phalanger

borrowed from New Latin, genus name, borrowed from French, from phalange phalange + -er -er entry 2

Note: The French name was introduced by buffon in Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi, tome treizième (Paris, 1765), p. 94. The coinage alludes to the partial syndactyly of two digits of the hind foot: "Je lui donne le nom de Phalanger, parce qu'il a dans quelques phalanges des doigts un caractère fort étrange et qui lui est particulier; le premier & le second doigt des pieds de derrière sont presqu'entièrement réunis ensemble sous la peau, ils ne sont séparé l'un de l'autre que par la dernière phalange." ("I am giving it the name Phalanger, because several phalanges of the digits are of a quite strange nature, which is peculiar to it; the first and second digits of the rear feet are almost entirely joined together under the skin, they are separated from each other only along the last phalange.") The female animal in Buffon's illustration has been identified as Phalanger orientalis (plate 10), the male as Spilocuscus maculatus (plate 11). (See J.E. Gray, "Observations on the Genus Cuscus, with the Description of a New Species," Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, part 26 [1858], pp. 100-05.) Buffon believed that the specimens he described and illustrated were sent to him from Surinam, which is hardly possible unless that colony was one stop on a long voyage. Buffon's French word was turned into a Latin genus name by Gottlieb Conrad Storr in Prodromus methodi mammalium (Tübingen, 1780), p. 33.