Comment on On trees...

• piccolo@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  What about starfishes? Checkmate.

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  • DancingBear@midwest.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    That made me chuckle, but because this is a science meme forum, I will just clarify that starfish are not fish.

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• SuperNovaStar@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Source?

  Because all the sources I’ve come across say that “fish” is not a monophylatic classification and is essentially arbitrary.

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  • DancingBear@midwest.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish

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    • SuperNovaStar@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      … and Wikipedia states that the category of “fish” is paraphylatic, meaning that it is defined by convention rather than ‘fact’ and its boundaries can be argued, since it excludes some of the descendants of fish.

      also, as pointed out, we use the word fish to describe lots of things that are not included in this definition, like starfish and crayfish.

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