Phylum Feast for Darwin Day February 3, 2010

Phylum Feast for Darwin Day

By Guest Contributor
February 3, 2010

One way to celebrate Darwin Day is by having a “Phylum Feast” — that is, a potluck dinner where the items are as biologically diverse as possible.

Hugh Kramer has an example of a menu used for such a feast:

Mammalia: Minke Whale meat
Aves: Smoked Turkey slices
Teleostoma: Pickled Herring
Bivalvia: Mya (clams) from mouth of the Honna River
Gastropoda: commercial escargot
Malacostraca: commercial shrimp
Pteridophyta: commercial fern fiddleheads
Monocots: Onions, rice
Dicots: Pecans, spinach
Fungi: commercial Agaricus (mushrooms)
Bacteria: villi (Finnish Longmilk (yogurt))

All served with primordial soup, of course 🙂

How are you celebrating next week?

(via LA Atheism Examiner)

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  • Lost Left Coaster

    I’ll probably be celebrating without eating any whale meat.

  • Yeah, even though the minke is doing fine for itself, sustainability-wise, I still find it a bit distasteful. I’ll just have a cut of the Ameglian Major Cow: it definitely wants to be eaten.

  • Reginald Selkirk

    Trilobite cookies

    Because real trilobites are so hard to find

  • The McMaster Association of Secular Humanists (Hamilton, Ontario) will be hosting a birthday dinner celebration for Darwin on Thursday, February 11th at the Phoenix on campus, starting at 6 pm. Check us out on Facebook or darwinday.org for more information.

  • Revyloution

    A meal to make PETA cry, I love it.

    Now im all damn hungry and stuff.

    Speaking of PETA, did anyone read that they were protesting Punxsutawney Phil’s abuse on Groundhogs day? They actually said he should be replaced by a robot. Seriously.

    I’m all about stopping needless cruelty, and I eat less meat to be more health and environment conscious, but PETA has really jumped the shark. I hope they didn’t scare the poor beast while they did it tho’.

  • Diverse phyla? For animals you only have 3 phyla. While granted the isn’t much meat on a member of Rotifera, and you probably don’t want to eat Nematoda and Platyhelminthes, you could have thrown in an Annelid, sea cucumber or Lingula (Brachiopod) for a little more variety. And you probably don’t want to eat whale meat. For odd mammal meat, try squirrel or bison.

    diverse phyla love

  • Reginald Selkirk

    Diverse phyla? For animals you only have 3 phyla.

    That’s a point. Perhaps Phylum is the wrong word. Perhaps a phrase with taxonomic and gastronomic.

  • Arctic Ape

    Wouldn’t this be more suitable for Linnaeus Day?

    Kramer’s example shows only three animal phyla (Chordata, Mollusca, Arthropoda), two plant phyla (Pteridophyta, Spermatophyta), one fungal phylum and one bacterial phylum. With a little effort you could get at least three more eukaryote kingdoms (red, green and brown algae), three more animal phyla (sea cucumber, earthworms and jellyfish) and two more fungal phyla (truffles and yeast).

    BTW, that Lactobacillus-fermented milk is called viili. Villi means “wild”.

  • Hmm, interesting idea – although I too will pass on the whale meat.

    And mammalia? Why not make a few additional divisions in there and really make for a big meal! I’m thinking bovidae (cow), rabbit (gliers), deer (ungulates, or sheep/pigs/goats I guess – same diff). There’s edible animals in nearly every phylum of animal; so you could really add to the list.

    And heck, there’s edible members of nearly every animal and plant phyla – you could really go nuts with this!

    The big hole in this menu though is the archea. They account for somewhere around 50% of all species on earth – they should be represented. But I know of no food that has them – any ideas?

  • Darwin’s Dagger

    Speaking of PETA, did anyone read that they were protesting Punxsutawney Phil’s abuse on Groundhogs day? They actually said he should be replaced by a robot. Seriously.

    Yeah, there’s Phil living in the lap of Groundhog luxury, only has to work one day a year, and PETA wants to set him free in the woods so he can spend his life grubbing around for food. I think he’s predicting a hurricane to hit PETA headquarters this year.

  • littlejohn

    I didn’t see any entry from the order Alcoholia.
    That’s the only way you’d get me to eat some of that weirder stuff.

  • Claudia

    @littlejohn, well, you could add a second course to the Fungi by getting yourself some bottle-conditioned beer, that would have a nice healthy dose of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in it 😉

  • twirlgrl

    As delicious as that all sounds, I’m just going to stick with our annual tradition of going with my husband and son to Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History to enjoy the Evolving Planet exhibit followed by pizza.

  • Annie

    We got a copy of the DVD “Creation” from the UK and I am planning to show it (unless the library prohibits it). Cake is possible.

  • Mikael

    Just a small point. The last one, “villi”, is actually spelled “viili.” At least assuming you mean the Finnish name for it.

    On the other hand “villi” actually means “wild” in Finnish so it’s not totally wrong, though it doesn’t really fit the context. 😉

  • Crux Australis

    What the hell is wrong with cow, sheep or pig from mammalia?