This is just me going wild again but what if…
What if the animals were the humans. Like the animals are the ones taking photos of the humans. The animals owned iNaturalist to “observe humans”. (How do the animals know coding?) What would it be like for us always getting our picture taken. I’m pretty sure that we would live the same but the animals IQ would be higher. Right? We are all animals because humans are mammals so should we call them the animals? I don’t know.
If you would like you can add one to this story and create your own nature what if… have fun!
Shows all the flaws of current taxonomy system! Human races are social construct more than morphological, if they were describing humans as different species, e.g. birds, seeing different vocalisations and different morphology, and boundaries for interbreeding would be enough to divide quite many species! And we know it would be wrong.
Hmm, I don’t know about that. There are really no boundaries for interbreeding in humans; maybe some geographical limitations, but those are easily and frequently overcome, as humans are not dispersal-limited.
They might not even be able to tell the difference. Humans are hyper-sensitive to differences in appearance, as pretty much every species is for their own kind, because we focus on specific cues to determine gender, reproductive status, relationships to ourselves (which in other species is used to avoid inbreeding or identify family members), etc. Note also that most animals use smell as their primary sense, and most species tend to be either red-green colorblind (as in most non-primate mammals) or tetrachromats (birds, turtles, etc.), so they aren’t as big on visual cues in the human visible spectrum. So whereas we perceive clear differences between human populations, most species would probably have as hard of a time telling us apart as most iNatters struggle with American versus Fowler’s toads.
Different breeds of dogs still recognize each other as dogs; Chihuahua, cocker spaniel, standard poodle, silky terrier, great Dane, Saint Bernard, whippet, all these know that each other are dogs. I doubt they would have a taxonomic problem with human variations.
As far as I have been able to tell, it applies across the Class Mammalia – Percheron, quarter horse, appaloosa, Shetland pony could all recognize each other as the same species; Angus, Hereford, Holstein, Jersey could all recognize each other as the same species.
And even in at least a few birds, it would seem. Do Rhode Island red, buff orpington, barred Plymouth Rock, and Araucana have difficulty flocking together?
Ah yes. Two mice sitting with a field guide - ‘That’s a red haired variant’. ‘But the hair is curly not straight like the picture - normal variation or a different species?’ ‘And she has brown flecks on her face - I just don’t know’. ‘Hard to say - I hate identifying these things.’