Why aren't common names useful to scientists for identifying a particular organism?

There's different problems.





The Maned Wolf is not wolf or fox. The American Pronghorn (antelope) is not an antelope or related to any animal.





Then there's how many mice, shrews, flies... I remember someone on here asked how often a shrew has to eat. I pointed out that some shrews have to eat almost constantly while other shrews have to eat every few hours, it depends on the species. To them, a shrew is a shrew is a shrew.

Why aren't common names useful to scientists for identifying a particular organism?
Different languages are spoken throughout the world. Using a set universal name, every scientist will be able to compare data efficiently. Not only that, but the scientific name holds a lot of information about the organism. It can tell you what other organisms it is connected.
Reply:A common name is non-specific.





Scientific names are used for taxonomy purposes, to classify the animal. Without the scientific name, you don't know what family, genus, etc...the animal belongs to.
Reply:because a common name usually refers multiple species of a given genre





i.e. Cats...there are many different types of cats, however we call all of them CATS, where as the scientific name defines the particular species of cat.
Reply:Because they vary so much. Bird have standard common names, I supposed because of the high-quality field guides that are widely available. Most plants and animals are known by many local names.
Reply:They are not common


They don't like using common names for anything


I don't know why and I don't even care!