this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2025
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*within taxonomy, I think most people can conceive of a fish in colloquial terms.
Whales are taxonomically fish.
No??? They're mammals, where did you pull this information out of?
They are correct. You're not wrong, whales are indeed mammals. But "fish" isn't a monophyletic grouping, meaning you either need to give up on using it as a category or you need to correct it by including everyone sharing the same LCA, meaning mammals would be part of your "fish" grouping.
Of course, that's how it works within biological classification. Colloquially, you can call them anything.
Just gonna copy paste what I told the other guy:
I understand that and completely agree, but comparing taxonomical categories with common categorizations such as "fish" is also missing a big point. You can make better comparisons to get people to understand that taxonomy is made up and not reliable to follow religiously, barely even works as a guideline
All mammals are taxonomically fish. Perhaps even all chordates. YOU are a fish!
After this conversation, I wish I was.
What they are trying to say: One cannot taxonomically group every animal we consider fish without also including all the mammals and i think even reptiles and birds. that's because there are multiple taxonomic branches of fish that split off of the trunk before our ancestors started to walk on land, and not all of the fish in our branch decided to go on land, and continued their own branch. therefore yes: whales are fish and so are you. what does this mean? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
it is technically correct which is, of course, the best kind of correct.
I understand that and completely agree, but comparing taxonomical categories with common categorizations such as "fish" is also missing a big point. You can make better comparisons to get people to understand that taxonomy is made up and not reliable to follow religiously, barely even works as a guideline