• Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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    18 hours ago

    most south american “foxes” arnt true foxes, genus vulpes they have thier own lineages. new world porcupine isnt actually closely related to old world porcupine(different evolution ).

    extinct american cheetah, wasnt actually a cheetah but a PUMA relative, a different species.

  • Lumisal@lemmy.world
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    23 hours 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!

  • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    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.

      • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        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.

        • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works
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          11 hours ago

          if it looks like a goat, and acts like a goat, it’s a goat.

          Logic like this is why people used to consider mammals like dolphins and beavers as fish. Stop it.

          • GreenBean@lemmy.today
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            8 hours ago

            Some communities and parishes in the St Louis , MO area still recognize a 17th century French Catholic decision that, as aquatic animals, Beaver fall inside the dispensation that “fish” is acceptable for consumption on Fridays. Soooo, no matter its appearance, it is kinda fish?

          • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works
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            11 hours ago

            Doplphins and beavers don’t act or look like fish to me. Dolphins maybe I could understand if you were an ancient person who lived inland, but beavers?

            But I guess part of crowdsourcing is that you get some really stupid people on the project.

        • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldM
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          1 day ago

          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.

            • Akasazh@lemmy.world
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              12 hours ago

              Maybe we should base s podcast around the fact that, according to the Oxford dictionary, there is no such thing…

              And other inane trivia

                • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldM
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                  8 hours ago

                  Snakes are tetrapods m8. Specifically referring to the clade Tetrapoda, within which snakes have secondarily lost their four limbs.

                • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldM
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                  7 hours 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.

            • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldM
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              18 hours 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.

              • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works
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                11 hours ago

                Same with peppers, zucchini, and all forms of squash.

                Also, strawberries aren’t fruit, botanically speaking because the seeds aren’t inside

          • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works
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            1 day ago

            Yes, we don’t disagree on the biology… I’m just emphasizing the nature of colloquial language as a crowdsourced effort and distinguishing it from the technical rigors of taxonomy.

        • Rug_Pisser@piefed.zip
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          20 hours ago

          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?

          • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works
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            21 hours ago

            Goats cosplay being in mountains no matter where they are. Goat yards are litered with large object topped by goats. Goat yoga is a thing.

    • ourselves@slrpnk.net
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      1 day ago

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

      • TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub
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        23 hours ago

        Which I find pretty accurate for their name since they might not hatch immediately at the end of April, where spring starts. It makes more sense for Mayflies to be mostly absent in April, but everywhere in May.

  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldM
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    1 day ago
    • 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.
      • PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        17 hours 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?!”

        spoiler

        Overall 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.

    • khannie@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      That one’s to catch out foreigners. I’m convinced.

      Source: foreigner that will never be caught out but might very well have if he didn’t know a South Dakotan.

      Do they actually serve those anywhere?

  • Equinox1289@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    Almost like those names were made for morphological categorization rather than a phylogenetic categorization where we use a completely different naming scheme.