Chapter 882 Animal Democracy

[I have always had a question, why do all scientific names seem to be in Latin]

[How else to bring out Lao Fang’s versatility]

[Do you understand the value of eight languages ​​(tactical retreat)]

[Please, if you learn a little bit about biological classification, you will know that Latin is a must]

[Fifth-year graduate student tells you that all biological names are basically in Latin or Latinized Greek. It is an internationally accepted practice and the purpose is to facilitate botany exchanges among countries around the world. 】

There were many answers from professionals in the live broadcast room. Similarly, as they said, Bifang's Latin scientific name was not just to show off his ability to speak multiple languages.

"Knowing a little Latin is an essential skill for almost every animal and plant researcher."

"The reason for this is that all scientific names of professional species are composed of Latin."

"Everyone knows that an animal or plant may have different names in different places. In order to facilitate research, scientists need a name that is unique in the world. In the end, everyone's choice was to use the double name created by the biologist Linnaeus. Law, which is composed of two Latin words: the genus name and the species epithet.”

"The function of the genus name is to indicate the genus of an animal or plant, and the species epithet is used to modify the genus name to express the characteristics of the species."

"For example, the scientific name of our most common potato is solanum tuberosum. Solanum means that it is from the genus Solanum, and the species epithet tuberosum means 'tubers.' The meaning of this name is that there is a strange eggplant with a There are tubers.”

"There are also some plants whose species epithet is edulis, which means 'edible', such as ice cream beans, inga, and edulis, which translates to an edible bean."

"There are even species epithets like deliciosa, which means 'delicious', such as our Chinese Actinidia deliciosa, which means delicious kiwi."

[It feels like Harry Potter reciting a spell]

[Avada eats a big melon! 】

[Holy crap, if I know its scientific name, can I judge whether it is edible or not? 】

【6ah】

【I like to eat kiwi fruit】

Bi Fang continued: "As for why Latin was chosen, it is not because the founder of biological classification was a Latin, but because of some significant advantages of Latin, such as its uncommon use."

uncommonly used?

Is this also an advantage?

Many people were left scratching their heads.

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 a native language."

"This resulted in Latin being very stable, both in terms of status, grammar and even the spelling of words."

"The world's popular languages ​​have changed many times. French, Italian, and Arabic were all popular in ancient times, and German was also popular in modern times. Russian was also a major language during the Cold War. Ugly English is the most popular now, and it is foreseeable that the future will be Chinese is a big hit.”

[Chinese hotspot likes]

"As mainstream languages ​​continue to change, Latin appears to be very 'neutral'. It is a foreign language to everyone. If you learn just one language, you can understand a lot of things. At this time, Latin has become an advantage."

"Everyone knows that a dynamic language updates quickly. If it is not updated, it cannot express the rapidly developing social environment."

"But how can you ensure that the words you write can still be read by people a thousand years from now? Ahem, of course, this change must be excluded as hieroglyphic Chinese characters. As for why, we will talk about this later."

Bi Fang paused and continued.

"So, for texts other than Chinese, like Shakespeare's original text, modern Chinese people have actually begun to have some understanding obstacles, and the time span is less than four hundred years."

If you name something today, no one will recognize the word tomorrow.

This is a real problem with most phonetic scripts. They change too fast and will become incomprehensible to future generations in a few hundred years.

"Latin doesn't have this problem. All usages are written in ancient Roman dictionaries thousands of years ago."

"No one speaks Latin as their mother tongue. It's impossible for a family to change the grammar or spelling of words. What it was like a thousand years ago is still the same now."

"The second thing is the rich vocabulary. If we learn English, if we can memorize a few thousand words, we can easily pass level 4, but Latin has a vocabulary of millions, giving more than 300,000 species of plants to the world. Naming is more than enough.”

"This is why the basic study of animal and plant classification is in Latin."

【I see】

【Another day of learning】

[What about Chinese? What’s the difference between Chinese? Fang Shen, you haven’t talked about it yet]

"As for Chinese characters, this is actually more complicated to explain. It involves the difference between ideograms and phonetic characters, or even more than that."

Bi Fang organized his language and then began to explain.

If phonetic characters like English would be incomprehensible in five or six hundred years, then Chinese characters, as ideographic characters, have considerable advantages.

Shakespeare's writings are only four hundred years old, and they already have difficulties in reading for modern people.

But for the Chinese people, the emergence of such dyslexia has to go all the way back to more than three thousand years of history.

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 text - English, the sounds and characters are the same, and you can write it if you can read it.

The Chinese people discovered this problem during the Republic of China: as long as they can speak and write Western pinyin characters, the national literacy rate is very high, but Chinese characters cannot be spoken or written, so it is difficult for ordinary people to learn Chinese characters.

Intellectuals even began to demand reform of Chinese characters, and even wanted to abolish square characters and use alphabetic characters instead.

This cannot be said wrong, the limitations of the times are there.

Phonetic writing has many benefits in the short term, as it is extremely convenient for communication, communication and dissemination. Even ancient Egypt, which also developed hieroglyphics, was impacted by phonetic writing and gave up its preliminarily formed pictographic system and turned around and added hieroglyphics. The sound procession.

But the phonetic pronunciation also has a shortcoming - it changes too easily.

The most typical one is English, which is actually divided into Chou style and Central style.

It's obviously the same language, but due to changes in accent, the spelling of some words has gradually changed distinctively over the past two hundred years.

This is still the result of the help of modern printing. You can imagine the rapid changes before this.

On the contrary, Chinese characters, which originated from hieroglyphs, do not have such shortcomings, because the characters do not follow the accent and become extremely stable.

The initial stage may have changed a lot, from the simplest mural to a mature writing system. The changes in the middle are very rapid, but this is not a change similar to phonetics, but a development, from immaturity to maturity, from complexity to simplicity.

After the initial development, the basically finalized Chinese characters have changed little for thousands of years. Later generations can absorb the wisdom of their predecessors without any obstacles, and there will be no obstacles for one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, or five thousand years.

On the contrary, before modern archaeological skills were developed, the owners of phonetic writing could only read the history for three to four hundred years, and some of the history gradually turned into myths.

Some scholars now believe that the reason why China is a non-religious country has something to do with its own Chinese character system, which honors ancestors but not gods.

In fact, it was not just China that first developed hieroglyphics. Egypt, for example, also used hieroglyphics in its early stages. Unfortunately, it was impacted by phonetic writing before it matured and was completely assimilated.

China, on the other hand, is too far away from the phonological system, separated by the Caucasus Mountains and the Himalayas. They work on their own at home. By the time they come into contact with the phonological system, the system has already matured and is difficult to change. This is undoubtedly It's something to be thankful for.

Even Chinese characters are not just simple ideograms, but also have certain phonetic meanings.

Phonophonetic characters and pseudophonetic characters are both phonetic phenomena of Chinese characters.

This phonetic usage is completely different from English, French, Russian and other texts.

Therefore, according to the true classification of language systems, Chinese characters are not just ideographic characters, but are phonetic characters. This is a further understanding.

Bi Fang did not go into details here.

But there is no doubt about the stability of Chinese characters. If Chinese characters are used as the scientific names of animals and plants, there is actually no problem.

However, the initial biological classification systems were all built by foreigners, and the languages ​​​​of various European countries are more or less related to Latin. For them, Latin is easier to learn, so naturally it is impossible to choose a Chinese language. .

Since there were not only Chinese people in the live broadcast room, but also many foreign friends, Bi Fang did not make it too clear. He just briefly popularized the stability and uniqueness of Chinese characters, which really surprised many netizens.

[Oh, it turns out that Chinese characters are so chewy]

[On why a wilderness survival anchor also studies language systems]

[Isn’t it strange that eight foreign languages ​​in Wilderness Survival Club are not basic skills? (Funny)]

[Go alone to a 6]

[I don’t know Chinese characters, but I feel very powerful]

[suspected of bragging]

[In fact, it cannot be said that there has been no change, just like chrysanthemums were flowers before, but now (dog heads)]

"It's a bit far. I obviously just wanted to introduce the bastard, but the topic got sidetracked. I accidentally talked about so much."

Bi Fang scratched his temples, feeling quite embarrassed.

After this long conversation, the spotted hyena almost gnawed the zebra into bones.

Fortunately, the bastard was still there, so Bi Fang quickly changed the subject.

"More often, whether in academia or among the people, the mixed-haired wolf is called the 'African wild dog,' which is the African wild dog."

"This random name is not too outrageous, it is even more appropriate."

The mixed-haired wolf is like a "local dog". It really doesn't look out of the ordinary. It is similar in size to a Labrador, but it has a slender body, a shorter face, and larger ears.

In the African continent where ferocious beasts abound, this is really unattractive.

This ugly variegated wolf is also one of Africa's top predators.

Every time they attack, they are almost 60% certain that they will not return with nothing. Their prey is also various antelopes, warthogs, and even big guys like wildebeest.

"Colored wolves never fight alone, which is extremely rare among mammalian predators. Even hyenas and wolves, which are well-known social animals, sometimes live alone, but variegated wolves do not."

"According to E.O. Wilson, the motley wolf is the carnivore with the most complex social behavior."

"They always live in groups. The smallest group is a pair of adult motley wolves and their underage children, while the largest group has as many as 40 or 50."

"In a large group, the female and male each have a leader. They will lead the entire wolf pack and have almost the only reproductive rights."

"The leader couple gives birth to one litter a year, with an average of 10 wolf cubs per litter, and sometimes even up to 20, which is the largest number among all existing canids, and it can also ensure that only one pair of reproduction can maintain the development of the entire wolf pack."

[Awesome Ah, this is too fertile]

[I would like to call it the best-selling]

"The first few weeks after the cubs are born are spent in the cave, and the mother will always guard nearby. Her food problem is brought home by other wolves in the group."

"When the cubs can eat meat after a month, the mother will allow other individuals in the group to approach, because now the cubs also need to eat takeout."

"In terms of loving children, wolves are definitely a model. The takeout brought back by everyone from hunting, the children eat first."

"The leading couple will take over after the children are full, and then the other wolves."

Bifang's words are quite playful, making the audience in front of the screen laugh.

"This is not the most outrageous. In addition to the order of seniority, do you dare to believe that wolves also have a 'democratic deliberation' system!"

[Fuck, Lao Fang, are you kidding? ]

[I heard it]

[I don't believe it]

[How can it be so smart]

[Isn't it almost the same as humans?]

The barrage was full of exclamations, and basically no one believed it.

Bifang did not explain much, and directly talked about the behavior of wolves.

"In 2017, scientists from the United States, China, Botswana and Australia jointly published a paper describing a special behavior of the motley wolf group in the Okavango Delta in Botswana: voting with 'sneezes'."

"They observed that when the motley wolves were preparing to hunt collectively, they often had a strange ritual, that is, 'sneezing' one after another."

"This is not a random behavior, but it happens every time, so it must contain meanings 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 leading couple starts sneezing first, then the rest of the individuals only need more than three to follow suit, and everyone will get up to hunt."

"And when the leading couple does not speak, other individuals in the group sneeze first, and it takes at least ten people to relay before everyone sets out."

"You must get enough 'sneezes' before the hunting action begins, otherwise it will be cancelled."