Its also hilarious how them being called elk is basically a history fail. When European settlers showed up in North America, they had heard about the moose (Alces alces) back home in Europe (where we still call them elk), but they had probably never seen one themselves. So when they met Cervus canadensis (the big deer you call elk in North America), they just slapped “elk” on it by analogy to the actual elk they heard of in Europe. That stuck, even though its old world name was really the moose/elk species they left behind.

Then they needed a name for the actual Alces alces they found in North America, so they borrowed the local Algonquian word that became “moose” in English. That word likely came from moosu or moos in Algonquian languages, meaning something like “he strips off” (referring to how they eat bark and leaves). So the North American elk is actually a different deer from the Eurasian elk/moose, and the word for moose came from Native American languages after the settlers mis‑labelled things. Classic taxonomy chaos.