Oh, they will start the whole subspecies song and dance, and no they will not elaborate what's their definition of "subspecies" beyond "they are like, different".
Except, "domestic dog" is already subspecies level, which is why breeds of dogs are "breeds" and not subspecies. Domestic dogs, Dingos, and the other "species" of wolves are actually just subspecies of Gray Wolf.
But the type of people like OOP don't have any concept of biology anyway, and believe the earth is 6,000 years old, and refuse to accept that all tetrapods (including humans) are lobe-finned fish, or that birds are dinosaurs (therefore classified as reptiles, but then again, reptiles are a higher classification of lobe-finned fish, just like birds are a higher classification of reptiles). And just to confuse those people more, snakes are members of Toxicofera (which includes a large portion of lizards too, but not all lizards), meaning snakes are actually types of lizards, but separated millions of years before legless lizards, thus explaining physical differences, such as legless lizards having visible ear holes and eyelids, while snakes do not.
They are all canis lupus. For those wondering. Specifically because they can all breed with each other. While taxonomy isn't always consistent with this they did go consistent when it came to canines.
Canis lupus lupus is the gray wolf. Canis lupus familiaris is the domesticated dog. Canis lupus occidentalus and canaanus lupus nubilus are the northern American varieties along with canis lupus arcticus..
The dingo is Canis lupus dingo.
The confusion here often comes because sometimes people skip the species and go straight to the subspecies when talking about canines of the lupus species just for brevities sake (canis dingo instead of cannice lupus dingo. It's just trying to be shorthand to save space especially when repeating many of the subspecies in one writing)
Love the older religious line of misunderstanding evolution, "if humans evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys".
The answer is because the speakers an idiot who doesn't understand what evolution is theorizing. It isn't saying evolution is sequence like the "March of Progress" or "Evolution of Man" artistic depictions.
i asked "do you have grandparents? do they have siblings? do the siblings have children? do they have children? did they all die when you were born? okay, so now you know."
Dogs and wolves likely diverged well before domestication though. They're a separate species. Dingo and some other wild dogs can be considered subspecies of familiarus.
It is pointless to try to argue science with individuals whose highest level of science education was barely paying attention to "pass" high school.
Back in COVID I stupidly engaged in an online argument from someone claiming to be a "nurse" and claiming the mRNA vaccine altered the recipients DNA. That isn't how human immune system works, isn't what mRNA does, isn't how vaccination works, and quite frankly isn't how human genetics work. There are growing cases of individuals attempting to and successfully altering gene expression as treatment for some disease states. It is much more complicated and involve much more than just a simple injection of genetic material. Explained all that in a back and forth only for the "nurse" to just double down and reiterate her "facts" that weren't correct at all.
Another "fun" one is the topic of trans individuals. Their elementary understanding of sex doesn't have place for those individuals. It goes over their head when you discuss human fetal development stages, areas in development where the physical body can develop different from genetic sex chromosomes, intersex individuals, how certain hormones presence affects phenotypic development of secondary sex traits, and most complicated how "brain chemistry" influences perceived sex including how that brain chemistry can be altered during fetal development to the point it does not match the physical sexual appearance. It goes over their head because learning a binary rule that is constant is just easier to comprehend. (Some have some psychological rejection to the idea as they don't want to know their body, hormones, genetics to an extent, and potentially decisions/actions while pregnant contributed to their child being trans. True for some even when there was no way to predict or prevent this from happening.)
I know, I know... sometimes the ignorance pisses me off so much that I end up engaging with people like this before promptly regretting my decision.
The nurses are sometimes the worst as they have all the confidence, but no deeper contextual knowledge of human body and biology beyond what's required in their role.
People go weirdly militant on Reddit, when you dare to say something mildly critical of some of the people in the nursing profession, but imo we should hold them to a much higher standard than the general population.
Having shared classes with nursing student in undergrad, I have seen plenty of idiots. We had two 20 year old nursing students who tries to arguing with our microbiology professor that vaccines caused autism.
It led into a 30 minute lecture on human immunology (we were briefly discussing it as it related to viral, bacterial and parasitic diseases but not classes focus), Former Dr. Andrew Wakefield and his bullshit 1998 study, and the review of some of the massive studies done by entire countries tracking MMR dosed children and then following them through their childhood to determine autism diagnosis rate. (This was like 2012 so before even more massive studies from other counties had been released and more vaccines covered in these types of studies.)
It was insane the confidence of their 2 undergrads who were barely passing the microbiology class thought they could argue with a guy who had multiple doctorates in molecular biology and microbiology, and worked multiple years with Mayo Clinic during post-doctoral work in field of Cancer research before becoming a professor who taught general Bio, Microbiology and Genetics specifically for pre-healthcare professional track students.
Oh, yeah, and dogs are more differentiated than us humans, certain dog breed mixes are just a death sentence for the poor sod, but last time I checked there was no such thing in humans (sans consanguinity and the like)
I feel like a lot of them are home schooled by undereducated parents and thus dont actually have any idea how anything works, which makes everything scary
People in Swedish subreddits are all in on "africans have lower IQ" and "look at dogs, they are so different in temperament so black and white people must be too" nowadays.
This is why it's safer to just find a breed you like then graft it into other cat moms rather than roll the dice with new generation. It does result in a monoculture bit it keeps the taste more consistent
That's small potatoes. You should see the whole video. Or any of his other content. Dude's kind of a legend, a terrifying legend. and he's been making stuff like this forever.
Off topic, sorry. My dad used to bring a box of black and white cookies for my sisters and me once in a while when he came home from work. Such an amazing and exciting treat it was! Thanks for poking that memory!
If my hometown is any indication, quite a few people feel that simply being able to openly hurl slurs is just great! It sucks when racists think you agree with them by default of your meatsuit shade.
On the bright side, since they're no longer looking over their shoulders before saying outrageous things, I like to imagine they're all getting stiff / sore necks, and that gives me a little vindictive spike of happiness.
My Granddad had a dog who was a border collie and jack Russel mix. They were entirely collie in appearance and size except from their legs. Huge body and tiny legs.
These days, I believe the most stringent way to decide different species, is by genetic analysis, not procreative compatibility; and it's well known that the genetic differences between the traditional races are very few and small.
As a matter of fact, the most genetic diversity is found in Africa, between different groups of Black people. They can have more differences between each other than to white people, for instance.
To add to this, genetic diversity among humans compared to other animals is actually SO LOW that all these 'races' aren't even recognized as biologically valid entities.
Moreover, genetic differences between two randomly selected individuals from the same socially defined population account for 85% of the variation found between members of different populations. In other words, genetic differences between two people of the same race can be greater than those between members of different races.
So all this 'racism' basically boils down to the latitude your ancestors live in and how many trees in whose shade you can take shelter from the sun are there (what determines level ofmelatoninmelanin in your skin and some other minor adaptations), that's it...
Due to pretty drastic genetic bottlenecking in our evolutionarily-recent past, there is more genetic diversity in a colony of penguins than across humanity. Those penguins all look the same (to us) because there is heavy selective pressure to appear that way. Of course, racists will only look at the most obvious and pre-selected phenotypes and pretend they are familiar with biology, history, or humanity.
Take ringspecies for example. Say you have a big mountain range and a species of finches on the southern end of it. The finches won't go over the mountain range, but around it. They slowly differentiate as they go east and west and then north. Each differentiated group can have kids with their immediate neighbors, but the 2 neighboring groups at the northern end of the mountain range can't, because the groups at the "end" of the ring are too far apart genetically.
There is also the opposite. In 2020 scientists accidentally made a new fish. They were experimenting with a type of fertilization where sperm needs to be present but does not actually contribute to the offspring's genetics. Something some fish can do, apparently. As I understand it they used two species that are really far apart to make sure that fertilization could not occur / would produce non-viable eggs due to the incompatibility. Basically a control to verify that nothing happens when nothing should happen. And then the Sturddlefish was born.
The last common ancestor between the two parent species lived 141 million years ago. We are more closely related to whales than these two fish are (LCA of humans and whales lived around 107 million years ago).
All nonafrican populations come from the same founder group ~70k years ago. It is more likely for each of those descendents to be more related to each other than to native African populations
So, while yes, some African populations are more similar to nonafrican populations than to more distant African populations, all nonafrican populations are generally more similar to other nonafrican populations than any African population
Don’t even need to go into which ones can breed, just use Canis lupus familiaris as an example. A croc and an alligator look more alike than a pug and a St. Bernard, but we know they’re both Canis lupus familiaris.
So can a domestic cow and an American bison, but they're not even in the same genus. The offspring is also fully capable of reproducing in its own right.
biology is complex.
and super interesting if you bother to look into it.
some species including humans display something we call sexual dimorphism. this is a way to describe how males and females of the same species might be different.
for example peacock birds where the game is colourful and the female is brown. or humans where the males are on average taller, and more muscular, and have facial hair while the females are on average shorter and has more fat stores. we especially see this in the chest.
but in the same vein humanity is also one of a number of species where there can be vast differences between individuals of that species. dogs are like this too.
"we come in all shapes and sizes" as they say.
DNA shows beyond any doubt that all humans are indeed the same species.
He's a decade dead now but if I had video of my dad's oldest friend I'd post it here and everyone would think he'd have to be Morgan Freeman's bleached twin brother with straight brown hair. He looked and sounded just like Freeman which made his impersonations pretty unfairly easy, nonetheless quite entertaining.
Yeah not even the breeding argument is great because different species can breed.
Best example is just...cats having different colors or something. And then if they start with "different cat breeds", then just...literally point out that most cat breeds have multiple accepted colors.
Yeah, some hybrids can be fertile. A lot aren't, with the most obvious and well known example being mules. But any hybridization between coyotes, dogs, and wolves, ends up fertile.
First of wolves and dogs are the same species, Canis lupus, domestic dogs are of the subspecies familiaris. Certain classifications of speciation consider them to be separate, but those are based on classifications by Linnaeus’ taxonomy written in the 1700s and typically considered a little outdated for obvious reasons.
As for coyote hybrids the caveat that often gets missed is that they need to be fertile and ‘true breeding’ or perpetually breed through with back breeding. Coydogs eventually become infertile after several generations if dog or coyotes are not back bred into the line. The common wisdom has always said 4 generations before they can’t breed anymore, but there’s evidence of some going a few more. This method of speciation is a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy situation though as any hybrid that does breed true is kinda definitionally a new species.
So many studies have been done on this. There is often more difference genetically between two random melanically challenged white people than there may be between a person with more melanin and one without much. Skin color is such a small part of the DNA of a human. There hasn't been time for us to do anything but just all be humans. God, the anti-science idiocracy we live in will kill us all.
That doesn't make any sense. We're talking about species, that's a scientific concept and definitely requires a scientific rebuttal. It's very easy to explain why all humans are the same species, no need to dodge the question by talking about love. It makes it seem like you aren't actually disagreeing with them.
Different species actually can reproduce viable offspring if they share sufficient gene flow. Wolves Dogs, and Coyotes can reproduce, and so can some kinds of bears. Theyre sometimes defined as a subspecies.
We don't even know what other animals might be able to reproduce, because they simply dont have the opportunity.
The way I see it, categories like species are just little boxes we define to order things we discover by simple and sometimes (or maybe ultimately?) arbitrary rules. But sometimes nature is too complex to neatly fit into those boxes, so exceptions will be found and rules will be bent.
Sadly, a lot of people don't understand social constructs. Just look how people are losing their minds over gender. I've started to use "socially engineered construct" because it conveys that there is significant human effort put into creating and maintaining it.
You gotta ask yourself why is race only a human category? It's never applied to any other animal.
It's because it's artificial. It's a human compulsion to create an "other".
Even if that were true, and we had two disjunct humanoid species, it would change nothing about racists (or speciecists I guess) being assholes. You don't give people respect because they share a high enough percentage of your DNA, you respect them because they are people.
Love that this dummy's name is "Gray Shirt", too... chooses to name himself literally after the one color you get when you mix black and white together.
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u/NoBookkeeper3523 3d ago
Wow, that takes a special kind of stupid, but this is why they had to make laws to keep these guys from breeding with their cousins.