Common Names vs Scientific Names

[zonbonzovi]

i was going to say this in my newly created thread "what species lay the most eggs" only because someone gave me crap about using "common names"...the same happened on the other forum that i posted the same question about egg sac size. my question was totally ignored, but insead im told to call them by their scientific names...


As far as the scientific names….here is my opinion about their usage. Thanks to all of you, that insist on using these extremely long and hard to pronounce names, the tatarntula & hobby is very unknown throughout the world.
Think about it, do dogs have strange scientific names? And if they do, how many people would be able to name the breeds off hand, or spell, or pronounce. Very few im sure. But look at how popular dogs are throughout the world, and how many people have pretty basic knowledge of most dog breeds. Or lets look at snakes, if you were to ask people at random, name 3 popular types of snakes. What would they say? Python, boa, anaconda, rattler, gartner? Or would they say some crazy scientific names, like regis, imperator, eunectes, crotalus, columbrid.
Twenty years ago, if you would have asked me what a tarantula was, I would have said a very big spider. While not having any clue, that there was close to 800 different tarantula species. If you asked ten people at random today, “name a type of tarantula” you’d be lucky if one person knew their was more than one type. Why is this? Its because you people don’t use the common names. Ive never heard anyone talk about common names of tarantulas, up until six months ago when I started to research the purchase of T's. To me and most others, a tarantula is just a tarantula. Just a big spider. Im sure if there common names were used more frequently in the past, I would have heard of all the different species years ago. “wow look! A Mexican red knee” or “o-my god, look how big that goliath bird eater is” do you really think the average person is going to want to memorize all these scientific names? “hey look, what a beautiful brachypelma smithi” or “hey look at this huge theraphosa blondi” and those are the easier ones to say. But see if any one has heard of the white collared tarantula, I doubt they’ll say “o you mean the eupalaestrus weijenberghi”
now if you went out on to the streets, and ask people to name a type of spider, what would they say? tarantula, black widow, daddy long leg? NOBODY is going to say the scientic name. why? its because its like speaking a foreign language.
Thanks to all you ignoring the common names, and insisting on trying to be all official with your scientific mumbo jumbo, I and so many others have missed out on a great hobby/pet.
And look, here I am trying to learn and gather data for other commoners (in my thread, about egg sac size), and what happens? “don’t use the common names, you should try and use the scientific names, WHY! so the hobby continues to stay a secret to the rest of the world. “here, we speak in code”…”we don’t use common words”…“get with the program!” its very irritating when i think about it. i mean dont get me wrong, its good to know the scientific names, but its more important to learn and spread the common names first!

I highly doubt that you "T collectors" could know all these excessively long scientific names, but not the short memorable common names that go with them. You people need to embrace the common names, for the prosperity of the hobby.

No, no it's not. It helps no one. We're not speaking in code at all. Read back through the threads on common vs. scientific names or to a couple of choice posts in this thread. If you're just keeping a species or two & have no intention of breeding, fine. When you need details on a particular spider, good luck finding reasonable information via common name. Not so stunningly, many people here now that made this same claim when they first started in the hobby have made a 180 and have surprised themselves with how utterly easy it is to pick up on binomials. If you want to insist on calling your "tatarntulas" by their common names, you will necessarily catch a lot of flack by people that have put out the effort to learn this" foreign language". The vast majority of us here care not for what the person on the street or the "person at random" thinks about something they know nothing about. Common sense, as is said, is not all that common. Also, dog breeds are not of representative of any multiple species. Quite the contrary- they are highly manipulated physical characteristics of the same species. If you want to be taken seriously, please learn to "do as the Romans do, when in Rome".

 

[Motorkar]

Personaly I hate common names becouse I don't know what species is so I stick with scientific names and they are somehow easier to rember.

 

[NikiP]

i was going to say this in my newly created thread "what species lay the most eggs" only because someone gave me crap about using "common names"...the same happened on the other forum that i posted the same question about egg sac size. my question was totally ignored, but insead im told to call them by their scientific names...


As far as the scientific names….here is my opinion about their usage. Thanks to all of you, that insist on using these extremely long and hard to pronounce names, the tatarntula & hobby is very unknown throughout the world.
Think about it, do dogs have strange scientific names? And if they do, how many people would be able to name the breeds off hand, or spell, or pronounce. Very few im sure. But look at how popular dogs are throughout the world, and how many people have pretty basic knowledge of most dog breeds. Or lets look at snakes, if you were to ask people at random, name 3 popular types of snakes. What would they say? Python, boa, anaconda, rattler, gartner? Or would they say some crazy scientific names, like regis, imperator, eunectes, crotalus, columbrid.
Twenty years ago, if you would have asked me what a tarantula was, I would have said a very big spider. While not having any clue, that there was close to 800 different tarantula species. If you asked ten people at random today, “name a type of tarantula” you’d be lucky if one person knew their was more than one type. Why is this? Its because you people don’t use the common names. Ive never heard anyone talk about common names of tarantulas, up until six months ago when I started to research the purchase of T's. To me and most others, a tarantula is just a tarantula. Just a big spider. Im sure if there common names were used more frequently in the past, I would have heard of all the different species years ago. “wow look! A Mexican red knee” or “o-my god, look how big that goliath bird eater is” do you really think the average person is going to want to memorize all these scientific names? “hey look, what a beautiful brachypelma smithi” or “hey look at this huge theraphosa blondi” and those are the easier ones to say. But see if any one has heard of the white collared tarantula, I doubt they’ll say “o you mean the eupalaestrus weijenberghi”
now if you went out on to the streets, and asked people to name a type of spider, what would they say? tarantula, black widow, daddy long leg? NOBODY is going to say the scientic name. why? its because its like speaking a foreign language.
Thanks to all you ignoring the common names, and insisting on trying to be all official with your scientific mumbo jumbo, I and so many others have missed out on a great hobby/pet.
And look, here I am trying to learn and gather data for other commoners (in my thread, about egg sac size), and what happens? “don’t use the common names, you should try and use the scientific names, WHY! so the hobby continues to stay a secret to the rest of the world. “here, we speak in code”…”we don’t use common words”…“get with the program!” its very irritating when i think about it. i mean dont get me wrong, its good to know the scientific names, but its more important to learn and spread the common names first!

I highly doubt that you "T collectors" could know all these excessively long scientific names, but not the short memorable common names that go with them. You people need to embrace the common names, for the prosperity of the hobby.

Your arguement is invalid.

1) Europe has a huge invertebrate market. Canada has a fairly decent one. There seems to be an increasing number of Asian posters on here recently.

2) How many people start out googling tarantulas, seeing the scientific names, & get scared off? Probably no where near as many that buy a G. rosea at their LPS then go looking on the world wide web to find out why their G. rosea is on their back only to come across a board like this then proceed to buy a million tarantulas online that aren't found in the majority of pet stores.

3) Are you involved in very many hobbies?

What hobby doesn't evolve to have some language of it's own?

I'd love to own a grizzled marble half moon doubletail. Do you know what that is? Doubt it.

Do you know what EeAaCcrCcr DW would be? Doubt it.

Do you know what a dragging knee or bagger is? Maybe.

Do you know what a frag is? Maybe.

4) Copy & paste isn't that hard.

---------- Post added at 05:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:28 PM ----------

Don't get me wrong, I use scientific names on all of my Ts and most of the ones I read about. I try to learn both common and scientific names, but it just baffles me that the scientific name is really the more commonly used name. Why not just drop all common names and just use scientific names....it would make thing a lot easier for all. The only T I use the common name(abbreviation) more then the scientific name is on OBT for some reason.

P.s. Thanks for everyones comments.

Because most people come into the hobby from buying things at pet stores, run by people that aren't usually willing to learn or end up learning from sources that never bother to expand their own.

 

[RyTheTGuy]

i was going to say this in my newly created thread "what species lay the most eggs" only because someone gave me crap about using "common names"...the same happened on the other forum that i posted the same question about egg sac size. my question was totally ignored, but insead im told to call them by their scientific names...


As far as the scientific names….here is my opinion about their usage. Thanks to all of you, that insist on using these extremely long and hard to pronounce names, the tatarntula & hobby is very unknown throughout the world.
Think about it, do dogs have strange scientific names? And if they do, how many people would be able to name the breeds off hand, or spell, or pronounce. Very few im sure. But look at how popular dogs are throughout the world, and how many people have pretty basic knowledge of most dog breeds. Or lets look at snakes, if you were to ask people at random, name 3 popular types of snakes. What would they say? Python, boa, anaconda, rattler, gartner? Or would they say some crazy scientific names, like regis, imperator, eunectes, crotalus, columbrid.
Twenty years ago, if you would have asked me what a tarantula was, I would have said a very big spider. While not having any clue, that there was close to 800 different tarantula species. If you asked ten people at random today, “name a type of tarantula” you’d be lucky if one person knew their was more than one type. Why is this? Its because you people don’t use the common names. Ive never heard anyone talk about common names of tarantulas, up until six months ago when I started to research the purchase of T's. To me and most others, a tarantula is just a tarantula. Just a big spider. Im sure if there common names were used more frequently in the past, I would have heard of all the different species years ago. “wow look! A Mexican red knee” or “o-my god, look how big that goliath bird eater is” do you really think the average person is going to want to memorize all these scientific names? “hey look, what a beautiful brachypelma smithi” or “hey look at this huge theraphosa blondi” and those are the easier ones to say. But see if any one has heard of the white collared tarantula, I doubt they’ll say “o you mean the eupalaestrus weijenberghi”
now if you went out on to the streets, and asked people to name a type of spider, what would they say? tarantula, black widow, daddy long leg? NOBODY is going to say the scientic name. why? its because its like speaking a foreign language.
Thanks to all you ignoring the common names, and insisting on trying to be all official with your scientific mumbo jumbo, I and so many others have missed out on a great hobby/pet.
And look, here I am trying to learn and gather data for other commoners (in my thread, about egg sac size), and what happens? “don’t use the common names, you should try and use the scientific names, WHY! so the hobby continues to stay a secret to the rest of the world. “here, we speak in code”…”we don’t use common words”…“get with the program!” its very irritating when i think about it. i mean dont get me wrong, its good to know the scientific names, but its more important to learn and spread the common names first!

I highly doubt that you "T collectors" could know all these excessively long scientific names, but not the short memorable common names that go with them. You people need to embrace the common names, for the prosperity of the hobby.

“hey look, what a beautiful brachypelma smithi” or “hey look at this huge theraphosa blondi” Most people would say B. smithi or T. blondi you dont need to say the genus only the first letter in MOST cases.

Just to let you know, ALL domestic dogs regardless of breed or mix, is Canis lupis familiaris, some of the stuff you said is ridiculous, but your post was why i made this. I dont understand why people don't embrace the so called "COMMON NAMES" isn't it the common name? no the scientific name is the name we use........ok that makes tons of sense...thats all im wondering I actually think the scientific names sound better.

 

[Jester]

I just recently got into this hobby about a month ago and have only learned the scientific names so far. It takes away the guesswork, you KNOW which species you're looking at. For someone like me that doesn't know much about identifying tarantulas, when I hear the scientific name, I can recall hearing the name previously and some general information I remember about it, but I'm completely lost with the common names. I went to a pet store and they had both the common name and the scientific name labeling each of the spiders, I didn't know any of the common names but I recognized the scientific names at once.

I think that "common name" refers to what someone on the street might call them, not someone that's getting into the hobby. If you go on a snake board, you'd hear a garter snake being called Thamnophis sirtalis, not a garter snake (sorry, first example that came to mind). Same goes for here. It's a specialized forum, and draws in a certain demographic -- people that are interested in spiders. People off the street wouldn't come here because they're not interested, so they might know the common name at best, not the scientific name.

In regards to TaraculasByte's post, the reason people aren't into the hobby is because they're scared of spiders, not because we don't use the common names. There's plenty of people that are scared of dogs, does that take away from the dog breeding hobby? Most kids go through a bug phase, but then they're influenced by the media. The media says that spiders are gross and scary, and that they'll kill you if they bite you. Of course, we in the tarantula community know that no tarantula can take down a healthy person, just irritate them for a little while. There's a lot that isn't known about tarantulas, whereas we know a lot about dogs, cats, rabbits, gerbils, hamsters, and other such mammals. Tarantulas require a lot of specialized care. They're hard work. You can just buy a dog, put the dog in your yard and give it a bowl of food and water and it will be fine, but that's obviously not the case for a tarantula. Nobody says the scientific name on the street because they're not into tarantulas. If you asked me to name a type of tarantula, I could gladly tell you many scientific names for them, as could many other users on this (or any other) tarantula forum. Do you know why it's like speaking a foreign language when speaking a scientific name? It is! It's Latin! -pops you on the forehead- Coulda had a V8!
I have done just fine with learning only the scientific names. I feel that if you are truly interested in the hobby, you will not miss out on the great opportunity presented to you and dive straight in to learning the scientific names. The common names will only help you if you work in a pet store. But if you worked in a pet store, could you please tell me the color sponge you put in the tank? How's the sand holding up? Obviously you don't really want to be around spiders, or else you would bother to put in the minuscule effort for learning the scientific names.
Or maybe you're just lazy.

 

[High_Rolling_T]

Think about it, do dogs have strange scientific names?

Yes, it's Canis lupus familiaris. That covers all dogs since all dogs are of the same species. Tarantulas on the other hand are a completely different story as there are about 930 documented species plus countless others undiscovered/documented.

And if they do, how many people would be able to name the breeds off hand, or spell, or pronounce.

As many people are actually interested in them truly.

Twenty years ago, if you would have asked me what a tarantula was, I would have said a very big spider. While not having any clue, that there was close to 800 different tarantula species.

930 -> The Tarantula Bibliography

TIf you asked ten people at random today, “name a type of tarantula” you’d be lucky if one person knew their was more than one type.

Lol. Anyone with common sense would know there is more than one type of tarantula in the world.

TWhy is this? Its because you people don’t use the common names.

Also lol. If a person has never heard about all the types of tarantulas there are, then its because tarantulas have little to do with their lives or they haven't heard it period. Not because the people talking about it are using certain terminology. I could go get any tarantula and call it the Zulu Zulu Great Armanoid Turkey Hunting Xylophone Pinkerton Land Octopus(more commonly known in the hobby as the ZZGATHXPLO), and those people who haven't heard about all the types of tarantula's still won't hear about it because it just isn't something that crosses paths with their lives. Even if I did talk to them about my ZZGATHXPLO, they still wouldn't know there is tons of types of tarantulas out there.

To me and most others, a tarantula is just a tarantula. Just a big spider.

Yeah, they're all just the same thing, no need for different care, housing, feeding, etc. Please sell your tarantula(s) as you clearly can't differentiate(probably other than by the purty colorz) enough to properly care for them as is evident by your ignorant statement here.

“wow look! A Mexican red knee” or “o-my god, look how big that goliath bird eater is”

Are you talking about a Brachypelma emilia? Brachypelma smithi? Brachypelma bohmei? And the second one... a Theraphosa stirmi? Theraphosa blondi? Theraphosa apophysis?

do you really think the average person is going to want to memorize all these scientific names?

So memorizing 2 words is harder than 3 words? I'd like to give people more credit then that. Not to mention that I can remember one scientific name for a tarantula, or have to memorize the 5 common names(that generally are a country, color, and body part in some miscellaneous order) that a tarantula could have, and hope that new ones aren't being made up everyday because someone feels one sounds better or doesn't know the original one so just wings it.

“hey look, what a beautiful brachypelma smithi” or “hey look at this huge theraphosa blondi”

OHHH, now I actually know which tarantulas you are referring to, before it was all just a guess as to which of many possibilities you were talking about. And also, the genus is capitalized.

But see if any one has heard of the white collared tarantula, I doubt they’ll say “o you mean the eupalaestrus weijenberghi”

And what if I asked someone about the white ringed tarantula? Thats a perfectly valid common name for a Eupalaestrus weijenberjhi. Just like if I asked you have you seen my pink toe tarantula? I can guarantee you that I'm not talking about an Avicularia avicularia, so have fun guessing which of the other 50 or so tarantulas in the Avicularia spp. it is.

NOBODY is going to say the scientic name. why? its because its like speaking a foreign language.

No, it is because they are not educated on the scientific names of tarantulas. Just like if you showed me a picture of a whale, I couldn't tell you if its a humpback whale, a blue whale, a sperm whale, or some other type of whale all together. Why? Not because I'm not using a common name, but because I just don't have any knowledge in my history on whales.

Thanks to all you ignoring the common names, and insisting on trying to be all official with your scientific mumbo jumbo, I and so many others have missed out on a great hobby/pet

I'm sorry that the words I say caused you to be oblivious to what tarantulas there are? I'll try and watch my language so you can expand your lifetime experiences. </sarcasm> You missed out on it because
1.) you just weren't exposed to it(this is the majority of people)
2.) you heard people saying scientific names and apparently that is too hard for you, no real point in being educated on something you're actually interested in

And look, here I am trying to learn and gather data for other commoners (in my thread, about egg sac size), and what happens? “don’t use the common names, you should try and use the scientific names, WHY!

Why? Because clearly nobody has any idea which tarantula you are talking about. If you had used a scientific name, then everyone would know exactly what tarantula it is and can give you an answer(unless since all a tarantula is to you is just "one big spider", they must all therefore just lay the same size and amount of eggs so there is no real reason to be specific about which one you want an answer for).

but its more important to learn and spread the common names first!

No, it's not. Anyone can use any common name they want for any tarantula, have fun remembering the 5 different names and their x amount of permutations for each tarantula

I highly doubt that you "T collectors" could know all these excessively long scientific names, but not the short memorable common names that go with them

Common names are often not memorable. As I said earlier, the majority are just a random combination of the tarantulas origin, one of their colors, and what body parts has the color. Not to mention that many common names can apply to more than one tarantula.

You people need to embrace the common names, for the prosperity of the hobby.

The hobby has grown extremely well without the use of common names, there is no need for them other than to cause confusion and be lazy.

I see you have very little interest. No worries, I wont be bothering you anymore.

+100

 

[PrimalTaunt]

Why not just drop all common names and just use scientific names....it would make thing a lot easier for all.

I think that would be a dream come true to many on these boards and myself included. Just think about it - no more, "I just bough this as a blahblahblah... what is it," threads! But that will never happen - the vast majority of pet stores cater to the lowest common denominator so they will only put some common name which is frequently one that nobody has heard of before or that they simply made up on the spot. It's just easier for them to sell something with a colorful name attached to it than a harder to pronounce scientific name.

 

[RyTheTGuy]

yeah, you might be right. but yes I really am. I love Ts, they interest me more then anything. I just don't see the point in having common names if they are frowned upon. Why not take them out and get rid of all this confusion.

 

[Motorkar]

TarantulaByte: You know, technally tarantula is not corrct common name for this genera? You know what is it called? Bird eater. First setlers that came to america saw this big spider who was eating a small huming brd and they called it bird eater. Tarantula was brought later in 19th century wich came with itallian emigration to the states. Tarantula is a species of a wolf spider wich origins is surrounding the town of Taranto in Italy. Here it is:

Not to mantion we in europe, asia and in australia use word bird eater, africans call them baboon spiders. But we never use common names, we always use scientific names, thats becouse we don't have comon names. Thats something strictly america and canada related and I think its just to confuse people. Its just like I would call some spider A lunatic Orange bafoon spider of death. I bet you wouldn't know wich spider is that, now would you?;P

 

[RyTheTGuy]

Im pretty sure you are talking about a P. murinus, but thats just a guess.

 

[Motorkar]

Im pretty sure you are talking about a P. murinus, but thats just a guess.

Nope, I meant B. smithi. I guess I made the point.;P

 

[Rue]

...since I'm nit-picking...

There IS a list (or two ;P) of 'approved' common names - problem is no one wants to follow the list consistantly enough to make it as useful as scientfic names are.

 

[High_Rolling_T]

Not to mantion we in europe, asia and in australia use word bird eater, africans call them baboon spiders.

Actually, in Asia they are known as earth tigers and Austrailia as whistling spiders.

But we never use common names, we always use scientific names, thats becouse we don't have comon names.

Lucky

Its just like I would call some spider A lunatic Orange bafoon spider of death. I bet you wouldn't know wich spider is that, now would you?;P

Come on now, any reference to an orange angry spider in this hobby is universal

 

[Croaton]

i was going to say this in my newly created thread "what species lay the most eggs" only because someone gave me crap about using "common names"...the same happened on the other forum that i posted the same question about egg sac size. my question was totally ignored, but insead im told to call them by their scientific names...


As far as the scientific names….here is my opinion about their usage. Thanks to all of you, that insist on using these extremely long and hard to pronounce names, the tatarntula & hobby is very unknown throughout the world.
Think about it, do dogs have strange scientific names? And if they do, how many people would be able to name the breeds off hand, or spell, or pronounce. Very few im sure. But look at how popular dogs are throughout the world, and how many people have pretty basic knowledge of most dog breeds. Or lets look at snakes, if you were to ask people at random, name 3 popular types of snakes. What would they say? Python, boa, anaconda, rattler, gartner? Or would they say some crazy scientific names, like regis, imperator, eunectes, crotalus, columbrid.
Twenty years ago, if you would have asked me what a tarantula was, I would have said a very big spider. While not having any clue, that there was close to 800 different tarantula species. If you asked ten people at random today, “name a type of tarantula” you’d be lucky if one person knew their was more than one type. Why is this? Its because you people don’t use the common names. Ive never heard anyone talk about common names of tarantulas, up until six months ago when I started to research the purchase of T's. To me and most others, a tarantula is just a tarantula. Just a big spider. Im sure if there common names were used more frequently in the past, I would have heard of all the different species years ago. “wow look! A Mexican red knee” or “o-my god, look how big that goliath bird eater is” do you really think the average person is going to want to memorize all these scientific names? “hey look, what a beautiful brachypelma smithi” or “hey look at this huge theraphosa blondi” and those are the easier ones to say. But see if any one has heard of the white collared tarantula, I doubt they’ll say “o you mean the eupalaestrus weijenberghi”
now if you went out on to the streets, and asked people to name a type of spider, what would they say? tarantula, black widow, daddy long leg? NOBODY is going to say the scientic name. why? its because its like speaking a foreign language.
Thanks to all you ignoring the common names, and insisting on trying to be all official with your scientific mumbo jumbo, I and so many others have missed out on a great hobby/pet.
And look, here I am trying to learn and gather data for other commoners (in my thread, about egg sac size), and what happens? “don’t use the common names, you should try and use the scientific names, WHY! so the hobby continues to stay a secret to the rest of the world. “here, we speak in code”…”we don’t use common words”…“get with the program!” its very irritating when i think about it. i mean dont get me wrong, its good to know the scientific names, but its more important to learn and spread the common names first!

I highly doubt that you "T collectors" could know all these excessively long scientific names, but not the short memorable common names that go with them. You people need to embrace the common names, for the prosperity of the hobby.

LOL... wow... this sort of stupidity amazes me... I think the others have said more than enough about it though.

As for the use of common names... it bugs me as well... I hate going into a LPS and seeing T's labelled with common names. I don't know about you but I don't feel comfortable paying for something without knowing exactly what it is, what the proper price range should be, and how I am going to need to care for it!

When people use common names it immediately gives me the feeling that they really have no idea what they are talking about and have done no research on the specimen they have... personally I would never deal with them for those reasons.

Use of the scientific names makes everything so much more black and white. No confusion, no guessing, and proper information being shared.

 

[Mez]

Another thing I want to add as a benefit. If I know an animal's binomial name I often know a variety of things about that species to give me a base knowledge and some insight to its care, behavior, etc. In no way am I saying that knowing the genus is like a care sheet, but it gives knowledge to base off of. Usually I can pretty quickly tell if it is communal, arboreal/terrestrial, what region it is found, likely approximate size, and even likely temperament.

This +1. This has helped me so much in other things, especially aquatics, when we used to get shipments of new undescribed species, immediately able to 'put' the animal somewhere in your head and know that it comes from here, is similar to X species etc. It's just a great base to have IMO.

 

[Hatr3d]

TarantulaByte: You know, technally tarantula is not corrct common name for this genera? You know what is it called? Bird eater. First setlers that came to america saw this big spider who was eating a small huming brd and they called it bird eater. Tarantula was brought later in 19th century wich came with itallian emigration to the states. Tarantula is a species of a wolf spider wich origins is surrounding the town of Taranto in Italy.

Lycosa tarentula to be exact. Awesome spider, can be found especially in the south of italy, where I live. I'm always out to find them when the right time is near.

btw I don't think that's a L. tarentula in your pic, more like an Hogna species. They're pretty similar anyway.

 

[Rue]

There are different levels to any hobby. We may take enjoyment from some or all of it.

If you only have one T, and don't care about scientific names. That's fine.

If you find the scientfic names and naming process interesting and useful...that's also fine.

I chose my 3 species of T's primarily as pets, and secondly so I can learn a bit about their biologies...what's the same, what's different, etc., up front and personal. I have no interest in collecting all 900 + species of them or breeding them. But I certainly don't expect everyone in the T hobby to have my exact interests either...why would I?

 

[zonbonzovi]

Ry- just wanted to say, I thought it was a perfectly valid question & there ain't nothin' wrong with asking. The search goon squad may disagree, but that is the nature of the forum beast & their intellectual gauntlet running.

Missouri- you have a tough row to hoe, chief. My suggestion, if you should happen to take it to heart, is to do a little more reading/listening & a lot less lip flappin'...or...not, in which case, Branson awaits! Say hi to Yakov for me.

 

[Formerphobe]

..if everyone uses the scientific names wouldn't that also make it the more commonly used name, right?

Yes. And that is what the hobby is aiming at, commonly used scientific names that can be understood internationally with little to no confusion about which species is being discussed, bred, sold, etc.

 

[Croaton]

...

Get a fish if this is your mindset... as for the rest of the world, if they are as ignorant and uneducated as you are, I hope they do the same!

If Tarantulas or any other living animal is going to be kept in captivity then I really hope there is a group of "nerds" to care for them properly.