It’s all fun and games until the firegull nation attacks.

I’ve seen many seagulls in my life.

But I’ve never seen any of the others.

And that’s terrifying. Stay vigilant.

In light of the above, then, I hereby propose that squirrels get renamed to “treegulls.”

If there are armadillos, where are the legadillos?

You have to go pretty far back (to proto-Celtic, it looks like) to find a linguistic ancestor for the word “gull” that doesn’t just mean “that specific bird.”

But in proto-Celtic, it looks like “weilanna” probably meant “wailer.” As in, “one who wails,” though we don’t know exactly what the suffix “-anna” means. A similar word in that language would’ve been “wailos,” which even though it sounds similar seems to have been unrelated to our modern term “wolf,” as it comes from a different proto-indo-european root.

Anyway, the word “gull” does refer to the sounds that it makes more than anything else. So in figuring out what a landgull, airgull, and firegull might be, we need to find something noisy. Or just something annoying, given the derisive connotation of “wail.”

Edit: This is, of course, assuming that we’re looking for different existing types of animals to be these creatures, rather than just (for instance) creating new, elemental forms of gulls; or “reskinning” seagulls with different elements; or inventing all-new animals to fill those roles.

Captain Planet Gull: “Give me those chips and I’ll poop on you!”

You: “… don’t you mean ‘or’ you will poop on me, not ‘and’?”

Captain Planet Gull: …

You: …

I think a “landgull” would just be a pigeon

That’s if it’s specifying aquatic vs other elemental gulls. Perhaps it’s specifying what type of body of water it’s from instead. That’d imply oceangulls, rivergulls, bagels, pondgulls, lakegulls, etc

It’s Called seagull

It flies

With that logic, firegull are penguins.

Wrong.

Seagulls imply the existence of Rivergulls, Lakegulls, Mountiangulls, Desertgulls, Forestgulls, Plaingulls, Valleygulls, Hillgulls, etc.

Bay-gull. Bagel.