#whippomorpha

[taxonomytournament]

Taxonomy Tournament: Mammals

Ruminantia. This suborder of even-toed ungulates gets nutrients from plant material by fermenting it in a specialised stomach. It includes cattle, yak, deer, sheep, goats, giraffes, and antelopes.

Whippomorpha. This suborder of even-toed ungulates have for the most part lost their toes, becoming dolphins and whales. It also includes hippos.

[markscherz]

You said earlier that all whales are evolved from a hooved ancestor. Is there any remaining hoovery in modern day whales? Which is to say, do today's whales have any remnants of hooves?

Well, baleen whales are a lot like giant hoovers, vacuuming up vast quantities of krill, but I know that that is not what you meant by 'hoovery'.

No, there are no remnants of hoofs in whales, unlike the fingernails of manatees. The hallmarks of their artiodactyl affinities lie among other features. Important to note that although the group is named after their digits, there are a host of other features that unite them.

[iamthekaijuking]

apparently cetaceans are even-toed ungulates

which means that a deer is more closely related to a blue whale than it is to a horse. taxonomy is wack

Yup! Even toed ungulates bear their weight on an even number of toes and digest cellulose in multiple stomach chambers (with the exception of pigs and cetaceans), which contrasts with odd toed ones which bear weight on an odd number of toes and digest cellulose in their intestines. They’re also usually better at extracting minerals from their food, hence why way more of them have horns than their odd toed contemporaries.

Whales, hippos, entelodonts, and Andrewsarchus are all members of Whippomorpha, which was a weird family of evidently ill tempered ungulates that were usually omnivores. They absolutely had no problem getting meat though, and the ancestors of whales were small almost dog-like Whippomorphs that took advantage of the fact that there’s often food in water sources, and then took advantage of the fact that if you sit in said water source then food will come to you. They eventually went out into the open ocean and the rest is history.

Hippos are actually the odd ones out in the family because they’re entirely incapable of eating meat, and even when they do eat an animal it’s usually due to dietary or environmental stress and not to round out their diet like other herbivores.

And I guess cetaceans are a little weird for the family (aside from being marine) because they’re usually not as aggressive. Don’t go testing if this is true though.

Anyways Whippomorpha is my favorite ungulate family

[mmeveronica]

lmaoooo

theres a taxonomic group called whippomorpha like lol whatch them whipp though they don't neigh neigh

[sigmaleph]

there is a clade called whippomorpha, where the 'whippo' bit is a portmanteau of whale and hippo. because it contains whales and hippos.

there is a different clade called hippomorpha, which does not contain hippos (it contains horses and horse relatives)

[4d-hypermoth]

The best scientific name for an animal clade I've come across is without a doubt Whippomorpha.

Biologists needed a name for the group within Artiodactyla that includes the whales & dolphins + their closest relatives, the hippos.

Whale. Hippo. Whippo. Whippomorpha.

Yeh

[zinogirl]

Things you may not know about Animals

Wolf packs don't have an "Alpha male", they are nuclear family units comprised of a breeding pair and their offspring. They also prioritize taking care of weaker members of the pack.

Lion prides are technically Matriachal, the Lioness' form a sort of sisterhood and are responsible for the hunting, and are the stable units of the pride, while most if not all males tend to leave to form other prides, akin to elephant bulls

Hyena's are part of the Feliformia suborder (the same family as cats, mustelids, mongoose, and some more), they are also far more successful hunters than lions.

The closest living relative to the cetacean family (Whales) are Hippos (both are in the Whippomorpha suborder). And both are ungulates (specifically Artiodactyls, even toed ungulates)

Mosasaurs are considered to be relatives of, if not, lizards. So that mosasaurus in Jurassic world (which is drastically oversized, they got to about 50-60 feet long) is a giant aquatic lizard.

In contrast to wolves, our closest relative the Chimpanzee does, in fact, have a dominant male that could be considered an alpha. However, the Bonobo, the other closest relative to chimps, are Matriachal. Nature is interesting.

[junewild]

hi i think you would like the website metazooa it's like, wordle with phylogenetic trees its very fun and sillay and interesting. there are some weird clade names (whippomorpha! who knew!) but yea if you check it out i hope it gives you joy!

i checked this out & it does seem like exactly my sort of thing, so i'm sharing it with all my followers, many of whom will also find it delightful. check out metazooa here! thank you very much for the recommendation!

[angsttronaut]

i feel like a whippomorpha family reunion could be something very emotional

[radiogreen]

til whales (and other cetaceans) are most closely related to hippos, both being a kind of even-toed ungulate in the suborder whippomorpha

[alphynix]

Modern beluga whales and narwhals are the only living representatives of the monodontid lineage, found only in cold Arctic and sub-Arctic waters. But this whale family actually first evolved in much warmer climates – and some of them were downright tropical.

Casatia thermophila lived about 5 million years ago during the early Pliocene, in the Mediterranean Sea around Tuscany, Italy. Although known only from a couple of partial skulls and a few vertebrae it was probably similar in size to its modern relatives, around 5m long (16'4").

It seems to have had a larger number of functional teeth than modern monodontids, and probably didn't suction feed like its modern close relatives. Instead it may have fed more like most porpoises and dolphins, relying more on speed and snapping jaws to capture prey.

It inhabited the Mediterranean at a time not long after the sea there had mostly dried up and then been rapidly refilled. The presence of warm-water marine species such as bull sharks, tiger sharks, and dugongs in the same fossil beds as Casatia indicates the local climate at the time was hotter than it is today, with tropical temperatures – and suggests that this whale's ancestors must have originally moved into the replenishing Mediterranean from lower latitudes alongside these other warmth-adapted animals.

This tropical monodontid was also much closer related to modern belugas than modern narwhals are, which raises the possibility that the two living monodontid species actually specialized for colder conditions completely independently of each other rather than descending from a cold-adapted common ancestor. Instead modern belugas and narwhals may have originated from separate warm-water monodontid ancestors who evolved similar cold-tolerant adaptations in parallel as the climate cooled during the onset of the Quaternary ice age, while the rest of their relatives all went extinct.

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Nix Illustration | Tumblr | Twitter | Patreon

[taxonomytournament]

Taxonomy Tournament: Mammals

Caniformia. This suborder of Carnivora contains dogs, foxes, bears, otters, badgers, raccoons, skunks, seals, and walruses.

Whippomorpha. This suborder of even-toed ungulates have for the most part lost their toes, becoming dolphins and whales. It also includes hippos.

[animalids]

Amazon river dolphin (Inia geoffrensis)

Photo by Amos Nachoum

[iamthekaijuking]

horses are wacky. you know how most ruminants like cows and sheep have four-part stomachs that help them digest grass? apparently horses have a one part stomach like ours but it's their *large intestine* that's split into four compartments with their equivalent of an appendix being this huge side branch of the gut. what even is the difference

and apparently cetaceans are even toed ungulates which means that a deer and a humpback whale are more closely related than a deer and a horse

Yeah odd and even toed ungulates have different digestive set ups, and I talk about odd toed ungulate digestive efficiency here as well!

And yeah cetaceans are even toed ungulates, and are specifically part of Cetancodontamorpha, which is a family comprised of members with absolutely zero chill such as hippos, entelodonts, Andrewsarchus, and the aforementioned whales. It’s my favorite ungulate family.

[economicsresearch]

page 497 - whales were fish who crawled on land until they were mammals then crawled back into the ocean. Whales used to exist in greater numbers than they do today. Whaling declined as the need for whale oil declined with the advent of petroleum and vegetable based lubricants and eating the meat fell out of favour in many countries. The only way to stop anything’s destruction is to remove its value as commodity.

[mothmammoth]

i saw something earlier and i was going to make a shitpost about whale evolution... but i completely forgot what i was going to say because i found THIS while checking on some details:

‘Whippomorpha is a mixture of English (wh[ale] + hippo[potamus]) and Greek (μορφή, morphē = form). Attempts have been made to rename the clade Cetancodonta but Whippomorpha maintains precedence.’

and i’m absolutely losing it