Are any of them tasty?

Out with the old, in with the new, I always say.

But I'm sure Noah had two of each on the ark...Right, Christians?

What makes similar animals differ from one another to be separate species? I mean, 356 leaf beetles? Can't two be the same species but have a different color patterns for example?

walkerhound: Fails for not being a slideshow.

Thanks for letting me know. I don't have the time to click through a 20,000 new species slideshow.

/to busy at work

wildstarr: What makes similar animals differ from one another to be separate species? I mean, 356 leaf beetles? Can't two be the same species but have a different color patterns for example?


Reproductive isolation is the defining feature. If two animals can (and will) mate and produce offspring that are viable and (eventually) fertile, then they are different variants of a single species. If there is no possibility of gene flow between the two populations, then they are separate species.

If two beetles with different colors can and will produce offspring that go on to survive and reproduce, then those two (and the populations from which they were drawn) are variants of a single species. If they can't or won't, then they are different species.


(There is some gray area in between, and different rules apply for plants and for single celled organisms, and of course for fossils, but that's the basic idea for extant animal species.)

High quality nightmare fuel. (new window)

PleaseHamletDon'tHurtEm: How many did we kill off as a species last year?

/merely curious
//DNRTFA

After a little internet sleuthing I was highly surprised how small the list is for the past 10 years. Wikipedia has a couple of good extinction time lines.