There's no such thing as a fish. · 11:09pm Aug 10th, 2020
I amuse myself while the world burns down around me by babbling on about random scientific facts that lurk about in my mind.
It's that or run in circles screaming.
There's No Such Thing As A Fish
Reptiles don't exist either, unless you're okay with birds being reptiles. Seeing as they're already dinosaurs, this would mean that the "tyrant lizard king" can be a lizard again and I think we can all agree that this would be part of any worthy categorization system.
Glub Glub
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Oh yeah, reptiles are at least as weird as fish to try to define! I almost went on a ramble about that in the tweet, but decided to cut it, since twitter is not a great medium for endless rambling.
Although you can meaningfully define lizards. It just not only leaves out poor T-rex, it leaves out some things that sure as hell look like lizards. (Like the tuatara, which is not a lizard, but you'd swear it was.)
A friend once told me that hiccups happen because of a malfunction that reactivates the gill-breathing reflex. Said reflex never went away; we just evolved the equivalent of dummying out code instead, because natural selection means shrugging and rolling with whatever mutations produce the most viable offspring.
I never bothered to confirm the claim because I like it too much to care if it's true. Though it seems there's some degree of basis for it, which is neat. Nature isn't just fascinating, it's quite silly.
Reminds me of that episode of Q.I.:
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That's where I first heard it! Though they explain it very poorly, in my opinion.
well, whats been keeping my blind neighbor so relaxed?
Guys, we don't have to worry about bacteria anymore! There's obviously no such thing as a single-celled organism.