Taxonomic Term Confusion: Difference between revisions
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== General ==
* Most common is using the word "race" where "species" would be more appropriate. Science-fiction series with multiple sapient alien peoples are a big offender here.
** Fantasy settings do the same thing, but whether it's as bad in such a case is more debatable since there are often [[No Biochemical Barriers]] either. (If [[
*** It should be pointed out that the definition of species is not absolute. In rare cases seemingly very different creatures can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. A good example is the case of a false killer whale and bottle-nosed dolphin (both dolphins but very different in shape and structure) which produced a fertile calf in captivity. Animals in the same genus such as tigers and lions are even more likely to interbreed.
*** The consensus usually is that [[No Biochemical Barriers]] means they're the same species. It's also sort of determined on how often this occurs. One or two exceptions doesn't break the rule.
*** In a fantasy setting, it's sometimes stated explicitly that a given "race" was created from scratch by divine agents. In that case, it's not technically related to any other species at all in real-world terms. But since it's also likely to be very similar to them, the whole set-up just can't be understood in the same terms.
** Usage of the word "race" to mean "species" in [[Speculative Fiction]] is probably an archaism, which stayed as a sort of genre convention.
*** Indeed, "race" was used to mean "species" in common and scientific speech until relatively recently. It was extremely common in the nineteenth century. It can be an easy way to create an old-timey mood in a fantasy story.
* Referring to a group of related species (a ''genus'') as a single species.
** There are two known species of ''Velociraptor'', three of ''Stegosaurus'', and two of ''Triceratops''.
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** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A-dMqEbSk8 This guy] disagrees.
** Don't do this one near [[Discworld|The Librarian]]: It's his [[Berserk Button]].
** Heck, far too many apes are too quick to forget that humans are one of the great
** It depends on your definition of 'monkey'. Monkeys as a group are useless in taxonomy if humans (and other apes) are excluded. "Tail-less simians" are do not share a single common ancestor that apes don't.
** In French, the word ''singe'', translated in "monkey" ''en anglais'', mean "more or less all primates that are not humans"... ''Singe'' (and probably "monkey") means something more cultural than biological.
** [[Lampshaded]] in the [[Planet of the Apes]] remake. When one of the humans called the apes "talking monkeys", one of them pinned him down and reminded him that monkeys were lower on the evolutionary ladder.
*** Although "[[Evolutionary Levels|lower on the evolutionary ladder]]" is '''itself''' a [[You Fail Biology Forever|biology fail]].
** On an episode of ''[[Sale of the Century]]'' someone got points for saying that a Baboon was an ape. They're actually Old World monkeys.
*** The use of "ape" as "simian", as in Dutch or German, may be rare in English, but it is not extinct.
** All in all, one should remember that, in biology, something never stops being what it once was. Apes descend from monkeys (but not from living monkeys), and, therefore, ARE monkeys themselves. Just like humans are apes, monkeys are primates, and primates are mammals. The dichotomy between ape and monkey to the extreme seen here is mostly a case in English speaking circles.
* Calling dolphins "fish."
** Any reference to "the fish class" as if there were only one, probably refers to ray-finned fish, you'd hope. There are actually three: cartilaginous fish (sharks and rays), lobe-finned fish (very obscure, mostly coelacanths and lungfish) and ray-finned fish (everything else).
*** It's not all that long since actual taxonomists put all fish in a single class, and school biology textbooks probably still do. Being a bit behind the cutting edge of classification is a very minor sin - there are piles and mounds and mountains of more substantial errors to complain about in Hollywood Biology.
** There is a dolphin fish. There's also a dolphin mammal. For some reason, the dolphin mammal gets accused of being a fish frequently but the dolphin fish is rarely accused of being a mammal. The latter is often referred to by other names to avoid unfortunate misunderstandings; fishing magazines (and ''[[Animal Crossing]]'') often refer to the Dolphin (fish) by its Spanish name, ''Dorado'', while most restaurants call it mahi-mahi.
** An example can be seen in this [https://web.archive.org/web/20131207085148/http://www.politedissent.com/archives/7104 Comic book PSA]
** Under "strict cladism", dolphins ''are'' fish — along with birds and humans. Strict cladism holds that no species ever "loses" any of the categories it is descended from, so, eg, all birds are dinosaurs, because they arose from a group of theropods. Since all mammals are descended from synapsids, synapsids from amphibians, and amphibians from fish, well, there ya go.
* A "lizard" and "reptile" are not interchangeable words, the latter includes snakes, crocodilians, turtles, and possibly birds. "Lizard," on the other hand, contains creatures as diverse as geckos, iguanas, chameleons, and monitor lizards (a category that includes the Komodo Dragon).
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* ''[[Tyrannosaurus Rex]]'' is always spelled T-Rex in most media, despite the proper way to abbreviate it is ''T. rex''.
** Heck, messing up the format of genus and species is so common, it deserves a trope of its own. For the record, the genus (''Tyrannosaurus'') is capitalized, the specific name (''rex'') is not, and you always underline/italicize it.
* For the record, dinosaurs are
** This, and the gorilla=monkey thing, is often more of a case of [[Did Not Do the Research]] than of trying and failing to get the genus/family/whatever correct. It's easier to call something a monkey than it is to call it the Super Magnificent Hominid Ultra Gorilla Of Doom.
*** Of course, [[Did Not Do the Research|a gorilla ''is'' a monkey]], as detailed in the link above.
** On the other hand, -saurus is the latinized form of the Greek word for lizard, and thus calling it lizard is justified on linguistic, rather than taxonomic, grounds, and that would even go for ''Basilosaurus''.
** Speaking of what is and what isn't a reptile, ''Dimetrodon'' and other so-called mammal-like reptiles (synapsids) are NOT reptiles, despite looking like lizards. That, until you check the bones, or the skin, seeing they kept the fish-like scales of their ancestors (which are pretty different for those of reptiles), and their glandular skin. Y'know, the kind of skin that oozes liquids. As when you sweat.
* Just as a reminder: While many turtles ''are'' '''amphibious''', ''none'' of them are '''amphibians'''. Conversely, despite having a similar body shape to lizards, newts and other salamanders ''are not'' lizards or reptiles at all, but amphibians.
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== [[Comic Books]] ==
* ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' has many examples of [[You Fail Biology Forever]], but two things are worth noting: The mutants are referred to as a new species, but they can breed with non-mutants; so no, the term mutant, or at least subspecies, is far more accurate. (Though the deciding factor would be if the ''offspring'' of mutants and non-mutants breed; else lions and tigers could be the same species.)
** Subspecies have to have some factor that prevents them from breeding most of the time, like geographic separation or something, which doesn't happen in ''[[X-Men]]''. The fact that mutants differ only from baseline humans by the "x-gene" means that mutants just have a different phenotype and are thus more closely related to baseline humans then gingers are related to blonds.
** With a few exceptions, none of them can have the same mutation, despite what they all claim. Then again, at least one of them has a mutation that allows [[Time Travel]], to say nothing of the couple of dozen [[Reality Warper
** Third, it's usually Magneto who claims that mutants are a new species, and he is, for all intents and purposes, a mutant-Nazi, not particularly intent on letting reality get in the way of his delusions.
*** [[Irregular Webcomic|Nazi Science sneers at your version of taxonomy!]]
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** But whatever a species is, it must involve a common ancestor for all members of that species. Marvel mutants commonly arise from purely normal human parents, i.e. there's no common ancestor involved. Therefore Magneto is full of it. Biologists in the Marvel universe would probably have a ton of arguments on the subject of classification.
*** Especially since there is at least one case of two mutants producing non-mutant offspring: Mystique and Sabertooth's son, Gordon Creed, aka Victor Creed, Jr. I also heard...somewhere that mutants tend to be closer genetically to a random human than they are to random mutants due to the wildly different forms of mutations around.
*** In fact, there are several "species" of lizards - several whiptails, for instance, and several types of frog - that are actually hybrids, ''and need their parent species to breed'', or breed asexually on their own, and which have existed for millions of years. Our current definition of species has so many problems with it that it's really only taught at the high school level for ease of convenience, and one of the first things university will do to you is tell you it's far too simplistic.
** Of course, every human, nay, every individual of any species born is almost certainly a mutant, several times over, by the actual definition of the term. A typical human may have dozens of alleles (that is, genetic variations) not present in either of its parents. These are all mutations.
* Subverted in a [[Marvel Star Wars|Star Wars]] comic in which Jaxxon, a rabbit character, says "I ain't no rodent!"
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** Perhaps they meant the first such species encountered in an aquatic environment?
** He also repeatedly refers to shrews as "rodents" in his ''[[Spellsinger]]'' series.
* In ''The World Of Kong: A Natural History Of Skull Island'', ''Venatosaurus''
* ''[[Bored of the Rings]]'' has an appearance by "six different phyla of giant insects". Insects, whatever their size, are a single CLASS of phylum Arthropoda.
* Melville spends an entire chapter of ''[[Moby Dick]]'' committing an extended crime against taxonomy. He starts by classifying whales as "spouting fish" and proceeds from there.
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* The female scientist near the beginning of the series ''[[Surface]]'' described the creature she'd seen as "An entirely new phylum of mammal!" This is especially mind-boggling when we later learn that the creatures are created from the DNA of liopleurodons(a prehistoric sea reptile)... which she describes as "A type of prehistoric eel"... You know, just stop trying.
* Anyone else want to punch the screen when [[Doctor Who]] gave the (reptilian) Silurians the name "''Homo reptilia''"?
* Occasionally a host of a [[Food Network]] show will try to emulate Alton Brown's use of scientific terminology, and wind up sounding like a [[Know-Nothing Know-It-All]]. The host of ''Food Feuds'', for one, has openly referred to clams as crustaceans, apparently on the assumption that all seafood without fins is in the same taxon.
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* Subverted in [[Mass Effect]], in which the names of the various alien species are very carefully non-capitalised, thus avoiding the common assumption that an alien planet is [[Planetville|just another country but a bit further away]].
* Also recently [[Subverted Trope|subverted]] in ''[[
* Hidden object casual games regularly invoke this trope, as when clicking on a "seahorse" isn't registered as finding a "fish".
* Averted in the [[Warcraft]] franchise, where across all media species names are almost always left uncapitalized. However, many, many fans do so anyway.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* [[Looney Tunes|Elmer Fudd]] calling [[Bugs Bunny]] a rodent.
* An episode of ''[[The Angry Beavers]]'' does this, as well. Rabbits are lagomorphs, not rodents, though Rodentia and Lagomorpha are sister orders in the clade Glires. However, in the Elmer Fudd case at least, the mistake is perhaps forgivable. Indeed, taxon Lagomorpha ''was'' placed within Rodentia until at least early 1900's, making then-Rodentia equivalent to now-Glires, and Fudd was already depicted as a middle-aged man in 1940.
* ''[[Family Guy]]'''s Meg Griffin calling a raccoon a rodent. They're actually members of the order Carnivora, close relatives of BEARS. Rodents and carnivores are both boreoeutherian placental mammals, but that's almost literally about as far as their taxonomic relationship extends. It's like saying we humans (which are primates) are related to horses (which are perissodactyls).
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