taxonomic 復習
「おさるのジョージ」が75周年を迎えました。記事中ではジョージが果たして “monkey”なのかについて書かれております。
Curious George Turns 75, But Is He A Monkey Or An Ape?
This month marks the 75th birthday of Curious George, that mischievous little primate who is the lead character of a book series, a TV show and even a movie. But is George, who was found in Africa by the Man with the Yellow Hat, technically a monkey or an ape? The answer is not as obvious as you’d think!
Curious George books. (Photographer: Stephen Hilger/Bloomberg News.)
The simple way I teach the semantic difference in my Intro to Biological Anthropology course is: Monkeys almost always have tails. Apes never have tails. Additionally, apes are only found in the Old World, whereas monkeys can be either Old World or New World in origin. Seems pretty simple and straightforward — save the Barbary macaque, the only monkey to lack a tail — but the taxonomic history of the term “monkey” is more complicated.
Let’s start with the vocabulary we use now. Current scientific nomenclature separates the order Primates into prosimians (those monkey-like primates such as lemurs and lorises) and anthropoids (monkeys, apes and humans). Within the anthropoids, there are New World monkeys (Ceboidea), Old World monkeys (Cercopithecidae) and apes and humans (Hominoidea). Living New World monkeys all have tails. Old World monkeys, except the Barbary macaque, also have tails. Apes (gibbons, siamangs, gorillas, chimps, and orangutans) lack tails, as do humans. This is an important distinction because, as depicted, Curious George has no tail, suggesting he is an ape or possibly a Barbary macaque.
(以下省略)
今回取り上げる単語は、taxonomic /tak-sə-ˈnä-mik/です。
『ジーニアス英和辞典』（第五版，大修館）で調べたところ、「分類学の」と載っておりました。名詞はtaxonomyで「分類学，分類法」だそうです。
ちなみに日本の辞書での分類学の定義は、「生物を形態・生理などの関連や系統的なつながりに基づいて整理し、各種間の相互関係を研究する学問分野」とのことでした。 (『デジタル大辞泉』，小学館)
Oxford Dictionary of English (Second Edition Reserved, Oxford University Press)によると、 taxonomyは“chiefly 〈biology〉the branch of science concerned with classification, especially of organisms; systematics”と定義されておりました。
文中では “the taxonomic history”と使用されているため、「分類学の歴史」と訳せるかと思います。（Gomez）
