👉 Okay, let’s tackle this wonderfully prickly beast of a word! Now, the wonderfully verbose entomologists and naturalists haven’t quite agreed on a formal, pretty-sounding definition for, let's just say…the delightfully awkward "striped tailed." Essentially, we, as reasonably observant humans (mysavings we aren’t entirely reasonable observers), describe something as “striped tailed" when it possesses the rather unfortunate characteristic of sporting a frankly aggressive and somewhat haphazard arrangement of stripes paired with... you guessed it! A tail.
Frankly, there isn't an enshrined scientific classification for this state. You won't find a textbook shouting about the glorious diversity of the "striped tailed clade." Instead, we simply
notice
that something looks like a badger wearing a very confused Jackson Pollock, and then add the appendage. The stripes themselves can vary dramatically; some are bold and jaunty, others are so faint you practically need to squint, and there's a frankly disturbing amount of haphazardness in their placement – it honestly feels as if a toddler with a paintbrush was let loose on a badger.
Let me be clear: the term itself is a little…lurid. It just
sounds
vaguely unsettling, which, I suspect, is exactly what some undiscovered amphibian or bizarre beetle has been banking on all along.
Now, here’s an unsettlingly specific example sentence to really get you feeling that "striped tailed vibe.
—