A non sequitur on reddit color me surprise. Premise 1: All plants are alive. Premise 2: All animals are alive. Conclusion: All plants are animals.
Do you also consider bacteria to be alive because I have some terrible news for you…
I disagree with that, because it's a matter of subjective personal politics. Have you ever noticed how birds gather on a freshly-cut lawn? That's because the lawn sends out that lovely 'mown grass' smell (GLVs), which is the grass thinking it's being damaged by bugs rather than a blade, and it's releasing a chemical to warn other plants to be defensive, and calling for birds to come eat the bugs. I know, I know- grass doesn't have a face or fur or offer cuddles or look cute as a baby, and "it's not sentient", but again, those are your political parameters- your rules. To me, life is life- you draw your line where you want to.
Honestly, saying that “chicken vs plants is just a line in the sand” is a faulty argument.
What do you think the chicken ate to grow as much as it did? Considering how inefficient biology is: the chicken you ate probably ate at least 1000 times the equivalent food in plants.
So the argument is taking the life of “1 chicken and 1000 plants” or “1 plant” (for every single meal)
Don’t be in denial that the 2 options are equal. One is objectively much much worse than the other. Just because we all do it doesn’t make it ethically right (eg: slavery).
Technically the term "fish" is fake bc water creatures have so many different ancestors that if you wanna use the term "fish" because of a common ancestor humans are almost as much fish as a shark is
It has a definition in a dictionary, sure, but taxonomically any monophyletic group for fish must also include include all tetrapods. So either fish as a clade encompasses all tetrapods, including humans, or doesn't exist as a clade at all. In simpler terms: either humans are fish or fish don't exist taxonomically at all.
In the hank green video they are referencing, I watched it a while ago, but I think he talks about the definition of words and how they kinda have a human bias, like how some clades are grouped can be kinda arbitrary. He said that it is very hard to remove the human perspective from the definition of words or something like that.
It is too late, so I am paraphrasing, I don't remember the right words, I'm no biologist either.
Clint's Reptiles also made a similar video saying that "humans are monkeys" and monkeys are also a paraphyletic group. He is a professional biologist and Hank has a B.S. in biochemistry and a M.S. in environmental studies.
I think they are just making funny videos to talk about biology, I don't think they are misinformed. Is not too deep, but also who has the authority to say how you should use language. Everything in Biology is complicated. We as humans make up words to easily talk about it, but definitions are not perfect. Like if an alien was studying taxonomy on earth they would make up totally diferent groups.
I like Hank and I quite enjoy his AHA series, but that man will take any opportunity to say the crazy thing instead of the real answer, if the crazy thing can be even remotely justified. He's a scientist, but he's also a social media guru, and clicks are important to his existence.
No? Monophyletic has been the standard for a long time, unless you count pure Linnaean taxonomy on which modern cladistics has been bolted on, but that has been outdated for a long time and my guess is that it will be fully removed in the future. I would say that it is true that we are not fish in a cladistic way, not becuse it is paraphyletic, but because it is not a clade, but more of a morphological term. We do belong to the Osteichthyes, the bony fishes, though.
But paraphyletic groups are standard in many sciences that focuses more on morphology than taxonomy, that is true. Ichthyology studies fish and excludes tetrapods. Herpetology studies Amphibians and Reptiles and excludes birds. But even then, they does not mean that they deny monophyletic groupings for taxonomy, just that they focus on a paraphyletic one for their study.
Yabble yabble babble babble. It's obvious to anyone with eyes (and any sense) that fish aren't people and people aren't fish; your vocabulary doesn't prove anything beyond your having a vocabulary.
fish (countable and uncountable, plural fish or fishes)
1. (countable) A typically cold-blooded vertebrate animal that lives in water, moving with the help of fins and breathing with gill; any vertebrate that is not a tetrapod.
(cladistically) Any vertebrate, including tetrapods.
(archaic or loosely) Any animal (or any vertebrate) that lives exclusively in water.
Now used in combination: (e.g., starfish, cuttlefish, jellyfish, etc).
1a : an aquatic animal —usually used in combination
starfish
cuttlefish
b: any of numerous cold-blooded strictly aquatic craniate vertebrates that include the bony fishes and usually the cartilaginous and jawless fishes and that have typically an elongated somewhat spindle-shaped body terminating in a broad caudal (see caudal sense 2) fin, limbs in the form of fins when present at all, and a 2-chambered heart by which blood is sent through thoracic gills to be oxygenated
freshwater fish
tropical fish
Which sure, b) doesn't mention tetrapods but it is even more elaborate.
and please check the most commonly used dictionary (wikipedia). Edit: Aaand that's an encyclopedia. My brains not fully online today, i'll just shut up.
Fish has a definition that has nothing to do with evolution and taxonomy. You are right that the world includes sharks and excludes humans, but it's not a particularly sensible word since we are more closely related to normal fish than sharks are.
Yeah, sharks are fish, but cmon... Calling a shark a fish is weird in this context haha. Like for a second, I was like "The dying fish behind the shark? What risk??" haha.
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u/Fun-Habit-683 Mar 27 '26
Sharks are fish and that wasn't a foul hook