Except big cats look NOTHING alike even to an amateur ...
It was an honest mistake and you guys are being quite mean ...
I was simply being humorous. I'm sorry, humor does not pass through the Internet well.
As for cats, I was not comparing them because I believe that. I was simply comparing the examples - that saying the big cats are the same is like saying all salamanders are the same, though I have just generalized it more now. I used that example because large cats have similar shapes, and we can instantly define them as feline. Salamanders have similar shapes, that are instantly defined into slimy-lizard-things. But when we know a group of animals well, we see the clear differences.
Take a child. A child that is an amateur of all things in the world (except possibly at crying), would simply identify a fluffy as a cat, a lion as a cat, a tiger as a cat, and their stuffed animal as a cat. They would do the same with salamanders. They have no knowledge of biology and taxonomy. It is an easy mistake to make, especially since as people grow they only learn selectively. That is, cats are encountered more often than salamanders, so that difference is learned, though the difference between salamanders and lizards never is if they aren't encountered. The opposite could also happen. A child could encounter only salamanders, and become an adult that does not recognize the difference between cats. I myself cannot tell one bug from another- a beetle is a beetle, though there are hundreds of beetle species.
You asked a question, and it was answered. No one had any intention to offend, and I certainly didn't. I'm sorry my example was misunderstood. I meant it to be slightly light-hearted, and it didn't come off that way, apparently.
