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Comment by MustardTiger | Hacker News Reader

People have been separated far longer than just since the ice age. And no, some people think brown bears and polar bears should be reclassified, others do not. As it stands, they are separate species. Take the 2 seconds to google basic information before posting incorrect things that are so easy to verify. Even if you reclassify them, it still supports my point: humans consist of several subspecies.

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People also talk about Europe and Asia as separate despite being a contiguous landmass on the same plate. Genetically brown and polar bears can and in reality often do interbreed producing viable offspring and exchanging genetic information between populations.

>People also talk about Europe and Asia as separate despite being a contiguous landmass on the same plate

That analogy is not useful at all. Continents are not biological organisms.

>Genetically brown and polar bears can and in reality often do interbreed producing viable offspring and exchanging genetic information between populations

And yet they are separate species. Just like the 4 separate species of giraffe the article is about, which can and do all interbreed. The concept of species is in no way reliant on an inability to produce fertile offspring.

The point which is very clear that people stick with old definitions despite new evidence even in the sciences. The great thing is different countries use different definitions yet people seem to assume whatever they grew up with is correct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#/media/File:Continen...

At most you can say brown and polar bears are "generally classified as separate species" But, there really is debate on this topic.

So all those posts were just to say nothing?

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