The fisher is the largest species of marten. Some males can weigh as much as 20 pounds. However, it has the most confusing name. It is a large arboreal weasel that almost never eats fish. Its main prey items include squirrels and, most famously, porcupines.
But how did an animal of the forest get such a strange name?
Two theories have been posited about the origins of this name.
One is that the animal gets its name for the trade name for its fur. The French fur-trappers sold the fur of this animal as European polecat fur. (A European polecat is a wild ferret, not a skunk. How skunks became known as polecats in this country is something for which I have no answer.) The French word for a polecat pelt is fichet or ficheux.
The other theory is posited in Farley Mowat’s Sea of Slaughter. He argues that the fisher got its name because it was confused with another mustelid that really did live on fish.
As you may be aware, there were once two species of mink in North America. These were the only “true mink” species in the world. The so-called European mink is actually a semi-aquatic polecat, which can hybridize with both European polecats and domestic ferrets. Today, we have only a single species of true mink. This species is best referred to as the American mink.
It is a commonly fur-farmed species, which comes in many different colors in captivity. In the wild, it always chocolate-brown or black in color. This mink species has been introduced to Europe, both intentionally and unintentionally, and it has largely taken over much of the European mink’s habitat.
The other species of true mink was the sea mink. We call it the sea mink today, because we recognize that it is relative of the American mink. However, during the early days of settlement on the New England coast and the Maritimes, the species was called lots of things. Sir Humphrey Gilbert called it a “fyshe like a greyhound.” In those days, all creatures of the sea were called fish. Several descriptions of this animal suggest that it was gracile in build, even referring to them as being like Italian greyhounds. It was also reddish in color when compared to the other mink.
The animal had several names. In New England, it was called the fisher cat. In the Maritimes, it was called the water marten. No one, it seemed, connected it to the other mink species.
When settlement moved from the coast into the interior, Mowat argues, they came across another similarly built animal in the forest, and not being the best zoologists or taxonomists, assumed that the large tree marten was the same species as the coastal animal.
So the fisher is a horribly misnamed animal, and if Mowat is correct, our ignorance of zoology is to blame for the misnomer. The reason why I think Mowat might be a little more accurate is the reference in the old literature of a “water marten” for the sea mink. The fisher is obviously a marten, and very gracile mink could be thought of as a marten.
Nope, fishers don’t fish. They are very arboreal, not water loving, and often coyotes get blamed especially when cats disappear. It’s most likely a fisher who killed Kitty.
Nor does it surprise me that the English settlers to Eastern NA got the names of the animals they encountered wrong. While they did call Alces alces by a corruption of it’s Indian name “Moose”, they then went on to refer to our subspecies of Red Deer as Elk, the name for moose in northern Europe. And our common Robin, Turdus migratorus? They named it after the English Robin who isn’t even a close relative. Our robins are closely related to the European Blackbird, Turdus merula of baked in a pie fame. Our blackbirds aren’t related at all.
Nope, taxonomy wasn’t their strong suit.
And what about calling Bison buffalo?
There is a European bison, called a Wisent. It is quite rare now, but when people were settling here, they surely would’ve known what one was. They nearly disappeared because of their superior leather.
They are nothing like the African buffalo or any of the Asian buffaloes.
The reason why they got the same name is because their tough hides were sold as “buffle-skin.” If they were both tough-skinned and like a cow, they had to be the same species. Futher, we all knew that North America was Asia, so it had to have the same species.
If you’ve ever seen a blackbird, they look almost exactly like our robins, just a different color.
The Puritans, at least, were more of the mindset that they were playing Adam and naming the new creatures in their new Eden. Not much interest in proper taxonomy, I don’t think.
I wonder how robin would taste baked in a pie? I quite like that Moroccan dish, bisteeya, but I have only had it made with chicken. I expect it would be very tasty made with dove.
The ‘woodchuck’ (Vermont) answer to the term “fisher cat” would be that those critters are always fishing for cats.
We also have the beefalo, for silly names. I prefer bison to most hamburger myself. And then there is water buffalo, with its lovely mozzarella & yogurt.