Re: Animal {gismu}

[John Cowan <cowan@SNARK.THYRSUS.COM>]

la kris. cusku di'e

> Very definitely, the creatures identified are all important in one way or
> another. We could also have a 'catch-all' for the local worrisome insect --
> in South Africa it was mosquitoes, here it is sandflies.

"civla", meaning louse/flea, can be very well extended to any parasitic
insect, or even to scorpions.

> Just to mess things up because animals do not split neatly into species. The
> latest evidence claims that the DNA distance between chimps and us is less
> than half the distance between either and gorillas and hence any reasonable
> classification should at least acknowledge this (%-}. I realise that the
> human - non-human split is probably too firmly entrenched to expunge, but it
> woule be nice to at least think about it. Alternatively lump us all together
> with some prefix to distinguish between the various species (the
> Pongid/Hominid split is totally artificial).

Yes, I know about that.  I probably should have given "remna" a pathname of
"Vertebrata:Mammalia:Primates:Hominidae" (not ":Homo", because that would
exclude Australopithecus and the like).  But I have no trouble with saying

        mi smani
        I am a primate.

because any primate is a {smani}.

Sidenote:  My very favorite Linnean binomial, which describes the boa
constrictor:  >Boa constrictor<.

--
John Cowan      cowan@snark.thyrsus.com         ...!uunet!lock60!snark!cowan
                        e'osai ko sarji la lojban.