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Sonatavarius
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Sonatavarius
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Farmer

"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!!!
http://i.imgur.com/xvwHtsU.gif

...specifically genetics

  • 38 Replies
09philj
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09philj
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Jester

There is no such thing as a fish.

Sonatavarius
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Sonatavarius
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Farmer

idk about you guys, but I'm a single celled protozoa :] (jk... I understand and know what you're talking about)

FishPreferred
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FishPreferred
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Duke

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.


Irrelevant. The physiological distinction between monkey and ape (by scientific classification) is not that distinctions exist. It is that specific features, which are recognized as being ancestral to certain groups, are shared within the groups, but not beween.

If you define "monkey" as any creature possessing key features common to present-day primates of the classes generally identified as "monkeys", we are not monkeys because we do not fit within that definition as our ancestors did.
If you define "monkey" as any creature that is a descendent of the creature mentioned above, we are (by extrapolation) hominids, apes, monkeys, tree shrews, prototheria, cyntodonts, pelycosaurs, reptiles, amphibians, lungfish, and plankton, among other things.
If you define "monkey" as any creature which is a present-day primate of one of the classes generally identified as "monkeys", we are not monkeys because we are not in any of those classes.

With the exception of all [tetrapods] being lobe-finned fishes, no, we cannot. Deer and whales are distinct monophyletic groups, as are monkeys and shrews and mammals and amphibians.


Hence my refutation of Mage's assertion that the ancestors of apes qualify as monkeys. Simian â  monkey.
HahiHa
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HahiHa
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Simian â  monkey.

From an etymological point of view I'm sure you'll agree that it actually does mean the same thing.
From a phylogenetic point of view, "monkey" as colloquially used, meaning excluding apes, should not be used as it is paraphyletic. One of the reasons why I started that discussion with Mage the first time. The simian or anthropoidea include the NWO and OWM, and the latter are actually closer related to apes than to the NWM. The English distinction between "ape" and "monkey" is purely vestigial.
MageGrayWolf
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MageGrayWolf
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From a phylogenetic point of view, "monkey" as colloquially used, meaning excluding apes, should not be used as it is paraphyletic. One of the reasons why I started that discussion with Mage the first time. The simian or anthropoidea include the NWO and OWM, and the latter are actually closer related to apes than to the NWM. The English distinction between "ape" and "monkey" is purely vestigial.


Which is why I've been peppering what I've been saying with statements like this.

"Which is fine if we aren't applying it any other way but arbitrarily in a colloquial sense."

Though I do find it interesting that the colloquial use of ape once referred to all great apes except humans. So there is room to argue for a change in the usage of monkey excluding apes and humans.
FishPreferred
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FishPreferred
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Duke

From an etymological point of view I'm sure you'll agree that it actually does mean the same thing.


No. Simian means snub-nosed. Monkey appears to derive from a name. You could argue that it should apply specifically to apes, but the fact remains that it doesn't.

From a phylogenetic point of view, "monkey" as colloquially used, meaning excluding apes, should not be used as it is paraphyletic.


It is this point that I agree with. The term should not refer to both "Old World" and "New World" groups, only one.
Kennethhartanto
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Kennethhartanto
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this is a long way from the racial question of "what are you?", so i will follow all of you and discuss the naturalist view of the answers on the "what are you?" question.

strictly speaking, we are humans. otherwise known as homo sapiens sapiens, we don't have like a subspecies or another relative species of humans, as in monkeys and apes. so i don't really get the correlation between 2 types of monkeys and humans in general; which is a bit out of subject. actually the question itself by definition ask what type of animals are you, so maybe a bit denigrating

Sonatavarius
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Sonatavarius
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You're right... i has gotten a little off track. I recognize that retorting with a sarcastic remark is often the preferred means of answering dumb questions, but there are those that don't have context lenses and can't comprehend the differences in what people mean to say and the literal translation of what they said. I'm not sure, but I think it might fall under the whole rhetoric thing.

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