From Thomas Frost
Why should Neanderthals be considered members of our own species, Homo sapiens, just because interbreeding has been shown to produce fertile offspring, as your editorial suggests (15 May, p 3)?
If this is a criterion for species membership, then we shall have to accept that jaguars and leopards are the same species. The same would go for jaguars and pumas, polar bears and brown bears, wolves and coyotes, and domestic sheep and goats. In several of these cases the animals are classified not merely as distinct species but as distinct genera.
If we are not willing to merge these species, then why should we merge modern humans and Neanderthals? The clear anatomical differences between them and us argue against such a conflation.
Northfield, New Hampshire, US
