• Question: Could different races be subspecies?

    Asked by anon-181684 on 19 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Liza Selley

      Liza Selley answered on 19 Jun 2018:

      No, we are all one species together. The physical traits that we use to distinguish race (eye colour, hair texture, skin tone etc) are caused by slight differences in a handful of our genes.

      As an example, over the years people who originated from hot, sunny places developed different versions of the gene that produces skin pigment to people who lived in cold, cloudy places. This was because skin pigments protect our skin from the sun’s rays, making it beneficial for our ancestors to have darker skin in hot countries. In contrast, inhabitants of cloudy places needed to have pigment-free skin to ensure they got enough vitamin D from the weak sun.

      This doesn’t mean those people were from different species. Indeed, the definition of a species is a group of organisms that can produce fertile offspring together which definitely applies to people from different racial backgrounds.

    • Photo: Daniel Rhodes

      Daniel Rhodes answered on 20 Jun 2018:

      I just want to add that the idea of ‘race’ is really slippery. If we try to define it by genetic variation, then you will find that more variation exists within the continent of Africa than across the rest of the continents combined. Race as a concept has an ugly past and has been often used by xenophobes and eugenicists to justify their politics, but the biology doesn’t really justify any such differentiation. It is a word that has survived into the modern day, and is used generally by us all and it incorporates many other aspects such as culture, but again biologically, saying that someone is significantly different overall based only on a few aesthetic characteristics doesn’t make much sense.
      Also the definition of a species unfortunately isn’t all that clear either. For example the common definition talks about sexual reproduction producing fertile offspring. This just doesn’t cover animals that reproduce asexually at all. There are also numerous other examples of animals breeding between species and producing viable, fertile offspring.
      So basically – biology is messy, even our core concepts aren’t necessarily clear.

Comments

  • Photo: anon-181684

    anon-181684 commented on :

    This is true, the definition of a species is a group of organisms that can produce fertile offspring however, a subspecies can also produce fertile offspring with one another, except it is not often the case due to geographical isolation. Therefore, could it be said that different races are subspecies but due to the development of technology and travel, we are able to travel and migrate to different countries resulting in the idea of us as subspecies being lost?