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> There's even the suggestion that there are creatures that can't really be classified into plant or animal - it's not clear what they are at all. No plant or
by hutzlibu 5y ago
> There's even the suggestion that there are creatures that can't really be classified into plant or animal - it's not clear what they are at all.
No plant or animal, but alive. How strange, rare and exotic ... like a mushroom?
(Mushrooms are not a plant nor animal either, but if you look close enough, mushrooms are indeed strange and exotic, though)
- andrewstuart 5y agoYou are correct. I believe there are five kingdoms of living things, and mushrooms belong to fungi. https://www.iberdrola.com/sustainability/biology-kingdoms-living-things-classification https://www.iberdrola.com/sustainability/biology-kingdoms-li... https://www.iberdrola.com/wcorp/gc/prod/en_US/comunicacion/reinos_seres_vivos_2_res/Infographic_Living_Things.jpg https://www.iberdrola.com/wcorp/gc/prod/en_US/comunicacion/r...
- tr3ndyBEAR 5y agoThe number of domains/kingdoms/empires/superkingdoms of living things is actually much more of a matter of debate amongst taxonomists than people realize. Taking our classification schemes as a fact about biology is confusing the map for the territory. But you are correct that mushrooms (which is the fruiting body of some types of fungi) are separate from plants (and actually more closely related to animals. They're basically animals that digest things externally instead of having a stomach to digest things internally)
- loonster 5y agoWe digest externally too. We just carry the outside around with us.
- thaumasiotes 5y agoThis shouldn't have been downvoted; external digestion, usually known as "cooking", is one of the most important features of human biology, explaining why our intestines are so short.
- dodobirdlord 5y agoAn animal’s gut is also arguably “external”, in the sense that the gastrointestinal tract means an animal is a topological torus, and the contents of the gut are also “outside” of the body. It’s an open question how the closed digestive tract evolved, but it presumably came from a digestive surface of some sort folding over on itself, since it must have evolved in creatures that were previously able to digest. The same general phenomenon presumably produced lungs by cavitating a gas-exchange surface to increase surface area.
- dotancohen 5y agoIf you have further reading material on these two developments, I'd be thrilled to go over them. The subject is fascinating, but layman subject matter is scarce and I already have a profession.
- thaumasiotes 5y agoWell, a digestive surface is necessarily external in that sense, since the only things you want to digest originate outside the body. The options are that you have a digestive surface that is open to the world, or that you have one which is protected within your interior, but nevertheless topologically external. Or, I guess, that you have a topologically external surface which does nothing but create vacuoles around food, which then get transmitted to a topologically internal digestive surface. (Similar mechanisms do exist for other purposes; one thing that may happen to a splinter embedded in your finger is that the body applies a protective coating to the splinter and then expels it.) Starfish seem like an interesting case here, in that they have an ordinary internal stomach which they extrude, when they're eating, for the purpose of external digestion.
- pvaldes 5y agoShort intestines are a characteristic typical of predators. Our ancestors probably started as insectivores / frugivores / egg eaters
- loonster 5y agoI agree that cooking is a form of digestion, but that is not what I was thinking when I made my comment. We are walking tubes. The cavity inside of the tube is still external to the tube itself. This is a video that partially explains the concept. https://youtu.be/vuIlsN32WaE https://youtu.be/vuIlsN32WaE
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y agoI wouldn’t call fungi exotic. There are fungal spores pretty much everywhere, healthy animals are just particularly good at keeping they’re active forms at bay.
- smartbit 5y agohutzlibu was ironic. That you didn’t see this, make me think that some cultures have more use of irony than others. I can imaging that in a potpourri of cultures like the USA irony can often be misunderstood and therefore is less used than in other countries.
- austinprete 5y agoWow, that’s a lot of extrapolation from one comment. First of all, TheSpiceIsLife is Tasmanian according to their bio. Second, even if they were American to then assume that all Americans can’t pick up on irony or sarcasm because one person on the internet missed an instance of it is quite the stretch.
- hutzlibu 5y agoWell, I said, if you look close enough, you might find them to be much more alien and exotic, than one would expect.
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y agoYeah sorry I misreads the context of your comment.
- pvaldes 5y agoThe kingdoms Protozoa and Chromista include some former algae that have also motile 'spermatozoan like' forms in its lifecycle. The were plants before, but in some parts of this lifecycle they act like microscopic animals.