DNA testing is relatively new so I assume it wasn’t that. Did some scientists just go out into the wild and observe lions behaving like cats and think to themselves “I bet they’re related!”, or did they have some other way of figuring it out?
**EDIT:** By the sounds of things they just looked at them and guessed. Luckily they guessed right! Can you imagine if we’d spent all this time calling them ‘big cats’ only to have DNA evidence prove that they’re completely unrelated? 😂
In: Biology
Not sure how this applies to big cats specifically, but before DNA testing a large part of understanding evolution also came from the fossil record. This is why it’s so huge when we find new fossils – they give us a look into the past where we can potentially see a common ancestor of two modern species, or we can see how their anatomy changed over time
For one: come on it’s obvious. And it was obvious to scholars in the past, too. They analyzed what was available clearly to help them classify lifeforms. Just as how they tried to identify tiger subspecies by looking at skull shapes and stripe patterns. Note that it’s not a perfect process, and like all science, it’s a constant search for truth.
For two: recently they just study the genetics. It’s more accurate, but difficult. And it’s not perfect either
They wouldn’t be completely unrelated. All living things are related. You are distant cousins with a banana.
No OP, they didn’t just guess. They did anatomical studies (cut up dead animals and then compare them to each other) and behavioral studies.
> By the sounds of things they just looked at them and guessed. Luckily they guessed right! Can you imagine if we’d spent all this time calling them ‘big cats’ only to have DNA evidence prove that they’re completely unrelated? 😂
Thats actually the case for a lot of other cases, where unrelated species look alike due to convergent evolution and taxonists just wrongly classified them based on looks. For example, hyenas were thought to be related to canines, cos look at em, but further research has found they are more closely related to felines.
Other examples include falcons which were assumed to be the same as other raptors like eagles and hawks. But phylogenetic research has shown that falcons are not closely related to those other raptors, and in fact falcons are more closely related to parrots and songbirds.
Many things we call lobsters and crabs are not related to true lobsters and crabs. Like the hermit crab, horseshoe crab, and coconut crabs are not true crabs.
So there are definitely limitations to just grouping species by their looks and behaviour, and why genetic evidence has made so many changes to existing taxonomy.
Is this a serious question?
They didn’t “just look at them and guessed.” They studied the morphological features, the anatomy, the skull shape, etc. It was a very obvious conclusion for any biologists.
They have a lot of anatomical similarities. There are times when we made mistakes about relationships, like hyenas look like dogs, but they’re more closely related to cats. Before DNA we also had fossils, if you find a likely common ancestor and can date the ground they were found in, you get a pretty good idea of how the diverged over time.
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