3 ms·

You can just look this stuff up on wikipedia... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_(biology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_(biology) "Family (Latin: f

You can just look this stuff up on wikipedia... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_(biology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_(biology) "Family (Latin: familia, plural familiae) is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between order and genus." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equidae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equidae "Equidae (sometimes known as the horse family) is the taxonomic family of horses and related animals, including the extant horses, donkeys, and zebras, and many other species known only from fossils." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovidae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovidae "The Bovidae comprise the biological family of cloven-hoofed, ruminant mammals that includes cattle, bison, buffalo, antelopes, and goat-antelopes. A member of this family is called a bovid." No, horses and cattle are not in the same family. Nor are they in the same clade; cattle are artiofabula, (ruminants) horses are mesaxonia. (odd toed ungulates) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artiofabula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artiofabula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesaxonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesaxonia > But to also be fair, if you want to classify horses and cows as edible based on their shared common ancestry, you’re also arguing for eating giraffes, tapirs, rhinos, hippos, whales and dolphins. The argument is about whether horses and cattle are in the same family, not that a species' taxonomic classification can be an indication that they ought to be eaten.

jameshart 4y ago
My point is that Linnaeus's 'family' is not rigorously defined and generally not a very precise term anyway. If you're not sure what level of clade a pair of related creatures share, referring to them as being 'in the same family', informally, is fine. And Ungulata is a clade. "Ungulates (/ˈʌŋɡjəleɪts, -ləts/ UNG-gyə-layts, - ləts) are members of the diverse clade Ungulata which primarily consists of large mammals with hooves." As a clade, it includes several clades that are historically classified as 'orders' and several that are 'families'. It would be inaccurate to say 'horses and cows are members of the same Linnaean order'; but equally, in Linnaean terms, it would be insufficiently precise to say they share the same Linnaean 'grandorder', because that's also true of, say, a grizzly bear, or a badger. Basically, if you're going to be taxonomically pedantic, I think it's better to be pedantic about the Actual taxonomy (i.e. the real common ancestry of an organism) than it is to be pedantic about the metataxonomy (i.e., the classification of clades as 'order' or 'family' or 'genus')

jameshart 4y ago

My point is that Linnaeus's 'family' is not rigorously defined and generally not a very precise term anyway. If you're not sure what level of clade a pair of related creatures share, referring to them as being 'in the same family', informally, is fine. And Ungulata is a clade. "Ungulates (/ˈʌŋɡjəleɪts, -ləts/ UNG-gyə-layts, - ləts) are members of the diverse clade Ungulata which primarily consists of large mammals with hooves." As a clade, it includes several clades that are historically classified as 'orders' and several that are 'families'. It would be inaccurate to say 'horses and cows are members of the same Linnaean order'; but equally, in Linnaean terms, it would be insufficiently precise to say they share the same Linnaean 'grandorder', because that's also true of, say, a grizzly bear, or a badger. Basically, if you're going to be taxonomically pedantic, I think it's better to be pedantic about the Actual taxonomy (i.e. the real common ancestry of an organism) than it is to be pedantic about the metataxonomy (i.e., the classification of clades as 'order' or 'family' or 'genus')