Post #2698906
2026-05-13 20:56 UTC
Replies (3)
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@datarama@hachyderm.io 2026-05-13 21:00
Which of the following pairs of animals are more closely related?
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@datarama@hachyderm.io 2026-05-14 22:24
Horses and zebras are about as closely related to each other as horses and donkeys are - and, just like horses and donkeys, they can breed and have hybrid (but sterile) offspring. Their last common ancestor lived about 4 million years ago. With hares and rabbits, it complicates things quite a bit that both groups are ill-defined. The entire Lagomorpha family tree (to which they both belong, together with the one living species of pika) is basically a poorly sorted heap of animals that the terms "hare" and "rabbit" have been rather haphazardly applied. There is even one kind of "hare" that *is* indisputably a rabbit: The Belgian Hare is a domestic rabbit that has been selectively bred specifically to look like a wild European hare! The closest to a principled definition of "hare" vs. "rabbit" we can get cladistically is to define the genus Lepus as "hares", and all the others as "rabbits" - and in that case, we get a latest common ancestor that lived about 30 million years ago.
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@pauldrye@spacey.space 2026-05-14 00:18
@datarama@hachyderm.io Felt cuke, might delete later?