10,000 Birds

AUGUST 19, 2014

Whales are cows. It is technically correct, and recently fashionable, to insist that any living animal is a member of the larger group that contains it phylogenetically, i.e., ancestrally, with that group often named after the known animal that roots the tree. The point is, of course, that whales are not cows.

Camels 198

Camels Whales Whaling Apes 198

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 7, 2021

No, Madagascar is the most famous for an endemic group of mammals: lemurs, sifakas, indri, aye-aye – in total, 112 endemic species and subspecies of lemurs alone! Still, there should be no problem with larger species that allow for longer observation time (e.g. Larger species, that is, excluding dolphins and whales.

Madagascar 241

Madagascar Mammals Lemurs Seychelles 241

10,000 Birds

JUNE 27, 2018

There are important details within that dictum that we will ignore here, but this has to do with knowing when a characteristic doesn’t really tell you about the relative position of species on a “tree of life” vs when the characteristic works for that purpose. Rather, cladistics is a way of looking at the process of evolution of species.

Monkeys 136

Monkeys Gorillas Whales Whaling 136