On 7/3/06, Justin Cormack justin@specialbusservice.com wrote:
Its pointless trying to classify animals based on the political boundaries they happen to inhabit. It shows a deep misunderstanding of classification. Delete them.
It's not at all pointless. "Australian native mammals" is a perfectly natural, meaningful, valuable, navigable category.
Animals are not "Australian" or "English" or "French". But they can be "native to Australia", "native to England" etc.
Political boundaries may not matter to animals, but they matter to us, and there's no inherent reason not to use them to categorise animals. Whether it's actually practical due to the sheer number of entries is another question...
Steve