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TheBear said:Is it supreme ego that makes some people refuse to believe than we are primates? What is this nonsense? Do superstitious beliefs trump tangible evidence, again?
michabo said:In a weird way, I like these sort of debates. Or rather, I like that we have them. But also not...
I think it is a good reminder that we tend to act as a group, not out of loyalty or some dogmatic defense of evolution (and everyone that supports it), but because, unlike theology, once you learn about evolution, there really is only one path that you can follow. We show that we can disagree in a civil fashion, that we can support our positions, and that we can (and do) back down gracefully when wrong.
I like that the people that come here have a large range of backgrounds, and they correct others who may not have as much experience.
What I don't like so much is the impression that a debate over terminology may be conflated to be a debate over some fundamental point in evolution, or a debate about evolution itself.
And I also think that debates about names can be really misleading. We as humans like to put names on things, to draw clear boundaries. This is from species A, this is from species B. This is a monkey, this is not. This is a human, this is not.
But life is much more complicated than this. Evolutionary history, and ring species today, show us that species change in a very smooth process. It's only because all of our ancestors have died off that we're able to say we are a clearly distinct species from, say, chimps. Imagine if all of the intermediate ancestors along the way were still alive and we were part of a ring species with chimps! When we put a human beside a chimp, we could see clearly that we were two different species, but as we walk along the ring and see interbreeding couples with barely perceptable differences which only slowly accumulate to end up at us, what then?
michabo said:To make matters worse, taxonomic names like monkey and ape have colloquial meanings as well. Taxonomically we are a fish, but we have no scales and live on land. Taxonomically, whales are artiodactyls, closer related to hippos than hippos are to pigs.
* * *
So when we start fighting over labels, it seems to encourage the belief that species are distinct instead of continuous, and that these labels are fundamental issues when really we just have different ways of talking about the same, commonly understood facts.
Or unless you are using the universally accepted Linnaean taxonomic system, according to which old world monkeys are in family Cercopithicidae and humans are in family Hominidae.Edx said:We are Old World Monkeys, theres nothing wrong with saying that unless you are using the common mans definition of monkey which is a small little tree climbing animal with a tail and that traditionally likes bananas.
The first of the pictures above is of a gibbon, not a monkey. The second looks to me to be a baboon. Baboons have tails, though some of their tails can be very short.Edx said:Well, no. Not all monkeys have tails.
An explanation of evolution is never complete without this picture.MewtwoX said:I think a picture will make it clear:
TexasSky said:Actually,
It was said on this board, many times.
In fact, every time I said I had problems with the idea of man descending from Ape, a LARGE number of evolutionists would scream, "That isn't even PART of the evolution." IN fact, I was flat out MOCKED on this board for saying that was taught. Told I didn't have any idea what WAS taught about evolution if I thought that was.
Cirbryn said:First off, taxonomically we are not fish, nor are whales artiodactyls. Taxonomically we are in class Mammalia, order Primates; and whales are in class Mammalia, order Cetacea. No fish are in class Mammalia, nor are any artiodactyls in order Cetacea. If you want to claim we are in the fish clade, or that whales are in the artiodactyl clade, then you should say so. At that point you will be discussing phylogenetics, not taxonomy.
Youre telling people with a tenuous understanding of evolution that if they want to accept evolution as true theyll have to forget about the most basic biology they know.
I will try to be more precise in my language, too. Thank you.Finally, theres the simple value of getting something right, whether you think its trivial or not. Humans are apes. Humans are in the monkey clade. Humans are not monkeys. Its simple, straightforward and correct.
michabo said:I'm sorry, I might have not made my points very well. It was a bit off the cuff. My bigger point was that taxonomy is, in large part, about assigning distinct names to things which aren't so distinct. We do call whales cetaceans, but the latest evidence (fossil and molecular) shows they are artiodactyls: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20010922/fob1.asp.
michabo said:Now, will this change any names or taxonomy? Unlikely. Names have historical components which aren't going to change because of this discovery.
I was trying to point out a couple things. That the names we give fossils and living species are an attempt to make them distinct and special, and don't reflect the smooth and continuous nature of their evolution. When looking at whales, this is especially clear, considering that new discoveries showing that cetaceans are artiodactyls (cladistically, if you prefer) isn't changing their naming at all.
So, when we argue and you say that whales are cetaceans and not artiodactyls, while taxonomically accurate, is also obsucuring the fact that whales are, cladistically, artiodactyls. That if we pick any definition of artiodactyl that doesn't explicitly exclude whales, we have to say that whales are artiodactyls.
michabo said:It reminds me a lot of the debates we're having here about homo and monkeys. Did we have ancestors which were monkeys? I think that we would both agree that, yes, we did. Cladistically speaking, does this mean that we are monkeys? I think we would still agree that we are monkeys. Taxonimically, are we monkeys? Here you are right that, no, we are not classified as monkeys. But when we get into heated arguments with one group saying that we aren't monkeys and another group saying that we are, then this creates the false impression that we are arguing about our origins, whereas we're arguing about our taxonomical naming. Something which doesn't allow us to express the full nuances of our evolutionary past.
michabo said:I will try to be more precise in my language, too. Thank you.
Cirbryn said:Theres also the problem of the conflicting messages we give when we tell people that we are monkeys but that it is a strawman to claim a monkey gave birth to a human. If we were monkeys then monkeys would give birth to humans every day. (Too often, in my opinion.) In fact, we are not monkeys, so a monkey gave birth to a human remains a strawman..
Cirbryn said:I saw the thread several months ago that Aron Ra started up about this topic,
Cirbryn said:Or unless you are using the universally accepted Linnaean taxonomic system, according to which old world monkeys are in family Cercopithicidae and humans are in family Hominidae.
As I understand it, cladistics seeks to identify all the species (or genera or whatever) that evolved from a given common ancestor. So if you specified the common ancestor as the first of the old-world monkeys, then all the current old-world monkeys, all the gibbons, and all the great apes (including humans) would be in that clade. The essential difference from the Linnaean system is that you cant evolve out of a clade, but you can evolve out of a Linnaean taxon. (Taxon being any classification level, such as class, order, genus, etc). Taxonomists make an effort to make sure each Linnaean taxon only includes one clade, but theres no way to make sure each clade only includes one taxon, even if you limited it to a particular kind of taxon like a family. For instance, the old-world monkey clade must have started with one species and one family, but it currently contains three families, and whos to say that with continued evolution there might not be more some day?Edx said:In cladists is it different?
Done. Ollie ollie oxenfree!Edx said:If you PM him Im sure he'd enjoy talking to you about it, it would probably be a welcome change from the Creationists he deals with. Be sure to discuss it here though becuase I want to watch
Fine. Here I am then.Cirbryn said:Done. Ollie ollie oxenfree!
Aron-Ra said:Fine. Here I am then.
First off, SLP, not all monkeys are apes, but all apes are monkeys, and that includes humans.
BigToe, if a human were born with a tail, (and some have been) they would still be human, would they not?
Adriac, while some of our ancient ancestors were creatures most people would recognize today as monkeys, its not quite accurate to say we come from them because that implies that aren't them anymore. But we are still monkeys right now.
Yes Cirbryn, even by Linnaean thinking, we are monkeys. And not just in the sense that whales and snakes are still tetrapods. Every morphological, physiological, genetic, or developmental character trait indicative of all monkeys collectively -still applies to humans, just as every character trait of primates, mammals, vertebrates, etc, also still apply to us. There are no exceptions. I challenge you to find one. You think it "straightforward and correct" to say that we aren't monkeys. But it doesn't matter whether you're cladist, or whether you still cling to Linnaeus' out-moded system. We can prove that humans are monkeys regardless how "correct" you may claim to be about that now.
For one thing, you're forgetting (as many do) about a second category of Catarrhine monkeys, Propliopithecoidea, a sister clade to Cercopithecids, but which are now entirely extinct, except for apes, which are their sole surviving descendants. Propliopithecids were definitely monkeys, even Old World monkeys, but they weren't Cercopithecids.
You're not really getting the image of cladistics either, because, taxonomically, we are fish. Why? Because you have to have a precise definition of what a fish is. You may be surprised to know that not all the animals commonly classified as such have scales or even gills. I've already stood where you are, and argued your side once upon a time. But I was proven wrong, and so will you be.
It turns out, the word "fish" is not synonymous with any taxonomic classification because there are exceptions to everything. There are even some fish who are warm-blooded! In fact, I challenge you to find a single generic character common to every sort of fish -without exception- that isn't present on tetrapods. Since fish are the umbrella / parent category, then the only way to divide them from tetrapods like us is to find some trait common to every last one of them that isn't present in a single one of us. If you can't do that, then perhaps you can't even define the word, "fish" without describing descendant groups too.
As it happens, phylogeny is the only consistent way to categorize life-forms. That's why the Linnaean system isn't universally-accepted anymore. And it turns out that the only taxonomic parallel which applies to all "fish" consistently in every case -is the clade, Chordata. Cladistically, "chordate" means "fish", and every mammal is a chordate. So yes, there are fish in the mammal clade, because "fish" is not a clade itself. Neither is "reptile", but we can talk about that at another time.
As for cetaceans as artiodactyls, I'm not sure if they are. But they're awfully close. I like the term, Cetartiodactyla myself, and felt a need for something like it. But there's no doubt cetaceans are carnivorous and they were hooved. Genetically, their line may run closer to the hippopotamus than to Andrewsarchus. The only question then is which side was Pakicetus on? Because morphologically, cetaceans may be artiodactyls. Phylogenetics is taxonomy when you're talking about clades. Just as it is with Hominoidea, Artiodactlya is determined by an in-depth character analysis; and whales seem to fit that clade, indicating an ancestry within their ranks, or as close to it as rabbits are to rodents. If they did emerge from within that group, then that is what they are still, and what they will always be. Because its not possible to grow out of your heritage. You will always be whatever your ancestors were, even if you have become something more than they were at the same time. That's cladistic! And we can easily show that to be true too!
Now, I don't mean to trivialize the differences between us and the other great apes. But I'm not even aware of what those difference are. Could you point them out to me? I'll bet you can't. Because Linnaeus himself made that very challenge almost 260 years ago, and no one's managed to answer it yet. That's why he, initially, classified chimpanzees as Homo troglodytes, a subspecies of human.
That's going to be some challenge for you, especially since you already contradicted yourself by talking about the differences between us and the other great apes while admitting that we are all in the same clade. "Hominoidea" means "ape" just Hominid means "great ape." The word, "monkey" may be accurately translated as "Haplorhini". The word, Catarrhini, (which is the parent clade for all humans and other apes as well as Cercopithecids) means "Old World monkey".
That is what we are.
FEZZILLA said:I don't look like that.
Can you trace your family tree down to this? Can anyone?
Can we breed with these creatures and beget ape-man? Well, the answer is a BIG NO! The DNA of the ape and Human are too different and such a result would have to happen in order for evolutionist to make any claim like you have. Evolution theory is all about sex; and when it boils down to the nearest axiom of logical understanding we see no sexual evidence for such a crazy story.
FEZZILLA said:Even the scientist know this cannot be proven! Its all nothing more than a big quess!
FEZZILLA said:Are not fish and monkeys two different species? Are they not still fish and monkeys? Use the common sense that God gave you.
FEZZILLA said:Are not fish and monkeys two different species? Are they not still fish and monkeys? Use the common sense that God gave you.
When someone posts a picture of a Japanese macaque and says "this is what you are", the natural implication is that he's saying you're a Japanese macaque. Aron could have made his actual point better by posting pictures of monkeys, apes and humans and saying "this is the clade you belong to", but that wouldn't have had quite the shock value. In short it wouldn't have been as insulting and as easy to misinterpret. I think if Aron were trying he'd have had a hard time coming up with something as likely to put people off the idea of evolution.FEZZILLA said:I don't look like that.
Can you trace your family tree down to this? Can anyone?
Can we breed with these creatures and beget ape-man? Well, the answer is a BIG NO! The DNA of the ape and Human are too different and such a result would have to happen in order for evolutionist to make any claim like you have. Evolution theory is all about sex; and when it boils down to the nearest axiom of logical understanding we see no sexual evidence for such a crazy story.
Even the scientist know this cannot be proven! Its all nothing more than a big quess!
God created my family tree!
Are not fish and monkeys two different species? Are they not still fish and monkeys? Use the common sense that God gave you.
Except of course that I never mentioned Japanese macaques. I said we were Old World monkeys, meaning that we are in the infraorder, Catarrhini. I showed another, non-ape Catarrhine, one with similarities to our face striking enough to illustrate the point.Cirbryn said:When someone posts a picture of a Japanese macaque and says "this is what you are", the natural implication is that he's saying you're a Japanese macaque.
Were I as vague as you want me to be, then I would be easy to misinterpret. But I am being as blunt as possible so that I will be less likely misunderstood. But I made no attempt to be insulting and honestly -sincerely- do not understand how one even could be insulted by what I said.Aron could have made his actual point better by posting pictures of monkeys, apes and humans and saying "this is the clade you belong to", but that wouldn't have had quite the shock value. In short it wouldn't have been as insulting and as easy to misinterpret.
I don't have to seduce anyone with charming apologetics. The facts can be as cold and as hard as they want to be because they are facts.I think if Aron were trying he'd have had a hard time coming up with something as likely to put people off the idea of evolution.
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