The Appalling Green Biology

The Back Page of the Merry Goblins Warhammer Page
(Where you find out just how warped my mind really is)

Issue #1 : 15th July 2002


Welcome to the first issue of The Appalling Green Biology, the back page of the Merry Goblins Warhammer Page. This is a place where I put some of my more random thoughts to keyboard as they flit across my mind in a grand effort not to get run over by the overarching twin juggernauts of mindless tedium and inane logic. This first issue is devoted to one, simple question:
Is a bird a mammal?

Simple question, right? My first thought as it crossed my mind was, "well, yeah, 'course it is. I mean birds are warm blooded..." Before any of you hot blooded male human mammals out there get the wrong idea, I'm talking about the feathered variety, as opposed to the variety you chat up at nightclubs on a Friday night. Anyway, I thought yep, they'd be mammals. I imagine a number of other people would too. I mean, its not exactly obvious. You always hear people talking in a single breath about "birds and mammals", they never seem to say just "mammals", and I wondered why. But then, I've never seen anything that said they weren't mammals...

Now, some of you out there may have some nice professor type friends who know all there is to know about birds (in both senses of the word, most likely :o) who most likely will cheerfully tell you that, no, they aren't mammals. TAGB doesn't have that privilege, however, so I had to dig out my encyclopedia from the deep, dark depths of the book cabinet. It said that birds were of the class Aves (not to be confused with the Greek god of war, Ares), had feathers (wow), generally bipedal (really?) and laid eggs (no!). But what, I asked myself, did they have that actually made then not mammals? I mean, mammals are just warm-blooded, full stop, right? Is a bird a mammal or not?

I can tell you're on the edges of your seats now, my little green gremlins. What did our hero do next? Well, I looked up "mammal" in the encyclopedia. Mammals, it told me, are of the class Mammalia, are characterised by the secretion of milk to feed its young and the possession of hair, lungs, and a four-chambered heart, they maintain a constant body temperature in varied surroundings, and usually give birth to live young. Doesn't sound much like birds to me. If it walks like a mammal, talks like a mammal and squawks like a mammal, I figured it would be a mammal. Except mammals don't squawk - as far as I know anyway - birds do. So now you know, if you didn't before, or if you'd just never thought about it before (I certainly hadn't).
No.


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