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[–] 71 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Not sure what the original source of this was, other than an old tumblr post

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  • [–] 76 points 1 month ago* (33 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 1 month ago* (28 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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  • [–] 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)
  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)
  • [–] 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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  • 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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  • [–] 37 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Mayfly indeed may fly, give it a pass!

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  • [–] 33 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (21 children)
    • Horseshoe crab – Not a crab.
    • Hermit crab – Not a crab.
    • King crab – Not a crab (but, in fact, a hermit crab).
    • Porcelain crab – Not a crab.
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  • [–] 24 points 1 month ago* (4 children)

    Camel spider - Not a camel, Not a spider.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 month ago* (3 children)

    Not only that, but horseshoe crabs are closer to camel spiders than they are to crabs – closer, in fact, than horseshoe crabs are to bees, which themselves are (recently) crustaceans.

    Not sure why you got downvoted, btw; great example.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 month ago (7 children)
  • [–] 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)
  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Wait... What are they then? Really tall shrubs?

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago (4 children)
  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (3 children)

    That's actually not true, funnily! There's no such monophyletic thing as a fish, but "fish" has a very clear, commonly accepted definition in modern science, namely non-tetrapod vertebrates.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (2 children)

    Which is the point.

    All these animal names (goat / crab / fish / etc) have accepted meanings. They may not match specific genus, but that's ok.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago* (1 child)

    All these animal names (goat / crab / fish / etc) have accepted meanings. They may not match specific genus, but that’s ok.

    That's not what I'm referring to. "Fish" has an accepted scientific meaning. The accepted scientific meaning for "goat" is the genus Capra; the accepted scientific meaning for "crab" is the infraorder Brachyura. Among phylogeneticists, a "fish" is a non-tetrapod vertebrate, which unlike the other two is paraphyletic but nevertheless creates a completely rigid definition. It's not about "matching a specific genus"; it's about being well-defined among scientists.

    These all have strict definitions that don't resort to "well, it looks like [thing], so toss it on the pile." There literally is such a thing as a fish.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    "They all have strict definitions..." in a scientific setting. Not in a colloquial one, which is where most people live. Language isn't precise in everyday usage, and words have multiple definitions. A mountain goat may not be a goat (scientific definition), but it is a goat (colloquial definition) and it's certainly the GOAT (Greatest of all time) of shaming mountain climbers.

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  • [–] 22 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    So you are telling me that Mayfly may or may not fly?

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  • [–] 9 points 1 month ago (3 children)
  • [–] 20 points 1 month ago

    Hmmmm... The guide didn't say the mountain goat isn't a mountain... So I guess I'll go catch me me own mountain!

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  • [–] 19 points 1 month ago (2 children)
  • [–] 16 points 1 month ago* (3 children)

    Hermit Crab - what kind of hermit would be so obsessed with real estate deals?

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    I never see a hermit crab by itself, there's always at least a hundred of them together

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  • [–] 29 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    It May Fly, but does it???

    Does it????

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  • [–] 14 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    Prairie oyster: Not an oyster

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  • [–] 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    See also: Rocky Mountain Oysters

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    I remember a pizza spot that came and went, made it a couple years in total, that sincerely offered rocky mountain oysters on pizza.

    They were trying to stand out in the most anciently-gentrified strip of a very culturally southern (but tryna do better! kinda! not really!) city.

    The number of lazy folks who ate cow nuts by accident, primarily the crowd of "I'm too boringly affluent to understand much of anything, but damn do I want to stand out, the cool new spots with the weird menu items make me cool, right?!"

    spoilerOverall a wildly problematic thing to do at all, but then again it points the finger back at all of us to say "do you know what you eat? Why is that a line when other things aren't?" And etc., which makes for a less fun and judgmental take lol.

    The funny part for me is the way the place tried to succeed for the worst reasons, and the way the dude bros got mad after tryna be the cool guys. Angry dude bros and half-surprise testicles on your pizza is just a magical USian match made in...not heaven, but wherever we make them.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 month ago (8 children)

    Fascinating on King Cobras, I had no idea!

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  • [–] 28 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    Yeah, it's little known but true fact that snakes do, indeed, not recognize any monarchical systems at all!

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  • [–] 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    It's well-known that snakes are right-wing libertarians.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 month ago

    Classic. Love this one

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