# Plant or animal first? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 18, 2009, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plant-or-animal-first/517974 "2009-11-18T00:15:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plant-or-animal-first/517974/21 "2009-11-20T03:23:56Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Things that would popularly be considered “single-celled animals” … are mostly put into the protozoan kingdom.. Nitpick: protist rather than protozoan. > [@Colibri](#): > > The kingdom of “protists” (one celled eucaryotes)… And this is where it gets even trickier, as mentioned above. A single kelp organism can weigh over tonne, is considered a plant by most people and is certainly not one celled, yet according to most taxonomies it is still a protist. And the reason for that is that it has close relatives that are entirely unicellular. So here we have a huge, multicellular, photosynthetic organism with a trunk, ‘leaves’ and fruiting bodies that forms forests. But it’s not a plant, it’s a protist. Meanwhile we can look at some of the corals that are green, immobile, obtain most of their energy from photosynthesis and have a trunk and branches. And they are animals. Then we look at the saprophytic plants, which are white, threadlike, never see the sun, much less photosyntheise and live entirely on decaying organic matter. And they are still considered plants. Unfortunately there’s no simple way of defining a plant without referring to ancestry. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Man\_In\_Black](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@The\_Man\_In\_Black](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Man_In_Black)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plant-or-animal-first/517974/22 "2009-11-20T06:06:31Z")
Anyone remember that old sci-fi movie, I think it was called The Thing, about the alien that was a plant? It had two arms and legs, and a head. Could move and think. But its cells were what we would consider plant cells. This thread just got me thinking about that movie. sorry. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plant-or-animal-first/517974/23 "2009-11-20T07:02:55Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > A single kelp organism can weigh over tonne, is considered a plant by most people and is certainly not one celled, yet according to most taxonomies it is still a protist. Most _outdated_ taxonomies. Protista hasn’t been a useful taxonomic classification for the last generation, at least. Not since biologists decided cladistics is where it’s at. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plant-or-animal-first/517974/24 "2009-11-20T07:26:38Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Most _outdated_ taxonomies. Protista hasn’t been a useful taxonomic classification for the last generation, at least. Bwahh haaa ha ha hah haaaa. [Are you](http://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?hl=en&q=protist&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=2008&as_vis=0) [fuckin’ joking?](http://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?hl=en&q=protista&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=2008&as_vis=0) You’re funny, even if you do post blatant misinformation like this from time to time.😃 ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plant-or-animal-first/517974/25 "2009-11-20T08:13:29Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > [Are you](http://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?hl=en&q=protist&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=2008&as_vis=0) [fuckin’ joking?](http://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?hl=en&q=protista&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=2008&as_vis=0) No, I was not joking. I stand by my statement. Protista has ceased to be a useful classification. That it is still _used_ doesn’t mean it’s use_ful_. As your own kelp example clearly shows. It’s outdated. Eventually the literature will catch up. BTW, got that cite for the ur-metazooan being photosynthetic, yet, speaking of blatant misinformation? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plant-or-animal-first/517974/26 "2009-11-20T08:30:22Z")
I should add that I am specifically referring to Protista’s use as a _taxonomic_ classification. For an ecological or morphological scheme, great, use it if you want. But for modern taxonomy, it’s worse than useless, obscuring as it does any real phyletic relationships. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plant-or-animal-first/517974/27 "2009-11-20T09:49:16Z")
Yeah, it’s outdated and hasn’t been used fo generation… except for all those thousands of scientists publishing in high end journals who used it in the last year. But they’re all wrong, Mr. Dibble is wisdom wright, and they’ll all realise how wrong they are and acept his wisdom some day.:rolleyes: Tell ya what dude, when that day arrives you can say the system is outdated. Until then I’ll accept the word of actual taxonomist published inpeer reviewed journals over that of some anonynous internet poster. This the supposed to be a forum for factual answers, not wild proclamations on how your pet theory is the only right one. M’kay? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 9:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plant-or-animal-first/517974/28 "2009-11-20T09:52:30Z")
So that’s a “No” on the cite, then? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 10:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plant-or-animal-first/517974/29 "2009-11-20T10:06:03Z")
Take your time… Here’s a hint - Google Scholar on “urmetazoan photosynthesis” is only going to get you two hits, neither relevant. Just so you know. ETA make that 5 hits ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plant-or-animal-first/517974/30 "2009-11-20T12:18:26Z")
**MODERATOR** steps in------------------------------------------------------------------- **Blake** –ratchet back the tone, please. You have a habit of being a bit too passionate from time to time. No warning. **samclem** Moderator, General Questions ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plant-or-animal-first/517974/31 "2009-11-20T22:32:57Z")
I should say that I know that the protists aren’t a clade (that’s what I was alluding to when I referred to them as a sort of catch-all category), but I thought, from the question, that an answer of “six kingdoms” would be more useful than going into the cladistics. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2009, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plant-or-animal-first/517974/32 "2009-11-21T07:23:52Z")
There was nothing exactly \*wrong \*with your answer (with **Blake** ’s correction to it). Even Blake’s extention of the point re: fuzziness of the concept of “plant” was spot-on. But if someone asks a question like that in GQ, \*not \*using cladistics strikes _me as about as useful as using Linnaeus’ two-kingdoms model - neither is the current state-of-the-art in taxonomy. And in modern taxonomy, Protista is as useful as Invertabrate. Not totally useless_, often convenient, mostly kept around for historic reasons but not hella precise or truly meaningful the way clades are. As \*\*Blake \*\*has shown, lots of people still use the older classification system, but like I said, that doesn’t make it best practice. And (counter to what Blake seems to think) this is not just \*my \*opinion - papers get written about this all the time. By the time the dust settles, we may have an 18-Kindgom model, or a 30-Kindgom one, or somewhere inbetween. But that _doesn’t_ mean we have to wait for the final concensus before we can confidently say to any General Questioners that the 6-Kingdom model is outdated. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2009, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plant-or-animal-first/517974/33 "2009-11-21T07:25:48Z")
I should add, that as far as the OP goes, a more meaningful answer would be that Plant and Animal are fuzzy concepts, and does he mean Plantae vs Metazoa, or Photo-autotroph vs heterotroph? ---
**Author:** ![AWB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bb73d2/32.png) [@AWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AWB)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2009, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plant-or-animal-first/517974/34 "2009-11-21T13:30:28Z")
It’s a bit dated, but [“Enter Life”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HXOgqmRcyQ) explains it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plant-or-animal-first/517974.md?page=1)