The word 'animal'

[Miss Chicken]

I was looking at an episode of Antiques Road Show (the British version). A man was showing a little box he had and the valuer was trying to work out exactly what it was for.

The valuer said 'Is it to carry a small animal in?"

The owner said "Not an animal.......but a bird."

The box was used to carry out captive songbirds to the fields so that they could learn to sing. It seems that in a couple of English counties songbird competition used to be very popular.

Any way I asked myself "What does this guy think an animal is? It seemed to me he thought that animal = mammal as he excluded birds.

On another board one member said that she would never kill an animal. I knew she had previous admitted to spraying ants so I asked her about that. She insisted that ants weren't animals, they were insects. I, and another member, could not convince her that ants are part of the Animal Kingdom.

I am asking members here if they have come across people who don't seem to know what is an animal or not?

 

[RoJoHen]

It's bizarre, that's for sure. Along the same line, I get confused by "vegetarians" who are perfectly okay eating fish.

 

[trekkiedane]

What did she think insects were, I wonder, rocks?, plants?

Any board on the net has those kind of people.

I just don't understand why they cant laugh it up and accept that they've learned something new, when told that they were wrong.

ETA: And they're usually the first ones to say something along the line of never trust anything you read on-line

"Not an animal, a bird" could just mean: "not any ol' animal, just a bird", btw.

It's bizarre, that's for sure. Along the same line, I get confused by "vegetarians" who are perfectly okay eating fish.

Those are just hypocritarians.

 

[miraclefan]

I was looking at an episode of Antique Road Show (the British version). A man was showing a little box he had and the valuer was trying to work out exactly what it was for.

The valuer said 'Is it to carry a small animal in?"

The owner said "Not an animal.......but a bird."

The box was used to carry out captive songbirds to the fields so that they could learn to sing. It seems that in a couple of English counties songbird competition used to be very popular.

Any way I asked myself "What does this guy think an animal is? It seemed to me he thought that animal = mammal as he excluded birds.

On another board one member said that she would never kill an animal. I knew she had previous admitted to spraying ants so I asked her about that. She insisted that ants weren't animals, they were insects. I, and another member, could not convince her that ants are part of the Animal Kingdom.

I am asking members here if they have come across people who don't seem to know what is an animal or not?

Anything that breaths is an animal in my book.

 

[trekkiedane]

Anything that breaths is an animal in my book.

In other words: you also don't count ants as animals...

 

[miraclefan]

Anything that breaths is an animal in my book.

In other words: you also don't count ants as animals...

Pretty much, yeh!

 

[trekkiedane]

'Kay, just checking.

 

[RJDiogenes]

This reminds me of one of the many memorable "discussions" I had with my Uncle Joe when I was a kid. We argued for hours over fish being animals. He just couldn't get it through his head that his only choices were "animal" or "plant."

He also used to say "manimals" instead of "mammals."

 

[Deckerd]

Ants breathe. All insects breathe. How deep are we going with ignorance here?

 

[RJDiogenes]

Plants breathe, too. All living things have respiration.

 

[Trekker4747]

I had a similar disucssion, too, with someone a while back. I finally told him, "It's like 20 questions. Something is either an animal, vegetable or mineral. You're either a "thinking" biological lifeform (animal), a plant (vegetable), or a substance (mineral.)

Aside from trees, grass and other plant-life every living thing on this plant is an "animal" inside that catagory, yes, there are shades of gray which is where we get in to "bird", "reptile", "mammal", etc."

Birds are animals but not mammals.

This is fourth-grade stuff.

 

[RoJoHen]

Ants breathe. All insects breathe. How deep are we going with ignorance here?

That depends on the size of your shovel.

 

[Gepard]

This reminds me of one of the many memorable "discussions" I had with my Uncle Joe when I was a kid. We argued for hours over fish being animals. He just couldn't get it through his head that his only choices were "animal" or "plant."

Wellllll...Plants, animals, fungi, protozoa, archaebacteria and eubacteria. But who's counting?

 

[trekkiedane]

Ants breathe. All insects breathe. How deep are we going with ignorance here?

No, breathing requires lungs.

Plants breathe, too. All living things have respiration.

No, Breathing requires lungs. However -as you seem to know- they do respire.

Breathing and respiration are not synonyms. Breathing is when you inhale and exhale gasses, respiration is the process of exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in an organism.

 

[Miss Chicken]

This reminds me of one of the many memorable "discussions" I had with my Uncle Joe when I was a kid. We argued for hours over fish being animals. He just couldn't get it through his head that his only choices were "animal" or "plant."

Wellllll...Plants, animals, fungi, protozoa, archaebacteria and eubacteria. But who's counting?

When RJDiogenes was a boy lhe would have been taught that living things were either members of the Animal Kingdom or Plant Kingdom. The other Kingdoms have only been taught as part of the Classification System (at least in primary and probably in most highschools) for a couple of decades or so. This means that when RJD argued with his uncle he was giving the only information that a youngster was expected to know.

 

[Deckerd]

Ants breathe. All insects breathe. How deep are we going with ignorance here?

No, breathing requires lungs.

Plants breathe, too. All living things have respiration.

No, Breathing requires lungs. However -as you seem to know- they do respire.

Breathing and respiration are not synonyms. Breathing is when you inhale and exhale gasses, respiration is the process of exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in an organism.

I beg to differ. The OED:

breathe, v.

3. Of animals:
b. To exhale and inhale, to respire. The ordinary current sense, which colours all the others.

 

[trekkiedane]

Apparently it differs when you talk about these two words in English and in Danish, then.

ETA:
dictionary.com has this to say:

1. to take air, oxygen, etc., into the lungs and expel it; inhale and exhale; respire.
2. (in speech) to control the outgoing breath in producing voice and speech sounds.
3. to pause, as for breath; take rest: How about giving me a chance to breathe?
4. to move gently or blow lightly, as air.
5. to live; exist: Hardly a man breathes who has not known great sorrow.
6. to be redolent of.
7. (of a material) to allow air and moisture to pass through easily: The jacket is comfortable because the fabric breathes.
8. (of the skin) to absorb oxygen and give off perspiration.
9. (of a wine) to be exposed to air after being uncorked, in order to develop flavor and bouquet.

I suppose respiration would be the 8th point then.

 

[Gepard]

When RJDiogenes was a boy living things were either members of the Animal Kingdom or Plant Kingdom. The other Kingdoms have only been aprt of the Classification System for a couple of decades or less. This means that when RJD argued with his uncle he was giving correct.

Oh, pedantry, thy name is killing the joke. Even if those classes had been part of the system back then, it wouldn't have mattered, since fish are animals anyway. I was being an ass for effect.

 

[Deckerd]

Apparently it differs when you talk about these two words in English and in Danish, then.

But we're using English. In Danish, I bow to your expertise.

 

[Miss Chicken]

When RJDiogenes was a boy living things were either members of the Animal Kingdom or Plant Kingdom. The other Kingdoms have only been aprt of the Classification System for a couple of decades or less. This means that when RJD argued with his uncle he was giving correct.

Oh, pedantry, thy name is killing the joke. Even if those classes had been part of the system back then, it wouldn't have mattered, since fish are animals anyway. I was being an ass for effect.

Arghhhh - you quoted me before I corrected my post to explain it better.

I think that the 6 Kingdoms was a very good point for you to bring up even if you where only joking. It does show how much taxonomic classification altered in thr 20th century. I do believe that there was 3 Kingdoms at the start of the 20th century, 6 at the end but for most of that 100 years most people were taught that there was only basically two and that the other ones didn't really matter that much.

In 1984, the last time I studied Biology (I did a highschool level class when I was in my mid-20s) we really glossed over the classification of Fungi and Protista - I think they were given about 15 minutes in one lesson.