Breeds VS Species PSA
Guys, please don’t use the word ‘breed’ interchangeably with the word ‘species’.
Those are not even remotely the same thing!
Dogs have breeds. There are breeds of cat. There are breeds of bunny. Breeds of cow, breeds of horse, breeds of goat, breeds of sheep, breeds of pig, breeds of chicken, breeds of duck, breeds of pigeons, breeds of goldfish…
All of which are distinct genetic variations atrificially selected from their respective single species.
All breeds of dog from st bernard to chihuahua are the species Canis lupis familiaris, for example, with the Wolf, Canis lupus, being the wild type from which the domesticated breeds derived.
There are not different breeds of parrot. With the exception of the budgerigar (which comes in Wild Type and English which have significantly different skull structures), those are all completely separate species.
With the exception of the Goldfish (which has at least twenty distinct breeds) and possibly the betta?, there are only species and color or fin varients of fish. (I hesitate to include betta, guppies, and platys as breeds rather than mutations because only their color and fins are altered, where as the different breeds of goldfish have drastically different skeletal and body shapes from the wild type.)
Calling different species of parrots ‘breeds’ is like lumping foxes and dogs together as the same species because they are both canidae.
When pet shops claim to sell many “breeds” of fish, it’s about equivalent to lumping land mammals all under the same species because they have fur and four legs.
It also makes things really confusing when discussing a species like the domestic pigeon that has many different actual breeds with in it if the other person doesn’t know the difference between “species” and “breed”. You guys have no idea how many times I have had to explain that yes, two different breeds of pigeon will generally get along if housed together and can successfully interbreed because they are the same species. You just get mix breed offspring from two different breeds of pigeon, same as you would from mating two different breeds of dog.
Canines are weird though. They can breed with different species and the hybrids they make are fertile.
