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- "Ο πίθηκος δεν είναι ερπετό"
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Though reptiles are traditionally defined as a paraphyletic group, even when they aren't the monophyletic definition only includes them and birds (sauropsids). Mammals, including apes, are descended from another branch (synapsids) which aren't the ancestors of modern reptiles, though they are still called sometimes "mammal-like reptiles" because of the close relationship and relative similarity. The common group for mammals and reptiles would be amniotes. Having birds within dinosaurs allows for a monophyletic definition of dinosaurs which does include all birds and there's no other ambiguity.
In general, the farther you go back in time the less meaningful such statements are: "a cow is a fish, an eel is a worm, a butterfly is a bacteria..." because the ancestors of modern animals were closer and the classification is static. Dinosaurs just happened to be yesterday and leave nothing but birds - even then, an ape still isn't really a reptile.
And "ερπετό" is related to "έρπω" meaning "to crawl" because reptiles usually crawl to move forward. In German besides the word "Reptil" there is also the synonym word "Kriechtier" (crawling animal).
The new voice (much better!) seems to pronounce the 't' as some kind of a 'd': Ο πίθηκος δεν είναι ερπεδό Is this common in Greek?
No, he actually mispronounces that one. It's a new TTS program so we gather any bug that we can find. Thanks for pointing it out. :)
Has anyone come up with a mental word picture that associates ερπετο with "reptile" and not "eagle"?
The only one I can think of, is that ερπετό starts with e,r,p, (ε,ρ,π) and reptile starts with the same letters in a different order r,e,p. Those kind of things help my mind, but may not be your cup of tea. Hope it helps anyway. :)
