Watch nobody actually get angry at this. It would be just my luck
You must log in or register to comment.
There is no formal definition for fish that includes everything that we consider a fish and excludes everything we don’t. All human classification systems are based on vibes.
Extra pendant here, all terrestrial vertebrates are descended from lobe-finned fish. Sharks, lampreys, and ray-finned fish are not descended from lobe-finned fish.
Rar! Grrr! Snarl! Angry stomping noises!
Whales evolved from fish, but ceased being fish when they could no longer breed with them.
I didn’t want to leave you with no angry commenys.
You can’t evolve out of a clade. Humans didn’t stop being apes, haplerines, primates, mammals, therapsids, etc. at any point, because a clade includes all descendants of a common ancestor.
so all tetrapods are bony fish, not fish, because fish is a non cladistic category of animals that roughly means animal you think of when you think of fish
But fish are not a clade. The clade you’re thinking of is vertebrates.
Yep, that would be the fish clade. The only way to draw a clade that includes all extant animals we’d consider fish is to include all of vertebrata. You could also consider the fish clade to just be ray-finned fishes if you want, but then sharks, rays, coelacanths, mudskippers, etc would not be fish, which seems absurd to me (but is also cladistically valid).
But fish are not a clade. Mice are not fish. Birds are not fish. I don’t know how else to explain it to you. Do you understand that there can be terms for groups of living things that are not clades or that have no scientific basis whatsoever? Did you know that there is no difference between frogs and toads except that, broadly speaking, we call the ugly warty ones toads?
This is a popular definition of a species*, but you’re applying it to a class**. Humans can’t breed with other apes, but we are apes. Biological classification (fish vs whales) is based on evolutionary relationships and traits, not whether two animals can interbreed.
Cladistically, whales are not fish because “fish” isn’t a clade. Fish are an everyday label, not a clean scientific clade or rank.
* - this is a very limited definition of species
** - fish really aren’t a class, but that’s how it’s taught in grade schoolSo salmon is not fish? Salmon can breed with other salmon but not other fish…
Up comes Diogenes with a fish insemination machine shouting: “Behold, a fish!”
Salmon are fish. Salmon can breed with salmon, so salmon can breed with fish. Ergo salmon are fish.
Once a fish, always a fish. Modern cladistics is weird like that. Unironically, humans are fish 🐟
No, modern cladistics is not like that at all, because fish do not form a clade. Fish are non-tetrapod vertebrates; humans are tetrapods, hence vertebrates but not fish.
By that logic humans are fish too.
Of course. Humans are a type of bipedal, terrestrial lobe-finned fish.
So the reptilian people theory is actually true.
But I can’t swim.
you’re really bad at being a fish, but you still are one
All life is actually primordial soup.
Always said penguin are fish
Whales are fish just as much as cucumbers are fruit
this but with capybara as fish
If lampray and sharks are fish, then everything between coelacanth and clownfish are definitely fish too.
Fish don’t exist.
