Undomesticated Peeves Part 1

(Well, they can’t be “pet peeves” if they’re about wildlife, can they?)

Recently Patti Abbott posted a question on her blog asking what relatively small things annoyed her readers. Being who I am, I had to struggle to keep the list down, but one of my foremost irritations is, of course, a biology-related one.

Often—faaaar too often, in our supposedly civilized society—people confuse mammals with animals. This is not to say that mammals are not animals. However, just as all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares, “animals” is a category that includes a vast array of species that are not anything like mammals (which themselves make up only a tiny percentage of the number of animals out there).

And I have to admit, I’m baffled when people say that insects or fish or octopi aren’t animals. What do they think they are—fruit?

[this mantis shrimp is having an existential crisis:
when it looks in the mirror, does it see an animal?]

This is not just a trivial thing, given that it highlights both our mammal-centric thinking (dangerous as well as profoundly inaccurate) and our general ignorance of basic zoology. Or maybe it’s not true ignorance so much as carelessness; surely if someone paused to think, he or she would realize that there is no category other than “animal” into which they could place alligators or stick insects or barnacles. But it worries me that anyone would have to pause to think about it.

Maybe I’m just being snobbish, complaining about these taxonomical inaccuracies. But—here’s the great part—I don’t care!

Don’t say that jellyfish, or fruitflies, or any other species lacking hair and mammary glands, aren’t animals. There’s just no excuse for that kind of thing.

Stay tuned for more of my education-through-harangues campaign!

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}