Comment on Dolphins is whales.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
If you go back far enough, whales are a type of fish, just like us humans
Comment on Dolphins is whales.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
If you go back far enough, whales are a type of fish, just like us humans
lugal@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Either that or fish aren’t a phylogenetic group. You decide
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Have I got a podcast for you!
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
You can’t evolve out of a clade, or so they say.
Of course it’s not helpful to call humans and whales fishes in common parlance. But in phylogenetics, why not?
lugal@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Because that would make fish and vertebrates synonyms so why not drop the former altogether?
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Words can mean more than one thing thought, and depending on the context it can be useful to convey the fact that the vertebrates all evolved from fish-like ancestors, or that whales are more closely related to some fish than those fish are related to other fish.