Orders, Families, Evolution and Individuals

[Darren_Garrison]

@Chronos

Those characteristics had to evolve one at a time. I’m not sure in what order, but for the sake of argument, let’s say that it was earbones, milk, hair, live birth.

Well, hair came before modern earbones and live birth (as shown by the megaconus that I mentioned earlier.) Milk did come before live birth, but nipples are still up for grabs (so to speak.) Monotremes don’t have them, instead just leaking milk out pores which the puggles then lap up. But marsupials do have them, and it is hard to imagine the infant marsupial lifestyle without having a nipple to clamp onto, so you probably never had live birth without nipples. But it is possible that nipples could have come around while mammals were still egg-laying.

(As long as we are talking about naughty bits, monotremes and marsupials have bifurcated wangs, which is the primitive condition. If there were no monotremes or marsupials around today, we’d probably never have conciser that the earliest mammals were anything other than monowanged.)

[Chronos]

Or tetrafurcated, depending on how you count them (two shafts, four heads).

[Darren_Garrison]

@Chronos

Or tetrafurcated, depending on how you count them (two shafts, four heads).

No, echidnas have the twice-split wangs, but that is a derived character–marsupials and even platypii have plain old everyday bifurcated wangs.

[John_Mace]

Platypuses (or Platypods, if you must). Same as Octopus. Greek, not Latin.

[Darren_Garrison]

@John_Mace

Platypuses (or Platypods, if you must). Same as Octopus. Greek, not Latin.

So you have an issue with faux-Latiniatization of plurals but not the use of the term “wang”?

My rule of thumb: in non-formal writing, if any word sounds funny getting the “ii” suffix for pluralization, that justifies the words getting the “ii” suffix for pluralization.

[Colibri]

@Darren_Garrison

(As long as we are talking about naughty bits, monotremes and marsupials have bifurcated wangs, which is the primitive condition. If there were no monotremes or marsupials around today, we’d probably never have conciser that the earliest mammals were anything other than monowanged.)

As if that weren’t enough, female marsupials have three vaginas (two lateral ones, plus a temporary central one that forms the birth canal).

Echidnas indeed have one of the world’s most terrifying penises (or penes, if you prefer; not penii).

[Mangetout]

@Chronos

It is somewhat interesting, though, that among surviving animals, those characteristics are so correlated. Every animal that has three inner earbones also produces milk. Every animal that produces milk also has hair. Every animal that has hair also has three inner earbones. Almost all of the animals that have those three characteristics bear live young without eggshells. Most animals which bear live young without eggshells also have those other characteristics.

Those characteristics had to evolve one at a time. I’m not sure in what order, but for the sake of argument, let’s say that it was earbones, milk, hair, live birth. That means that there were some descendants of the first earbone animal that produced milk, and some that don’t, but that every single one of the milkless ones went extinct. And then of the ones with milk and earbones, some had hair and some didn’t, and every last one of the hairless ones went extinct. And then of those animals with milk, earbones, and hair, some laid eggs and some didn’t, and very nearly every last one of the egg-layers went extinct. And sure, you can posit that each of those changes was evolutionarily beneficial in some way, but yet, there are plenty of creatures without milk, fur, or inner earbones that somehow managed to avoid extinction.

True, but also consider that within mammals, there are traits that are not universal for example the way that the teeth are formed, and whether they continue to grow or not - so there’s a bit of circularity involved in the definition. If all mammals happened to have blue ears, the group might be called Blue-Ears rather than Milk-makers

[Chronos]

There is no such thing as an -ii suffix for pluralization. The number of Latin words that use -ii as a plural marker is exactly zero. The general rule (to which, admittedly, “octopus” and “platypus” are exceptions) is that a word ending in -us has the -us changed to -i. The only reason I can see for the confusion is “radii”, but that still follows the same rule as everything else: Take “radius”, chop off the -us, and replace it with -i. “Penii”, if it existed, would be the plural of “penius”.

And while we’re at it on Greek-Latin confusion, I think my “tetrafurcated” should actually have been “quadrafurcated”.

[Darren_Garrison]

So, you are saying a lot of Popeye enemies would be Brutuses, not Brutii?

[Colibri]

No, the plural is Blutoes.

[Chronos]

Et two, Brutuses?