Two points are worth making regarding this strategy. First, although these moves generate explanations by unifying different species into a shared (if abstract) evolutionary trajectory or set of affordances, the unity at work is not a broad ‘super-empirical’ virtue that one might use to decide between competing explanations (Churchland 1985; Kitcher 1981, 1989). Instead, the strategy attempts to highlight deep causal regularities between evolving systems and environments, with abstraction facilitating the identification and evidencing of such regularities (Strevens 2008). Second, the two evolutionary similarity criteria identify different kinds of regularities and thus establish different kinds of uniqueness attributions. They do so in part because the contrast classes are established using different kinds of similarity. Kline MA (2015) How to learn about teaching: An evolutionary framework for the study of teaching behavior in humans and other animals. Behav Brain Sci. e31.

Eventually the crocodile let go of the elephant’s nose with a plop that you could hear all up and down the Limpopo River. Photo credit: Danny Goirdano Thank you,’ said the Elephant’s Child, ‘I’ll remember that; and now I think I’ll go home to all my dear families and try.’ Bear in mind that till that very week, and day, and hour, and minute, the elephant’s child had never seen a crocodile. And finally he asked an unknown creature (the crocodile himself) the question which he hoped to finally relieve himself of, “What does the crocodile have for dinner?” That is odd,’ said the Elephant’s Child, ‘because my father and my mother, and my uncle and my aunt, not to mention my other aunt, the Hippopotamus, and my other uncle, the Baboon, have all spanked me for my ‘satiable curtiosity—and I suppose this is the same thing.Ereshefsky M, Turner D (2019) Historicity and explanation. Stud Hist Philos Sci Part A. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2019.02.002 I anticipate human teaching is at the extreme end of the distribution of teaching and that, like other apparent exceptions that in fact prove the rule, explaining teaching in humans will inform our understanding of teaching across species. (Kline 2015, 56)

Scuse me,’ said the Elephant’s Child, ‘but my nose is badly out of shape, and I am waiting for it to shrink. Thornton A (2008) Variation in contributions to teaching by meerkats. Proceedings Royal Soc b: Biol Sci 275(1644):1745–1751 Best elephant gifts: 7 elephant-themed present ideas you can’t resist So how did the elephant get its trunk?

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Kipling began working on the book by telling the first three chapters as bedtime stories to his daughter Josephine. These had to be told "just so" (exactly in the words she was used to) or she would complain. The stories illustrate how animals acquired their distinctive features, such as how the leopard got his spots. For the book, Kipling illustrated the stories himself. And the Elephant’s Child’s nose kept on stretching; and the Elephant’s Child spread all his little four legs and pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and his nose kept on stretching; and the Crocodile threshed his tail like an oar, and he pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and at each pull the Elephant’s Child’s nose grew longer and longer—and it hurt him hijjus!