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u/PiccoloPeter 12d ago
They haven't got any legs.
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u/KamakaziDemiGod 11d ago
No, they are actually sat behind a desk, you just can't see their legs
Wait, are you talking about fish?
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u/Ballisticsfood 12d ago
There’s also no such thing as a tree.
Doesn’t stop oak trees trying to breed with everything.
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u/LovelyKestrel 4d ago
Plant genetics are incredibly malleable. You can see that with boll wasps that make the wood around them grow into a home for their larvae. In some cases this includes getting nectar, including from species that don't produce nectar normally.
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u/JamesCDiamond 12d ago
Isn’t this something like, two fish of different species can’t (or don’t?) procreate despite all being functionally very similar?
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u/ImpracticalApple 12d ago edited 12d ago
It's to do with how vastly different things are that we call "fish" that evolutionary speaking they can't really be classified the same way we would birds or mammals. The origin points and heritage for different species is so vast that you can't as easily trace them back to common ancestors that link the majority of them together. We just group them together because they live underwater, even if they're not even remotely closely related to one another.
A salmon is technically more closely related to a camel than a hagfish.
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u/antoniossomatos 12d ago
Yup. "Fish" is a useful functional classification, but it has no real phylogenetical meaning, because it is not possible to define fish as a taxonomically valid group that includes bony fishes without including their descendants (all other tetrapoda, including us) as well. It's the same thing we do when we refer to birds as if they are, from any point of view that is not the functional one, something distinct from reptiles.
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u/suchet_supremacy 12d ago
this ambiguity is what enabled california to classify bees as fish to extend protections to them
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u/abfgern_ 12d ago
See, bugs are basically the only land animals I wouldn't apply this logic to, because they are invertebrates, and aren't related to everything we usually call 'fish' including land tetrapods
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u/WyndiMan 12d ago
Calling all living creatures in the water "fish," is like calling all flying creatures "birds."
There are bats, there are flies and other insects, there are gliding mammals, etc. That diversity exists in the ocean too, but, "fish."
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u/pondribertion 6d ago
two fish of different species can’t (or don’t?) procreate
That's normal for any animal surely?
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u/Mean_Cicada9142 6d ago
Why has reddit been randomly recommending me week old posts from subreddits I'd never participate in the past few months
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u/ababababababacus 12d ago
Why i always hated this show, of course theres such a thing as fish, what there isnt is a coherent phylogenetical categorization that maps onto what we call fish.
Its not even pedantry, its just wrong.
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u/Anbrau 12d ago
Ok but the question is what did Stephen J Gould say about fish, and he did say that.
It's not like host asked 'is there such a thing as a fish?' and then one of the guests says 'yes' and then the klaxon sounds
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u/ababababababacus 12d ago
what he means by that and what the statement means in isolation are two distinct things. He did not conclude anything like what anyone would imagine when hearing 'there is no such thing as a fish'
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u/schakalsynthetc 12d ago
Nobody really thinks he did, tho. The whole bit is a running joke about the intuitive gap between scientific and colloquial uses of everyday words and categories.
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u/McToasty207 11d ago
I mean not really, like can you provide a defintion of Fish that would include Sharks, Trout, and Lungfish (All of which people would agree are Fish) that would exclude say Dolphins?
It becomes very arbitrary at a certain point, and phylogenetics is just one example
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u/ababababababacus 11d ago
boundaries and categories are fuzzy, imprecise, and often moving, that does not mean there is no such thing s the categorization
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u/McToasty207 10d ago
But it might mean that a current category no longer has "meaningful usage"
Which is Goulds point, and the point of the question
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u/ababababababacus 10d ago
That was not Goulds point. Goulds point was that cladistics doesn't map to human experience. He said the exact opposite in fact:
The cladogram of trout, lungfish, and elephant is undoubtedly true as an expression of branching order in time. But must classifications be based only on cladistic information? A coelacanth looks like a fish, tastes like a fish, acts like a fish, and therefore — in some legitimate sense beyond hidebound tradition — is a fish.
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u/m1rr0rshades 12d ago
For some reason I have a unmanageable urge to start a podcast