Comment on Dolphins is whales.

• Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Have I got a podcast for you!

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• sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?

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  • lugal@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Because that would make fish and vertebrates synonyms so why not drop the former altogether?

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    • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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      • lugal@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        And it’s totally valid to use it that way even though I wouldn’t. That’s the “You decide” part of my first comment

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