You sure about this. Yellowstone Buffalo are not cross breed with cattle and cattle adapted. You could even say they evolved to meet there conditions. Yeah in the first years the cows had a rough go of it and many died , but now a 100 + years later : no big deal they breed like rabbits and are hardy resilient creatures of the Mountains and plains. You should see the wild cattle by the Ponderosa Ranch by Lake Tahoe . They will gourd you in the ? if you are not careful
Species defintion: Cattle verse Buffalo
- Thread starter ElectricFetus
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You sure about this. Yellowstone Buffalo are not cross breed with cattle and cattle adapted. You could even say they evolved to meet there conditions. Yeah in the first years the cows had a rough go of it and many died , but now a 100 + years later : no big deal they breed like rabbits and are hardy resilient creatures of the Mountains and plains. You should see the wild cattle by the Ponderosa Ranch by Lake Tahoe . They will gourd you in the ? if you are not careful
So far the only evidence I've seen of that in the context of bison and cattle is your exaggerated description of their ability to hybridize.electric said:
Which was backed by false assertions about behaviors and diets and habitats, and other indications of a lack of relevant information on your side of things.
Score so far: consensus of all the experts in the relevant fields - 1. Your opinion of the significance of potential hybridization in phylogenetic classification systems - 0.
OK, then state that as your desired state of affairs. You want to use a classification system in which all bovids that can hybridize under any conditions are the same single "species". (The complication of the half-sterile, such as the wisent/cattle crosses, remains - but later)electric said:
What advantages to you foresee from such classification?
Why would you put such trivial and inconsistently distributed differences as those alleged among modern humans, most of which don't even exist in physical reality, in the same category as the far more serious and rigorously characteristic differences between different kinds of bovids?electric said:
That's fairly benign and protected and small scale habitat, well watered and until recently predator reduced in the extreme - bison ranged from northern Canada to Mexico, high steppe to eastern woodlands, and migrated long distances north and south.mi ki gel said:
Cattle might of course be able to adapt to that way of life, we don't know - they haven't had the opportunity. But the adaptations already long acquired by bison are some of the serious physical and behavioral differences between them and cattle. And there is no reason to suppose the cattle would acquire the same features by the same genetic route, in the process of that adaptation. They would not necessarily become bison - and evolutionary theory indicates that the prospect is very unlikely.
And note: these cattle are not hybridizing with the available bison. They are not behaving as if they were a single species, or even closely related.
Exaggeration, genetic studies show most surviving buffalo herbs are polluted with cattle genes, what more do you want?
Only that it would be a classification we could based on definite and consistent standards rather then abstractions and whims as the present one is.
Because they are matters of opinion, to many a racists a black man is just as different as a buffalo is from a cow, but a definite standard like "if it can't make fertile hybrids, than it's not the same species" is unarguable and without whim or bias.
Oh, very interesting! I had not heard we were all descended from the San...
Yes...and I seem to recall hearing of a study done on a fairly large sample of ostensibly caucasian people living in NYC...20% of whom were found to have Native-American DNA markers; 25% of whom carried African-American DNA markers...
If I stumble across a news article about it...I am copying that article to hand out to the members if I ever go to protest a KKK rally again. Because their ignorance ain't my bliss
If we all died of some fatal hemorhhagic fever or some such, the white-tailed deer would likely take over the niche of the wood bison...unless the horses beat them to it.
I was under the impression that the wood bison and the plains bison were actually two separate species; the plains bison being more robust than the wood bison.
I say "were" because we white folk ate all the eastern wood bison.
Longhorn cattle are low-maintenance; other cows are known for their propensity to do stupid things, need special feed, and die. Bison are known to try and kill you.
I suspect that the survival advantage goes to the smarter, more aggressive herd animals in a wild setting.
Then again, the reason I say deer would win: deer are dumb...but they reproduce pretty well.
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The same things the pros in the field want - something of greater significance to taxonomy than small amounts of gene flow from a captive bred population of hybrids between two such distinct species of animal.electric said:
Your proposed standard - singular, as far as I can tell - would have NA bison and Tibetan yaks more closely related than NA bison and European bison, which shared a common ancestor as recently as a couple of ice ages ago.electric said:
In the first place, that's not your standard - your standard is that if they can make fertile hybrids, then they are the same species. That's quite different.electric said:
In the second place, your second proposal there is already a most significant and important current standard, now in use by conventional classification systems and normal biological science. Your first proposal, the one you are arguing in this thread, is almost useless as well as misleading - it's very difficult and troublesome to discover whether a given pair of proposed "species" would be capable of hybridizing under the sort of arranged and diligent captive breeding programs that created the beefalo. Your second one is conventional wisdom, a "gold standard" distinction often used to separate otherwise very similar organisms into different species.
Meanwhile, your original, first standard would create a taxonomic tree inconsistent with the genetically and morphologically established evolutionary pathways. Why would you want to do that?
An opinion that proved insupportable via evidence and reason.electric said:
The support of one's opinions in evidence and reason being critical to their establishment as scientific knowledge, true?
Hence the mockery directed at persistent racists, and the dismissal of their attempts at "science" from the conventional wisdom and established body of scientific knowledge.
A dismissal made with such force and leverage from the facts that many think it has created a sort of bias in backlash, discouraging even legitimate and well-founded research into the biogeography of Homo sapiens.
At any rate, irrelevant to a discussion involving two such well-established and accepted taxons as "bison" (a couple of recent species) and "cattle" (a few recent species).
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What the "pros" in the field want is the status quo, for taxonomy to be non-precises and up to there aesthetics choice, that not very scientific.
Maybe :shrug: I'm merely proposing they be precise on their definitions of a species, genus, phylla, etc,
How so?
... what second proposal? Sorry but you lost me at that.
Why would it be inconsistent genetically? and why should we stay with old paradigm, for convince sack?
and such evidence and reasons has been made to separate the buffalo and cattle physiologically? Oh do cite it!
Quite right, which the buffalo and cattle show a point of: as long as its not human a taxonismist will call them separate sub-species, species or genus purely on their own whim without worry of repercussions, yet do the same with humans and they will get harassed as racists, its a hypocrisy.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
This is very recent research, less than five years ago. Even the Native Australians are descended from the San, despite the fact that their ancestors left Africa several thousand years before those of all other non-Africans.
Wikipedia says they are two subspecies of Bison bison.
The deer are adapting to an environment with no predators, in which intelligence is a better survival trait than speed. Their biggest danger is cars, and in Washington DC I saw a pair obeying a traffic signal.
They've even figured out that most large dogs were bred for the instinct to protect livestock somewhere in their distant past, so they jump into our yard at night where our Anatolian keeps them safe from the bears and cougars.
It's your proposal and argument throughout this thread, I don't know how or why you came up with it.electric said:
The entire classification system is for convenience sake. The cows don't care.electric said:
And they have been trying very hard. It's not easy. Your proposal is obviously useless and misleading, for example.electric said:
Nobody has tried that kind of bs with any non-human lifeforms, AFAIK. The racist classifications of humans are a unique case of total bullshit masquerading as science even after being invalidated in public.electric said:
How can you say that when the racial difference are obvious.
There are three human races: blonds, brunets and bald.
(Redheads are a sub division of blonds.) Get your scientific facts straight!
A bit of a sidetrack but adding to Fraggles post #47,there is a very good 13 part video series at You Tube called "Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey" It's an easy to understand presentation of Man's migration from Africa to America.I know there is other videos too but these take you thru each step Country by Country,race by race.Simply search at You Tube for "Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey" part 1.
"There is no scientific consensus of a list of the human races, and few anthropologists endorse the notion of human "race". For example, a color terminology for race includes the following in a classification of human races: Black (e.g. Sub-Saharan Africa), Red (e.g. Native Americans), Yellow (e.g. East Asians) and White (e.g. Europeans).
Referring to natural species, in general, the term "race" is obsolete, particularly if a species is uniformly distributed on a territory. In its modern scientific connotation, the term is not applicable to a species as genetically homogeneous as the human one, as stated in the declaration on race (UNESCO 1950). Genetic studies have substantiated the absence of clear biological borders, thus the term "race" is rarely used in scientific terminology, both in biological anthropology and in human genetics. What in the past had been defined as "races"—e.g., whites, blacks, or Asians—are now defined as "ethnic groups" or "populations", in correlation with the field (sociology, anthropology, genetics) in which they are considered."
...................................................................Wikipedia: Human Race and ethnicity
Referring to natural species, in general, the term "race" is obsolete, particularly if a species is uniformly distributed on a territory. In its modern scientific connotation, the term is not applicable to a species as genetically homogeneous as the human one, as stated in the declaration on race (UNESCO 1950). Genetic studies have substantiated the absence of clear biological borders, thus the term "race" is rarely used in scientific terminology, both in biological anthropology and in human genetics. What in the past had been defined as "races"—e.g., whites, blacks, or Asians—are now defined as "ethnic groups" or "populations", in correlation with the field (sociology, anthropology, genetics) in which they are considered."
...................................................................Wikipedia: Human Race and ethnicity
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
DNA analysis confirms this. But a second link discovered quite recently corroborates it. The Yenisei language of Siberia turns out to be related to the Na-Dene languages of North America, which include, Navajo, Tlingit, Apache, Eyak, and many others.