I am fully hearing, though recently I have gotten into asl.
One thing that I have wondered ever since I was young, though: do deaf biologists have to fingerspell animals’ scientific names? I know asl doesn’t have widely recognized signs for some more specific things (like, you have common signs for “bird,” “goose,” “chicken,” but not “canary”) and I assume that’s similar in other sign languages, but I imagine a deaf insect biologist fingerspelling “armadillidium granulatam” when talking about roly polys would get incredibly annoyed after their second or third time.
So, is there a widely-known-but-only-in-the-deaf-biologist-community set of signed scientific names? Are there ever enough deaf biologists working together for this to come up? If there aren’t, what do deaf biologists do? If you don’t speak the name aloud, do you really have to fingerspell it or write it down or finagle a bunch of common signs together until you get your point across each time?
If there is a set of signed scientific names, do they vary from sign language to sign language, or are they used by all deaf biologists, like how all hearing scientists around the world all use the same Latin names?
This same question applies to deaf chemists with chemical formulas & deaf geologists with specific rock names and literally any deaf scientist in any science field.
I don’t know if i explained myself well but this is not a jokey or rhetorical post if you are deaf and/or a scientist or you know a deaf scientist or are connected to any of these things in any way I am very curious :)


















