Animal names for tanks

I was reading a book about German armoured vehicles of the WWII era and was struck by the rather whimsical use of animal names, especially cats and insects.  Some, like the Panther and Tiger tanks are well known but some others are more obscure and I shall list them here.  I have not bothered with umlauts, I hope you will forgive me.

For example, other tanks (experimental or unbuilt, by and large) included the Lowe (Lion) heavy tank, the Maus (mouse) super-heavy tank, the Leopard light tank (not to be confused with the contemporary German main battle tank of the same name) and the Wanze (bug) one-man tank.  There were numerous self-propelled guns including the Wespe (wasp), Grille (cricket), Heuschrecke (grasshopper), Elefant, Hornisse/Nashorn (hornet/rhino), Hummel (bumble bee) and Brummbar (grizzly bear).

There was an experimental amphibious vehicle called the Ente (duck), miscellaneous recon/APC vehicles like the Luchs (lynx), Maultier (mule), Puma, Katzchen (kitten), Falke (falcon), Schildkrote (turtle), UHU (eagle owl) and anti-tank or anti-aircraft vehicles like Marder (marten), Gepard (cheetah, again, not to be confused with...) and Coelian (a legendary monster, referring to a converted Panther tank).

Anti-aircraft guns in particular were often given eccentric or dramatically lyrical names:  converted tanks carrying AA guns were known as Mobelwagen (removal vans), while more adavanced AA vehicles became Wirbelwind (whirlwind), Ostwind (east wind) and Kugelblitz (ball lightning).

My absolute favourite name was for a prototype heavy tank destroyer called Sturer Emil, stubborn Emil.

By comparison, the allies in WWII often (but not always) used rather prosaic names if they went beyond simple model numbers at all.   British tanks usually have "C" names like Covenanter, Crusader, Comet, Cromwell, Churchill, and the more modern Centurion, Conqueror, Chieftain and Challenger, although informality and eccentricity did creep in occasionally, tanks converted to APC's were called Kangaroos, Valentine tanks were so named because their design was initiated on 14th February, M7 Priest SP guns were so called because of their pulpit-like machine gun mount, an unofficial ecclesiastical naming system being established which led to later SP guns like Bishop, Sexton and Abbot.  American vehicles were named, unofficially at first and often by export customers, after famous soldiers (mostly generals), Lee, Grant, Stuart, Chaffee, Sherman, Pershing, a tradition continued to this day (Walker, Ridgeway, Patton, Abrams, Bradley, Stryker) and taken up by other countries, e.g. the French LeClerc.

Tanks and armoured vehicles are bad things that are designed to kill people, plain and simple, but some that conceived them had poetry in their souls.