In Defense of Fish
Fish are great: Here is a phylogeny, an evolutionary history, of fishes. Evolutionary groupings are the thing in biology. All animals in a named group, mammals, for example, have a common ancestor or should. A little bit ago (okay, a long time ago), analyses of the group that generally were called fish, including sharks, bony fishes, lungfishes, and more, were found not to have a single common ancestor. The same situation also applies to reptiles; there is no common ancestor, and it doesn’t fit a neat evolutionary grouping. It turns out that birds are grouped with dinosaurs—valid and worthy science. But what do we do with the term fish if fish do not exist? An unfortunate carryover is that fish is in the name of many things that are not fish but were once kinda fish, Lungfish, for example. This is a common problem in the English language: Silverfish and starfish are not even pretending to be fish. Do not get me started on seahorses. Side note: The wordsmiths tell me that I ...