• pedz@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    In French they are all butterflies (papillons). There once was a distinction between butterflies and night butterflies (moths) but apparently it’s now obsolete and they are just all lepidoptera.

    • Diddlydee@feddit.uk
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      3 months ago

      That seems crazy. All butterflies come from moths, so it’d make more sense for Papillon to mean moth. It’s like calling everything from the order Rodentia a Capybara, or everything in Eulipotyphla a hedgehog, both things within those orders in smaller numbers.

      • Kichae@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        Weirdly enough, language largelt evolves independently from other species.