Comment on Bees don't have lungs.

• frigidaphelion@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  In a nutshell: speaking cladistically, there is no such thing as a fish, or alternatively, all tetrapods are fish. You cant define a monophyletic group that includes “fish” that doesnt also include humans (and all other tetrapods eg birds and such). That’s my understanding anyway

  source

  • Soggy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Fish is a polyphyletic group. It’s a shorthand to refer to various lines of aquatic vertebrates with a similar anatomy. It’s not a clade but that’s not the only way to logically group organisms. People trot it out like a “gotcha” or just misuse it in much the same way they don’t understand speciation (or most science terminology, to be frank)

    We are not fish by anyone’s honest definition, but “there’s no such thing as a fish” is the kind of attention-grabbing false revelation I hate: it’s the headline with none of the understanding to actually learn something.

    source

    • frigidaphelion@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      My knowledge on the subject is purely at a youtube video level so i am happy to have someone else provide better knowledge and insight

      source

      • faythofdragons@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        I too have seen that Clint’s Reptiles video, lmao

        source
  • faythofdragons@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    From what I understand, this is sorta like a hangover from pre-DNA taxonomy. We went “yeah, those all look like fish, we’ll put them in the fish group”, only to find out later that a bunch of them weren’t very closely related at all. So now we have a ‘fish’ group that’s a total mess, and we’re in the middle of getting it organized and re-labelled.

    source

    • frigidaphelion@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Yeah exactly lol science is full of silly stuff like that but that’s the price of knowledge and of using models to understand things. Same with trees and such, they look alike to us so we call a lot of organisms trees but they are VASTLY different from each other in many cases

      source

      • Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Image

        source

        • -> View More Comments
  • Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Can’t we just un-fish it like we do for other clades when we need to?

    “There’s an ape in the office!”

    “Yes, his name is Tom. More importantly, he is a human being, and we don’t refer to them as apes outside of an academic context and even then, only when necessary.”

    [Tom eats a banana, screams at an intern, and starts picking his nose]

    source

    • Klear@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      No, fuck paraphyletic groups.

      source

      • Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        I meant, can’t we just be more specific rather than use paraphyletic grouping?

        “What’s for dinner?”

        “Fish”

        “That could mean anything!”

        “You know I meant Actinopterygii.”

        “Still pretty broad.”

        “Oncorhynchus.”

        “You know how I feel about trout.”

        “Ugh. tshawytscha.”

        “Well, why didn’t you just say so in the first place?”

        source

        • -> View More Comments
• WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  We’re all descended from fish.

  Also, IIRC, some fish are more closely related to us than they are to other fish, making it impossible to biologically define a category of animal that includes everything we call a fish but doesn’t include us.

  source

  • Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Thanks!

    Also, I recognize your username. I feel like you may have encountered my ignorance on at least one previous occasion.

    source