Talk:Eulipotyphla

More Direct Definition

It'd be nice to have a more direct and complete definition of what this order is, as opposed to what it isn't (afrosoricida). I understand this can be tricky, as this order is apparently defined a lot more by genetics than physical traits. As it falls under the superorder Laurasiatheria, it sounds like this order originates from the supercontinent Laurasia. Also, I'm seeing on other related Wikipedia articles that this order is known as "True Insectivores". I think that should be inserted somewhere in the article, as it's very typical for orders to have alternative, vernacular English names that can be effectively communicated to the public. DAK4Blizzard (talk) 06:03, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Etymology and meaning

Prompted by a previous edit I went down a bit of a rabbit hole (mole hole?) investigating the origin of the name and its potential meaning. The Catalogue of Life attributes the name to Waddell, Okada & Hasegawa (1999), who seemingly derived it from the older (now deprecated) classification Lipotyphla, adding the eu- prefix to designate the "core insectivores" as they call them. This follows the same pattern as e.g. the coinage of "eudicots" (Eudicotidae) to designate "true dicots" after the older category of "dicots" was found to be non-monophyletic. It is perhaps most accurate to give the meaning of the word as simply "true Lipotyphla", rather than "truly fat and blind" or any other literal part-by-part translation (indeed it makes more sense not to assume that scientific names like Eulipotyphla "mean" anything besides simply the taxon they designate). As for Lipotyphla, as far as I can tell it originates from Haeckel's Generelle morphologie der organismen (1866). I'm not sure if he gives a justification for the name in that text; "lipo" for "fat" seems to me more likely than any alternative (they're kind of chubby, right?), but who knows for sure what he was thinking. The Lipotyphla are separated from the Menotyphla, another deprecated grouping. Merriam-Webster seems to think the meno- part is connected to the men- in "menstruation", meaning "month", but what that has to do with elephant shrews is beyond me. (90.250.186.35 (talk) 03:48, 23 October 2024 (UTC))

The explanation given in Michael Ohl's "The Art of Naming" (p.7, "Eu Talkin' to Me?") is that "Lipotyphla" means "lacking an appendix". Merriam-Webster defines "menotyphlic" as "having a cecum". Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 09:56, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Aha, that makes much more sense; don't know how I missed that! I was thrown off by the MW entry for Menotyphla which misleadingly references entry 2 on this page. It did also occur to me that λίπος in Greek refers only to fat the substance, and not the property of fatness, as in the adjective "fat", which translates to παχύς (as in pachy-) or χονδρός (chondro-). That on its own doesn't disprove anything since New Latin derivations do sometimes deviate from the original meaning of the Greek/Latin roots as well as combine them in ways that would be unnatural in those languages («λειπότυφλα»/«μενότυφλα» don't feel quite natural to me either, fwiw), but I haven't been able to find any other cases of lipo- used to mean "fat" in the adjectival sense. But yeah anyway, this seems a lot more credible than "fat and blind" or "lacking in sight". 90.250.186.35 (talk) 19:54, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Pinging @Modern Cosmopolitan:. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 12:39, 23 October 2024 (UTC)