According to Reynolds and Sjodahl, before one jumps too quickly to premature conclusions about the actual animals in the Promised Land, they should keep in mind that Nephi was a Hebrew, and the expression of his thoughts, naturally, conformed to the idioms of his mother tongue. The Hebrews did not always classify objects as we do. For instance, observing that the animal we call a "horse" had a peculiar way of "leaping" or galloping, they gave him a name expressive of that characteristic and called him sus, from a root, meaning "to leap." The horse was a "leaper." But presently they noticed the flight of a certain bird and fancied there was some resemblance between that mode of traveling and the leaping of a horse. Then they called the bird also sus or sis, and the swallow, as far as the name was concerned, was put in one class with the horse. For the same reason of classification a moth was called sas from the same root as the horse and the swallow. Again, they had at least six words for "ox." One of them was aluph, from a root meaning to be "tame," "gentle." It was used for both "ox" and "cow," because either could be "tame." For the same reason it might mean a "friend," and sometimes it meant the "head" of a family, or a tribe. Another word for "ox" was teo, translated "wild ox" on account of its swiftness, but the word also stands for a species of gazelle.
The enumeration by Nephi of "cow" and "ox," "ass," and "horse," "goat" and "wild goat," and all manner of "wild animals," meaning the strange specimens met with in the New World, conforms strictly to what might be expected of Hebrew. The passage, therefore, as has already been said, is a strong proof of the truth of the record.
This method of naming strange objects was not confined to the Hebrews alone. It seems that all people entering a strange land adopted the same practice.
When the English first came to America, they found the aborigines growing and cultivating a strange plant which they had never seen before. It resembled, most closely, a plant familiar to them, which was corn. Now corn to them is what we, in America, call wheat, but it was not (wheat) corn, it was a plant indigenous to America. However, we would not think their historian false, let alone a liar, when he says that they found the Indians growing corn. This same procedure was characteristic of the Scandinavians and of other races. [George Reynolds and Janne M. Sjodahl, Commentary on the Book of Mormon, Vol. 1, pp. 191-192]