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[–] 42 points 1 month ago (26 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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  • [–] 31 points 1 month ago (13 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 1 month ago (8 children)
  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (4 children)

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

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

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

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

    My doctors office as a young kid had a mural wall with a bunch of silly fish. They had the names written next to cartoonish drawings in an undersea landscape. One example was the catfish had the face of a cat.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

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

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    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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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (5 children)
  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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 1 month ago (3 children)
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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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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