Reptiles

António Pedro Marques · 07 Jan 2011, 16:42 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: entonio at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?QW50w7NuaW8gUGVkcm8gTWFycXVlcw==?=)
Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2011 16:42:53 +0000
Subject: (urth) Reptiles
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-w32E1FFFCC8666E6ED65670CF0B0 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-w32E1FFFCC8666E6ED65670CF0B0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <4D27428D.8040907 at gmail.com>

Lee Berman wrote (07-01-2011 15:26):
> David Stockhoff:
>> I think that is basically what Lee is saying in his retraction, and I
>> agree, especially when the situation allows for some slippage (e.g.,
>> 20,000  years have passed).
>
> Well, to clarify further, if I'm watching TV and a chimpanzee is shown
> and somebody says, "oh what a cute monkey!" I may or may not say, "ape,
> actually", depending on who is speaking.
>
> When I read Robinson Crusoe or some other old book and a character
> remarks, "the ape didst gnaw upon its own tail", I can appreciate the
> archaic use of the word. And I think maybe Wolfe was going for that sort
> of usage to go along with his other archaic terms and names rather than
> making a linnaean error.

It would seem that you feel calling an ape a monkey is demeaning to the ape, 
and calling a monkey an ape is demeaning to the word 'ape'. That's an angle 
I hadn't met previously.
Iinm many languages have a term for 'monkey', but not necessarily for 'ape', 
and chimpanzees tend to be the archetypal monkey (due to the small size). So 
I just don't see how one can expect that modern english terminology is 
correctly followed.

Would it be unreasonable to call tuataras, crocodiles and dinosaurs 
'lizards'? Legless lizards 'snakes'?

(OT: Some cladists feel so good calling birds 'dinosaurs' that they've 
successfully imposed that terminology on the interwebs. Of course, then they 
had to redefine dinosaurs to exclude the ancestors of mammalians. So that 
what you used to call dinosaurs now have to be 'non-avian-dinosaurs + 
stem-mammals-and-whatnot'. It just doesn't strike me as a useful exercise. 
Paraphyletic witch-hunt is a never ending endeavour by definition. One 
should accept that there is evil-paraphyletic and reasonable-paraphyletic.)

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