Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Beaver; muskrat
The muskrat, on the other hand, is a native of North America. Far from being highly destructive and
a carrier of disease, it's of great benefit to many forms of wildlife and of considerable value to humans.
This interesting midsized rodent deserves to be more widely recognized and appreciated.
Even those who recognize the muskrat and don't confuse it with the common rat often tend to think
of it as a sort of junior edition of the beaver. In fact, the muskrat is very much its own man, so to
speak—related to neither Norway rat nor beaver except by virtue of belonging to the order Rodentia.
This order, incidentally, comprising some three thousand species worldwide, is the largest of all mam-
malian orders.
Despite some similarities to beavers in such things as appearance and habitat, muskrats are far more
closely related to voles, those plump little short-tailed rodents that most of us call meadow mice. It's
not stretching things much to say that the muskrat is a very large, aquatic vole, and some scientists have
actually described it in that fashion.
The origin of the muskrat's name itself is fascinating. We might reasonably deduce that it derives
from a combination of the muskrat's long, naked tail and the slightly musky odor produced by its scent
glands—but we would be wrong! Rather, the name is the product of a peculiar twist of language called
folk etymology.
Etymology is the study of word derivations, and folk etymology is the modification of an unfamiliar
word by incorrect usage into something with more familiar elements. Although European settlers oc-
casionally adopted—usually in somewhat corrupted form—Native American names for creatures with
which they were unfamiliar, they tried to avoid that practice wherever possible. Their avoidance took
the path either of naming a North American creature for something at least vaguely similar from
Europe, or of using folk etymology to transform the name into something “sensible.”
In the present instance, the name of this little marsh-dwelling rodent was originally
musquash
in
the Algonquian language. That name made little sense to the colonists, who observed that this creature
