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Eels are fish

(eocampaign1.com)
178 points speckx | 3 comments | 03 Sep 25 14:02 UTC | HN request time: 1.115s | source
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boesboes ◴[03 Sep 25 14:37 UTC] No.45116372[source]▶
Apparently we are all fish. Or fish don't exist.

To explain: if you want to define a taxonomy in which all things that look like fish and swim are 'fish' then we are too. We are more closely related to most 'fish' than sharks are. I.e the last common ancestor of herring AND sharks is older than our & herring's LCA.

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ralfd ◴[03 Sep 25 14:53 UTC] No.45116523[source]▶
At least you could exclude jawless, cartilaginous, and lobe-finned fish. That would leave you with 99% of what people call fish. But as said it would exclude sharks, they would need to be their own group.

More bothering me is that there are no trees. There are just many plants which have independently evolved a trunk and branches as a way to tower above other plants to compete for sunlight.

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pavel_lishin ◴[03 Sep 25 15:05 UTC] No.45116669[source]▶
Yeah. Terms like "fish" and "tree" are more like "quadruped" than they are like "rodent".
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1. IAmBroom ◴[03 Sep 25 16:23 UTC] No.45117617[source]▶
Except that "quadruped" is (AFAIK) phylogenetic: Tetrapoda.
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2. pavel_lishin ◴[03 Sep 25 18:40 UTC] No.45119087[source]▶
> * tetrapod (/ˈtɛtrəˌpɒd/;[4] from Ancient Greek τετρα- (tetra-) 'four' and πούς (poús) 'foot') is any four-limbed vertebrate animal of the clade Tetrapoda (/tɛˈtræpədə/).*

Huh. I always thought it was a more generic term for any four-limbed animal. TIL, I guess!

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3. IAmBroom ◴[03 Sep 25 19:00 UTC] No.45119296[source]▶
Honestly, I can't think of a non-tetrapod animal that is four-limbed. I mean, unless you cut one leg off a starfish.