DIVIDE and conquer! This isn鈥檛 just a political or military strategy, it is a human imperative. Categorising is in our nature. It is how we make sense of the world, from personal identity to scientific investigation. But sometimes, something happens that illuminates the arbitrariness of our classifications 鈥� something like the discovery that our species, Homo sapiens, contains DNA from Neanderthals.
Most of us think of a species as a group of individuals that can interbreed to produce fertile offspring. In which case, either humans are hybrids or we have been mistaken in seeing Neanderthals as 鈥渙ther鈥�. In fact, it isn鈥檛 that simple. This definition is just one of 34, all of which are valid ways of categorising the living world, depending on your viewpoint (see 鈥�Human or hybrid? The big debate over what a species really is鈥�).
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This taxonomic confusion goes far beyond human identity to the heart of how we value nature: using an alternative definition can instantaneously transform one species into several 鈥� or reclassify an endangered species as a hybrid. One solution is to ditch the idea of 鈥渟pecies鈥� altogether. Whatever would Darwin think?
