If you want to find out what a female dog is called then you’ve come to the right article.
As, in this article, you’ll find the answer to the main question, and after you’ve read the answer to the main question then I’ll also cover the answers to a few more closely related questions.
I hope you learn a lot from this article!
What Is A Female Dog Called?
A female member of the subspecies of Canis lupus, or domesticated dog, is called a bitch.
The term “dog” refers to both the female and a male member of the species, while “bitch” is used to refer only to female members.
When a bitch gives birth, she is said to be the dam of her puppies.
Dogs were the first animals to be domesticated by humans.
It is estimated that the domestication process began over 15,000 years ago.
The earliest domesticated dogs were from a now-extinct variety of the gray wolf, and they probably became tamed as a result of scavenging from the waste areas near human settlements, eventually coming to rely on humans to provide them with food.
As a result of selective breeding over thousands of years, there are now more than 800 breeds of dogs.
Because dogs are a subspecies derived from a now-extinct variety of wolves, present-day, or extant, wolves remain their closest evolutionary relatives.
In addition to dogs, female foxes and wolves are also sometimes referred to as bitches, though the term “vixen” is the term most commonly applied to a female fox.
Both “bitch” and “vixen” are also metaphorically applied as derogatory terms to people, usually women.
What Is A Female Dog Called in English?
In English, a female dog is referred to as a bitch, while a male dog is simply called a dog.
The term “bitch” was derived from the Old English word, bicce, which etymologists (people who study the origin of words) believe was in turn adapted from the Old Norse word, “bikkja”.
Both of these ancient words are the equivalent of “she-dog,” or “female dog” in modern English.
The use of “bitch” as a derogatory term that is applied metaphorically to a person is derived from this literal meaning.
The term “dog” itself has a largely unknown origin.
Etymologists have identified the use of the Old English docga to refer to a large canine, but the exact origins and how it came to refer to domesticated canines, in general, have been lost to history.
What Is A Female Dog Called in German?
The German term for a female dog is “Hündin”.
It is the direct equivalent of the English “bitch” or “she-dog”.
When speaking about a female dog, you would say “die Hündin”.
By contrast, when speaking about a male dog, you would say “der Hund”, or “der Rüde”.
What Is A Female Dog Called in Spanish?
The Spanish translation of “a female dog” is “un perro hembra”.
The word hembra, which means “female”, qualifies as “perro”, which is the Spanish equivalent of the English word “dog”.
As with the English term “dog”, the etymology of perro is unclear.
It may have been derived from the name given to a specific breed of hunting dog from Persia.
According to this theory, the term eventually was applied to other domesticated dogs.
What Is A Female Dog Called in French?
In French, a female dog, or bitch, is referred to as “une chienne”.
This is the feminine form of the word, whereas chien is the masculine form.
Like the English word “canine”, the French word “chien” is derived from the Latin term “canis”.
What is a scientific name for a female dog?
Within the scientific naming system known as binomial nomenclature, no distinction is made between males and females of species.
Put another way, both males and females are included under the scientific species name.
The scientific name for the subspecies of wolves that we call dogs is Canis lupus familiaris.
While the term “bitch” is the traditional term for a female dog, it continues to be used by dog breeders even though it is not a scientific term.
In scientific jargon, a female dog would simply be referred to as “a female Canis lupus familiaris”.
Under the conventions of binomial nomenclature, the first part of a species name indicates the genus it belongs to while the second expresses the specific name given to the species.
So, “Canis lupus” indicates that gray wolves (lupus) are within the genus Canis.
Since dogs are a subspecies of gray wolves, their scientific name includes a third word, or qualifier, which designates their subspecies: familiaris.
Sometimes, writers treat dogs as a species, rather than a subspecies.
In such cases, they refer to dogs as Canis familiaris.
Check out the video below if you want to find out the scientific names of the most common animals.
What is a male dog called?
The word “dog” is both the common name for the subspecies Canis lupus familiaris as well as a male member of the subspecies.
The common name for female dogs, by contrast, is “bitch”.
When a dog is used to breed, he is referred to as a stud and he is said to be the sire of his puppies.
The female parent, or bitch, is called the puppies’ dam.
Neither “dog”, “bitch”, “sire”, nor “dam”, are considered scientific names.
In formal scientific writing, both males and females of the subspecies are referred to as Canis lupus familiaris, and the different sexes are simply denoted by using “male”, and “female”.
The use of “dog” as the common term for both a male Canis lupus familiaris and the species (or subspecies) mirrors a broader tradition in which the males of almost every species were taken to be paradigmatic specimens whereas females were viewed as inferior versions of the male.
