taxonomy

A... not-too deep chart on vertebrate taxonomy I made on MS Paint, using photos I've taken as examples of each lineage

Do note that this image was taken yesterday (March 16th, 2025), at the Brevard Zoo in Melbourne, Florida, USA.

Hey everybody! Inspired by Sicarius' thread on new taxonomic divisions among zoo and aquarium species, I wanted to start a thread on one particular species complex that has caused myself and other elasmobranch enjoyers some trouble. That would be the spotted whiptail rays of the Himantura genus...

While I've seen these sorts of threads for many other animal taxa, I'm surprised I haven't seen a thread for discussing what primates people have seen. Here is my list of primate taxa seen, and I'd be curious to see your lists too. Currently, there are sixteen recognized families of primates...

Just some thoughts of how zoos should react to splitting or lumping species or subspecies. Recent proposals to split subspecies into species affected among other ungulates and primates. Split species included giraffe, antelope, deer, caprids, mouse lemurs, loris, night monkeys, sakis and...

Indian king cobra expert Gowri Shankar has discovered that king cobras are four distinct species, not one species as previously thought. He explains it in this five minute video: Gowri Shankar: A king cobra bite -- and a scientific discovery | TED Talk He will be visiting the USA in July 2023...

Reptile houses are amongst the most common types of zoo exhibits, with the majority of major U.S. zoos (and I'd presume zoos abroad as well) having some-sort of reptile house. Many of these buildings are historic, but there are also numerous examples of zoos building new reptile houses in recent...

It should come as no surprise to anyone that many common zoo animals have multiple common names. It seems, however, that these multi-name species fall into different categories: 1. Species that zoos seem to use the names interchangeably. For instance, some zoos may sign a "puma", while others...

A recent trip has got me thinking, which zoo or aquarium houses and displays the most classes of animals? Most places have at least five or six, with the most common ones being Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Amphibians, Ray-finned fish, Arachnids, Insects, and Millipedes. In aquaria, Elasmobranch...

Does anybody know anything about Goldman's Jaguar. The only info I have found is that Cameron Park zoo has them and that they live in Central and North America. I'm slightly confused by it's taxonomical existence so if anybody has any information on them that would be great.

I had not heard of the concept of taxonomic vandalism until I read this story. Apparently there are some unscrupulous taxonomists who steal the research of other people to name species before the researchers can. They use loopholes in the taxonomy code and non-peer-reviewed blogs to name the...

Scientists have discovered that there are three snow leopard subspecies:https://phys.org/news/2017-05-sub-species-leopard.html

So I'm thinking about how despite the fact that I usually don't care about big cats, apes and Old World monkeys or hoofstock, I have a number of exceptions. Usually the exceptions are because the animals are A. small and cute, B. weird in some fashion, or C. both. First I'll note that the only...

I've tended not to pay much attention to subspecies of mammals, however I've noticed people here and elsewhere distinguish two main subspecies of binturong. Wikipedia lists eleven subspecies, but googling indicates seems to be two main clades. Zootierliste has three subspecies held in zoos...

I don’t recall seeing this posted previously but apologies if it has been and I’ve overlooked it; see link below. Linnaeus's Asian elephant was wrong species : Nature News & Comment ZooChatters living in the London area might be interested to know that this is the subject of a Linnean...

With my new-found access to this wide cross-section of people knowledgeable about animals, I want to get your opinions on a topic that I have often pondered and debated with my brother. (He's an evolutionary biologist; I'm a computer programmer.) That topic is my belief that scientists tend to...