Zebra, toucan, pelican, puffin? I speak English, and I have no idea what this page is talking about.
OK, a Zebra crossing was so named because of the black and white stripes marking it. Then came the Pelicon (PEdestrian LIght CONtrolled) crossing. This crossing was one where the pedestrian pressed a button to indicate a desire to cross, and the lights for the traffic would change in order to allow the pedestrian to cross. Because of the homophonous nature of the word to pelican, plus the fact that it, like the zebra, was an animal, the name has changed over time to be "pelican". Then, with the growth of bicycle lanes, there came the Toucan crossing (because Two Can cross the motoro traffic - both pedestrians and cyclists), and an improvement in traffic/people detection abilities resulted in the Puffin - the Pedestrian User Friendly Intelligent crossing. Here, the use is much the same as the pelican, but it was redesigned to improve visibility to the pedestrian of their signals to let them know it's safe to cross, and also has detectors to allow the pedestrian phase to be extended if there's lots of them, or to cancel the request if the pedestrian has moved off. (it was a fun passtime as a child to walk past a pelican crossing and press the button, even if you had no intention to cross, just to watch the lights change and the motorists get frustrated. Well. Of course, I would never have done such a thing. no. Not me. Of course not. ahem.) So there you go. A brief guide to UK pedestrian crossing types :) Timothy