Damn!
When you see a thread title like this, do you also have an image of a sprint race, with a starter and his gun, athletes on their blocks, a group of timekeepers at the finshing line, a video room where officials pore over the video of the race amid a stack of record books, rules books and encyclopedias, and a press room with sports hacks hollering their reports down the phone?
Yep. You say “murine” to a biologist, she thinks “mouse”. When you want her to think rat, you pretty much just say rat, e.g. murine model of diabetes vs. rat model of diabetes. Technically, that doesn’t really make sense, but it will be understood nonetheless. I have never actually heard anyone say “rattine” that I can recall, though I’ve encountered that word on rare occasions in papers. I kind of wish there was a fun word like “murine” that both mice and rats had all to themselves.
Cat:Feline::Weasel:musteline.
Part of the confusion is whether we’re taking the -ine name from. For canines, felines, and murines, the name comes from the Family name.
For lupines (wolves) the name comes from their species name (Canis lupus) and for foxes (vulpines) the name comes from their genus name, Vulpes (but still in the Family of Canidae (canine)).
Polycarp, while one can say that cheetahs are acinonychine, because their Genus is Acinonyx, or that their Subfamily is Acinonychinae, they are still of the Family of Felidae, and therefore, felines (otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to call lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars ‘felines’ because they belong to the Subfamily, Pantherinae, and therefore, would have to call them pantherines).
Class: Mammalia
Order Family Subfamily Genus Species Subspecies Common
========= ======= =========== ======== ========== ========== ===========
Carnivora Felidae Felinae Felis silvestris silvestris wild cat
Carnivora Felidae Felinae Felis silvestris catus domestic cat, or..
Carnivora Felidae Felinae Felis silvestris domesticus cat
Carnivora Felidae Felinae Lynx lynx lynx
Carnivora Felidae Felinae Puma concolor puma
Carnivora Felidae Acinochinae Acinonyx jubatus cheetah
Carnivora Felidae Pantherinae Panterha leo lion
Carnivora Felidae Pantherinae Panterha tigris tiger
Carnivora Felidae Pantherinae Panterha pardus leopard
Carnivora Felidae Pantherinae Panterha onca jaguar
Carnivora Canidae Canis latrans coyote
Carnivora Canidae Canis rufus red wolf
Carnivora Canidae Canis lupus (grey) wolf
Carnivora Canidae Canis lupus familiaris domestic dog
Carnivora Canidae Canis lupus dingo dingo
Carnivora Canidae Canis aureus jackal
Carnivora Canidae Vulpes vulpes red fox
Carnivora Canidae Vulpes velox swift fox
Carnivora Canidae Urocyon cinereoargenteus gray fox
Rodentia Muridae Muridae Rattus norvegicus brown rat
Rodentia Muridae Muridae Rattus rattus black rat
Rodentia Muridae Murinae Mus musculus lab mouse
For the confusing taxonomy of rodents (using Order, Infraorder, Suborder, Family, and Superfamily) check out Wikipedia’s Rodent.
Peace.
I’m going out on a limb here and saying that at least in common {as opposed to scientific} usage it would be “rodentine”.
OP here-
Murine is what I was looking for: I had seen it listed for mice (I can Google too!)
but didn’t think to apply it to all Muridae.
Mods- feel free to close this as I have my answer!
Thank you everyone!
Great comment, and I would agree – except that I learned a very clear break between lesser and great cats on the one hand and the cheetah on the other, where all the former were Felinae, while the cheetah was all by itself in Acinonychinae. And that was what I was attempting to convey. But I think I can see the sense of Felis and Panthera each having their own subfamily, though I’d be inclined to argue against it.
Side comment to amateur mammalian taxonomists: I ran into an essay some years ago, and have never been able to recover it since, with an interesting premise. Consider the fossa (Cryptoprocta ferox), generally considered the most advanced and catlike of the Viverridae (civets and mongooses). The author took cryptoproctine characteristics in conjunction with cheetah characteristics, and did a compare-and-contrast with typical “cat” characteristics – and came to the conclusion that whatever level of relationship you place the cheetah at w/r/t “typical” felids, the fossa belongs at the same level, because they share feline characteristics to approximately the same degree. (His suggestion was a separate family within the Feloidea, IIRC.)
So what is it that makes him rat-like?
Oooops…sorry, never mind.
That does it, I’m sticking to Visine. :eek:
But it seems to me that the most common adjective for rat is “dirty”. Preferably with a Cagney impression.
Which not many people know is the Canonical name for the Catholic Mass said in Ratin…
As opposed to the Tridentine Mass, normally chanted by Neptune? (Or on Neptune?)
Egads, what did I just squeeze into my eyes? :eek:
Except in the Byzantine Rite, where it’s chanted by Poseidon.
OK, so what are humans? Homine? (from homo sapiens)
Humans are human. Great apes (as a class, including humans) are hominid.
Or if said by a guinea pig it could be done in Pig Ratin…
Did you know that the Vatican has its own special delicacy, rarely sold to non-Catholics? It’s a kind of cheese made using the lining of guinea pig stomachs as rennet.
They call it Cavy-Curia’ed.
I think eventually humans, extinct species of the genus homo, as well as some of the earlier bipedal apes from our line will come to be known universally as hominini. That transition hasn’t happened yet, and may never, but the trend appears to be toward making hominins (ourselves and our direct ancestors after the human/great ape split) a subset of hominids.
Good point. The -ine endings refer to the genus, while the -id endings are for the family. Strictly speaking, lions and tigers are not felines although they are felids. Their genus adjective would be Pantherine.
You think you’re joking… My brother was in Peru a while back, where they eat guinea pigs, and he has a photo taken there of a fresco in a rural church, depicting the Last Supper with Christ handing round the wine and roast guinea pigs.