| ▲ | jackconsidine 8 hours ago |
| When H Melville stuffed the middle of Moby Dick with a "cetology" -- BEFORE The Origin of Species, famously saying "a whale is a fish" -- he didn't forget the Greenland Shark. I think all the time about how many of those sharks swimming around in 1851 are still swimming around today. |
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| ▲ | mikkupikku 6 hours ago | parent [-] |
| Note that Melville was well aware of the reasons that "whales aren't fish", and went over those in detail, then said he was going to call them fish anyway. |
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| ▲ | IncreasePosts 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think that's perfectly fair. The same way everyone knows that chimps are monkeys, it's just brainy losers who insist they're just apes | | |
| ▲ | mikkupikku 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes I agree. All the moreso because the word fish is very ancient and was used to mean any aquatic animal long before Linnaeus came along and decided to "well ackshully" the word. | | |
| ▲ | jbaber 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | This is a reach, but do you know where to find the essay I read about someone explaining to King David that a whale isn't a fish and the King laughs at him because his modern mammal explanations are useless and impractical compared to the ones he uses? I've been trying to re-find it for ages. | | |
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