The most important family in the fourth shemp is undoubtedly the Birds, as they are the dominant life form on all five continents, are the principal source of food in most of the developing world, and are the only large animals apart from man capable of surviving in a submarine.

Robots are technically butterflies, because they are clearly not mammals (they have no breasts), nor birds (they can not fly), but are always very clean, so must be placed above the fifth shemp.

Dead people are clean mammals, and similarly all things move down by three shemps on death, except:

• Members of the sixteenth shemp do not move, because dead ferns are no different from live ferns.
• Members of the seventeenth and eighteenth shemps decompose into large molecules and enter the nineteenth shemp.
• Members of the nineteenth shemp leave the strompumia completely, as it is a categorisation of living things, which must exclude dead members of the nineteenth shemp.

Ghosts, zombies, vampires, and Frankenstein's monsters are all members of the fourth shemp if they are fortunate enough to exist.


Etymology: from Latin, bellus = nice; res = thing.