"Taxonomy has a great deal to do with evolution," says Susan, with surprise. "In ethology we are taught to consider phylogeny of entire taxa when sorting out why certain behaviors or physical features exist. For example--" she casts about. Her knowledge is much more squarely in the realm of animal life than plant. "Primates. I had a professor who studied the rhesus macaque, you know. They're Old World monkeys, which had a behavioral and evolutionary split with New World monkeys long before they split with apes. If we had a variety of troops of primates here," she says, with a little sigh - monkeys were never her passion animal, but she does so miss the opportunities she got to work with them now, "then we might start to distinguish between them by observing: which are more arboreal and which are more terrestrial; if they've got tails and if so, how those tails are used; whether they seem to have padded buttocks; their primary methods of communication; and the structures of their hands. This would allow us to more easily pinpoint their classification and cross-reference them with books."