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Is taxonomy arbitrary?

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Anarchist420

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I was thinking it was because many homo sapiens contains many subspecies. Some people are obviously a mixture of different subspecies and still classified as homo sapiens.

How do taxonomists get away with calling all people homo sapiens?
 
Anarchist420 said:
I was thinking it was because many homo sapiens contains many subspecies. Some people are obviously a mixture of different subspecies and still classified as homo sapiens.

How do taxonomists get away with calling all people homo sapiens?
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You're getting hung up on technicalities and consequently related semantics that don't actually exist.

You also answered your own question.

I was thinking it was because many homo sapiens contains many subspecies. Some people are obviously a mixture of different subspecies and still classified as homo sapiens.
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Subspecies and not species. Species and not subspecies.
 
There's no universal document that says how life forms are to be classified, so we picked some arbitrary rules that seemed reasonable at the time. The fun part is that a fair portion of this stuff came before anyone knew that DNA existed.

GasX's definition is indeed correct though.


Though it made me wonder then: How do you do the species differentiation with things that don't reproduce sexually?
 
Jeff7 said:
GasX's definition is indeed correct though.
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No it's not. If two animals can produce children together, but don't typically breed with each other, they are usually considered separate species.

Lots of animals within the same Genus can interbreed, but they usually don't.
 
BladeVenom said:
No it's not. If two animals can produce children together, but don't typically breed with each other, they are usually considered separate species.

Lots of animals within the same Genus can interbreed, but they usually don't.
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Did not know that.

And I guess that statement technically was incomplete anyway - yes, "viable" is a critical keyword there too. :\



CallMeJoe said:
Ligers, Tigons, Mules and Hinnies are all viable.
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Seems that "species" is pretty arbitrary then. 😛
 
Jeff7 said:
Did not know that.

And I guess that statement technically was incomplete anyway - yes, "viable" is a critical keyword there too. :\
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Actually, often the distinguishing characteristics is not simply whether or not the offspring are viable, but whether or not the offspring are fertile, i.e. can reproduce themselves.

There's also the phenomena of ring species.


Seems that "species" is pretty arbitrary then. 😛
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Pretty much.
 
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