ooh, that's clever. You'd have to accept semi and hemi as number references (i.e. half) but if so then it works. I was trying to work something out from the common names, given that Gentle Lemur seems to have deliberately used the number 6 rather than the word six in two of the names, and both the 6 animals are right next to southern animals. And I figured Malayan Angelfish was also a deliberate name-choice, perhaps connecting to Asian Wild Ass (as opposed to him using Onager). But I couldn't make any further connections...
I have worked out an answer. It is almost certainly not the correct answer. If all the numbers in the animals' specific names are added up, they come to 40. The answer, by my reckoning, should be an animal with the number 40 in the specific name, in either Latin or Greek. So I submit the Forty-spotted Pardalote Pardalotus quadragintus as the answer to the riddle.
You are inferring connections that I was not intending. I have always preferred the name Malayan angelfish to the options you suggested previously and, as I said that subspecies were not relevant, Asian wild ass seemed preferable to onager or any of the others. I would be very interested to know why . . . because I can't see any logical connection
I was trying to work out a relation between numbers and letters. So the numbers in order of your photos ran 4, 6, 0.5, 0.5, 6, 1,10, 1, 9 and 2 (treating the semi and hemi both as "half"). Obviously there's no 0.5 of a letter, so those two would have to be combined to make 1. So if I combined each pair of numbers the 4 and 6 made 10 (corresponding to the letter J), 0.5 and 0.5 made 1 (for A), 6 and 1 made 7 (for G). I could get to U with the next pair of numbers but only by fudging a little. Then I couldn't find a way to get to A again.
Not that I know of Actually I don't know of any animal that meets your criterion, so it can't be what I had in mind.
I think I was confused by your answer. Was I correct only in the sense that I had said my answer was almost certainly not correct? Or was my reasoning correct (i.e. adding the numbers up to forty) but not the actual answer I came up with?
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I do notice that there are several "paired" names in the selection. There's tetradactyla and monodactylus; sexlineatus and decemlineatus; unicornis and bicornis. Then there's semitorques and hemionus which pair in a different way to the above three pairings. But then the remaining two don't connect with one another, hexazona and novemradiatus. I thought the first three examples were interesting enough to possibly form connections though.
My answer was meant to be enigmatic, if not actually confusing. You made an error in one step of your reasoning, falling into a trap that I had set (rather to my surprise). There are other ways in which names can be paired
Time for 2 clues. I think Chlidonias fell into the rhino trap. Finding the answer requires Deep Thought
Is it the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, then? I had deliberately disregarded the di- in the rhino's generic name because it was the only generic name with a number in it.
Except for Monodactylus I originally had the idea from Octopus, but who can identify Octopus species? I was hoping to fit Tetraceros quadricornis in too, but I only have photos of females and young animals which are just too hard to identify. So the answer is 42 - a little tribute to the late Douglas Adams and the days when men were real men, women were real women and small, furry creatures from Alpha-Centauri were real small, furry creatures from Alpha-Centauri
Just to show the full solution (as my maths teachers taught me to do many years ago). 1 southern tamandua Tamandua tetradactyla 4 2 6 banded barb Desmopuntius hexazona 6 3 collared finchbill Spizixos semitorques ½ 4 Asian wild ass Equus hemionus ½ 5 6 lined grass lizard Takydromus sexlineatus 6 6 southern helmeted curassow Pauxi unicolor 1 7 narrow-striped mongoose Mungotictis decemlineata 10 8 Malayan angelfish Monodactylus argenteus 1 9 Pearse's mudskipper Periophthalmus novemradiatus 9 10 black rhino Diceros bicornis 2 + 2 Total = 42 QEDCogratulations to Chlidonias for the final answer, to Al for spotting the common factor and to lintworm and bongorob for doing the heavy lifting on the species identification.
