Species/Kinds (for Peg...and others)

Please provide a working definition of "kind" by which such a list may be compiled.If you're tying the concept of "kind" to interfertility, then is a "kind" the same thing as a species?

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Estimates of the number of species currently living on Earth range widely, largely because most living species are microorganisms and tiny invertebrates, but most estimates fall between 5 million and 30 million species. Roughly 1.75 million species have been formally described and given official names. Insects comprise over half of the described species, and ~3/4 of known animal species. The number of undescribed species is undoubtedly much higher, however. (from the Encyclopedia of the Earth)

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I'll presume that you'll discount all evidence that living species only make up 0.1% of all species that have ever existed on earth. 5 to 30 million is still a lot of critters to fit on a boat.The question still goes round and round. Is there a useful definition of "kind" or not?

So just to be clear on the concept, are all beetles of the beetle kind?There are currently more than 350,000 known species of beetles, and most estimates say that there are probably 5 to 8 million all told. In addition, those 350,000 species all belong to the order Coleoptera which is further divided into 4 suborders consisting of more than 284 families. Also, if all beetles belong to the beetle kind, are weavils then also of the beetle kind, since they also belong to the order Coleoptera?On the other hand, are human beings of the same kind as squirrel monkeys, since we are also in the same order, just like all beetles are in the same order? Or are squirrel monkeys of the same kind as capuchins, since they're both in the same family and are also both called monkeys?If you agree that every kind was present on the ark, just how many beetles and monkeys are you going to have to have on board? Help me out on this one?(My apologies to any qualified biologists here. I hope that I'm at least right in the general outline.)

So should capuchins be able to interbreed with squirrel monkeys, since they're both of the monkey kind? Or are they of different kinds now? Do mean to say that since capuchins and squirrel monkeys are both of the monkey kind that therefore there only had to be one pair of monkeys on the Ark, representing all of the monkey kind? That would also mean that every monkey on the planet, no matter how different, would have descended in the last 4000 years from just one single pair.In other words, this guy: looked just like these guys: as well as these guys: just 4000 years ago or so? They would have to be, since you're saying that they're all of the monkey kind. Or would you tell me just what it means to be of the monkey kind?

I'm sorry, my head is spinning. I'm trying to make sense of this. So:All kinds that exist today were on the ark. There are no such things as new kinds.A dog is a dog kind and a wolf is a wolf kind.Dogs and wolves are not of the same kind.Dogs and wolves can interbreed. Their offspring are not wolf kind nor are they dog kind.But in Message 62 you said: So of what kind are these wolf-dogs? Did you just create a new kind or didn't you?

It doesn't matter what I call it. I'm asking what YOU call it.You're not denying that wolves and dogs can interbreed. They can. But whatever this offspring of a dog and a wolf is, according to you, it's not a wolf kind and it's not a dog kind and it's not some new kind, so I ask again: What kind of animal is the offspring of a dog and a wolf?

All right then, ICANT, since you simply refuse to answer the straightforward question, posed by numerous participants in this thread, of exactly what kind your hybrid wolf-dog is, let's try another one. Fair enough. Let's try just the beetles, all within the order Coleoptera. At this point, if you're going to count dogs and wolves as two different kinds, even if they're the same species, then we're now going to have to count each separate beetle species as a kind. If not, please give me a justification why not.Here are some numbers.There are at minimum 350,000 species of beetles alive today, with estimates that the total is really around 5 to 8 million. I'm going to use just that minimum number and also ignore all the species of beetles that have gone extinct since the Flood, or however far back you want to go.The size range for beetles is 0.3mm to 200mm long. For the sake of argument, let's take the average of the extremes to be the mean. So the average beetle is going to be 60mm long (or 2.3 inches, for us backward non-metric types). Sound like a reasonable size. No? Too big? Okay, I'll be really generous. Let's make the average just 1/4 of that figure. Now the average beetle is only going to be 15mm long. That's not a very big bug.Now it gets tricky. So far I have yet to uncover the average width or volume of our beetle friends, so we're going to have to do a bit of estimating. But before we do, let me point out that all we're trying to do is get an idea of the order of magnitude involved in this scenario. Please keep that concept in mind as we go.Let's take gander at a random selection of representatives from a number of different members of the Coleoetra order. (I picked these without looking, trying to be as random as possible.) The point is of course arguable, but our random sample seems to indicate a rough length to width ratio of 4:1. Again, this is just an estimate. All I'm trying to do is get a grip on the order of magnitude we're dealing with.So being generous and rounding even past our significant digit, we can say that your average run of the mill beetle is about 15mm long and 4mm wide (0.6 by 0.2 inches). Thus the total area taken up by our average beetle is 60mm². Still sound reasonable and in accord with our experience of beetles?350,000 different species of beetles times 60mm² is (after a bit of fiddling) 21km² of area taken up if we laid just one representative each of every known species of beetles with no space in between, like a giant beetle carpet. Oops, if this is the Ark then we need two of each kind. Now that's 42km² of beetles.Now for the big finish. Converting km² to acres we get 10,378 acres. Of beetles.So, you've got 18 acres of storage space on the Ark. We need to fit in 10,378 acres of just beetles, with no other creatures at all on board.Even if we have to adjust my initial numbers down by an order of magnitude, making beetles really, really tiny, I would venture to say that you've got a bit of a packing problem ahead of you.Final question: what is the standard or definition of kind that makes wolves and dogs different kinds but that would allow you to reduce the number of kinds of beetles down to something that would fit on your Ark?Edited by ZenMonkey, : Correcting html error that gave km rather than square km.

Oop, my bad but not for the reason you said. I accidentally put an "s" in the superscript for 21km² instead of a "2". I done fixed the htiml now. The math still stands, as far as I can tell.After all, 1/80th of an acre comes out to 544.5 ft², or a square about 23 ft on a side. Kinda small for 350,000 beetles.

And I can't believe that I used to tutor basic math.lyx2no and Coyote are totally right and I am totally wrong, and I should have realized that I was way off. We only come out to a small fraction of an acre for all of the known species of beetles laid out tail to antenna. That's still a bit of real estate if you start giving them a little room to move around in, not the huge swath I was coming up with.I was going to try again with the 110 species of gerbils, but perhaps I should leave well enough alone.

Okay, all living (and extinct) creatures got called forth after their kind. And some of them, you say, could be hybrids. Does that mean that hybrids don't have their own kind? For example, I still don't recall getting a clear answer about whether the offspring of a wolf and a dog is of the wolf kind or of the dog kind. I'll ask again. Is it of the dog kind, since one parent was a dog? Is it of the wolf kind, since one parent was a wolf? Is it neither? If it's neither, then does that mean that it's of a new kind? Or of no kind at all? How is a dog giving birth to a non-dog not an example of one kind giving birth to another kind, exactly what you say can never happen?

Well then, what exactly is a hybrid? That's all I'm asking. Let me rephrase the question again, though I thought that it was clear enough.Way back in Message 246 you said:

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If you breed wolves and dogs you get half wolf and half dog. Then you can call it whatever you want. But it is not a dog and neither is it a wolf.

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Then in Message 275, when presented with this thyclacineyou replied to hooah:

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In Message 271 you reference an extinct carnivorous marsupial and ask me if it is a Dog? Wolf? Kangaroo? Tiger?

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It is none of those but was a carnivorous marsupial hybrid.

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Do you mean that the thyclacine is not of a separate kind, but is instead a hybrid? If it so, why? Why isn't it just of the thyclocine kind? If it's a hybrid, just like the offspring of a wolf and a dog is a hybrid, then what two separate kinds were its parents, or at least its ancestors? Do you believe that this is the result of breeding a dog and a kangaroo and a tiger, or some combination thereof?Or permit me to focus on what I believe are two simple questions: What is your definition of a kind that makes a dog and a wolf two separate kinds?

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What is your definition of a hybrid that makes both the thyclacine and the wolf/dog offspring both hybrids?Now on to your questions, which pretty much come out to the same thing. Can a female wolf and a male wolf produce something other than wolf pups? The short answer is no. But the short answer is very misleading.Two animals that we would both call wolves will indeed produce something that also looks like a wolf, but that will be different in some degree from its parents. That wolf - if it's lucky - will produce offspring that resemble it but will in turn also be slightly different. Each generation will be similar to but not exactly like its parents. The difference between any two generations will not be very great. But the difference between generations further and further removed from each other will grow larger and larger. At some point, some descendent of that original wolf pair will look so different that you'd look at it and say, "Yep, that's a dog all right." But there was no single generation for which you could say that the parents were wolves and the offspring were dogs.By way of analogy, let's talk about language. Way back in 100 CE there were some folks called Romans who lived in Italy and who spoke Latin. Their fellow Romans who lived in Spain spoke Latin, as did the Romans who lived in France (using the modern names for convenience).Come around 500 CE and they're still speaking Latin, but now it's not quite the same Latin as everyone was speaking in 100, nor is the Latin of Spain the same as the Latin of France. You have distinct dialects.Skip ahead again to 1000 CE, and you wouldn't say that any of the common folk are speaking Latin at all. What were once dialects still resemble Latin a lot, but they're different enough that you have to call them French and Spanish and Italian.There are quite a few important things that this analogy helps illustrate, but the one I want to focus on for the moment is this: at no point did two parents who spoke Latin produce a child who spoke French. But the cumulative changes over time did ultimately change one language into another.Likewise, cumulative changes over time in a breeding population can be and often are significant enough that what was once one species has now become a different one.That's all. I hope that this helps.Edited by ZenMonkey, : Spelling.

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I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die.
-John Lydon

Thanks for pointing out this statement of yours from Message 331. However, I don't think that it helps you much. So at the risk of repeating myself: What is the definition of a kind that would help you - specifically you, who appears to be rejecting all other modes of classification - to determine whether an animal was of the dog kind, of the wolf kind, or of some other kind?Edited by ZenMonkey, : No reason given.

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I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die.
-John Lydon