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

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

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago (1 child)

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

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  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 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 4 days ago (2 children)

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

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