92. Toes

We took a walk this afternoon at one of our favorite dog-walk spots—only today, no dog. (Sad.) As we made our way back to the car we were walking on sandy trails, and I noticed some one-toed footprints. Horses. Which got us wondering what other one-toed beasts there are. 

Wikipedia to the rescue:

Horses, asses, and zebras, also rhinoceroses, also tapirs—three families, comprising 17 species—all belong to the order of ungulates known as Perissodactyla, meaning odd-toed. Meaning that these animals have reduced the weight-bearing toes to three or one of the original five. (Though tapirs have four toes in front, three in back, so they're a bit of an anomaly.)

The other order of (mostly) ungulates is the Artiodactyla, representing 270 species. Think pigs, peccaries, hippopotamuses, antelopes, deer, giraffes, camels, llamas, alpacas, sheep, goats, and cattle. Even the Cetaceae—dolphins and other toothed whales, baleen whales too (this blows my mind)—are sometimes placed in the Artiodactyla order of Euungulata. They don't even have toes! But they are closely related to hippos. Who knew.

Humans, may I remind you, are in the order Primates, 500 species strong. Our toes don't figure into that categorization. And the rest of the mammals? There are over 20 orders in all:
rodentia (representing 40% of all mammal species)
chiroptera (bats)
insectivores (moles, shrews, hedgehogs)
carnivora (dogs, cats, bears, raccoons, skunks, mongooses, weasels, and more)
lagomorphs (rabbits, hares, pikas)
proboscids (elephants)
pilosa (anteaters and sloths)
cingulata (armadillos)
sirenia (dugongs and manatees)
the marsupials: kangaroos, koalas, and wombats; opossums; bandicoots (three orders)
monotremes (platypus and echidnas)
and don't forget the pangolins, aardvarks, flying lemurs, and tree and elephant shrews

Sometimes I find it easier to try to puzzle out these various connections of our natural world than to try to make sense of human . . . what word do I want here? bullshit, malarkey, tragedy, stupidity, hubris, sad sad sad sadness. 

Maybe it's more convenient to parse a Grèvys zebra from a plains zebra, a chimpanzee from a bonobo. But shouldn't we be figuring out how to live human with human?