43The above fi nding is not particularly remarkable, as the ability to categorise
novel stimuli by visual features has been demonstrated repeatedly in human infants
[ 132 ], many non-human vertebrates [ 133 , 134 ] and even insects [ 135 ]—these
include abstract features like number, symmetry, shape, orientation, “sameness” and
“analogy”. Recently, it was shown that honeybees can even be trained to distinguish
face-like stimuli from non-face-like stimuli [ 136 ], but no one would ever argue that
these were categories relevant to a honeybee. Interestingly, the infant categorisation
literature demonstrates that children as young as 20 months can “ use a common
name to categorize objects even when those objects were completely dissimilar at
the perceptual level ” (reviewed in [ 137 ]), and that verbal labels provided by the
experimenter can disrupt the formation of perceptually salient categories, when they
correlate poorly with the visual category information presented to the infants [ 138 ].
Left to their own devices, then, infants will use their innate perceptual abilities to
categorise novel objects, but this tendency can be easily overruled by linguistic
input. Results such as these and the Boster and Johnson fi sh experiment show that
cognitive processes and a morphology -based folk taxonomy at best convey only
half the story, and that the other half must be something other than morphology—
something that is often loosely glossed as “ utilitarian concerns” or “culture”.^4
2.6 Folk Genera, Rank and Nomenclature
In his discussion on ways to predict and identify generic taxa in folk taxonomies,
Berlin makes frequent reference to the scientifi c concept of genera. He appears to
favour Cain’s [ 139 ] characterisation of the genus early in the history of scientifi c
taxonomy as “ the smallest ‘kind’ of plant or animal that can be recognized without
close study”. Building on this idea, and the fact that many Linnaean genera arose
from European folk taxa , Berlin concludes that
the genus is seen as a confi gurational category, recognizable almost instantaneously, in
contrast with that of subgeneric groupings whose differentiation often requires deliberate
and conscious effort to distinguish. (p. 61)
A similar point is made for generic taxa in folk classifi cations:
...in the categorization of plants and animals by people living in traditional societies, there
exists a specifi able and partially predictable set of plant and animal taxa that represent the
smallest fundamental biological discontinuities easily recognized in any particular habitat.
This large but fi nite set of taxa is special in each system in that its members stand out as
beacons on the landscape of biological reality, fi guratively crying out to be named. These
groupings are the generic taxa of all such systems of ethnobiological classifi cation , and
their names are precisely the names of common speech. (p. 53)(^4) A discussion on what is meant by “culture” is not possible here, but I would suggest that if knowl-
edge of French wines and artisanal cheeses can be considered culture, then so also is knowledge of
yam varieties and wild honeys. The discussion in Chap. 4 on the cultural signifi cance of birds to
the Solega also makes it clear that beliefs and practices well beyond the utilisation of an organism
as food by the community in question need to be considered.
2.6 Folk Genera, Rank and Nomenclature