Taxonomy of genetically engineered species

The Context

I have a group of genetically engineered people known as 'crows'. Their genome has been meddled with significantly enough that they are unable to successfully reproduce with humans, but are similar enough in physical appearance to humans for their ancestry to be apparent (think humans with fused keratin quills in place of hair, claws and various little internal changes).

Alongside these crows we have regular unedited humans.

The Question

How would our genetically modified crow-people be classified using Linneaen taxonomy?

Options I have identified:

1. Homo sapiens corvus (subspecies of Homo sapiens)
2. Homo corvus (separate species within the Homo genus)
3. Anthropocorvus sapiens (separate genus within the Hominidae family)

Full disclosure, my regular humans are in the earlier days of Linneaen taxonomy, so the architecture is in place but a lot of people are still very woolly as to what the definitions mean. Furthermore, they're solidly bigoted towards the crows so will likely try to dehumanise them by placing them outside the genus Homo. However, starting from a basis of how we might classify genetically engineered species would help inform that.

Plus, it's an interesting question :)

posted about 6 years ago

Ynneadwraith‭

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