urbpan | Jef the Taxonomy Geek

I seem to be momentarily obsessed with the following bit of trivia: What is the number of different Classes of organisms eaten by humans? What the significance of the answer to this question may be is up for grabs.

I’ve decided to make the question more digestible (ha!) by simplifying it thus: What is the number of different Classes of animals commonly eaten by North Americans? If I’m still obsessed by this later, I can try to tackle the other Kingdoms of life, and the edible oddities of North Americans and other cultures.

Commonly eaten animals/Class
Cattle/Mammal
Swine/Mammal
Sheep/Mammal
Goat/Mammal
Chicken/Bird
Turkey/Bird
Duck/Bird
Goose/Bird
Lobster/Decapod
Crab/Decapod
Shrimp/Decapod
Crayfish/Decapod
Clam/Bivalve
Oyster/Bivalve
Mussel/Bivalve
Scallop/Bivalve
Squid/Cephalopod
Octopus/Cephalopod
Cuttlefish/Cephalopod
(Now here’s where I get into trouble: I used to think of Fish as one Class, but I bet that they are considered to be several different ones now. At least Cartilaginous and Bony Fishes will be different Classes.)
So if we take Fishes to be two different Classes, and add Gastropods (Snails, Abalone), that’s only 8 different Classes. If we pretend that North Americans commonly eat Alligators (Reptiles) and Frog Legs (Amphibians) that brings us up to 10 different classes. This pie chart http://www.learner.org/channel/courses/biology/archive/images/1912_d.html shows that when you count by number of species, one Class has more than all the others combined, including Plants, Bacteria and Fungi. This is one of the Classes that North Americans generally don’t eat (but that most other cultures do).