### ch00p05 classification of species is hard > The fact that populations undergo evolutionary change, over time, can make drawing boundaries around species quite difficult. We do like to put things in boxes, but biology seems to delight in breaking itself out of such constraints, as we shall learn again and again in this book. [[Article & Blog Idea]]: complain about how we force kids to put things in boxes, somewhat arbitrarily (see also primary vs secondary sourcing) and it takes so long to unlearn. A friend was asking me if I wanted to tell my son a particular color was yellow or orange – the CLASSIC! “it’s not a binary its a spectrum” and my answer was “it’s marigold.” I like to default to using a specific accurate descriptor rather than trying to shove something into a box. my rant about the colors of the rainbow including indigo I was talking to my dad about how when I read books to my son and the gender of the baby in the picture is ambiguous I just use “they.” Not because I think the child is trans, but because I think training him to think in binaries instead of being accurate does him a disservice. ## ch01 Dogs - [[Tamed by Alice Roberts#ch00p05 classification of species is hard|View in Vault]]