Are You Man or Mouse?

fygment writes "... according to recent studies. It seems were more closely related to rodents than the carnivores i.e. the primates didn't evolve from the noble jungle cats, wolves, etc. Were closer to rats. Of course this has long been suspected in lawyers and SCO execs ..."

Comments

Biology I

[InsaneCreator]

Of course this has long been suspected in lawyers and SCO execs ...

I believe you are having trouble telling the difference between rodents and dung beetles.

Recent?

[Henry V .009]

I believe that this "news" has been known for nearly all of the 20th century. I'm not sure where the article gets off talking about:

recently proposed trees of mammalian evolution indicating that primates (human, chimpanzee, baboon) are more closely related to rodents (mouse, rat) than to carnivores (cat, dog) or artiodactyls (cow, pig).

Re:Recent?

[kramer2718]

According to the Tree of Life Web Project, all the animals mentioned (rodents, felines, humans) belong to the infraclass Eutheria (placental mammals).

If you look closely at the tree, you will see that the Tree of Life does indeed have order Rodentia closer to the order Primates. I recall learning this in high-school biology, also.

Yes this does seem to be a bit of old news.

42

[Hungus]

But we knew this all along after all the mice built this planet

"Mice are not, as is commonly assumed on Earth, small white squeaking animals who spend a lot of time being experimented on.

In fact, they are the protrusions into our dimension of hyper-intellegent pan-dimensional beings. These beings are in fact responsible for the creation of the Earth."

See the video here waning its real media

Re:mouse are humans too..

[BrokenHalo]

I thought they had been using lawyers for laboratory experiments for some time. They're more plentiful than mice or rats. The only trouble they've had is reproducing the results in humans.

The best laid plans of mice...

[quinkin]

The best laid plans of mice...

And men.

What have men got to do with this?

Q.

Tree of life online

[njchick]

You can browse the tree of life starting from its root. If we descend to mammals, we'll see that lines that lead to rodents, primates and carnivors all start in the same point. Of course, it's unlikely that several branches start in the same point of evolution. It's more likely that the tree divides into two branches and then divides again.

Perhaps this research will allow to make some adjustments to the tree. However, there are already interesting facts in the current version. For example, bats are closer to primates than most other mammals. On the other hand, armadillos must have branched very early, although they did it after opossums.

This has been a well known fact

[mnmn]

The mammalian line forks into one group that goes on to split into felines and canines, and another that further splits into rodents and primates.

Next this poster will post an article that says Birds are closer to reptiles than to humans. I'm no biologist but I can tell when someone tries to pass an encyclopaedia fact for a breakthrough news.

Steinbeck

[gooru]

So, I suppose this means the title of Steinbeck's book Of Mice and Men is redundant.

No

[axolotl_farmer]

Tha part of the tree you refer to is unresolved , a polytomy.

What is important in a phylogenetic tree is branching order. When the branching order is uncertain or ambiguous, a polytomy is put in place. The placement of the branches in a polytomy are usually arbitrary, or in alphabetical order.

From the tree, you can tell that primates are most closely related to tree shrews, and that the group (primates + tree shrews) in turn is most closely related to bats and colugos.