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I was looking through a list of words that normally are written in kana,
instead of their kanji. Two caught my attention because the list has them
written in katakana, instead of hiragana. But, as neither are 外来語, writing
them in katakana seems strange.

**When given no context, is it true that both "honey bee" and "dolphin" are
written in katakana (instead of hiragana)?**

(Note: I do not care about any theory as to "why" they are exceptions. Simply,
when _there is no context_ and they are just words in a list, should both be
written in katakana?)

Here is the full list of animals written in kana, instead of kanji:

> あかんぼう baby, infant  
>  **イルカ dolphin**  
>  うさぎ a rabbit  
>  かたつむり snail  
>  きつね a fox  
>  くらげ a jellyfish  
>  とら tiger  
>  とんぼ dragon fly  
>  ばら rose  
>  **ミツバチ honey bee**  
>  やまあらし porcupine  
>  やもめ a widow  
>  りす a squirrel
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katakana orthography
Are ミツバチ and イルカ more frequently written in katakana?
Both words you mentioned have Kanji.

> 海豚｛いるか} - dolphin
>
> 蜜蜂{みつばち} - honey bee

Most biological terms are written in Katakana in everyday language (places
like aquariums and TV spots). However it is also not uncommon to see them
written as Kanji in biological or science texts.

Other examples include...

-海豹{あざらし} (アザラシ) >[Earless Seal]

-海驢{あしか} (アシカ) >[Eared Seal]

-膃肭臍{おっとせい} (オットセイ) >[Fur Seal]

-蜻蛉{とんぼ} (トンボ) >[Dragonfly]

-水黽{あめんぼ} (アメンボ) >[Water Strider]

**EDIT:** The list you provide I have usually seen as the following.

赤ん坊(a baby is an animal?)、イルカ、うさぎ・ウサギ、蝸牛、狐、くらげ・クラゲ、トラ、トンボ、バラ、ミツバチ、山荒、寡婦（a
widow is an animal?）、リス

Depending on where you are usually depends on how they are written. A
children's science/biology centre will usually feature all names in ひらがな as
some 小学生 aged children have not yet learned カタカナ. However family aquariums and
zoos usually feature the 漢字 and カタカナ readings ie. 北極熊{ホッキョクグマ}.

Without knowing more about your list and the person who wrote it, it is
somewhat difficult to know why they chose to put all except 2 items as
hiragana. The choice whether to use ひらがな or カタカナ (or even Kanji) readings when
referring to various animals is largely a stylistic choice by the author as
both ひらがな and カタカナ can be read and understood interchangeably in this context.
To cover all your bases (aand make it easier to search for), you could always
have a third column in your database for カタカナ readings (instead of just ひらかな).

Some sources:

<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%B5%B7%E8%B1%9A>
<http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q1319142318>
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I'm in the translation industry and in my experience if given a list such as
yours with no context there is no particular reason those words need to be
written in katakana. The English is also inconsistent. Some words are
arbitrarily preceded with "a". I think the katakana usage here is the same
thing.

I hope this helps
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> When given no context, is it true that both "honey bee" and "dolphin" are
> written in katakana (instead of hiragana)?

Yes, but using hiragana is perfectly acceptable.

Names of species is one area where katakana is very often used, but there seem
to be no rule to tell which is more widely used to write a specific name. In
the examples you mentioned above, ウサギ，カタツムリ， etc. are equally common, and I
can't really say which (katakana vs. hiragana) is more common. I feel イルカ is
more often seen than いるか, but I wouldn't find it odd if I see いるか without
context. (There are contexts where one is probably preferred over the other,
but I think this is out of topic for this question).

The common custom to write names of species (plants, animals, insects..) seems
to have derived from the convention of academic fields.

Several informations that might interest you:

  * Japanese wikipedia [encourages to use katakana in titles of articles of species](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%97%E3%83%AD%E3%82%B8%E3%82%A7%E3%82%AF%E3%83%88:%E7%94%9F%E7%89%A9#.E9.A0.85.E7.9B.AE.E5.90.8D).
  * [現代日本語書き言葉における非外来語のカタカナ表記事情 (pdf)](https://www.ninjal.ac.jp/event/specialists/project-meeting/files/JCLWorkshop_no4_papers/JCLWorkshop_No4_35.pdf) (Frequency of Katakana Representation for Japanese Non-loan Words as Observed in the BCCWJ Corpus), found under the [National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics](https://www.ninjal.ac.jp/event/specialists/project-meeting/m-2013/jclws04/) , deals with similar question. While neither みつばち nor イルカ is observed in the article, it mentions the plant/animal names as a more-likely-to-be-written-in-katakana words.
  * [The Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese](http://pj.ninjal.ac.jp/corpus_center/bccwj/en/) may be good for individual research.
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I wholeheartedly agree with [@Ian's
answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/24941/1628). There's absolutely
no reason why "honey bee" should have been written in katakana, and "snail"
not. In fact, in the BCCWJ mentioned in [@Yosh's
answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/24945/1628), writing "snail" in
katakana is more popular by roughly the same margin:

> みつばち 70 results  
>  ミツバチ 212 results

> かたつむり 77 results  
>  カタツムリ 194 results

("dolphin" is hard to get numbers for, because いるか appears so often as part of
～ているか, which might be a reason to choose katakana in this case. This argument
doesn't hold for みつばち, though!)

**But that's not the only thing that's wrong with that list.** The "baby,
infant" entry is rarely written in kana, but practically always in kanji:

> 赤ん坊 1252 results  
>  あかんぼう 17 results

Another misleading entry:

> 寡婦 304 results  
>  やもめ 61 results

So, the list you're looking at is

  * inconsistent in its choice of kana syllabary,
  * provides misleading information of what words _really_ are written more frequently in kana, and
  * includes obscure words, like "porcupine", at the expense of more obvious choices, like "candle":

> ろうそく 296 results  
>  ロウソク 158 results  
>  ローソク 158 results  
>  蝋燭 48 results

Anyway, all in all, I think you need a better list.
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