Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0286: Reprise: How do you remember animal names by genus and species?

Episode Date: April 13, 2015

Today Timothy revisits the question on how to remember animal names by genus and species, with some extra comments on how he would change his answer today. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Hey everyone, this is Timothy from Master of Memory, and welcome to episode 286. Today we're doing a reprise episode. When we release this episode, it's going to be during my sabbatical for some extended overseas travel. So basically, we're representing an old Master of Memory episode that I think is worth a refresher, but also with some new commentary from me based on my more experienced perspective. Today we're representing episode 56, which was about memorizing animals by genus and species. So something good that I like about this is it uses a nonlinear memory palace to organize everything that's being

memorized from the top down so that you can just go into the palace and pull something out as you need to remember it. The only comment that I would add to this particular technique is see if you can associate the division between categories by some factor that defines the palace itself. So, for example, when you're dividing vertebrates from invertebrates, the vertebra area itself could be, you know, an enormous building that has all the vertebrates in it, but that also itself seems to have something to do with the backbone. Maybe the bricks that the building is made of could be related to vertebrae. That's just an idea that I've thought of that might help enhance this tactic, but admittedly this particular episode describes a memory palace that is dauntingly large. So this is a project that you might undertake if you're really serious about learning all of the animals, all of the organisms from, you know, the highest level of kingdom down to species.

Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Oscar asked in an email, how would you go about remembering the names of animals, individual mammals, reptiles, etc., by genus and species? Well, Oscar, this is a great question, and it's very interesting to me because I've been very interested in biology for a long time, and when I was a kid, I used to love studying animals and learning how they were classified and things like that. And I'm very interested in getting back into it as I have time. Now, in my mind, there are really two approaches to take to this project. You talk about genus and species, but that's really a bottom-up approach. And then there's also a top-down approach. Now, I personally favor a top-down approach, which means that you're starting at the highest classification level and working your way down so that everything that you memorize falls into a larger framework.

But I'm going to describe a process that you might use to do this basically from both ends at once. Now, one of the big complications with biological classification is that there are so many different layers of classification. So you may have heard of the popular mnemonic, King Philip cried out for goodness sake, which is, it stands for kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. Problem is, those aren't the only layers. There are all sorts of layers in between those because each of the phyla are grouped together into larger groups and then the classes are grouped together and the families are grouped together and it just

there are so many different layers that it's hard to give a number of exactly how many layers you would have to learn you know to classify these things but what i recommend is trying at least to come up with 35 individual phyla for animals. Since you're talking about animals in particular, why don't we at least start there for the highest level? And this is just to prepare you. Again, we're starting from both ends at once. We want to work on those genus and species, but I really recommend starting by thinking big picture so you can plan to learn more and they'll fall into the same framework. So you're going to choose 35 different memory palaces for different phyla, or at least allow for 35 different memory palaces.

And what that means is you're going to devote one memory palace to one specific phylum, but you're going to make it so that you can actually use 34 other memory palaces for other phyla whenever you are ready to memorize those. So that way, if you ever have to learn the genius in species of somebody who's not in the phylum of whatever you start out studying, you'll know to start a new memory palace and create it for the phylum that you're studying after that and go on from there. So what I'm recommending is that phyla are represented by individual memory palaces, and then to dive in from there, we'll just choose one memory palace that we'll construct in the first place, and that'll probably be Chordata, which is going to be the largest for our purposes

because that's where all the vertebrates are. So since it's a big place, I've chosen my alma mater's library, and that's where I'll place all of my mnemonics for Chordata and every single creature in that phylum. Now, unfortunately, we can't skip straight from P to C, from phylum to class, because there are, again, more layers in between. So there are the subphyla within Chordata. And so what we'll do for that is we'll choose inside for all the vertebrates and outside for all of the non-vertebrates. And then within vertebrates, we'll put the subphyla that are vertebrates on different levels. So we'll have seven different floors or different areas or groups of rooms,

which works for this particular library because it's a big building. And then we'll put a different class in each of those groups or each of those floors. So for each of the seven classes of vertebrates, we have agnatha, chondrichthys, ostecthys, amphibia, reptilia, aves, and mammalia. And so you want whichever room that you're going to focus on there to be the biggest. And so I'm going to make mammalia the biggest. So for me, remember that the phylum is Cordata, which is the whole library. Outside are the non-vertebrate classes and inside are the vertebrate classes. And then each of the different classes is in a different group. So one of these groups, Mammalia, is the entire downstairs area where all the quiet areas and the book stacks are.

Now within that, we can sort orders, mirror orders, and other layers within that as subdivisions of this location. The stacks area that I'm talking about is big enough that I can subdivide that area further to go another layer down within the classification. So what I'm going to say is that mirror order altungulata is the open-aired porch area, which is right at the bottom in the middle of the downstairs area. And that's an area that I can remember easily because it's right in the center of everything. So why did I pick Altungulata? To go within that, I'm going to choose a genus and species that is the Indian elephant. But we have to get down to that last level of detail.

We have to get down to that last level of classification. We have to get down to that last level of classification. We know that all al-tungulatas are going to be in this porch area because of all the narrowing that I've done with my classification so far, but in order to distinguish the different types by genus and species, now is the part where we really go from the bottom up and actually talk about genus and species. And one thing that helps if you have to subdivide something like this even further and you go, well, I'm already in one particular room. How do I subdivide even further than this without giving myself too little room to work with is you can actually change the environment of the room. So you can actually change aspects of the environment, like different times or different weathers. You have night, you have midday. You can imagine that it's snowing in that room,

that the room is on fire, things like that. And so that's how I recommend subdividing families. So for the family Elephantidae, I won't just put it in that open porch area, but I'll also imagine for all of these creatures that I'll put in there that it's snowing. If I had to learn things for a different family in the same location, I might imagine that the whole place is on fire, that it's the middle of the night, or something like that. But for Elephantidae, I'll imagine that it's snowing. And now we get to our favorite part where we actually talk about the genus and the species.

And all that you have to do for that is take the stressed syllables of these words, Elephas, Maximus, Indicus, and then see what you can do to turn that into something that's memorable. So Elephas, Maximus, Indicus is the Indian elephant. And sparing details for the sake of time, I'll just say that the object that I've related this to is a giant broken Indian abacus. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to place this elephant in a specific place in this porch, maybe standing on the thing that used to be a fountain, which is in the middle of this porch area. And I'll imagine that it's playing with a broken Indian abacus.

And it's easy for me to remember that it's Eliphas Maximus Indicus because I have that image in my head. Now, Oscar, you might say, well, if it's that easy just to remember Eliphas Maximus Indicus, why couldn't you just start with that? And the reason is, I really think that it helps to take a more global approach first and put it in a specific place, because now there's no end to what I can learn. If I need to learn something else from the same order, I know where to put it. If I need to learn something else from the same phylum, I can just put it in this whole library area. And it also stores a lot of information, so I can always trace back this animal's whole classification. All the information is contained in where it is, what it's doing, and what the weather

is like in that particular room. All it is is a memorable image of an elephant playing with an abacus while it's snowing, but that's all the information I need to give you the whole classification for the elephant. And I can do the exact same thing with all the creatures that I want. So I hope that helps you out a little bit, Oscar, at least in thinking about how to get this started. It's a big subject, and I'd love to dive with you in more detail on this. If you just shoot me another email,

I'd love to brainstorm with you on how we can make this work, because I'd really like to learn this as well. All right, I hope you've enjoyed this reprise episode. For anyone who has any questions about learning or memorizing anything faster than ever, feel free still to leave a message at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll be able to respond quickly to your message

from wherever I am. I just won't be able to record an episode on that topic until I'm back in the States in May. Meanwhile, if you want to support the show, please check out our Spanish course at masterofmemory.com slash Spanish. Or if you want to follow my adventures in Argentina or wherever else I might happen to be, you can do that at timothymoser.com. © transcript Emily Beynon