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Biology · Glossary

What is Attribute?

Definition 44.1 Primary & Middle School Biology · Chapter 44 — Classification and Kinship

An attribute is a feature an organism possesses, stated so it can be checked: has a skeleton with a backbone; has four limbs; has fur and milk-feeding; has feathers. Classification is built on attributes — Definition 14.1’s good criteria, formalized.

Attributes nest: fur-bearers sit inside the four-limbed, the four-limbed inside the backboned. The trout has the backbone but stands outside the four-limbed box.
Attributes nest: fur-bearers sit inside the four-limbed, the four-limbed inside the backboned. The trout has the backbone but stands outside the four-limbed box.

Examples

Example 44.5 (Reading the whale correctly at last)

This is why the whale puzzle (Exercise 21.9) had to resolve as it did: fur-and-milk marks the whale’s family line — its ancestors were milk-feeding land mammals — while its fish-like shape is the water’s doing (Exercise 28.11), stamped on an unrelated family by the same way of life. Attributes of ancestry sort families; resemblances of habitat can be borrowed by strangers. Classification trusts the first and distrusts the second.

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