Jericho wrote:Are you saying that mammals wouldn't evolve given time?
Multicellular life wasn't inevitable in my view. Much less any such highly specific function and arrangement of organs.
Jericho wrote:You do realize that evolution is based on the non random selection och random variation.
this to me says that mammal-like creatures will evolve inevitable given time. Not because of necessity but because of an afterthought in evolutions primary funktion.
What classifies something as a mammals are three very simple demands, Warm blood, live young, lactation. No more really.
You speak of evolution, yet you keep arguing for Linnaean categorization. I do not think you have thought this through as much as you should have.
Evidenced in particular because platypuses lay eggs, rather than giving birth to live young; your second criteria is false, and anyone who is aware of the sexual qualities of female spotted hyenas ought to know enough zoological trivia to be aware of the oddities of the oldest living group of mammals.
However, like all mammals, the platypus has mammary glands, which are specific organs of lactation in mammals.
There are also certain skeletal attributes which I cannot remember which are used to group mammals in paleontology, where soft glands aren't always well preserved.
But the importance of evolution here is not simply the emergence of traits.
Mammals are grouped as mammals because they share common evolutionary ancestors which are responsible for their common mammary traits.
No alien species would have that unless, like the Loroi, they shared at least some biological connection with Earth.
Tsetse flies are not mammals, even though their milk is produced through similar genetic and biological processes to ours, fulfills similar function in the raising of youngsters which (as single births) are given high parental investment, and which contains similar chemicals. The fact that they are not warm blooded is not the deciding factor here; evolutionary ancestry is most of it, and the dissimilarities between their "milk" and our milk, and the organs which produce it (due to our dissimllar ancestors) only helps press the case. It tsetse flies were warm-blooded and vertebrate they still would not be mammals, even though a hypothetical endothermic freak-fly and the mammalian platypus both lay eggs.
Lactation itself seems unlikely to me to be a common trait across so much of space, because lactation does not simply refer to producing nutrients from your body, but to producing nutrients with lactose and several other chemicals I have forgotten; a very chemically different secretion ought to be given a different name. With a vastly different organ using vastly different cells to produce an entirely chemically different nutrient brew, as I would expect to occur amongst aliens, you would end up with something that isn't actually a mammal at all, and would likely work under different reproductive rules.
I recall hearing some mild debate over whether avian or mammalian lactation should be specifically named to disambiguate the processes; I have no doubt that alien "lactation" would only be called that by laymen or junior high level general science classes.
(As an aside, I'm one of those pedants who would argue that male reptilian genitals shouldn't be called penises even when they are phallic any more than pedipalps and other decidedly non-phallic male genitals should, and deserve their own term).
Jericho wrote:I'd be really shocked if there were not hundreds of these examples in loroi space.
As for the delrias being mammals. If your saying that they are not i can't argue with that given the fact that they are mammaloid not mammals (Insider). I don't know what difference they have that seperates them from mammals or if this is just because they are aliens but i think thats irrelevant.
I would assume that even if they had whatever vertebral structures and tooth morphology and mammary gland chemistries and all else they would have to have to be called mammals in the fossil record, still the certain absence of direct evolutionary common ancestry would be enough to warrant not calling them mammals.
I would also be very surprised if their young responded to the particular nutrient mixture that makes up mammal milk, and more surprised if that were made through an organ that was actually close enough to a mammary gland to warrant the comparison; even organs which produce chemically related substances on Earth, such as avian "milk," cannot be called mammaries.
The conditions you laid out were warm blood, which birds have, live young, which mammalian monotremes do not have and ought therefore be stricken from the argument, and lactation.
I doubt that you would argue that pigeons were mammals even if they did give birth to live young. As it stands, they fulfill two out of three of your categories, as do several species of mammal. Yet I sincerely doubt that your inevitability argument means you are saying that eventually pigeons will become mammals.
Taxonomy in general, the ways we subdivide and categorize life, is not really a great subject to talk about, because while categorizing things is useful and necessary, there are a lot of different ways people have come about making and grouping these categories, and not all of them are compatible, nor really necessarily useful (Linnaeus' categories, for instance, are no longer entirely useful), and everyone who holds one particular view acts perfectly logically with respect to their own personal axioms, yet sees everyone else's equally logical argument as nonsense because they don't understand the differences or causes of differences between their assumptions.
This one you have explain to me.
Sorry for the confusion. It was a bad joke on my part. I felt so cocksure when i first posted that i was slightly taken aback by your response. Shows how much i know.
