Post B849TNrQjYfJjfxhfE by renardboy@mastodon.social
 (DIR) More posts by renardboy@mastodon.social
 (DIR) Post #B846aJ64XoAZ7qQ7VI by renardboy@mastodon.social
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       Just remembered that in elementary school, when I was taught about animals, I was taught that there were six groups of them, namely mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates.Which is kind of wild, because it's completely wrong. I understand that there's a limit to how deep you can go into taxonomy with young kids but like damn This would have been a great time to *not* cultivate anthropocentrism into the young fertile minds of tomorrow's decision-makers.
       
 (DIR) Post #B846aJNnTuLc0oiH8C by piggo@piggo.space
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       @renardboy why is that wrong? You can get all nerdy with the taxonomy tree but it roughly captures it
       
 (DIR) Post #B849TNTg9rfOY0qjdw by renardboy@mastodon.social
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       @piggo It doesn't capture the relationship between these groups and presents them as equal. It presents invertebrates as "a group" where in reality it's a catch-all for anything that doesn't look like us enough to be worth thinking too much about.Birds are the opposite, because they look and act more like us than most reptiles, they're presented as their own group even though they're reptiles.And salmon is closer to us than it is to sharks.
       
 (DIR) Post #B849TNrQjYfJjfxhfE by renardboy@mastodon.social
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       @piggo There's a lesson to be learned in the evolutionary journey we made from primordial soup to modern humans, and there's another, more important one to be learned in the fact that every single living thing on earth underwent a similar journey in parallel. We are a component of the great everything, not its "result".That's the key thing that I find to be missing in the way I was taught about this.