are no longer referred to as mice. What to do, then? Pohle would prefer the term Spitz for Spitzmaus, but it’s already been assigned to a dog breed. Rüssler could also work, only it already applies to some other insectivore. That leaves Spitzer, a name that emphasizes the pointy head as a distinguishing characteristic and is still available. Pohle wants a name for bats without “Maus” but happily with a nod to the animals’ flying ability. Most names of this kind are already employed for birds, and “Flatterer” or “flutterer” could only logically be used for a certain population of bats, namely, those bad at flying. “Flieger” or “flyer,” another hot candidate, is also in use by various other animal groups. But why, Pohle asks the reader, would one even need to say “Fledermaus,” when “Fleder” actually makes perfect sense?
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