Taxonomy & Genetics, WTF?
Mar. 10th, 2010 08:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
holly_evolvingMan, the more I think about it, the less useful canine and feline breeds, subspecies, and species are as metaphors.
Canines: wolves and dogs are the same, ja? Okay, so what's the universal standard for "dog?" They're so overbred that there just isn't one. We can assume for most purposes that the oldest breed is the Alaskan Malamute...except that doesn't explain domestic dogs in the fertile crescent before there were people in Alaska. Crap. So it's the greyhound, right? Except that pugs are older. Um. And then there's the issue of which species of wolf dogs are a subspecies of. I mean, the obvious answer is the gray wolf. Which didn't live around the people who first domesticated the dog...Crap again. And then there's the wolf issue itself. More and more evidence is coming to light that the Eastern red wolf is actually the result of the hybridization of the American gray wolf and the coyote. Wait, what? So you cross a wolf and a coyote and you don't get a mule-type sterile offspring as you should, but viable pups. And if you cross a coyote and a dog? You get a coydog, again with viable pups. But wait, there's more! In Russia, the official "breed" of dog used in airport security is a classified government secret. They won't reveal the exact formula used in establishing the first full members of the breed, but the will admit that the breeder used jackals in the process. Jackals and dogs...and the pups are genetically viable. What the crap? And just for added flavor, when some early researchers came across the coyote, they wanted to call it the American jackal.
So okay, canine genes are really plastic. Fine, dogs are weird.
But then there's cats. Specifically, the Savannah and the Pixiebob. Most cat people, even if they aren't crazy, know about the Bengal breed of housecat. It's a cross between ordinary housecats and the African wildcat from which they descend. Okay, nothing odd there. Only, they didn't use the African wildcat at all, but the Asian leopard cat. Okay, so maybe that's what they really come from. But then someone thought it would be awesome to cross the serval with a domestic cat. Completely different species. But the kittens are genetically viable, and now we have Savannahs. So then someone else thought they would do the same with a frickin' BOBCAT. And it worked! And now we have the Pixiebob.
Okay, so housecats and other small species are more plastic than we thought. But someone at the big cat preserve in Myrtle Beach, SC figured out that when you mate a tigress to a male tilion, he can sire cubs on her! But a liger on a lioness can't do the same.
I'm just saying, if I were a mule right now, I'd be pretty pissed.
Canines: wolves and dogs are the same, ja? Okay, so what's the universal standard for "dog?" They're so overbred that there just isn't one. We can assume for most purposes that the oldest breed is the Alaskan Malamute...except that doesn't explain domestic dogs in the fertile crescent before there were people in Alaska. Crap. So it's the greyhound, right? Except that pugs are older. Um. And then there's the issue of which species of wolf dogs are a subspecies of. I mean, the obvious answer is the gray wolf. Which didn't live around the people who first domesticated the dog...Crap again. And then there's the wolf issue itself. More and more evidence is coming to light that the Eastern red wolf is actually the result of the hybridization of the American gray wolf and the coyote. Wait, what? So you cross a wolf and a coyote and you don't get a mule-type sterile offspring as you should, but viable pups. And if you cross a coyote and a dog? You get a coydog, again with viable pups. But wait, there's more! In Russia, the official "breed" of dog used in airport security is a classified government secret. They won't reveal the exact formula used in establishing the first full members of the breed, but the will admit that the breeder used jackals in the process. Jackals and dogs...and the pups are genetically viable. What the crap? And just for added flavor, when some early researchers came across the coyote, they wanted to call it the American jackal.
So okay, canine genes are really plastic. Fine, dogs are weird.
But then there's cats. Specifically, the Savannah and the Pixiebob. Most cat people, even if they aren't crazy, know about the Bengal breed of housecat. It's a cross between ordinary housecats and the African wildcat from which they descend. Okay, nothing odd there. Only, they didn't use the African wildcat at all, but the Asian leopard cat. Okay, so maybe that's what they really come from. But then someone thought it would be awesome to cross the serval with a domestic cat. Completely different species. But the kittens are genetically viable, and now we have Savannahs. So then someone else thought they would do the same with a frickin' BOBCAT. And it worked! And now we have the Pixiebob.
Okay, so housecats and other small species are more plastic than we thought. But someone at the big cat preserve in Myrtle Beach, SC figured out that when you mate a tigress to a male tilion, he can sire cubs on her! But a liger on a lioness can't do the same.
I'm just saying, if I were a mule right now, I'd be pretty pissed.
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-10 03:01 pm (UTC)one of the biggest problems with modern taxonomy and genetics is that there are too many social and political ideas infecting it. one of the biggest is the concept of reification, the treating of abstract concepts as real things. in taxonomy and genetics, it manifests as assumption of strict categories and rules, as well as a tendencies to add moral hierarchy to developmental structure. it is an erroneous assumption that natural law follows man's (abstreact) social law. in reality, the so called taxonomic laws aren't set in stone, but represent a codification of social assumptions, or rules that are generally true on average, but there are always variations and contradictions. attempts have been made to create more objective standards through genetic evidence, but this process is akin to rewriting history
no subject
Date: 2010-03-10 03:30 pm (UTC)I haven't run into any instances of socially altered taxonomy (that I'm aware of) but I can certainly believe that they are out there, and not uncommon.