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| Credit: Alastair Simpson |
The link below goes to an article explaining the evolution of the scientific concept of "kingdoms of life".
Well, in popular science literature and at museums, the situation was a bit different. When I was a kid (think 1970´s), encyclopedias directed at the general public only talked about two kingdoms of life: animals and plants. If a thingy could move around all by itself, it was an animal. Everything else were plants! Simple as.
Then, at some point I don´t quite remember (early 1980´s), the kingdom of the fungi was introduced. So now there were three kingdoms.
And that´s pretty much were I assumed things still stood decades later...until I decided to check up on kingdoms of life on all-knowing Wiki.
WTF?!
It seems nobody even knows how many "kingdoms" there are anymore. Some have discarded that taxonomic level altogether, in favor of the complex diagram above. And that´s just the eukaryotes! Bacteria, archeobacteria, viruses, viroids and prions are not included. And, I suppose, fairies.
But if you look very closely, you can actually find the animals, plants and fungi somewhere in there...
It seems Einstein got it all wrong. God really does place dice with the universe. Even apart from having an inordinate fondness for protists!
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