Improbable Taxonomy Skills

"The fauna of the Urals is very rich. More than 15,000 species of animals live here. For example, the mosquito alone is represented by 14,500 species."
—An old anecdote

There are a LOT of different species of organisms in the world.

And a lot of them happen to look and behave very similarly to each other. Unfortunately, Hollywood thinks that any person who is sufficiently intelligent is also able to name any animal or plant they come across with its specific (and correct) Latin name, taxonomic history, and favorite color. In reality, unless you happen to be a foremost expert in studying that specific creature, it's unlikely that you could say anything more about it than "Hey that's a bug!".

This is especially wrong when dealing with bacteria or other microscopic organisms, since even though they may look similar at first glance, they could potentially belong to entirely different DOMAINS. And even microbes that are of the same species can look markedly different under different conditions.

With the advent of certain genetic techniques that allow scientists to specifically pin down what organism it is from analyzing its DNA, this is becoming somewhat more reasonable however, but such techniques also take time and significant computing power.

In the same vein, this is also when somebody sees Latin name and can automatically tell you the rest of its taxonomy from that information. If the character is already familiar with the species or genus, this makes sense, but since the Latin name only gives genus and species, and since even a person who knows Latin generally can't determine anything about an organism without context, it sticks out as serious Did Not Do the Research.

Your Mileage May Vary if this is only done with a single rare species, which can be viewed as just a rare bit of knowledge the person at hand happened to possess. Also, knowing your local flora and fauna often allows you to readily identify a plant or animal down to the subspecies, something that would be next to impossible if you did not know where the said plant or animal were collected. People who do a lot of hiking in a particular area would normally recognize the common species of plants and animals found in that area right away, regardless of any background in botany or biology.

Ultimately what classifies this as a Hollywood Science mistake is the assumption that ANYONE who is smart is able to identify a specific organism with uncanny accuracy by looking at a sample that is far too small or incomplete to normally reach that conclusion.

See also You Fail Biology Forever.

Contrast Small Taxonomy Pools.

Examples of Improbable Taxonomy Skills include:

Fanfic

Film

  • In Like Flint. From microscopic traces Derek Flint is able to identify the residue of exotic flowers and herbs (styrax, ylang, mimosa, hyacinth, cannabis and Macedonian brawley).
  • Jurassic Park: Elly, a paleobotanist, knows from a cursory glance that a certain plant is extinct. How it got there is never explained, since the park scientists weren't cloning plants.
  • In Deep Rising, a character swiftly identifies the man-eating worms as to their broad taxonomic group and likely behavior, despite the fact that A) he's only seen the things for a few seconds, B) the taxon in question is known only from fossils, and c) he's a freakin' cruise ship designer, not a scientist!
  • In Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, the tiny kids are running away from a gigantic lawn mower and jump into a hole in the ground. Nick immediately identifies the exact species of worm that made the tunnel (despite the worm not even being present). Possibly justified in that they are in his backyard and since he is a science geek, it's at least remotely possible that he knows what species of worm lives in their area.
    • Lumbricus terrestris: it's called the common earthworm for a reason.
      • Because they live on an estate?
  • Averted strongly in Silence of the Lambs, in which identifying the species of an insect pupa found on the bodies of victims is a notable plot point, and even the professional entomologist consulted needs time and equipment to answer the question.

Literature

  • Happens in many Jules Verne novels, where The Professor identifies and describes the characteristics of every plant or animal species the protagonists come across, as a means for Verne to show his work.
    • Back then, however, that was what a lot of people read books for, since there was no other means of learning about them save by actually going to see them.
    • But the cake is taken by Conseil, a manservant to prof. Arronax in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The man was a living classification handbook.
  • Slightly done in Sherlock Holmes when he correctly identifies the lion's mane jellyfish as the killer of the victim when he sees it at the bottom of a small pool. Very much justified, however, in that this is one species which is very distinctive (it's really, really big) and that the victim's last words were "the lion's mane."
  • Averted in one of Barbara Hambly's sequels to the Rising of the Dark. One character can instantly identify a small animal from its bones, but he was highly trained in botany/zoology/magic and the question is: 'rabbit or chicken'.

Live Action TV

  • CSI proper typically justifies the insect portion of this as Grissom is an entomologist, but has been very guilty of this with regards to the flora.
    • New York and Miami have not been so fortunate
  • Bones once featured a character identifying a fungus to species from a few hyphal traces. This is impossible even for trained mycologists.
    • And another time a person whose specialty was in art identified a specific species of fungal spores thanks to having a boyfriend who studied them. That this was actually accepted in court is a major case of Hollywood Law.
    • And then there is Hodgins, for which this trope essentially defines two-thirds of his job. The other third involves doing much the same, only with particulates, which I'm pretty sure is its own trope... Of course, he is PhD-qualified for both of these, so it makes more sense than in many of these examples.
  • Crossing Jordan had a character (aptly nicknamed "Bug") dedicated to this trope. ANY time there were entomological traces found, ONE look was all he needed to tell what it was and how incredibly few but oh so conveniently dark and abandoned places it could be found.
  • Subverted in The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon thinks he can identify the specific specie of a cricket by its chirping. He was in fact wrong, as pointed out by Howard (who spent his youth collecting insects), though Sheldon refused to believe it. In the end they turned to an associate with a PhD in entomology to settle the dispute.
  • Done in Monk when a rival detective is able to identify a mosquito's type and genus, as well as point out that it only appears in a specific spot in the city. Subverted when it was revealed that he was just making it up.
  • The TV-movie adaptation of Peter Benchley's giant-squid-on-the-rampage novel Beast has the resident scientist instantly identify the squid as Archetuthis dux from a single sucker-claw and a whiff of ammonia.
    • Especially bad because Architeuthis the giant squid doesn't have claws. (The colossal squid Mesonychoteuthis does, though.)
    • And most deep sea squid have a lot of ammonia in their systems.

Video Games

  • In Jagged Alliance 2, everyone has a comment on the monstrous and unearthly creatures you'll inevitably encounter if you tick the "Sci-Fi" option. Most mercenaries express various forms of surprise, but the medical doctors of your team will immediately start pinning down their taxonomy on first sight. (Crustacea, they seem to agree, which amusingly makes them Giant Enemy Crabs.)

Web Comics

  • In El Goonish Shive, the principal of Moperville South High School apparently knows the taxonomic family of squirrels. Despite the fact that that is easily recognized by biologists, the fact that he and several others recognize the word "Sciuridae" with presumably little biology experience is notable.

Real Life

  • In 1839, Richard Owen was sent (among other things) a six-inch bone fragment from Australia, which he identified as belonging to a previously-unknown-to-science extinct giant bird. This turned out to be the giant Dinornis or Moa.
    • It does bear noting that Owen actually was an example of the aforementioned "PhD-qualified taxonomist", who specialized in paleontology and comparative anatomy.
      • Not only that, Owen was world-renowned for being the best comparative anatomist of his generation. He was literally the only person in the world who could do this (at the time, anyway. The generation before him had Georges Cuvier, who pretty much invented the field of comparative anatomy. Owen was even known as "The British Cuvier").
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