On Friday I gave you this cranium to identify:
Jake got in early with the suggestion of a seal of some kind (based on his experiences at the University of Dundee), which Manabu Sakamoto agreed with. Dave Godfrey developed the seal suggestion and arrived at a correct identification, which was supported by Carlos Grau, David Craven, cromercrox, Neil, Jamie Revell and Zigg. This is the cranium of the Hook-nosed Sea-pig, more commonly known as a Continue reading
On Friday I gave you this skull to identify from the Balcony in the Natural History Gallery at the Horniman Museum:
I must say that I was very impressed with the response – diet was quickly identified by Rosa Rubicondior, Will Chapman and Carlos Grau then Stephen J Henstridge spotted that this was the skull of Bandicoot and Jack Ashby, cromercrox and Jamie Revell all dropped hints (or blatantly stated) that this was the skull of a Continue reading
Yes, apes are monkeys and therefore so are we. I’ve said it before and I’ve given my reasons, other biology types have said it and given their reasons, yet a crime against pedantry rages unabated.
There are some important questions in life and this probably isn’t one of them, but it seems to have generated a lot of debate, so it’s clearly a topic that needs resolution.
If apes are indeed monkeys as I suggest, why do so many intelligent and knowledgeable people insist that apes are not monkeys? I think that perhaps it’s because apes didn’t used to be monkeys.
Let me explain. Taxonomy is the science of naming things and it was established as a discipline by Carl Linnaeus in the mid 1700’s. Evolutionary theory was not part of science at the time, so there was no real understanding of why species formed recognisable groups with shared common features – but those shared features proved useful for classification.
Linnaeus – and the taxonomists that followed in his footsteps – went about classifying things based on the presence or absence of physical and behavioural characteristics.
According to the Linnaean system of classification monkeys were medium or small in size and had tails, whereas apes were medium to large in size and didn’t have tails. Simple, apes were not monkeys – except the Barbary Ape Macaca sylvanus (Linnaeus, 1758), which was quite obviously a monkey despite being medium-sized and having no tail… spot the problem?
Of course I’m an ape – look, no tail – Barbary Macaque CORRECTION Crested Black Macaque (Macaca nigra) aka the Sulawesi Black Ape – Thanks Prancing Papio
In the 1950’s a taxonomist called Willi Hennig had the bright idea of applying an understanding of evolutionary relationships to taxonomic classifications – he called this phylogenetic systematics. It was an idea that made sense, because rather than basing groups on arbitrary characters that might be open to convergent evolution (like becoming tailless), species could be grouped together (in something called a ‘clade’) according to common ancestry. What a nifty idea!
However, this idea has taken time to get established, since identifying clades means compiling and analysing a huge amount of data. It wasn’t until computers became capable of taking on some of the workload that phylogenetic systematics (or cladistics) became properly established – in real terms this meant that progress was slow until the mid-to-late 1990s.
Computers running cladistic analyses can tell us if apes are monkeys.
Since cladistics has taken off, there has been an effort to marry Linnean classification terms with evolutionary classifications where possible, to limit the confusion caused when discussing groups of organisms. There are rules in the form of PhyloCode, but they don’t really address common names associated with clades.
As a result this revolution in taxonomy has been largely ignored by the public and indeed by scientists not involved in the process. Nonetheless, it directly impacts on how biological terms are used. In this instance the issue impacts on whether apes should be considered monkeys – the fact that they share a clade, suggests that they should.
Neither ‘monkey’ nor ‘ape’ are proper scientific terms, but both are commonly used in scientific literature, so they should have formal recognition as valid biological terms. That means that they should be aligned with definable clades, since that’s how taxonomy is done these days. In this case the Simiiformes clade for monkeys and Hominoidea for apes.
Common usage of biological terminology may be slow to follow the science, but if it wasn’t related to taxonomy we’d still be calling whales ‘fish’ (which is a fascinating story in its own right). Certainly there would be no justification for denying that apes were monkeys if people were not referring back to traditional taxonomy, because the term would be defined by usage alone and people do call apes monkeys.
In fact, it’s only seems to be in English that a distinction is made between apes and monkeys in common terminology and even then the terms have long been used interchangeably.
Of course a hard-liner can argue that we should just ditch the terms monkey and ape and stick with proper scientific terminology. I agree with the logic from a scientific perspective, but culturally it would be a bit much to expect the public to toe the scientific hard-line.
If the term monkey is to remain, it should at least be meaningful, which requires the cladistic definition and the inclusion of apes. As explained in more detail in the video below [NB contains swearing]
Let’s face it, it doesn’t really matter if apes are called monkeys.
Monkey is a more generic term than ape, which means it’s not very accurate or meaningful when talking about apes. Therefore it’s not really very appropriate unless the person using the term has a limited ability to identify very characteristic primates.
These are good reasons for not using the term monkey when referring to an ape, but nonetheless an ape is still a monkey. So feel free to criticise the use of monkey when referring to a Chimpanzee (for example), but don’t do it by saying that Chimps aren’t monkeys, because you’d be the one who is wrong – at least from a cladistic perspective.
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of monkeying around the topic.
Martin Robbins wrote a fun piece in The Lay Scientist the other day on the incorrect use of the term monkeys to describe apes (triggered by an article by Graham Smith for the Daily Mail). In Martin’s words:
A great crime against pedantry is in progress and it’s time for someone to draw a line
So as a pedant with a professional interest in this issue I am taking my stand, to help ensure that a miscarriage of pedantic justice doesn’t occur.
Apes are monkeys in the same way that monkeys are primates, humans are apes and I am a human – it’s called a nested hierarchy.
This means that all apes are monkeys, but not all monkeys are apes. Just as all humans are apes, but not all apes are human. By the same token, humans are all ape, contrary to the title of the otherwise rather good book 99% Ape: How Evolution Adds Up.
This nested hierarchical system is the mainstay of biological taxonomy – each individual fits in its species (with the possible exception of hybrids), each species in its genus, each genus in its family and so on. It’s how Linnaeus organised things back in the 1750’s and it works remarkably well. [EDIT it’s actually a bit more complex than that]
Linnaeus’ system works well in biology because species share varying degrees of similarity depending on when they branched off from a common ancestor. The groups with most shared characteristics can be clumped together. That’s a bit tricky to explain in a few words, so here’s a simple diagram:
Primate phylogeny adapted to show clades. Image adapted from handout used by Mr. Krauz (click image for link to source)
The groups that form after a branching event are called ‘clades’ and the members of the group can correctly be referred to by the name of any of the clades that they are part of. This is known as monophyly (which means one leaf).
If a name is given to a group of species that are not all related in this way it will either be a polyphyletic group (many leaves) or a paraphyletic group (excluding leaves). Again, this can be confusing to describe, so here’s another diagram:
Monophyly, paraphyly and polyphyly in the vertebrates – from Wikipedia (click image for source)
Polyphyletic and paraphyletic groups are not particularly scientifically informative, since they include or exclude members of clades with no evolutionary justification. This means that scientists prefer to base names for groups on clear monophyletic clades.
That’s a scientific argument for considering apes to be monkeys.
Aha! I must make it clear that I have been using the term monkey as a direct match for the term Simiiformes (which includes the Old and New World monkeys, the lesser apes and the great apes) in the discussion above, but is that valid?
Obviously I argue that it is, since I’ve been using it – the question should be why wouldn’t it be valid? The only logically robust answer (that I can think of) is that it wouldn’t be valid if people don’t commonly use the two terms to refer to the same things. So do people use the term monkey to refer to the apes?
The simple fact is that this whole discussion has been raised because Graham Smith published an article in which he refer to apes as monkeys, which demonstrates that monkey is indeed used as a generic term to refer to apes.
Another example is Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, where the Librarian (who happens to be an Orang-utan) dislikes being referred to as a monkey, which happens regularly – it may be fiction, but it seems reasonable to suggest that it reflects the use of terminology of real people.
In addition, I would suggest that it’s helpful for common terms for biological groups to directly reflect the scientific terminology as much as possible, since this improves the ability of scientists to communicate with a non-specialist audience. So even if monkey didn’t mean the same as Simiiformes (which it seems to) it probably should. Otherwise monkey has no scientifically meaningful analogue, since it would refer to a paraphyletic (and therefore arbitrary) grouping.
I think that my argument is pretty robust and I’ll stand by it until I hear something convincing enough to change my mind.
That said, I will add an important caveat – monkey is a generic term and when referring to Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Gibbons, Orang-utans and Humans the more specific term of ape should be used for clarity. After all, you don’t refer to your pet cat as a pet carnivore, or a budgie as a theropod, because generic terms omit a lot of additional information.
So although apes are monkeys, they are still apes – and that means something.
On Friday I gave you this cute little chap to identify:
I was very impressed with Neil’s comment, which managed to convey the scientific name of the species without giving it away. Here’s what he said:
I see one eye and two fingers
which neatly leads us to Continue reading
This week I’m going to give you an object that’s on display at the Horniman Museum. Whenever I see this specimen I’m reminded of the diversity of life that is out there in the wider world, that we never consider normally. Any idea what this skeleton belongs to?
As usual, I will do my best to reply to your questions, observations and suggestions in the comments section below.
Good luck!
I’d like to begin by apologising for providing misleading information about Friday’s mystery object – I omitted a scale bar and then described the skull as being 4cm long. It goes to show how even a small amount of time can addle one’s memory, since this skull is in fact 7cm long:
I thought it would prove an easy one to identify, since it’s from a very well known species that I have talked about before – but the identification was made more difficult because it is a very young individual. This fact is clear from the lack of fusion of the bones and the lack of teeth. CopilasDenis and David Craven both spotted this and they also picked up on the fact that this skull is from a carnivore – as did ObenedO.
As to what species this skull comes from, no-one really came very close. In fact I was surprised when Jake said:
It doesn’t look catty or doggy or sheepy or deery.
since this is actually the skull of a Continue reading
After last week’s fiendishly tricky mystery object I’ve decided to give you a much easier one. Any idea what this is?
As usual I will do my best to answer your questions and provide guidance – good luck!
On Friday the mystery object was provided by Mark Carnall, the curator of the newly reopened Grant Museum of Zoology:
It’s not been an easy one to work out – I thought it was part of a fish skull when I first saw it and comments have ranged from a squashed frog to Yoda’s foot.
The closest suggestions came from Jamie Revell, Steven D. Garber, PhD and Helen (sort of…), this is the Continue reading
This Friday we have a guest mystery object from the newly reopened (and rather fantastic) Grant Museum of Zoology:
I got this one wrong when I first saw it – I hope you manage to do better!
I’ll do my best to give clues and answers to questions during the day, but hopefully Mark and Jack from the Grant will be able to provide some guidance as well. More about the awesome new Grant Museum on Monday with the answer. Good luck!
On Friday I gave you this fluid preserved specimen to identify:
I probably made this one a bit harder than I could have, by not giving you a photo from the other side, but then that would have made it too easy:
It seems that Neil was the only person who may have correctly identified this specimen, as hinted in this comment:
Knowing it’s an embryo give me some idea (possibly incorrect) of the orientation: tail and hind-limbs at top, trunk, then forelimbs at lower left and the head, unhelpfully facing away from us, at lower right. It would then appear to be a quadrapedal tetrapod, probably (?) a mammal. Based on the apparent shape of the feet and possibly the hint of an ear I’m going to say …
This is of course assuming that Neil deliberately chose the word ‘trunk’ to indicate that he had worked out that this is the embryo of an Continue reading
This week I thought it would be nice to give you a bit of a break from the usual skulls, so this week I have a fluid preserved specimen for you to identify:
It may just look like a small white blob, but it’s my favourite small white blob ever. Can you work out what it is?
As usual you can put your observations, comments and suggestions below and I’ll do my best to respond. Good luck!
On Friday I gave you this piece of skull to identify:
It was in the Horniman collections with no identification beyond a pencil note saying ‘Monkey?’, but that seemed to be a bit of an odd suggestion, since primates have very rounded braincases – even the longer skulled ones like baboons. I think the person who made the tentative identification had got the section the wrong way round – thinking that the nuchal crest was a part of a brow-ridge or something – a mistake that Jake certainly didn’t make. They also missed what several of you spotted – the rugose (sort of wrinkly) structure that supported the olfactory epithelium (the inner back part of the nose where the receptors for smell are located).
What most of you did miss however, was the lack of fusion of the cranial sutures, which indicates that this was from a juvenile animal. As a result it is smaller and has far less well-developed muscle scars than an adult animal would have. A faint muscle scar can be seen converging on what looks like the beginnings of a sagittal crest (as pointed out by Manabu Sakamoto), so it seems reasonable to guess that the adult animal would have a reasonably well developed crest on the top of the braincase.
Eventually Neil dropped a couple of hints that showed he knew what it was and David Craven and KateKatV also suggested that they knew that it was part of the braincase of a juvenile Continue reading
I apologise in advance for providing a slightly short answer to this week’s mystery object – I found myself a bit strapped for time between responding to Intelligent Design types trolling my blog here and at Scientopia, writing a talk for Skeptics In the Pub tomorrow evening and trying to sort out my laptop power lead after it broke (now fixed thanks to the helpful staff at Maplins who gave me the parts I needed to make repairs).
On Friday I gave you this object to identify, thinking that it might be a fun challenge:
As it turns out it seems to have been a good one, since most of you managed to work out what it’s from. There were some great hints dropped and I think that the comments proved to be a useful resource for those who weren’t sure, but they didn’t detract too much from the fun of working it out. Thanks to everyone for being awesome!
The first to correctly identify both the type of bone and the species it came from was Cromercrox, who gave a great rationale for his suggestion: Continue reading
Well, it seems that my earlier post on Darwin has ruffled some feathers in the Intelligent Design (ID) camp, so they’ve been trolling the comments section on my personal blog. This post started out as a response, but I decided to expand it to include some of the context surrounding Darwin’s work.
…One wonders why no one noticed “natural selection” before. And there were ingenous minds in the history! One answer might be this – it was never observed because it doesn’t exist. Darwin implanted this speculation there. And “On the origin of species” reads sometimes like comedy. One should try to count how many times Darwin used words like “which seems to me extremely perplexing” etc….
One reason why some scientific theories may have been slow to come to light
It’s interesting how ‘simple’ natural mechanisms and systems can take longer to be acknowledged than one might have thought. Heliocentrism is another example of something that now seems very obvious, but was historically slow to be recognised (and is still not recognised or not known about by some). It’s easy to blame organised religion for the suppression of such observational truths about the universe, since challenges to traditional belief were seen as heresy and dealt with accordingly, but there’s far more to it than that.
Let’s set the scene – Darwin’s formative years were tumultuous with regard to sociopolitical events. The Napoleonic wars drew to an end with the Battle of Waterloo when Darwin was six years old, the Peterloo Massacre occurred and the Six Acts were drawn up by the Tories to suppress radical reformers when he was ten – reflecting the ongoing social division between the establishment and the public. When Darwin was in his twenties the power of the strongly traditional British establishment finally began to wane, when the Whigs came to government allowing the 1832 Reform Act and the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act to be passed. There was also the devastating Great Famine in Ireland when Darwin was in his thirties and all of this was set against a background of the Industrial Revolution, which was providing the impetus for science to play an increasingly important role in society.
Peterloo Massacre
This meant that Darwin’s work was by no means formulated in intellectual isolation. Theories of evolution had been proposed 2,400 years previously, but they were poorly developed. Natural philosophers like Darwin’s own grandfather Erasmus and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck raised the issue of evolution at around the time of Darwin’s birth, but the mechanisms for evolution were either ignored or flawed. Evolution was an established topic of discussion and publication by the time Charles Darwin came onto the scene, with people like Robert Grant being more radical on the subject than Darwin found palatable in his early manhood. Despite this interest, the mechanism of evolution remained elusive – perhaps unsurprisingly, since the academic community addressing natural sciences was largely composed of members of the clergy and the natural theology of the time was seen as being mechanism enough.
But a literature base that was to inspire non-traditional hypotheses was also developing at the time – Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation in particular offered an alternative view that was seen as too radical by many – clearing a path for subsequent works that challenged orthodox views. Given this context, it is perhaps unsurprising that Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace converged on the same premise at the same time. In short, the ideas evolved to fit the intellectual and social environment. The same has been true of other discoveries and inventions where there was a requirement for the right intellectual groundwork to be laid in advance. This groundwork is required before a robust theory can take root – and Natural Selection is a component of the robust theory of Descent with modification.
The Intelligent Design agenda
The critiques I have seen of evolutionary theory have come from people who quite clearly don’t understand it – and such critiques tend to rely on statements of incredulity rather than a strong factual base. No well-supported alternative hypotheses have been constructed or presented and a lack of understanding hardly counts as a robust refutation of a well supported theory.
An accusation by IDers is that ‘Darwinists’ (N.B. I don’t know anyone who would call themselves a Darwinists following the New Synthesis) stick with Natural Selection because they are atheist. I think I see the real agenda emerging here, particularly when you see evolution as a theory being conflated with just one of the mechanisms involved. After all, Natural Selection is not the only mechanism involved in evolutionary adaptation and speciation – there are also other factors like hybridisation, horizontal gene transfer, genetic drift, perhaps some epigenetic influences and artefacts of EvoDevo processes. But these factors are still constrained by the simple fact that if they are selected against, they will not be perpetuated.
John A. Davison left this comment on a previous post:
Natural selection is a powerful force in nature. It has but one function which is to prevent change. That is why every chickadee looks like every other chickadee and sounds like every other chickadee – chickadee-dee- dee, chickadee-dee-dee. Sooner or later natural selection has always failed leading to the extinction of nearly all early forms of life. They were replaced by other more prefected forms over the millions of years that creative evolution ws in progress…
Salamander ring species
First and foremost, the suggestion that Natural Selection prevents change is erroneous – change will occur if there is a change in the environment and/or if beneficial mutations arise in a population (tell me that mutations don’t happen – I dare you…). The obvious response to the next statement is that I can think of six different ‘chickadee’ species, with an additional three subspecies (and this is ignoring numerous other very similar members of the Paridae), all are similar, but all are different – so the statement makes no sense as it stands. Getting to the meat of what is being implied about the Creationist interpretation of species, another bird provides a good example to the contrary. The Greenish Warbler shows a distinct pattern of hybridising subspecies across their vast range, until they form reproductively isolated species at the extreme ends of their range, where they happen to overlap yet not hybridise (a classic ring species [pdf of Greenish Warbler paper]). This is a well-known example of how genetic variation can accrue and give rise to new species without any supernatural intercession.
…But no wonder that Darwin considered “natural selection” for such a complicated force. Even nowadays Dawkins speculates that NS operates on genes, whereas E.O.Wilson has brushed up “group selection” recently (citing of course Darwin as debeatur est .
So may we “uncredulous” ask on which level “natural selection” operates?
As to this question about the level on which Natural Selection operates, I thought the answer was pretty obvious – it operates at every level. Change the focus of Natural Selection from passing on genes to the only alternative outcome – the inability to pass on genes. It doesn’t really matter which level this occurs at or why – be it a reduction in reproductive success when not in a group, or a deleterious single point mutation – if it happens then Natural Selection can be said to have occurred. Being ‘fit’ simply means that an organism has not been selected against.
There’s a lot more to modern evolutionary thought than Darwin’s key early contribution, but Darwin is still respected because he was the first to provide a viable mechanism by which evolution is driven. This mechanism has helped make sense of an awful lot of observations that were previously unaccounted for and, moreover, evolution has been observed and documented on numerous occasions [here’s a pdf summary of some good examples].
I fail to see why Intelligent Design has been taken seriously by some people – it relies on huge assumptions about supernatural interference (so it fails to be a science) and I have as yet never seen a single piece of evidence that actually supports ID claims. The only research I have seen mentioned by proponents of ID are old, cherry-picked studies that report a null result from an evolutionary study – this is not the same thing as support for ID, as anyone who can spot the logical fallacies of false dichotomy and Non sequitur (in particular the fallacy of denying a conjunct) will tell you.
Intelligent design as a scientific idea
I like to keep an open mind, but as soon as I see logical fallacies being wheeled out I lose interest in getting involved in the discussion. This may be a failing on my part, because I should probably challenge misinformation, but quite frankly I don’t have the time or the patience – much as I hate to stoop to an ad hominem, my feelings on this are best summed up by the paraphrase:
when you argue with the ID lot, the best outcome you can hope for is to win an argument with the ID lot
and my time is far too precious to waste arguing with people who ignore the arguments of others and construct Straw man arguments based on cherry-picked and deliberately misrepresented information. I have no problem with other people believing in a god, but please don’t try to bring any god into science (and heaven-forbid the classroom) – since it is neither necessary nor appropriate.
On Friday I gave you this object to identify:
I thought it would prove quite straightforward for my astute audience and I was not disappointed. As usual Jake was the first to comment and he was spot on when he said:
I think it is some sort of big bird, it’s the braincase and […] the ear
The big bird Jake suggested was an Emu, which was slightly off as was CopilasDenis‘ suggestion of Cassowary and Cromercrox‘ suggestion of Rhea (although they all correctly spotted that this piece of skull was from a ratite). But Dave Godfrey finally picked the last remaining living ratite and the correct answer when he suggested it was Continue reading
On Friday I gave you this sectioned bit of a critter as the mystery object:
A slightly trickier one than usual, so I wasn’t surprised at the range of suggestions – ranging from a vertebra to a Narwhal tusk. Jack Ashby got in first with a tentative stab at the right answer when he said ‘sawfish maybe?‘ a suggestion supported by Carlos Grau. It is indeed part of the rostrum (beak or nose) of a Continue reading
On Friday I gave you this object to identify:
As I suspected, you all worked out that it is the skull of a turtle, so well done all and particularly Jake, who got there first.
Turtle skulls are quite characteristic, in that they have a bill with no teeth and they have no openings apart from the obvious ones like the eye sockets and nose. Most other tetrapods have several openings in their skulls, something that is diagnostic for, and sometime provides the name for, major groups like the main ‘reptile’ group the Diapsida. This name that means two arches, which is a reference to two additional openings present in the skulls of this lineage (which includes the lizards, snakes, crocodiles and dinosaurs – including the birds). Turtles and tortoises are members of the Anapsida, which means without arches.
The characteristics of this skull are those of an Anapsid and the streamlined shape and quite large size (despite it being a youngish adult, as indicated by the unfused sutures) suggests that it is a sea-turtle. There are only 7 species of sea-turtle and the comments provide an example of features that can be used to distinguish this as a Continue reading
Zygoma 