Classified

Our next Biology class was on classification.  Fun!  We talked about how and why humans compulsively classify things, and the difference between Aristotle's sock drawer and the sock drawer of Linneaeus.

Aristotle only had 2 categories of living things: it was either a plant or an animal (each category had 3 subdivisions: animals were either land, water, or air).  He was Greek, he didn't have socks, but if he had a sock drawer, it would have white socks on one side and black on the other..

Carolus Linneaus, OTH, must have had his socks organized by the colors in the spectrum and then alphabetized by country of manufacture!  He was the father of our modern classification system.  If you can't read the headings in the picture, they are (down) Kingdom, Phylum, Class Order, Family Genus, species, and (across) cat, lion, dog, octopus.

Now my students know how to request a fun and friendly Common Octopus for their birthday, so they don't accidentally get a poisonous and bad tempered Blue Ring Octopus by mistake.  Ahh, science!