Wyoming resident here. We actually do have a “zombie moose” problem and its persistence is in part due to a lack of wolves. No, I am not kidding.
Fuck I didn’t know moose and elk were susceptible to cwd
Not your state, but this dummy… https://www.cpr.org/2024/04/30/boebert-bill-to-remove-grey-wolf-from-endangered-species-list-passes-house/
I like the thought that just like goose and geese the plural of moose should respectively be meese.
Agreed.
Following the same logic: if the plural of ox is oxen, the plural of fox is foxen.
Now I feel like the marketing department for the fashion industry back in the sixties missed an opportunity. It could’ve been a foxen coat or a foxen wrap.
The plural of grass should be grease.
Analogy is one of the strongest factors in language change
Actuallyyy…
Goose comes from Old English, where they pluralized [go:s] (think “goes” with a soft S) by adding [iz] (like “ease”).
When saying [go:siz], it was kinda hard for the mouth to switch the vowels from the [o] to the [i] quickly, so to save themselves the trouble, they’d change the first vowel to make it a little more similar to the second, so [go:siz] became [ge:siz].
Then, that was too long, so they dropped the [z]. [ge:si] (think “guessy” but the “e” lasts a bit longer than usual).
Then, that was too long, so they dropped the [i]. [ge:s] (“guess” with that same drawn out “e”).
📯It’s the Great Vowel Shift!📯 Now, [go:s] and [ge:s] become [gu:s] and [gi:s]. Almost there!
The vowels become a tad short over time, and now, you have [gus] and [gis] which are written “goose” and “geese”.
But “MOOSE”? That’s Algonquin. It has nothing to do with all that noise. “But they sound the same and are written the same?!” So? Haven’t you heard? English orthography is a dumpster fire. Nobody knows what they’re doing. Not even the words.
What’s this Great Shift of Vowels?
The reason why English sounds so different from its relatives like Dutch and German.
Two words on completely different paths, probably headed in completely different directions, but then they smashed together and because they sound similar, one could end up inheriting the evolution of the other.
Yup. That phenomenon is called “analogical change”. The opposite happens too though! For example, “person” and “parson”.
Cat: I have 9 lives!
That moose: PatheticA Møøse once bit my sister…
What’s up with these percentages? How could these possibly be known? You would have to know how much the animal weighed before hand and have control over a lot of variables.
And they cited Reddit…
[more citations needed]
A møøse once bit my sister.
She was carving her initials øn it
I am struggling to imagine a lone wolf killing an adult moose. A juvenile or elderly/sick one maybe. Unless it managed to hamstring it real early on it just seems implausible
A wolf is a lot bigger than you think, also, they have greater agility over a moose id reckon
Sure, but moosen are like 15 foot tall multi ton kaiju with bone spikes and an attitude problem. Ive been to wolf sanctuaries and I understand wolf size, but it’s not in the same league
TIL there is a Highlander moose and one brave wolf keeping it at bay.
Attack of the Zombie Moose, truly a Canadian horror story.
On the other hand: one wolf gets half a moose, six wolves each get 14% of a moose.
Zombie moose scary…