I really dislike cultivars like this where they have been changed so much it doesn’t look like actual plants…

Zarathustra kann mich mal :P

You mean Pica pica?

Confusingly, there is the animal in the post that is commonly called pika (Ochotona daurica). What I had to think of first was Pica pica though (the Eurasian magpie)

Yeah, that one is really weird!

As a biologist, my first thought would maybe be what physiological needs my child has and how it will interact with the natural environment. And what strange foods it could potentially eat.

Oh wow, didn’t know that! :O

Glad you could get something out of it :)

I’m not a teacher, just very passionate about biology and pretty active on iNaturalist. That’s where the vast majority of my knowledge of taxonomy comes from. Definitely a recommendation for everyone who is curious about their environment (no prior knowledge needed)

These are different branches on the tree of life, specifically within the plants. If you imagine this tree of life, species would be the tips of the smallest branches. And the branches itself would be different units (=taxa) that lead to various branches. So in taxonomy we use special words for these different units/taxa dependent on how far back they are removed from the species. Like, you may have heard of a genus. For example we as humans are the species Homo sapiens and our genus is the first part of that: Homo. There were also other species in that genus, like the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) or the Denisovans (Homo denisova). This works the same in plants. For example ginger is actually the species Zingiber officinale. There are also other gingers, like Zingiber spectabile. If we go one level up the branch, we reach the family ginger is in: Zingiberaceae. In this “ginger family” we have other plants of different genera like turmeric (Curcuma longa) or cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum). Notice how the first word of these species isn’t Zingiber, because they are in other genera. So, Zingiber is more closely related to any other Zingiber than it is to the other plants in Zingiberaceae. And one level above, Zingiber is more closely related to any plant in the Zingiberaceae than to any other plant outside of its family. Taxonomy is based on who evolved from whom, that’s why it is important what are the closest relatives to a given species.

This is fundamentally what taxonomy is about. From there on we can go up the branches of the tree of life and explore the branches that connect to even more species. If we go up one major level from the family we reach the “order” (I’m simplifying here, taxonomy is much more intricate than that). An order of plants contains various families and the OP spoke of the order Zingiberales (ending in -ales). The “words” I’ve used are families (ending in -aceae) as you might have expected from Zingiberaceae above. And the families I’ve listed in the first half are all within the same order of Zingiberales. These are all very common ornamental or otherwise cultivated plants. You may know some Marantaceae as calatheas/goeppertias/prayer plants, Heliconiaceae as lobster-claws. Other important members of this order are also bananas (Musaceae).

In the second half of my comment I talk about Poales. So, Poales as you might have guessed from the ending is a separate order of plants. In it are most prominently the grasses (Poaceae) OP spoke about in their post. OP talked about seaweeds, but I pointed out that they aren’t even seed plants (=Spermatophyta). I also mentioned seagrasses, which are seed plants (they even flower and are not too distantly related to the Zingiberales or Poales). But they are in another order: the Alismatales. This order’s most famous members is the aroid family Araceae (containing e.g. Monstera, Philodendron, etc).

I hope this explains it :)

Woah, what? Even Marantaceae, Costaceae and Heliconiaceae?? Any sources?

As others have pointed out, the second to last panel doesn’t make much sense. There are officially only 8 families in the Zingiberales. Poaceae are obviously in the Poales and seaweeds are not even Spermatophyta… If you meant seagrasses then those are in the Alismatales, so in a different monocot order.

Hm, in small animals my previous point of a 2D vs 3D space is also valid. Large land prey animals “only” have to look from side to side to spot predators. Small animals have to look in all 3 dimensions, like sharks

Haha, I’m not a bird person and didn’t bother to look it up. Thanks for the correction!

Although they still don’t look fully front-facing like e.g. in cats, right?

They also have to orient themselves in a truely 3D landscape, unlike terrestrial predators who hunt on basically a 2D plane. Birds of prey (with the exception of owls) also don’t have front-facing eyes, probably for similar reasons* (and they’re stereoscopic vision also works a bit different I think with very different points of focus).

*see comments below

If anyone else wonders:

• Talpa is an actual genus of moles: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talpa_(mammal)
• defossus is latin and according to Wiktionary it means “excavated, planted or hidden”: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/defossus (fossus coming from Latin fodiō meaning “to dig; to pierce; to goad”, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fossus)

There are a lot of fossilized records. You can see various examples of whole trunks or roots here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigillaria?wprov=sfla1

Alliaria petiolata is a pretty common herb in Europe (at least here in Germany) and it is related to mustard, cabbage plants and rapeseed. It does have a garlicky smell, but I wouldn’t really use it as an replacement to real garlic. Garlic plants are not related to it at all and are very different. Allium ursinum (wild garlic) on the other hand is also pretty common here and actually tastes like garlic.

How is iNaturalist not open source? They’ve got their code openly published and everyone is welcome to use their dataset. You can write some code and use their API, it’s pretty easy to get started.

https://github.com/inaturalist

I don’t get what your link has got to do with an online platform like iNaturalist. Biopiracy definitely is an important issue in general, but what is the point you’re trying to make here? If you don’t want to use iNaturalist, fine. But you don’t need to come up with nonsensical excuses…

Good point that there is a distinction between the quantity of cuteness (finding most of a population cute vs only a few individuals). Although part of it might be a cultural bias because cute dogs and hot people are given much more presentation in our society. Like watching a movie and nearly everyone is conventionally attractive. There are many dogs out there that aren’t cute at all, but they aren’t usually shown in posts/videos about cute dogs.

Regarding the evolutionary adaptation you were hinting at, I think the domestication syndrome makes it so that we see animals like dogs as partly infant-like. That is, bigger eyes, round features, etc. So maybe there is some trained response in us that reacts to those infant-like features? There is definitely some positive association because otherwise the domestication syndrome wouldn’t be such an universal thing.

I’m not even trying to suggest any judgement, if anything I’m just lamenting something that for my entire lifetime I have not been able to relate to or understand in my peers, which makes me feel somehow lacking, I guess.

I get that. Like I said, I feel somewhat similar towards human babies. Although since I’m an aunt and more in contact with infants/small children, I now understand it a bit better. I think you would probably find dogs much cuter once you get to develop a relationship with one. A friend of mine has been sitting a dog for some months now (only once a week) and his behavior towards dogs has completely shifted. Before he thought they were annoying or unimportant, now he always points out cute dogs in his environment. And I think building a connection is really the magic of it all. I grew up with a dog and she was really like my sister. I felt much sadder about her death than about my grandparents’ deaths, because I was closer to her than to them.

Here is the website: https://inaturalist.org/

You can make an account and start uploading pictures of whatever organism you like, be it a plant, fungus, animal, etc. There is a pretty good computer vision model that can give you automatic suggestions. But the true value lies in other people identifying your observations and sharing their knowledge.

If you want to upload photos, please read the following tutorial first :) https://help.inaturalist.org/en/support/solutions/articles/151000192921-how-to-make-an-observation

So you don’t understand how it feels to find something cute? Or how people see other people as cute? Or as beautiful? Or as attractive? It’s just another human like everyone else, what’s the big deal? kind of?

Not mad about you not relating to the love for dogs, just curious. I feel the same way about human babies, but I’m aware that’s something similar to when I find something cute.

Do you know about iNaturalist? It is a wonderful community of people that are just like you asking what a certain organism is and then helping each other identify these organisms. You could upload your pictures there, too. However, you’d have to also have a rough location and also take some extra pictures of the plants. There are hundreds if not thousands of plant species that look a bit like what I can see here. So taking better pictures of different parts of a plant really helps.