Chapter 878 Animal Democracy
[I have always had a question, why do all scientific names seem to be in Latin?]
[How else can we highlight the versatility of Lao Fang?]
[Do you understand the value of eight languages? (Tactical retreat)]
[Please, if you learn a little about biological classification, you will know that Latin is a must]
[Five years of graduate school will tell you that all biological names are basically Latin or Latinized Greek. This is an internationally accepted practice, and its purpose is to facilitate the communication of botany among countries around the world.]
There were many answers given by professionals in the live broadcast room. Similarly, just as they said, Bifang said the Latin scientific name not to show off or demonstrate his ability to speak multiple languages.
"Knowing a little Latin is a necessary skill for almost every scholar studying plants and animals."
"This is because all the scientific names of species are composed entirely of Latin."
"As we all know, the names of animals and plants may have different names in different places. In order to facilitate research, scientists need a name that is unique to the world. In the end, everyone chose to use the binomial nomenclature created by biologist Linnaeus, which consists of two Latin words, the genus name and the specific epithet."
"The function of the genus name is to indicate the genus to which an animal or plant belongs, while the specific epithet is used to modify the genus name to indicate the characteristics of the species."
"For example, the most common potato we have is scientifically named solanum tuberosum. Solanum means it belongs to the Solanum family, and the specific epithet tuberosum means 'with tubers'. The name means there is a strange eggplant with tubers underneath."
"Some plants have the specific epithet edulis, which means 'edible,' such as ice cream beans, inga, edulis, which translates to a bean you can eat."
"There are even specific epithets like deliciosa, which means 'delicious', such as Actinidia deliciosa, which means delicious kiwi."
[It feels like Harry Potter is chanting a spell]
【Avada is eating a big melon! 】
[Oh my god, if I know its scientific name, can I tell whether it is edible or not, and whether it tastes good or not? ]
【6 ah】
【I like to eat kiwi fruit】
Bi Fang continued: "As for why Latin was chosen, it was not because the pioneers of biological classification were Latin people, but because of some significant advantages of Latin, such as its seldom used language."
Not often used?
Is this also an advantage?
Many people are confused.
Bi Fang smiled and said, "Yes, this is the advantage. As a dead language, Latin is not the official language of any country except the Vatican, and almost no one speaks Latin as their mother tongue."
"That led to a very stable Latin language, both in terms of its status, its grammar and even the spelling of words."
"The world's popular languages have changed many times. In ancient times, French, Italian, and Arabic were all popular. In modern times, German was also popular. Russian was also a major language during the Cold War. Now Ugly English is the most popular. It is foreseeable that Chinese will be very popular in the future."
【Chinese Hot Topics Like】
"As mainstream languages continue to change, Latin appears to be very 'neutral'. It is a foreign language to everyone. Learning one can help you understand many things. Its 'lack of vitality' has become an advantage at this time."
"As we all know, a dynamic language is updated very quickly, and without updating it will not be able to express the rapidly developing social environment."
"But how can you guarantee that people a thousand years from now will still be able to read the words you write? Ahem, of course, this kind of change, as pictographic Chinese characters, should be excluded. As for why, we will talk about this later."
Bifang paused and continued.
"So, for languages other than Chinese, like Shakespeare's original text, modern Chinese people have actually started to have some difficulty understanding it, and the time span is less than 400 years."
We name something today, and tomorrow the word may be unrecognizable to anyone.
This is a real problem with most phonetic scripts. They change too quickly, and after a few hundred years people will be unable to understand them.
"Latin doesn't have this problem. All usages are written down in ancient Roman dictionaries thousands of years ago."
"No one speaks Latin as their mother tongue. It is impossible to change the grammar or spelling of words just because of one person's opinion. It is still the same as it was a thousand years ago."
"The second is the richness of vocabulary. When we learn English, if we can memorize a few thousand words, we can easily pass the Level 4 exam. However, the Latin vocabulary is as many as one million, which is more than enough to name more than 300,000 species of plants in the world."
"That's why most studies of plant and animal classifications are in Latin."
【I see】
[Another day of learning]
[What about Chinese? What is the difference between Chinese and English? Fang Shen, you haven’t explained it yet.]
"As for Chinese characters, it's actually quite complicated to explain. It involves the difference between ideographic characters and phonetic characters, and even more than that."
Bifang organized his words and then began to explain.
If a phonetic language like English would become incomprehensible after five or six hundred years, then Chinese characters, as ideographic languages, would have considerable superiority.
Shakespeare's writings are only four hundred years old, but they have already become difficult for modern people to read.
But for the Chinese people, such reading difficulties did not appear until more than three thousand years ago in the Book of Documents.
This is an incredible miracle for foreign countries that use phonetic writing.
The fundamental reason lies in the difference between pronunciation and meaning.
The most typical phonetic language is English, where the pronunciation and the characters are the same, so if you can read it, you can write it.
The Chinese people discovered this problem during the Republic of China period: Western phonetic characters can be written by anyone who can speak them, so the national literacy rate is very high, but Chinese characters cannot be written by anyone who can speak them, so it is difficult for ordinary people to learn Chinese characters.
Even intellectuals began to call for reforms to Chinese characters, and even to abolish square characters and use alphabetic characters instead.
This cannot be said to be wrong, the limitations of the times are there.
Phonetic writing does have many benefits in the short term. It is extremely convenient for communication, exchange and dissemination. Even ancient Egypt, which also developed hieroglyphics, was impacted by phonetic writing and abandoned its initially formed pictographic system and turned to join the ranks of phonetic writing.
But phonetic notation also has its disadvantages—it is too easy to change.
The most typical example is English, which is actually divided into ugly style and central style.
It is clearly the same language, but due to changes in accent, the spelling of some words has gradually undergone distinctive changes over the past two hundred years.
This is the result of modern printing technology, and one can imagine how rapid the changes were before that.
On the contrary, Chinese characters, which originated from pictograms, do not have such shortcomings because the characters do not change with accents and have become extremely stable.
The initial formation may undergo great changes, from the simplest murals to the mature writing system. The changes in the middle are very rapid, but this is not a change similar to phonetic changes, but a development, from immature to mature, from complex to simple.
After the initial development, the basically finalized Chinese characters remained largely unchanged for thousands of years, allowing later generations to absorb the wisdom of their predecessors without any obstacles for one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, or even five thousand years.
On the contrary, before the advent of modern archaeology skills, the owners of phonetic writing could only read three or four hundred years of history, and some of the history gradually became myths...
Some scholars even believe that the reason why China is a non-religious country is related to its own Chinese character system, and that it respects ancestors rather than gods.
In fact, it was not only China that first developed hieroglyphics. For example, Egypt also used hieroglyphics in the early days. Unfortunately, it was impacted by phonetic writing before it matured and was completely assimilated.
However, China was too far away from the phonetic system, with the Caucasus Mountains and the Himalaya Mountains between them. People were tinkering with their own phonetic systems at home, and by the time they came into contact with the phonetic system, the system had already matured and was difficult to change. This was undoubtedly something to be thankful for.
Even Chinese characters are not just ideograms, they also have certain phonetic functions.
Both phono-semantic characters and loan characters are a kind of phonetic phenomenon of Chinese characters.
This phonetic usage is completely different from English, French, Russian and other languages.
Therefore, from the perspective of real language system classification, Chinese characters are not just ideograms, but are ideophonetic characters, which is a further understanding.
Bifang did not elaborate on this.
But the stability of Chinese characters is undoubted. If Chinese characters are used as the scientific names of animals and plants, there is actually no problem.
However, the original biological classification systems were built by foreigners, and the languages of European countries are more or less related to Latin. Latin is easier for them to learn, so naturally they would not choose Chinese.
Since there were not only Chinese people in the live broadcast room, but also many foreign friends, Bifang did not explain it too clearly. He just gave a simple popular science introduction to the stability and uniqueness of Chinese characters, which really surprised many netizens.
[Damn, Chinese characters are so cool]
[Why does a wilderness survival anchor also study language systems?]
[Is it strange to know eight foreign languages when surviving in the wilderness? Isn’t this a basic skill? (funny)]
【Single walk 6】
[I don’t understand Chinese characters, but I feel it’s amazing]
[Suspected of bragging...]
[In fact, it cannot be said that there is no change, just like the chrysanthemum used to be a flower, but now... (dog head)]
"I've strayed off topic. I just wanted to introduce the mixed-haired wolf, but the topic got sidetracked and I ended up talking about so much."
Bifang scratched his temples, feeling quite embarrassed.
After this long conversation, the spotted hyena almost gnawed the zebra to bones.
Fortunately, the mixed-haired wolf was still there, and Bifang quickly changed the subject.
"Most of the time, whether in academia or among the public, the mixed-haired wolf is called 'African wild dog'."
"This random name is not too far-fetched, it's even quite appropriate."
The mixed-haired wolf is like a "local dog". It does not look unusual. Its body shape is similar to that of a Labrador, but it appears to be more slender, with a shorter face and larger ears.
In the African continent where ferocious beasts abound, this is really unattractive.
This unprepossessing motley wolf is also one of Africa's top predators.
Every time they attack, they have about a 60% chance of not returning empty-handed. Their prey are also large animals such as various antelopes, warthogs, and even wildebeests.
"The motley wolf never fights alone, which is extremely rare among mammalian predators. Even hyenas and wolves, which are well-known social animals, sometimes live alone, but the motley wolf is not like that."
"According to E.O. Wilson, the motley wolf is the most socially complex carnivore."
"They always live in groups. The smallest group is a pair of adult wolves and their underage children, while the largest group has as many as 40 or 50."
"In a large pack, there is a leader, male and female, who lead the pack and have almost exclusive reproductive rights."
"The leader couple gives birth to one litter a year, with an average of 10 pups in each litter, and sometimes up to 20, which is the highest number among all existing canids. It also ensures that only one breeding pair is needed to maintain the development of the entire wolf pack."
[Amazing! This is so fertile]
[I would like to call it the sales champion]
"The cubs spend their first few weeks in the den, with the mother staying close by, and the other wolves in the pack bringing them food."
"After a month, when the wolf cubs can eat meat, the mother will allow other individuals in the pack to approach, because now the wolf cubs also need to eat takeout."
"When it comes to loving children, Motley Wolf is definitely a model. When everyone brings back food from hunting, the children eat it first."
"When the children are full, the lead couple will take over, followed by the other wolves."
Bifang's words were quite witty, making the audience in front of the screen laugh.
"That's not the most outrageous thing. In addition to the order of seniority, can you believe that the Motley Wolf also has a 'democratic deliberation' system?"
[Fuck, Lao Fang, are you kidding me? ]
[I am hallucinating]
[I don’t believe it]
How can you be so smart?
[Isn’t this almost the same as a human?]
The comments were filled with exclamations, and almost no one believed it.
Bifang didn't explain much and went straight to talking about the wolf's behavior.
"In 2017, scientists from the United States, China, Botswana and Australia jointly published a paper describing a special behavior of a group of mottled wolves in the Okavango Delta in Botswana: voting with 'sneezes'."
"They observed that when wolves were preparing to hunt in groups, they often had a strange ritual of sneezing one after another."
"This is not a random behavior, but it happens every time, so it must contain a meaning that we humans don't know."
"After a long period of tracking and observation, we finally understood the meaning of this ritual - an alternative voting system."
"If one of the lead couple starts sneezing, it only takes three or more sneezes for everyone else to start hunting."
"And if the leading couple doesn't say anything, but other individuals in the group sneeze first, it will take at least ten people to take over before the group sets off."
"You have to get enough 'sneezes' before the hunt can start , otherwise it will be cancelled."
