Final-Fan said:
o_O.Q said:
"You didn't address my analogy to bats. If it's true that penguins have "adapted wings" and not flippers, doesn't it also have to be true that bats have "adapted legs" and not wings? If not, why not? If so, doesn't that seem like a ridiculous position to you?"
i didn't say that you were wrong... if you want to say that bats have adapted legs then so be it since its a fact
"He speaks of two sorts of groups:..."
look the point i'm making, is that this:
"Living creatures aren't inherently divided into strict groups"
is an absolutely insane claim to make, because we can see for example that elephants do not swim in fish schools...
there is a strict division between fish and elephants, get it?
i made such a ridiculous example because i couldn't really believe i was seeing what he was posting
and obviously you are quite clearly wrong here : "I don't think you'll find that he made the blanket assertion that there exist no groups into which animals can be sorted."
" At the very least, there is a serious miscommunication that is occurring somewhere here."
no there's not, i quite clearly laid things out
if you're still having difficulty parsing things, well at this point i can't help you... i can't really make it any simpler
"I will indulge you and answer your questions as requested."
to begin with i never had any questions for you, from the beginning you started this conversation with a misunderstanding of its context
that's how we got to where we are now
"Elephants do not swim with fish because elephants have evolved to be land dwellers, and fish have (for the most part, I think) evolved to be wary of large creatures splashing towards them."
congratulations, you finally got the point... i think
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1. OK, so if bats have evolved legs instead of wings, then birds have evolved legs instead of wings, too, correct? After all, they evolved their so-called wings from legs as well.
2. What exactly are your "strict groups" defining? What is being separated and delineated?
3. Although there are certainly populations that have been separated morphologically, genetically, reproduction-wise, etc., it is important to remember that they are all part of a continuum connected in the past via common ancestry. So the elephant doesn't swim with the fish, but perhaps the hippopotamus's great-to-the-millionth grandfather and the whale's were the same creature. So if you say you can identify natural groups that 100% separate these creatures, surely this must be applicable to past species as well, right? Where do you draw the line on the continuum?
Where is the line between red and yellow?
Or do you just mean that because of the built-up differences over time, you are fine with the human-oriented groupings? (In other words, a lot of the "reddish-yellowish" stuff is safely in the past, so there are many cases where we can get away with saying this bunch is "red" and this bunch is "yellow".)
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"OK, so if bats have evolved legs instead of wings, then birds have evolved legs instead of wings, too, correct? After all, they evolved their so-called wings from legs as well. "
yeah if you want, knock yourself out
"What exactly are your "strict groups" defining? What is being separated and delineated? "
well when i use the word "elephant" you understand that i'm not referring to a fish right?
why would that be?
"Although there are certainly populations that have been separated morphologically, genetically, reproduction-wise, etc., it is important to remember that they are all part of a continuum connected in the past via common ancestry."
which is irrelevant to my argument, so... i don't see why you keep bringing this up
" So the elephant doesn't swim with the fish, but perhaps the hippopotamus's great-to-the-millionth grandfather and the whale's were the same creature."
so what?
"Where do you draw the line on the continuum? "
again... when i use the word elephant you understand quite clearly that i'm not referring to a fish
why is that?
"Or do you just mean that because of the built-up differences over time, you are fine with the human-oriented groupings?"
how did we now start talking about human groupings from his claim about there being no clear divisions between animals?
"Where is the line between red and yellow? "
lol i never figured that you'd just double down and actually try to back up his nonsensical argument, i must say you've surprised me
clarify this for me how is the colour spectrum between red and yellow relevant to a discussion about animal divisions?
