Forums → WEPR → "What are you?"
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"What are you?"
This is another one of those things I chose not to jump into on fb. I'd like to ask the opinions of my fellow AG peoples on the matter? Is it so bad? Is the person that supposedly has this problem in the right or is she just down right whiney?
Here is my take on it.
There are definitely rude/hateful ways of going about asking the question, but it isn't inherently a rude thing to do. I've often been asked if I'm of German, Swedish, Norwegian, French, etc descent... actually, it's almost inevitable that a friend will eventually ask me that question if I'm friends with them for long enough. We are a very story oriented culture, and there is no problem with me being curious about yours or vice versa. I don't think the situation matters to me quite like she and some of the posters on that article thinks it matters to me. When you get to know someone you paint a mental picture of them, and not everything in a painting is of crucial importance. I'm just happy if people want to get to know me. Also, sometimes it isn't the actual conversation that matters its just the point of having one. Maybe someone has lost their words and can't think of anything other than that to say to what they think is a pretty girl. Or maybe they're just curious... Being that some people are just so unique in their particular flavor of looks I can't help but be curious myself as to what particular blend could've brought about something like them. IT'S SCIENCE!!!
...specifically genetics
- 38 Replies
Morphologically, this is incorrect. Do you mean it in the hereditary sense?
I am speaking photogenically. What feature does a monkey have that we do not that would leave us not classified as such? You can't say tale, there are monkeys without tales that are still classified as such.
I've been over this before in one of the evolution debates. Here is a visual of what I'm saying.
This is how we are currently going about calling monkeys, monkeys. It's arbitrary and has no barring on how we currently distinguish one group from another. Which is fine if we aren't applying it any other way but arbitrarily in a colloquial sense.
This is what I'm saying if we are to be more consistent with applying the term.
The term monkey and ape predate modern classification. Scientifically monkey is no longer recognized as a taxon. The taxon that does include what we tend to call monkeys is the simians, which would include apes (which includes us).
Skull structure and teeth are the main ones. The tail is only significant in that none of the species phylogenically classified as apes possess them.
By that reasoning we aren't apes as other apes possess different cranial and dental structures. (Which interestingly enough, ape did once mean all primates exact humans.) As noted we can rule out the tail as there are tailless monkeys. Also the ancestor of the ape (which I argue was a monkey) did have a tail. By the way I'm going about this it would just be that those subsets of monkey simply lost their tails over time.
monkeys have 48 chromosomes (24 pairs) when we only have 23 pairs (46). Even tho one of our chromosomes ate one of the others at some point they still technically have a variation of something that apathological do not...
As with cranial and dental differences this doesn't seem to exclude us from being a subset of ape. So why would it exclude us from being a subset of monkey?
Being descended from monkeys doesn't have to mean that we are them, but maybe only that we WERE them.
So at what point would that be?
"Creationists try to ridicule evolution through the implication that âwe came from monkeysâ, and those who know the difference are quick to point out that apes are not monkeys. For one thing, apes donât have tails. But thereâs more to it than that. For example, we can tell that a Barbary ape isnât really an ape, itâs a tailless monkey; the same way we can tell that a glass snake isnât really a snake; itâs a legless lizard. There are so many distinctions that even if we found a snake that had legs, (and we have) weâd still know it was a snake.
But snakes are a subset of the order, Squamata; That means âlizardâ. If snakes evolved from lizards, do they stop being lizards at the moment they become snakes? And when exactly is that moment? It turns out this is another confusing convention in Linnaean taxonomy which is corrected by cladistics. Paraphyletic groups shouldnât exist in phylogenetics, nor would systematic classification permit the emergence of new species to add another equivalent category. Instead existing branches split into successive subsets that are each monophyletic, sharing a common line of descent from which they can diverge but never detach. This means snakes will always be a subset of lizards and apes would still be monkeys." - AronRa
"A clade is a grouping that includes a common ancestor and all the descendants (living and extinct) of that ancestor. Using a phylogeny, it is easy to tell if a group of lineages forms a clade. Imagine clipping a single branch off the phylogeny â" all of the organisms on that pruned branch make up a clade." - evolution.berkeley.edu
All monkeys, apes and humans are simians (or anthropoids if you prefer). This is the branch we all share. Everything on that branch is just that a simian. In order of us to classify monkey as a monkey in a similar manner we would have to "clip" two separate branches. So in order to include both old and new world monkeys we would also have to include apes, which in turn would have to include us. As such we would have to call the whole thing "monkeys". By this we would be both "apes" and "monkey" if we were to apply the term more consistently. Also as noted if you wish to leave the term monkey arbitrary that's fine. This is about using the term in a consistent fashion.
