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.
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.
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.
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.
My doctors office as a young kid had a mural wall with a bunch of silly fish. They had the names written next to cartoonish drawings in an undersea landscape. One example was the catfish had the face of a cat.
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.
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.
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?
St. Louis Catholics when in relation to Friday apparently. Also I feel like this is one of those spite filled fights that's been going on for centuries and at this point it's easier to jest leave em alone.
"fish" is perhaps a bad example to make your point with, given that that's a non-technical term that doesn't refer to any particular genetic branch of the animal kingdom - hence the podcast "no such thing as a fish". So I'd say that calling a mountain goat a goat is supported by the idea that many unrelated animals are called fish.
Common names of animals often describe phenotype not genotype. If it looks like a ducks, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's common name is duck. There are lots of animals with common names grouping them by physical characteristics and ecological niche rather than genetic relationship, especially animals named longed before we had any real scientific study of their genetics.
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.
Not only that, but horseshoe crabs are closer to camel spiders than they are to crabs – closer, in fact, than horseshoe crabs are to bees, which themselves are (recently) crustaceans.
Not sure why you got downvoted, btw; great example.
I thought they were ferns but I was wrong, turns out they are grass.
Palm trees are angiosperms, which means flowering plants. They are monocots which means their seeds produce a single, leaf-like cotyledon when they sprout. This makes palms closely related to grasses and bamboos.
That's actually not true, funnily! There's no such monophyletic thing as a fish, but "fish" has a very clear, commonly accepted definition in modern science, namely non-tetrapod vertebrates.
All these animal names (goat / crab / fish / etc) have accepted meanings. They may not match specific genus, but that’s ok.
That's not what I'm referring to. "Fish" has an accepted scientific meaning. The accepted scientific meaning for "goat" is the genus Capra; the accepted scientific meaning for "crab" is the infraorder Brachyura. Among phylogeneticists, a "fish" is a non-tetrapod vertebrate, which unlike the other two is paraphyletic but nevertheless creates a completely rigid definition. It's not about "matching a specific genus"; it's about being well-defined among scientists.
These all have strict definitions that don't resort to "well, it looks like [thing], so toss it on the pile." There literally is such a thing as a fish.
"They all have strict definitions..." in a scientific setting. Not in a colloquial one, which is where most people live. Language isn't precise in everyday usage, and words have multiple definitions. A mountain goat may not be a goat (scientific definition), but it is a goat (colloquial definition) and it's certainly the GOAT (Greatest of all time) of shaming mountain climbers.
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 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.
:::
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.
Almost like those names were made for morphological categorization rather than a phylogenetic categorization where we use a completely different naming scheme.
In parts of China where frogs are eaten, they call them 田雞 which literally means "field chicken" (although it can refer to several different species of frog)
If you look at the Wikipedia pages for many of these animals, they'll use terms like, "true eel," "true goat," and "true cobra." I guess that's how they generally handle animals that share common names despite not technically being in the correct family or whatever.
If you really need to be specific the scientific name or phylogenetic genus is there if you need to avoid the popular morphological name. Trying to fit the two together will always cause problems. For an example, see "fish."
Oh yes look at this bird with its mostly white plumage, except for the males during the mating season. What should I call it, I know I shall call it the black-headed gull. A fitting name. Hopefully we don't come across a different gull with a black head year round, or that name is going to be stupid, but I'm sure that won't happen.
Snowy owl: not made of snow.
Every Fish Owl: not a fish.
Every Eagle-Owl: not an eagle.
Every Hawk Owl: not a hawk.
Spotted owl: often can't be spotted (especially if she's inside tree hollows, good luck trying to spot her).
Elf owl: not an elf.
Fearful owl: not always fearful (especially when she's hunting her prey)
Laughing owl: unfortunately hasn't been laughing since the early 1900s (she's extinct 😢)
Golden masked owl: wears no golden mask.
(Also, any masked owl: wears no masks)
Eastern Grass owl: not made of grass.
Bubo virginianus: can be found dwelling thousands of kilometers away from the USian state, for example, in Brazilian Southeast.
Megascops sanctacatarinæ: can be found in Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Paraná, hence not just Santa Catarina.
Burrowing owls: generally uses burrows made by other animals (e.g. prairie dogs), so she isn't necessarily burrowing her burrow.
Athene noctua lilith (on her way to become a taxonomic species of her own, Athene lilith): unlikely to be the specific species related to the Mesopotamic Goddess (in fact, Otus and Bubo (esp. Bubo ascalaphus and Bubo cinerascens due to their geographical habitats) would be far more stronger candidates for the flanking owls depicted in the Burney Relief)
Yeah, I just hate it when big taxonomy is trying to push their scientific agenda into our language. Can't even call a racoon a "trash panda" any more because it'll upset the Chinese!
red pandas belongs in the family ailuridae, which is relared to the raccoon family part of a superfamily including mustelids, and procyonids(raccoons). ancestors fo red pands were carnivores.
151 replies
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.
That's definitionally what goats are. It's close, being in the same subfamily, but then so are sheep.
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.
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.
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.
now do it with fish!
Phylogenetically, "fish" are simply all non-tetrapod vertebrates.
Behold, a fish:
Snakes are tetrapods m8. Specifically referring to the clade Tetrapoda, within which snakes have secondarily lost their four limbs.
so in other words its a catch-all for legless animals?
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.
My doctors office as a young kid had a mural wall with a bunch of silly fish. They had the names written next to cartoonish drawings in an undersea landscape. One example was the catfish had the face of a cat.
Absolutely outrageous
Maybe we should base s podcast around the fact that, according to the Oxford dictionary, there is no such thing...
And other inane trivia
True or false: The tomato is a fruit and a vegetable.
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.
Same with peppers, zucchini, and all forms of squash.
Also, strawberries aren't fruit, botanically speaking because the seeds aren't inside
Also this post is a joke, as King Bird isn't taxonomically defined.
This is very jackdaw.
It's clobberin' time.
Wait until you find out what a fish is.
Either everything is fish, or nothing is
Found the python programmer.
Actually, they're a COBRA programmer.
They write JavaScript and COBOL for the GI Joe villains and public health care insurance providers
Do you mean CORBA?
Nope, I mean COBRA
Yeah I thought for a programming joke we might have gone with CORBA
But that’s also pretty old.
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?
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.
Nice ouroboros definition
Logic like this is why people used to consider mammals like dolphins and beavers as fish. Stop it.
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.
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?
Who tf listens to Catholic's opinions on taxonomy? Especially 17th century ones?
Historians, I guess.
St. Louis Catholics when in relation to Friday apparently. Also I feel like this is one of those spite filled fights that's been going on for centuries and at this point it's easier to jest leave em alone.
Catholics in St Louis who really want to eat beavers on Fridays apparently
"fish" is perhaps a bad example to make your point with, given that that's a non-technical term that doesn't refer to any particular genetic branch of the animal kingdom - hence the podcast "no such thing as a fish". So I'd say that calling a mountain goat a goat is supported by the idea that many unrelated animals are called fish.
Common names of animals often describe phenotype not genotype. If it looks like a ducks, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's common name is duck. There are lots of animals with common names grouping them by physical characteristics and ecological niche rather than genetic relationship, especially animals named longed before we had any real scientific study of their genetics.
Ahh so thats what Capra Demon is
The goat head on the dude didn't give it away?
Capri Denim!
Context is what matters, I agree, except in contexts where the difference is important (conservation, biology, ecology)
Not sure what the original source of this was, other than an old tumblr post
Here’s the original tumblr thread just in case
"Tumblr thread". I didn't know that was a thing. I only remember it as a blogging platform.
Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal.
Nobody has mentioned mountain oysters.
Rocky mountain oysters
Bull Fries.
Is the guy on stage squatting one out?
That looks like some Diogenes shit right there
Mayfly indeed may fly, give it a pass!
Also that is around spring/summer.
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.
Camel spider - Not a camel, Not a spider.
Not only that, but horseshoe crabs are closer to camel spiders than they are to crabs – closer, in fact, than horseshoe crabs are to bees, which themselves are (recently) crustaceans.
Not sure why you got downvoted, btw; great example.
Bees are crustaceans‽
Bees are insects are hexapods are crustaceans, yup!
Edit: this is a very recent thing, by the way.
Were.
Coconut crab - Not a coconut
Cocconut tree - Not a tree
Wait... What are they then? Really tall shrubs?
I thought they were ferns but I was wrong, turns out they are grass.
Palm trees are angiosperms, which means flowering plants. They are monocots which means their seeds produce a single, leaf-like cotyledon when they sprout. This makes palms closely related to grasses and bamboos.
Via https://scienceoxygen.com/is-palm-tree-a-fern/
But, in fact, a hermit crab!
Have you ever fucked a coconut?
Tried, once. Dick was too big.
The coconut’s?
And not made of porcelain
No Such Thing As A Fish
That's actually not true, funnily! There's no such monophyletic thing as a fish, but "fish" has a very clear, commonly accepted definition in modern science, namely non-tetrapod vertebrates.
Which is the point.
All these animal names (goat / crab / fish / etc) have accepted meanings. They may not match specific genus, but that's ok.
That's not what I'm referring to. "Fish" has an accepted scientific meaning. The accepted scientific meaning for "goat" is the genus Capra; the accepted scientific meaning for "crab" is the infraorder Brachyura. Among phylogeneticists, a "fish" is a non-tetrapod vertebrate, which unlike the other two is paraphyletic but nevertheless creates a completely rigid definition. It's not about "matching a specific genus"; it's about being well-defined among scientists.
These all have strict definitions that don't resort to "well, it looks like [thing], so toss it on the pile." There literally is such a thing as a fish.
"They all have strict definitions..." in a scientific setting. Not in a colloquial one, which is where most people live. Language isn't precise in everyday usage, and words have multiple definitions. A mountain goat may not be a goat (scientific definition), but it is a goat (colloquial definition) and it's certainly the GOAT (Greatest of all time) of shaming mountain climbers.
We’re headed toward a weird collision of memes, where everything becomes crabs, but nothing is one.
It May Fly, but does it???
Does it????
It does for a bit, and it’s more like a Junefly in my experience
In Canada they're junebugs
So you are telling me that Mayfly may or may not fly?
It may fly.
But may not fly in may.
Maybe.
Or Maybee?
Uh, I sure hope it does!
Hmmmm... The guide didn't say the mountain goat isn't a mountain... So I guess I'll go catch me me own mountain!
Sea Lion - not a Lion.
Also, does not taste like sea.
Also, got at least a B average.
Hermit Crab - what kind of hermit would be so obsessed with real estate deals?
I never see a hermit crab by itself, there's always at least a hundred of them together
a king crab is a hermit crab.
Bro needs to make a decision. Can't be both a king and a hermit.
Prairie oyster: Not an oyster
See also: Rocky Mountain Oysters
Mostly found in the ocean
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 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. :::
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?
I saw them on a menu in Calgary once.
Fascinating on King Cobras, I had no idea!
Yeah, it's little known but true fact that snakes do, indeed, not recognize any monarchical systems at all!
"I didn't vote for you!"
You don't vote for cobras!
It's well-known that snakes are right-wing libertarians.
So you're telling me that snakes know a lot about child support and the age of consent laws?
That's racist! Snake voice against snakeland!
cobras belong to the NAJA genus, while king cobra is ophiophagus(aka snake eater)
For anyone who’s actually wondering, with snakes, ‘king’ is generally used to denote snakes that eat other snakes (like kingsnakes, for example).
Forgot to include the Blue Tit
They have blue on their head and back and are part of the Paridae family.
So they don't belong on the cartoon as they are both blue (at least in a large part) and tits.
I thought a bird was a finger not tits 🤔
Classic. Love this one
I'm pretty sure when a snake has 'king' in it's name, that's because it eats other snakes.
Just like human kings do!
Snake: “Who voted for the Devour the Snakes party?”
Other snakes: “… I thought they would only eat the snakes I dislike…”
hence the genus name Ophiophagus.
Well, I didn't vote for 'im.
I really hope this doesn't apply to the birds as well!
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.
Almost like those names were made for morphological categorization rather than a phylogenetic categorization where we use a completely different naming scheme.
Sure, but then no comedy
They're called Mountain Goats 'cause they're the GOAT.
How is no one talking about the mountain chicken?
Or chicken of the woods?
Have you ever tested its courage on a mountain?
In parts of China where frogs are eaten, they call them 田雞 which literally means "field chicken" (although it can refer to several different species of frog)
turkey is fire chicken in catonese.
The Eastern Kingbird may perhaps rule over the eastern part of the west.
king crabs arnt really crabs, but a type of hermit crab.
Ooh that means hermit crabs aren't really crabs but actually hermit crabs!
Convergent evolution.
Also, horseshoe crabs are apparently arachnids now. The largest arachnids in fact
Also sea spiders arnt spiders at all, a sister group and basal of chelicterata. as many of them dont have 8 legs, some have 5, and others have 6.
Ah, more of an autonomous singleton.
If you look at the Wikipedia pages for many of these animals, they'll use terms like, "true eel," "true goat," and "true cobra." I guess that's how they generally handle animals that share common names despite not technically being in the correct family or whatever.
If you really need to be specific the scientific name or phylogenetic genus is there if you need to avoid the popular morphological name. Trying to fit the two together will always cause problems. For an example, see "fish."
Oh yes look at this bird with its mostly white plumage, except for the males during the mating season. What should I call it, I know I shall call it the black-headed gull. A fitting name. Hopefully we don't come across a different gull with a black head year round, or that name is going to be stupid, but I'm sure that won't happen.
I'm studying insects at the moment and came across a couple of cracking beetles:
Snowy owl: not made of snow.
Every Fish Owl: not a fish.
Every Eagle-Owl: not an eagle.
Every Hawk Owl: not a hawk.
Spotted owl: often can't be spotted (especially if she's inside tree hollows, good luck trying to spot her).
Elf owl: not an elf.
Fearful owl: not always fearful (especially when she's hunting her prey)
Laughing owl: unfortunately hasn't been laughing since the early 1900s (she's extinct 😢)
Golden masked owl: wears no golden mask.
(Also, any masked owl: wears no masks)
Eastern Grass owl: not made of grass.
Bubo virginianus: can be found dwelling thousands of kilometers away from the USian state, for example, in Brazilian Southeast.
Megascops sanctacatarinæ: can be found in Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Paraná, hence not just Santa Catarina.
Burrowing owls: generally uses burrows made by other animals (e.g. prairie dogs), so she isn't necessarily burrowing her burrow.
Athene noctua lilith (on her way to become a taxonomic species of her own, Athene lilith): unlikely to be the specific species related to the Mesopotamic Goddess (in fact, Otus and Bubo (esp. Bubo ascalaphus and Bubo cinerascens due to their geographical habitats) would be far more stronger candidates for the flanking owls depicted in the Burney Relief)
...and so on so forth. Lol
[email protected]
Peacock - not a vegetable.
But definitely a dick
pink robins are not actually robins.
Do people not consider May to be between Spring and Summer? Legit confused here.
Mayfly implies only active in May whereas it's active in a broader season of months
Depends on the hemisphere you live in.
All jokes based on the premise that the only true meaning of words for living things is the technical one are shit.
Yeah, I just hate it when big taxonomy is trying to push their scientific agenda into our language. Can't even call a racoon a "trash panda" any more because it'll upset the Chinese!
ive heard giant pandas are not pandas either as the red pandas they were names after are more related to trash pandas.
red pandas belongs in the family ailuridae, which is relared to the raccoon family part of a superfamily including mustelids, and procyonids(raccoons). ancestors fo red pands were carnivores.
[spraying crumbs] exactly!