Talk:Mammal

At the cappuccino stand today, the trivia question was to name two poisonous mammals. I thought this might be a fascinating factoid to add to the article, but I didn't want to tamper with it at this point. One poisonous mammal is the Northern Short-Tailed Shrew (http://www.enature.com/fieldguide/showSpeciesRECNUM.asp?recNum=MA0055) (Blarina brevicauda). <>< tbc

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Platypus Ornithorhyncus anatinus.

The male has poisonous spurs on its hind legs. One nerd point for me. :-)

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Even more nerd trivia: poisonous or venomous? It's poisonous if you eat it, it's venomous if it eats you :-)

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The shrew is venomous, the platypus is poisonous, or at least the toxin is not used for predation, but defense and/or male-male competition. At least as far as anybody's been able to tell ;)

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Moved to talk:

"(Linnaeus named the order mammals for their breasts because he wanted to encourage women to breast-feed their infants.)"

mmmmm, patriarchal hegemony in science. Why hadn't I ever heard this one!! --MichaelTinkler

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Do whales have hair?

They sure do! Just not a whole lot of it, and not necessarily throughout their entire lives. A couple links:

• • http://www.whalesfilm.com/char.htm
  • http://www.seaworld.org/adventuremail/i5/background_janact.pdf (PDF file)

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Re name "mammalia": I think I got this from Stephen Jay Gould. Not patriarchal hegemony at all--breast-feeding one's own infant rather than hiring a wet-nurse (or, nowadays, using formula) doesn't map particularly well onto patriarchy, though it does have class elements. I'll see if I can find documentation on this. --Vicki Rosenzweig

Okay, I did a bit of googling. At http://biology.uindy.edu/langdon/HUMANSTRATEGY01/24birth.htm I found "Lactation and suckling are perhaps the only behaviors found in all mammals and are definitive of the order. (Linnaeus, who created the name Mammalia, was a supporter of women breast-feeding their own children instead of hiring nursemaids; hence his choice of nipples, rather than hair or the placenta to define the order.)" That's a bio textbook; not conclusive, perhaps, but I think a neutral source. Vicki Rosenzweig again

I'm the one who moved this quote to / Talk. I like it, I just question whether it belongs in the Mammalia entry. How about this: I think it says more about Linnaeus than it says about mammals - let's put it on the page of his article.

Moved it to Carolus Linnaeus. What do we think?

Makes sense to me. --Vicki Rosenzweig

I think it's interesting to know why a certain term was chosen. So there should be a way to get at that information easily. --HJH

This is probably the sort of thing where a primary source should be given as a reference. Even the reference that was given does not not say where this comes from. Even here, Michael's and Vicki's versions of the story are not the same. Michael's shorter version suggests that the story is about breast feeding versus not breast feeding at all. Vicki's at least clarifies that Linnaeus was criticizing the mostly upper class practice of using nursemaids.
Phrasing this issue in terms of male hegemony in the way in which it was probably has the effect of puttiong the male hegemonists on the opposite side of the issue to where they really are. A few years ago there was some controversy because the leadership in the pharmaceuticals industry was trying to sell baby formula - by convincing women to stop breast-feeding they could sell more formula. I would not think that the La Leche League was run by male hegemonists.

eclecticology

Your source for the patriarchal hegemonic aspect of Linnaeus's term mammalia is Londa Schiebinger's book Nature's Body (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0044409079/qid=1038063274/sr=1-8/ref=sr_1_0_8/026-3819267-4926861) (1993). She argues that Linnaeus's insistence on mothers breast-feeding their own children instead of farming them out to wet-nurses is an example of the patriarchal view that the woman's place is in the home, caring for the young, rather than whatever "frivolous" activities C18 upper-class women were doing when not caring for their children. Essentially he saw wet-nursing both as a contravention of nature and as an act of vanity - Fiona C-H (mailto:quinquireme@hotmail.com).

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Why are the orders not listed in alphabetical order? --rmhermen

It looks as though they're listed loosely by which are most closely related. Vicki Rosenzweig

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I'd like to see the orders grouped into superorders. For instance, if I remember correctly, the Chiroptera, Insectivora and Primatia are in the same superorder (not sure of this; need to look this up), and the Carnivora and Pinnipedia are in the same superorder (sure of this one). John Knouse

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What happened to the Insectivora? I see them split into three groups, two of which I've never heard of, and the third is a family. -phma

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Just reading up for the hedgehog article. My encyclopedia says "over 4,000" species of mammals. sould we add this to the article? -- Tarquin

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The third paragraph seems IMO to belong with first half of the first - defining mammals, to which some details about heart & tempture control could be added. My main references are however two to three decades old - so review of these details would be appreciated. User:Daeron

What is Xenarthra doing in Afrotheria? Anyone know?