I just realized. Andalites aren't mammals

[Benioff]

I always assumed that because they had fur and struck me as warm-blooded and giving birth to live young. But I just realized given the lack of mouths, there was no need for the trademark mammary gland of the mammals.

I guess they're in an entirely new class.

[Chad32]

I figure they are warm blooded mammals, but because their species eats grass through their hooves then the young ones are probably born self sufficient.

They may be in a different class, but I label them as mammals. I also label Horks as reptilians.

[esplin]

yeah but if you think about it mammals is a classification we made up so who knows what andalites and horkbajir would actually be

[Liz]

I figure they are warm blooded mammals, but because their species eats grass through their hooves then the young ones are probably born self sufficient.

They may be in a different class, but I label them as mammals. I also label Horks as reptilians.

Yeah...I mean, platypuses lay eggs and they're mammals, right?  So I guess there can be some differences within the class.

And I dunno, maybe they do feed milk to their young, although I have no idea how that would be possible. xD

[TheSoulEater]

Well, the most obvious answer would be that they drink the milk like they drink everything else. Through their hooves.

[RYTX]

Walk on mom's back for dinner???

I don't think any of the alien lifeforms techniqually fall into any earth classifactions, as those all imply whatever common ancestor.
So unless some really really old martians really did start shipping life forms long ago (like with iskoort and garatron), there should be no relations between planetary species

[Phoenix004]

Either our classification system is wrong, or the aliens of the series have a completely different classification of animals on their planets (since they evolved on different worlds).

[musicman88]

They're obviously not mammals because they're not from Earth and weren't know about when people began to classify things as "mammals".  They should be their own genius (I think that's what mammals are, don't kill me if I'm wrong).

[Chad32]

Why shouldn't we put them into a class like mammals or whatever? Just because they aren't from earth, doesn't mean we have to make a new genus for them? Unless they have their own word, then we could use that.

Honestly though, we don't know if they are warm blooded. That's one of the main things that classifies something as a mammal.

[musicman88]

Well, we don't know if they have mammary glands first off, which would exclude them from being mammals.  If they fit into one of the categories then that's fine, but what I'm saying is that we don't know if they do and my guess is that they probably don't.

[Phoenix004]

Technically it is possible that the females have mammary glands and the young Andalites suckle using their hooves.

[Chad32]

That would look very strange. A bit stranger than my theory that females have tits on the lower half, and the milk is excreted onto the grass. Then the young one gets milky grass to eat.

[Liz]

I thought it would have to be something like that, but that seems really inefficient.

I just assumed they're mammals because of the similarity to horses or deer.

[musicman88]

I wouldn't think that female andalites have boobs since their kids could just begin to eat grass as soon as they can stand (which for most animals is pretty quick)

[RYTX]

Why shouldn't we put them into a class like mammals or whatever? Just because they aren't from earth, doesn't mean we have to make a new genus for them? Unless they have their own word, then we could use that.

Honestly though, we don't know if they are warm blooded. That's one of the main things that classifies something as a mammal.

Not to go all bio major on you, but the system isn't about similairities, it's about realition.
There are people I look like more than I do my own mother, but I'm still more closely related to her.

Andalites may look like deer or whatever but since there is no means for them to be related to the animals that evolved on Earth, they techinqually couldn't be called mammals even if they had all the physical characteristics of them.


And I think somewhere they talked about andalite sweat didn't they?
that's a warm blooded trait