I think a more nuanced answer is better: "Only if you believe mammals and fish are not mutually exclusive."
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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I think the even more nuanced answer is that “fish” is not a scientific category so comparing it to mammals makes no sense.
Got it , got it... writes in margin
Ichthyology ≠ Science
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish
In a break from the long tradition of grouping all fish into a single class (''Pisces''), modern phylogenetics views fish as a paraphyletic group.
Paraphyly is a taxonomic term describing a grouping that consists of the grouping's last common ancestor and some but not all of its descendant lineages. The grouping is said to be paraphyletic with respect to the excluded subgroups. In contrast, a monophyletic grouping (a clade) includes a common ancestor and all of its descendants.
This is in contrast to the class Mammalia which is a complete clade.
In other words, I could make up a branch of science called foobarthology that studies Jurassic raptors, whales, and the Rock Dove, but that doesn’t mean those things are related, or a ‘true’ scientific group of their own. It just means I put them together for some other reason, either cause it’s easier for the requirements of the job, or I wanted to, or many other reasons including historical.
"Scientific group" is not the applicable term. "natural group" or "monophyletic group" or "clade", would be more... scientific
Sure, and not calling them fish is even more scientific. From a grouping perspective, (which is how you refer to it) there is no such group.
lol no. Whales are clearly not foobars.
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I'm flattered, honestly, that guy is my favorite treefucker.
Humans are fish
Humans living under the sea are fish.
Like people in Netherlands.
or something, I'm not a biologist
Continuing a long proud tradition of "midwit" memes being made exclusively by people who think they're the 145 IQ guy, but are actually the the 55 IQ guy who found a brown hood.
Whales aren’t fish, they’re whales. There is no such thing as a fish.
Nonsense, we're all fish
I don’t know how many times I have to say this, I AM NOT A FISH! I am a regular tasty human, and frankly I’m growing real tired of these targeted attacks. You people are ridiculous. I won’t swi-STAND! Y-we stand. I won’t stand for this!
Guys I think this guy might be a fish
Guys, I think this guy might be a HUGE JERK FACE!
Dunno mate, seems like a dragon to me.
A dragon with a jerk for a face.
No that guy's Canadian I think
Clearly he is a gay fish
STOP TELLING PEOPLE I’M A FISH!!!
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Whaddayamean there's no such thing as a fish? I just ate one!
they're a berry i think
Yes but only when culinary, this is why it's okay for vegans to eat whale.
This tracks, berries keep their seeds on the inside. Whales are bananas and vice versa.
Broke: Whales are fish because they look like other fish
Woke: Whales aren't fish because they're in the class Mammalia, not Pisces
Bespoke: Whales are fish because any monophyletic group that encompasses all the fishes must also include the clade Tetrapoda
Artichoke: Whales aren't fish because fishes are a paraphyletic group that includes the entire clade Vertebrata at the exclusion of the clade Tetrapoda.
Stick and Poke: Whales are fish because they've developed the same bodyplan and are in the same ecological niche as the pelagic fishes.
Tadpoles are fish too, right?
And they even have gills.
Look all I'm saying is Hank Green agrees with me that whales are fish.
Hank Green is great but good god the adhd runs strong in that one. Watch some of his vlogbrothers videos and count the number of cuts. It's like watching Liam Neeson jump a fence.
Maybe that's why I like him so much lol
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You can't fool me. I've read Moby Dick and Melville dedicated an entire chapter about how whales are absolutely fish
Cladistically speaking, whales are just a big colony of eukaryotic clones.
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I know a doctor of marine biology who disagrees with your assessment.
Everyone that doesn't revel in their fishness is a coward or worse, a creationist.
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whales are fish because they successfully went back to the ocean and i'm jealous
Whales are mammals. How is the dude on the right even being pedantic and not just outright dumb?
"Fish" isn't a real type of animal, it's a term of convenience for similar looking/acting things that humans have lumped together.
Its taking that back to the medieval level of "whales are fish"... Which ignores that key difference of them breathing air and not having gills.
There isn't a simple evolutionary definition of "fish", not the same way there is for, say, mammals. If you found the common ancestor of everything we call a mammal and said "everything descended from this one is also a mammal", you'd be correct. If you did that for everything we call fish, every animal in the world would be a fish. Also, we decided which animals were fish mostly on vibes, so without a clear definition you can pedantically argue that everything is a fish including mammals.
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Mammals are fish
Isn't that only if they are born between February 19th and March 20th? 🤔
Those are fishies.
people who fish have also always known that whales are fish. not sure about the welsh though, that seems iffy.
No, but seriously, why did this become so common? It seems like the internet learnt a new word and is just rolling with it.
Well, yea that. I know Hank Green likes to bring it up and he’s popular, and it’s come up with a bunch of other content creators, too. It’s fun, technically true, and enough people don’t know it yet so it’s great to bring up in the real world.
Plus it’s super cool to explain how our eyes are built for the ocean and they had to get a special lens on top to fix it. Or how we carry the sea with us in the form of all this salty water. Or the whole swimbladder/lungs/guts thing relationship I mean they’re all quite fun, really.
I also like explaining that octopuses are molluscs and, because we say that molluscs have one “foot”, it’d be more appropriate to say that octopuses are really just going around the world with eight funky toes and not eight arms.
Didn't know that octopus came from the molluscs branch. Even more surprising that they at a smart as they are.
Never gave any thought to were they branched off, but them being advanced slugs is crazy.
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I get the impression from the other comments that a popular YouTuber made a recent video about it, where I'm guessing he tried to be a smartass about some of the implications of "fish" being ambiguously defined, and a bunch of his more credulous viewers have got the wrong end of the stick and ran with it?
I mainly know the idea from an old QI episode that explained it as "there's no such thing, biologically speaking", which in turn became the title of the show's researchers' long-running podcast "No Such Thing As A Fish".
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