I remember when I was a child, I was shocked when my teacher said that whales were not fish, but mammals like us.
Today, I was also shocked when I got the news! The whale is actually a relative of the hippopotamus . What is going on?
Under the classification of mammals, there is a classification called Artiodactyla. Artiodactyla is classified as follows:
Artiodactyla
--- Callopod suborder (camels and alpacas)
--- Porcine suborder (pig and peccary)
--- Ruminant suborder (cattle, sheep, deer, etc.)
---Whale and hippopotamus (cetaceans and hippopotamus)
You can see that there are 4 presses in Artiodactyla, one of which is called Whale Hippopotamus suborder
Why are whales, like hippos, classified into the order Artiodactyla?
To put it simply, whales evolved from terrestrial artiodactyls that entered the water 50 million years ago. Where is the evidence?
1. Research shows (I won’t go into details here, I don’t understand it, this is a professional evolutionary theory)
2. DNA sequencing , this is more convincing to ordinary people.
In fact, at first whales were a separate category, called Cetacea , but with the deepening of research, it was discovered that whales and hippos have the same ancestor. In order not to make mistakes in the genealogy, whales and hippos were put together. , called the suborder Whale Hippopotamus.
