Humans are one of the 5 ape species and one of the 4 great apes. Why are they not tagged as apes? Other species have specific and complex tags, but the human tag does not create any additional tags.

abjectdtruculence said:
Why are they not tagged as apes?

Probably because the site caters to furry interests. I figure that most who come here to search the ape tags probably wouldn't be happy with search results showing a large number of images featuring humans with no other apes present.

riverinadryland said:
Probably because the site caters to furry interests. I figure that most who come here to search the ape tags probably wouldn't be happy with search results showing a large number of images featuring humans with no other apes present.

That is true, but they could always search for more specific tags such as gorilla, chimpanzee, orangutan, gibbon, lemur, sasquatch, kong, etc.

abjectdtruculence said:
That is true, but they could always search for more specific tags such as gorilla, chimpanzee, orangutan, gibbon, lemur, sasquatch, kong, etc.

My assumption is that most people looking for apes don't particularly care exactly what kind of ape they see, but they probably aren't looking for humans... even if, factually speaking, humans are apes.

Additionally, there are 4.2k posts tagged with ape and 243k posts tagged with human, having human implicate ape would completely flood the tag and make it basically unusable without always using ape -human when searching.

This is one of those rare cases where facts have to take a backseat to allow for tag functionality.

hungrymaple said:
My assumption is that most people looking for apes don't particularly care exactly what kind of ape they see, but they probably aren't looking for humans... even if, factually speaking, humans are apes.

This is one of those rare cases where facts have to take a backseat to allow for tag functionality.

Yes, that is an accurate assumption.

Actually, I believe that "human" should not imply "mammal" either for the same reasons. In e621, "human" is used as a form and as a species at the same time, muddying the proverbial waters.

We also have to wonder why "mammal" applies to post #2203827 but not to post #2218912 and whether that distinction makes sense. The only difference between an elf and a human is adding pointy ears, then magically they become a humanoid and stop being a mammal?

Personally, when I search for "mammal" I want to see either anthros or ferals (which is why I support the separation of the "humanoid" implication tree, but that is a discussion for another topic).

gattonero2001 said:
We also have to wonder why "mammal" applies to post #2203827 but not to post #2218912 and whether that distinction makes sense. The only difference between an elf and a human is adding pointy ears, then magically they become a humanoid and stop being a mammal?

More that humanoid doesn't imply mammal because you can have non-mammal humanoids, and elf only implies humanoid (are there non-mammal elves? I don't know). IMO, that second one should be tagged mammal since it's just a human (mammal) with pointy ears.

gattonero2001 said:
We also have to wonder why "mammal" applies to post #2203827 but not to post #2218912 and whether that distinction makes sense. The only difference between an elf and a human is adding pointy ears, then magically they become a humanoid and stop being a mammal?

1. Like Watsit said, humanoid could be applied to an amphibian humanoid or reptilian humanoid which would make them non-mammalian

2. There appears to be a general rule that fictional species (with the exception of unicorns and pegasi) don't implicate animal classes, dragons are usually reptilian, but dragon doesn't implicate reptile, and gryphondoesn't implicate bird or mammal

hungrymaple said:
1. Like Watsit said, humanoid could be applied to an amphibian humanoid or reptilian humanoid which would make them non-mammalian

I am aware of that. The question is why elves specifically and humans are treated so differently. You could make a point of implying elf to mammal or unimplying human to mammal, and I believe that the latter is preferable.

2. There appears to be a general rule that fictional species (with the exception of unicorns and pegasi) don't implicate animal classes, dragons are usually reptilian, but dragon doesn't implicate reptile, and gryphondoesn't implicate bird or mammal

There are furred dragons who seem closer to mammals than to reptiles. Also, from the felid wiki page:

The following tags implicate this tag: mithra, caitian, charr, felynn, felyne, khajiit, nekomata, exceed, mythological_sphinx, manticore, kaka_(blazblue), moomba, ronso, cat_sìth, felineko, grimalkyne, melynx, sparklecat, ventrexian, tigrar_shokan, ecaflip, hrothgar, appoplexian, tetton, catfolk, rakshasa_(might_and_magic), tabaxi

gattonero2001 said:
I am aware of that. The question is why elves specifically and humans are treated so differently. You could make a point of implying elf to mammal or unimplying human to mammal, and I believe that the latter is preferable.

I see no reason to unimply human to mammal. It's impossible to have a human that's not a mammal; if it's not a mammal, it'd no longer be human and instead be some kind of humanoid. Implying elf to mammal_humanoid instead of simply humanoid may make more sense, assuming there are no non-mammal elves.

watsit said:
I see no reason to unimply human to mammal. It's impossible to have a human that's not a mammal; if it's not a mammal, it'd no longer be human and instead be some kind of humanoid.

Every human is an ape, but "human" does not imply "ape" for the same reasons why it should not imply "mammal". Regarding elves, are they supposed to be ape humanoids now?

gattonero2001 said:
Every human is an ape, but "human" does not imply "ape" for the same reasons why it should not imply "mammal".

Because people searching for or blacklisting "ape" probably don't mean "human"? I don't think "mammal" is the same there at all, that people searching for or blacklisting "mammal" probably don't mean "human".

People generally think of apes as a separate species from human, even if modern apes and humans descended from a common ape ancestor. It's the same reason bird doesn't implicate dinosaur, even though birds are dinosaurs, people conceptualize them as separate species.

watsit said:
I see no reason to unimply human to mammal. It's impossible to have a human that's not a mammal; if it's not a mammal, it'd no longer be human and instead be some kind of humanoid.

This is exactly why I believe mammal needs to be limited to real-world species which are mammals.
Species tagging is concerned with what the species is at a base level, disregarding any evident traits such as the possession of mammary glands. All real-world species which imply to mammal do so because they are taxonomically classed as mammals in reality. This is a the same group as animals which have mammaries only because this is a shared evolutionary branch and as far as we know the same mechanism has not evolved elsewhere, and so that's where our cultural definitions lie.

Designing a human character lacking mammary glands does not make them no longer a mammal.
Elves as a broad concept do not share real world evolutionary status with humans despite appearing similar, and therefore are not inherently mammalian from a tagging standpoint.

gattonero2001 said:
There are furred dragons who seem closer to mammals than to reptiles.

Designing a dragon with fur does not make them a mammal. (I want to point out that western_dragon in particular implies scalie, which is distinct from reptile. I'd like to similarly argue that fantasy dragons are not reptiles because they are not literal real-world reptiles)

gattonero2001 said:
Also, from the felid wiki page:
[fictional cat-derived species]

Many of these are simply anthropomorphised equivalents of real-world felids and as such should keep the tag, but in line with my reasoning I do believe there's some room for discussion regarding everything else.

magnuseffect said:
Elves as a broad concept do not share real world evolutionary status with humans despite appearing similar, and therefore are not inherently mammalian from a tagging standpoint.

By this same argument, however, human should imply ape, and bird should imply dinosaur, as they are taxonomically correct. They are not, however, practical for searching or blacklisting. Likewise, elves have pretty exclusively mammalian characteristics, and so including them as mammals seems more practical to me.

Designing a dragon with fur does not make them a mammal. (I want to point out that western_dragon in particular implies scalie, which is distinct from reptile.

This, I’ll agree with. Furred dragons in particular are essentially just reptilians with fur, and could likewise probably be considered scalie. Otherwise, I’m not sure how you could recognize it as a dragon at all if it isn’t reptilian… it’ll probably just be a vague mammalian thing.

scaliespe said:
By this same argument, however, human should imply ape, and bird should imply dinosaur, as they are taxonomically correct. They are not, however, practical for searching or blacklisting. Likewise, elves have pretty exclusively mammalian characteristics, and so including them as mammals seems more practical to me.

I thought I'd have to add to this
I'd lump most elves in with the fictional cats that are real cats but anthropomorphised with some tweaks but because we treat humans so differently they go to humanoid ^{instead of to the taxonomic groupings that humans would be in here if we didn't treat humans differently.} Also elves really don't have a single cohesive depiction. But the important thing here is that elf doesn't auto-imply mammal
Also I'd consider sauropsida and dinosauria to just be one of the many skipped taxonomic stages when it comes to tagging, like we don't tag caniform vs feliform

Banned OP really likes to mess with stuff here, huh...

And yeah, I find this ridiculous to begin with. No tagger in their right mind will tag a human character in a post as 'apes'.

magnuseffect said:
I thought I'd have to add to this
I'd lump most elves in with the fictional cats that are real cats but anthropomorphised with some tweaks but because we treat humans so differently they go to humanoid ^{instead of to the taxonomic groupings that humans would be in here if we didn't treat humans differently.} Also elves really don't have a single cohesive depiction. But the important thing here is that elf doesn't auto-imply mammal
Also I'd consider sauropsida and dinosauria to just be one of the many skipped taxonomic stages when it comes to tagging, like we don't tag caniform vs feliform

I think the best possible solution would be to create more non-taxonomic umbrella tags. I know of only three of them that are in use currently, but they’re very useful IMO and provide a more elegant solution to arguments like this. Those (that I’m aware of, anyway,) are scalie, avian, and marine - for reptilian creatures, bird-like creatures, and aquatic creatures, respectively, regardless of whether or not they share any taxonomic grouping or are even completely fictional. So lizards and salamanders don’t share any taxonomic grouping tags, but can generally be considered scalie due to sharing reptilian features (amphibian used to imply scalie, but was removed, from what I’ve heard, primarily because frogs are not particularly reptilian… but IMO salamander could at least get the implication), plus the tag can include entirely fictional or mythological species like dragons and Argonians. Likewise, creatures like gryphons and avali are not birds in any taxonomic sense, but they are clearly bird-like, so the avian tag serves them. And cetaceans are about as far away from fish as any two vertebrate species can be, and yet they may bear a strong resemblance as they are both adapted for an aquatic environment, so a non-taxonomic umbrella tag, marine, serves to unite them for searching purposes.

mammal, however, is not only a taxonomic group, but far too varied to be of much use in that regard. So, I think a better solution would be to break mammal up into some of these non-taxonomic umbrella tags that group species according to appearance rather than taxon.

the only reasonable way to have humans with an ape tag is if great_ape was implicated to included all the great apes while leaving ape alone for jungle boys.

Hmmmmm. https://e621.net/posts?tags=sasquatch LULz