Comment on Dolphins is whales.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks agoYou 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?
Comment on Dolphins is whales.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks agoYou 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 5 weeks ago
Because that would make fish and vertebrates synonyms so why not drop the former altogether?
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.
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