This is where the Chinese Language comes to shine. Animal, 动物, literally “moving object”, so if it has roots (aka: plants, fungi), it cannot move on its own, therefore, not a 动物, Animal.
Like the words are self-explanatory, so beautiful.
Comment on Not impressed
ieatpwns@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Correct me if I’m wrong but like isn’t every living thing an animal? Like trees and fungi too? Or is there something I’m missing?
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 17 hours ago
ieatpwns@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
No worries I know someone from hk who loves linguistics this will get me some brownie points
PyroVK@lemmy.zip 17 hours ago
No trees are plants and fungi are fungi. Animals are multicellular organisms that are mobile and seek out food at a very basic description. Plants are multicellular non mobile that make their own food and fungi are somewhere between that. Closer to animals but not. Then there’s the single cell life of bacteria and archea.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 17 hours ago
Animals are multicellular organisms that are mobile and seek out food at a very basic description.
Sea sponges are animals and don’t move.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Animals are a specific lineage of eukaryotic multicellular (mostly) organisms that lack cell walls.
The problem with evolution is that it likes to make exceptions to any descriptor based taxonomy. Any taxonomic category will ultimately be attempting to say “this genetic lineage”. If a sea sponge species eventually develops chlorophyll and cell walls it’ll still be an animal, but just a really fucking confusing one.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
I wish we could use photosynthesis, even if it’s just as a supplement like a hybrid vehicle.
SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 hours ago
Yep, traditional (non-phylogenetic) taxonomy creates problems like protists, the grab bag of eukaryota.
There are more species labeled protists than the sum of all their descendants.
Are they animals, plants, or fungi? Sure, why not!
Some are heterotrophs (eat things), some are autotrophs (energy from sun or chemicals), and others are mixotrophs (some of both). Some are motile, others immotile. Some are multicellular, most unicellular.
The problem is all taxonomy is arbitrary, and traditional taxonomy is pretty inconsistent. Phylogenetic taxonomy is still arbitrary, but using evolutionary relationships instead of “this monkey looks like other monkey” at least gets you more consistency in that system.
PyroVK@lemmy.zip 17 hours ago
Before they attach to a rock they move around in a larval stage, same for anemones and some jellyfish species. There are exceptions to all of our classifications because nature doesn’t have to play by any rules besides physics. Even the concept of species has no set definition because no matter what we come up with there are exceptions.
chunes@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Paralyzed people too
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
But that’s due to some sort of injury or disorder, not how they function standard.
Ashen44@lemmy.ca 17 hours ago
Animals are one group or “kingdom” of life. Plants (such as trees) and fungi (such as mushrooms) each have their own kingdoms, and so do bacteria and a few other forms of life. They’re organized this way to represent how closely related they are. Every single living thing in the animal kingdom is more closely related to every single other thing in the animal kingdom than to anything in any other kingdom.
As an example, chimpanzees, starfish, and earthworms are more closely related to each other than to a sunflower, so we call chimpanzees, starfish, and earthworms animals but not sunflowers. This is called “taxonomy” and there’s a ton of different levels of how related things are, ranging from very distantly related to so closely related you can barely tell them apart. Kingdom isn’t even the most broad!
You might have also heard that fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants, but that doesn’t mean that fungi are animals, just that the lifeform that branched into fungi and animals did so a lot later than the one that branched into plants. In the end they’re still distinct enough that we call them different kingdoms!
Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk 12 hours ago
That was a well explained reply, thanks!
PyroVK@lemmy.zip 16 hours ago
Thank you for putting my thoughts into much more eloquent words!