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Well, I thought this was a fascinating and well-written article. p.s. I learnt not long ago that there's no such 'thing' as an antelope: "The term antelope is

Well, I thought this was a fascinating and well-written article. p.s. I learnt not long ago that there's no such 'thing' as an antelope: "The term antelope is used to refer to many species of even-toed ruminant that are indigenous to various regions in Africa and Eurasia. Antelope comprise a wastebasket taxon (miscellaneous group) within the family Bovidae, encompassing all Old World ruminants that are not bovines, caprines, deer, or giraffes." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antelope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antelope

Areibman 5y ago
The term for these sorts of categories is called "Wastebin Taxon"
- yesenadam 5y ago
  That's pretty much a worse than pointless comment, isn't it, without some reason/justification supporting it. The wiki page for the term in question begins "Wastebasket taxon (also called a wastebin taxon, dustbin taxon or catch-all taxon)", so it does seem there's no one correct term.
- t786342723 5y ago
  The posh word is "polyphyletic"
- DarylZero 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wastebasket_taxon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wastebasket_taxon
Rebelgecko 5y ago
What's the difference between a ruminant and an ungulate?
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Grass eating Vs hooves.
- Groxx 5y ago
  Broadly speaking: a ruminant is a subset of ungulates. Well, technically too. Ungulates have hooves (horses, pigs, camels, cows, etc). Ruminants are ungulates that eat grasses in a somewhat unique way, by partially fermenting it in their gut, and horking it back up for another good chew or three (cows, giraffes, deer, antelopes, etc). And I say "broadly" and "somewhat" because, to intentionally misrepresent the article's title, there's no such thing as a tree (of ancestry/relationships). Camels also ferment food in their gut but aren't ruminants, as do (I assume) other kinds of animals. There are a lot of parallel evolutions, genetic crossovers, and general muddying with any kind of attempted high-level grouping of creatures. Did you know ungulates include whales, for instance? You know, those hoofed, herbivorous aquatic mammals that people are so fond of. But not seahorses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungulate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungulate Taxonomies are weird. And it only gets weirder as we dig into them more and more, and keep making adjustments and corrections.
  - jwdunne 5y ago
    And killer whales. Big, carnivorous and hooved with lots of teeth. Those are ungulates too. Interestingly enough, Judaism uses rumination, in part, to determine whether an animal is okay to eat. It was called “chewing their cud”. Pigs don’t do this and that’s why they’re not kosher. I suspect this was the inspiration for pork being haram in Islam but it’s explicitly prohibited by name, rather than by property. I’m not Jewish or by any means religious but I got curious one day and that’s how I learned what ruminants were (and even toed ungulates from the split hooves rule). EDIT: clarity on comment regarding cetaceans as ungulates
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      > And killer whales. Is that true? The wikipedia page on Ruminants shows the Cetacea outside of the group labeled Ruminants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant
      - jwdunne 5y ago
        Ah, I meant they’re cetaceans and therefore ungulates, albeit non-herbivorous. Should have made that clearer, sorry!
ajuc 5y ago
Biology is what happens when you try to decompile code written in assembler into OO language.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  And publish a uml diagram of species
- aitchnyu 5y ago
  Where a cat is a table extended with a .meow()
- rightbyte 5y ago
  And when the systematics guys started out they did not even know the assembler code existed for like 200-300 years.
  - kelseyfrog 5y ago
    They just classified by UI.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  Clade computing.
- ialyos 5y ago
  This comment is underrated
Zababa 5y ago
A good reminder that the map is not the territory. Lately I've started to see more and more "categories" in general as a very human construct, probably made to save on processing power when thinking about things. Reality is hard and very complex and you can't be thinking about all the details all the time.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Categories are an optimization. It is also a leaky abstraction and there are a large number of errors in our thinking due to this optimization, which is often premature.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    I'm not sure that it's premature. We use categories all the time, the time when they fail us seem to be rare in proportion.
    - dsr_ 5y ago
      Rare but often important. We all work with computers all the time, and so we have a tendency to try to represent the universe in the simplest abstractions that capture the necessary detail for the project we are currently contemplating. When those abstractions fail to capture a necessary detail, it can be due to: - a bad abstraction in the first place - a new use for the representation that we hadn't thought about - insufficient understanding of what we are trying to represent I have seen all three of these situations repeatedly. They are all quite common.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  "The Treachery of Images" "The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture "This is a pipe", I'd have been lying! — René Magritte" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images
medstrom 5y ago
Also, you're a fish. When people talk about fish, they mean "fish that aren't tetrapods", because cladistically speaking, tetrapods (birds, reptiles, mammals) are fish too.
- lproven 5y ago
  I dispute that. Speaking as a vegetarian, I think the key problem is that a lot of people don't know WTF a fish is. Q: Do you know what's the best gift to give a vegetarian who eats fish? A: A dictionary.
  - medstrom 5y ago
    I don't see how the culinary definition of fish is related to cladistics. Even if they were, I don't see what you dispute, because they agree on this point; if "vegetarian" means "avoid meat" and "meat" means "flesh of animal", then vegetarian also means to avoid fish. Come to think of it, eggs would also be included in that definition.
    - lproven 5y ago
      So from this I can tell that you're not one. Also, that you didn't get the joke. I have been ovo-lacto-vegetarian for about 40 years now. So many self-identified "vegetarians" think that fish is vegetarian that many many restaurants etc. offer fish-based dishes as "vegetarian". I have frequently had to go totally without food because there was nothing available for me, because all the "vegetarian" options contained fish. This is an extremely widespread issue, which you've never noticed. That's why you don't understand the relevance. As for cladistics, again, this is very simple: look at the number of different types of animal that are called "fish". . Shellfish (which includes crustaceans, i.e. arthropods, bivalve and gastropod molluscs) . Hagfish (and lampreys) . Starfish . Jellyfish Even going by simpler understandings: chondrichthyes and osteichthyes are both, to the general public, just "fish" with no particular distinction between these wildly different clades. And this still overlaps with dietary restrictions. Kosher food excludes crustaceans but permits fish with fins _and_ scales, with a loose definition of both. The public understanding of "fish" is a perfect example of the non-overlapping nature of the general understanding of groups of animals and plants, and the scientific one. The public understanding bears little more relationship to reality than Borges' classification in "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" – « animals are divided into: those that belong to the Emperor, embalmed ones, those that are trained, suckling pigs, mermaids, fabulous ones, stray dogs, those included in the present classification, those that tremble as if they were mad, innumerable ones, those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, others, those that have just broken a flower vase, those that from a long way off look like flies. » https://multicians.org/thvv/borges-animals.html https://multicians.org/thvv/borges-animals.html

Areibman 5y ago

The term for these sorts of categories is called "Wastebin Taxon"

yesenadam 5y ago
That's pretty much a worse than pointless comment, isn't it, without some reason/justification supporting it. The wiki page for the term in question begins "Wastebasket taxon (also called a wastebin taxon, dustbin taxon or catch-all taxon)", so it does seem there's no one correct term.
t786342723 5y ago
The posh word is "polyphyletic"
DarylZero 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wastebasket_taxon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wastebasket_taxon

Rebelgecko 5y ago

What's the difference between a ruminant and an ungulate?

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Grass eating Vs hooves.
Groxx 5y ago
Broadly speaking: a ruminant is a subset of ungulates. Well, technically too. Ungulates have hooves (horses, pigs, camels, cows, etc). Ruminants are ungulates that eat grasses in a somewhat unique way, by partially fermenting it in their gut, and horking it back up for another good chew or three (cows, giraffes, deer, antelopes, etc). And I say "broadly" and "somewhat" because, to intentionally misrepresent the article's title, there's no such thing as a tree (of ancestry/relationships). Camels also ferment food in their gut but aren't ruminants, as do (I assume) other kinds of animals. There are a lot of parallel evolutions, genetic crossovers, and general muddying with any kind of attempted high-level grouping of creatures. Did you know ungulates include whales, for instance? You know, those hoofed, herbivorous aquatic mammals that people are so fond of. But not seahorses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungulate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungulate Taxonomies are weird. And it only gets weirder as we dig into them more and more, and keep making adjustments and corrections.
- jwdunne 5y ago
  And killer whales. Big, carnivorous and hooved with lots of teeth. Those are ungulates too. Interestingly enough, Judaism uses rumination, in part, to determine whether an animal is okay to eat. It was called “chewing their cud”. Pigs don’t do this and that’s why they’re not kosher. I suspect this was the inspiration for pork being haram in Islam but it’s explicitly prohibited by name, rather than by property. I’m not Jewish or by any means religious but I got curious one day and that’s how I learned what ruminants were (and even toed ungulates from the split hooves rule). EDIT: clarity on comment regarding cetaceans as ungulates
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    > And killer whales. Is that true? The wikipedia page on Ruminants shows the Cetacea outside of the group labeled Ruminants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant
    - jwdunne 5y ago
      Ah, I meant they’re cetaceans and therefore ungulates, albeit non-herbivorous. Should have made that clearer, sorry!

ajuc 5y ago

Biology is what happens when you try to decompile code written in assembler into OO language.

agumonkey 5y ago
And publish a uml diagram of species
aitchnyu 5y ago
Where a cat is a table extended with a .meow()
rightbyte 5y ago
And when the systematics guys started out they did not even know the assembler code existed for like 200-300 years.
- kelseyfrog 5y ago
  They just classified by UI.
pfdietz 5y ago
Clade computing.
ialyos 5y ago
This comment is underrated

Zababa 5y ago

A good reminder that the map is not the territory. Lately I've started to see more and more "categories" in general as a very human construct, probably made to save on processing power when thinking about things. Reality is hard and very complex and you can't be thinking about all the details all the time.

jacquesm 5y ago
Categories are an optimization. It is also a leaky abstraction and there are a large number of errors in our thinking due to this optimization, which is often premature.
- Zababa 5y ago
  I'm not sure that it's premature. We use categories all the time, the time when they fail us seem to be rare in proportion.
  - dsr_ 5y ago
    Rare but often important. We all work with computers all the time, and so we have a tendency to try to represent the universe in the simplest abstractions that capture the necessary detail for the project we are currently contemplating. When those abstractions fail to capture a necessary detail, it can be due to: - a bad abstraction in the first place - a new use for the representation that we hadn't thought about - insufficient understanding of what we are trying to represent I have seen all three of these situations repeatedly. They are all quite common.
HPsquared 5y ago
"The Treachery of Images" "The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture "This is a pipe", I'd have been lying! — René Magritte" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images

medstrom 5y ago

Also, you're a fish. When people talk about fish, they mean "fish that aren't tetrapods", because cladistically speaking, tetrapods (birds, reptiles, mammals) are fish too.

lproven 5y ago
I dispute that. Speaking as a vegetarian, I think the key problem is that a lot of people don't know WTF a fish is. Q: Do you know what's the best gift to give a vegetarian who eats fish? A: A dictionary.
- medstrom 5y ago
  I don't see how the culinary definition of fish is related to cladistics. Even if they were, I don't see what you dispute, because they agree on this point; if "vegetarian" means "avoid meat" and "meat" means "flesh of animal", then vegetarian also means to avoid fish. Come to think of it, eggs would also be included in that definition.
  - lproven 5y ago
    So from this I can tell that you're not one. Also, that you didn't get the joke. I have been ovo-lacto-vegetarian for about 40 years now. So many self-identified "vegetarians" think that fish is vegetarian that many many restaurants etc. offer fish-based dishes as "vegetarian". I have frequently had to go totally without food because there was nothing available for me, because all the "vegetarian" options contained fish. This is an extremely widespread issue, which you've never noticed. That's why you don't understand the relevance. As for cladistics, again, this is very simple: look at the number of different types of animal that are called "fish". . Shellfish (which includes crustaceans, i.e. arthropods, bivalve and gastropod molluscs) . Hagfish (and lampreys) . Starfish . Jellyfish Even going by simpler understandings: chondrichthyes and osteichthyes are both, to the general public, just "fish" with no particular distinction between these wildly different clades. And this still overlaps with dietary restrictions. Kosher food excludes crustaceans but permits fish with fins _and_ scales, with a loose definition of both. The public understanding of "fish" is a perfect example of the non-overlapping nature of the general understanding of groups of animals and plants, and the scientific one. The public understanding bears little more relationship to reality than Borges' classification in "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" – « animals are divided into: those that belong to the Emperor, embalmed ones, those that are trained, suckling pigs, mermaids, fabulous ones, stray dogs, those included in the present classification, those that tremble as if they were mad, innumerable ones, those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, others, those that have just broken a flower vase, those that from a long way off look like flies. » https://multicians.org/thvv/borges-animals.html https://multicians.org/thvv/borges-animals.html