More animal names, European languages version

I have comments people emailed me about my woodpecker post, and I thought I'd share.

My grandfather sent me the following email:

Woodpecker in Italian is il picchio and you can add the color behind to be more specific.

In Spanish Pacjaro and the a has a tick over it over it. It also means a nitwit or dummy. also called carpinterpo meaning carpenter

Pic in French

[German] der specht or buntspetch bunt is color

Now to try to understand how each derivation of the word for this bird in each language?

Maggie sent me an email that included the following word:

Smushers!!!!

But I have no idea which animal this is about.

Today I learned from Dictionary.com's word of the day e-mail that the word capricious is partially derived from the Italian word riccio, meaning hedgehog:

Capricious comes, via French, from Italian capriccio, a shivering, a shudder, finally (influenced by Italiancapra, goat) a whim, from capo, head (from Latin caput) + riccio, hedgehog (from Latin ericius). The basic idea is that of a head with hair standing on end, like the spines of a hedgehog.

This reminded me about the famous Soviet-era cartoon Hedgehog in the Fog. Continuing with the theme of this post, the Russian word for hedgehog is ëж, which is a common word for beginning Russian students to learn as it is a short word demonstrating the umlatted e. Perhaps it is also taught because of the popularity of the film? I'll have to find this film in the "public domain." It even has a Chrome theme.

Finally, the Turkish word for hedgehog is kirpi, from the same root kirpik, eyelash. Cuute! Our English word is from Middle English, and comes from what you think it does, hedge and hog. A hog in the hedge? Not so cute, at least in modern English. I've also just learned while looking up this etymology that there exists an adjective: hedgehoggy. The more you know...