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[–] 78 points 3 days ago* (43 children)

A mountain goat is a goat, it's just not in genus Capra.

Fun trip and interesting trip through taxonomy, though, in addition to the gags. A collection of wikipedia articles would be a nice companion.

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  • [–] 45 points 3 days ago* (38 children)

    it's just not in genus Capra

    That's definitionally what goats are. It's close, being in the same subfamily, but then so are sheep.

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  • [–] 41 points 3 days ago (36 children)

    I think words like "goat" should have a generic and unstudied applicability: if it looks like a goat, and acts like a goat, it's a goat.

    A mountain goat looks like a goat and acts like a goat, therefore it is a goat.

    A sheep neither looks like a goat, nor acts like a goat, therefore it is not a goat.

    All semantics, of course. If you want to understand goat to mean "member of genus Capra", you certainly can. If you want me to make goat mean that, you're out of luck.

    I'm willing to grant you the distinctions between goats and true goats, in deference to the science of biology. I am not a monster.

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  • [–] 32 points 3 days ago (14 children)

    I'm willing to grant you the distinctions between goats and true goats, in deference to the science of biology.

    Well that's my point: this post is about how common names contrast with actual, rigid taxonomical definitions. :p

    Like the colloquial word "goat" fits, but your comment read to me, given the context of the post, like you were saying goats can exist outside Capra via a technical definition, which isn't true.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 days ago (8 children)
  • [–] 5 points 3 days ago (4 children)

    Phylogenetically, "fish" are simply all non-tetrapod vertebrates.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    so in other words its a catch-all for legless animals?

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

    No, and not even close. Consider a tree of life. Formally, vertebrates are subphylum Vertebrata within the phylum Chordata (the chordates). That already eliminates most of the animals, as most animals are invertebrates – defined as being outside Vertebrata. All the arthropods, molluscs, echinoderms (like starfish), sponges, cnidarians {jellyfish, corals, anemones, etc.), nematodes, and so on are invertebrates.

    Instead of just assaulting you with terminology, here's a phylogenetic tree showing the vertebrates within the chordates and the chordates next to our nearest neighbors.

    To get fish from the vertebrates, you simply exclude the tetrapods (clade Tetrapoda), which are the four-legged vertebrates. However, even within the tetrapods, plenty of tetrapods also have no legs (snakes, for example); they've simply lost them through evolution, a phenomenon called "secondary loss".

    Here's a phylogenetic tree, meanwhile, within the vertebrates. Anything outside "Tetrapoda" on that tree is a fish.


    TL;DR: There are many, many, many legless animals that aren't fish.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago (2 children)

    True or false: The tomato is a fruit and a vegetable.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 child)

    True in that it's a fruit botanically and a vegetable culinarily (or, less arbitrarily for the latter, that it's a part of a plant consumed for food).

    A carrot, as another fun example, is a root botanically, a vegetable culinarily, and, in the European Union, a fruit legally as a carve-out for laws about making jams.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 child)

    Well you talk about 'goat like behaviour', how many different types of goat cling to the side of mountains like some kind of Rock Lobster?

    My experience of goats is mainly in fields like, oh I dunno, a sheep?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (7 children)

    if it looks like a goat, and acts like a goat, it's a goat.

    Logic like this is why people used to consider mammals like dolphins and beavers as fish. Stop it.

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  • Doplphins and beavers don't act or look like fish to me. Dolphins maybe I could understand if you were an ancient person who lived inland, but beavers?

    But I guess part of crowdsourcing is that you get some really stupid people on the project.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (4 children)

    Some communities and parishes in the St Louis , MO area still recognize a 17th century French Catholic decision that, as aquatic animals, Beaver fall inside the dispensation that "fish" is acceptable for consumption on Fridays. Soooo, no matter its appearance, it is kinda fish?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago (3 children)

    Who tf listens to Catholic's opinions on taxonomy? Especially 17th century ones?

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  • [–] 0 points 2 days ago

    "fish" is perhaps a bad example to make your point with, given that that's a non-technical term that doesn't refer to any particular genetic branch of the animal kingdom - hence the podcast "no such thing as a fish". So I'd say that calling a mountain goat a goat is supported by the idea that many unrelated animals are called fish.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago (5 children)
  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

    Actually, they're a COBRA programmer.

    They write JavaScript and COBOL for the GI Joe villains and public health care insurance providers

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago (3 children)
  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)
  • Common names of animals often describe phenotype not genotype. If it looks like a ducks, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's common name is duck. There are lots of animals with common names grouping them by physical characteristics and ecological niche rather than genetic relationship, especially animals named longed before we had any real scientific study of their genetics.

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