#fish essay
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fishyfishyfishtimes · 1 year ago
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What Is and Isn't a Fish: a List
A list of the animals I discussed in my fish essay, but for those who don't want to scroll through paragraphs of text to find out if an animal is or isn't a fish. Just CTRL+F your way through here!
I'll add onto here more animals whenever I get asked about them being fish. See my fish essay here!
Some notes before you proceed:
Yes, all tetrapods are fish! We are phylogenetically fish, as we are and our ancestors were lobe-finned fish! "Fish" in the phylogenetic sense is a paraphyletic group if you try to exclude tetrapods, so it is frankly impossible.
How come tetrapods aren't listed as fish then? Long answer, read my essay. Short answer, me and other fish accounts tend to operate on the morphological definition of fish, so does most of the world. Here I use the morphological definition of "fish".
Fish:
Jawless fish
Hagfish
Lamprey
Cartilaginous fish
Sharks
Dogfish
Whale shark
Chimaeras/Chimeras/Ghost sharks
Ratfish
Ray
Stingray
Skate
Ray-finned fish
Teleosts
Catfish
Eels
Moray eel
Seahorse
Sea dragon
Lobe-finned fish
Coelacanth
Lungfish
Not Fish:
Crustaceans
Krill
Shrimp
Crab
Crayfish/Crawfish/Crawdad
Lobster
Spiny lobster
Triops
Mantis shrimp
Barnacle
Isopod
Copepod
Shellfish
Mollusks/Molluscs
Gastropods
Sea snail
Sea slug
Snails and slugs in general
Sea angel
Sea hare
Sea bunny
Cephalopods
Octopus
Squid
Cuttlefish
Nautilus
Inkfish
Bivalves
Clam
Mussel
Scallop
Oyster
Chiton
Chelicerates
Horseshoe crab
Sea spider
Water mite
Diving bell spider
Cnidarians
Jellyfish/Sea jelly/Jelly
Coral
Sea anemone/Anemone
Siphonophores
Portugese man o' war
Echinoderms
Sea cucumber
Sea pig
Feather star
Sand dollar
Sea biscuit
Sea cookie
Brittle star/Serpent star
Sea urchin
Starfish/Sea star
Comb jelly
Lancelet
Tunicates
Sea squirt
Salp
Annelids
Bristle worm
Bobbit worm
Spoon worm
Giant tube worm
Bone-eating worm
Sea mouse/Sea mice
Feather duster worm
Christmas tree worm
Leech
Flatworm
Amphibians
Salamander
Amphiuma
Mudpuppy/Mud puppy
Waterdog
Olm
Axolotl
Siren
Frog
Toad
Tadpole
Caecilian
Reptiles
Sea snake
Water snake
Snakes in general
Sea krait
Turtle
Snapping turtle
Softshell turtle
Sea turtle
Terrapin
Marine iguana
Crocodilian
Crocodile
Alligator
Caiman
Gharial
Bird
Penguin
Seagull
Loon
Swan
Mammals
Whale
Orca
Baleen whale
Toothed whale
Dolphin
River dolphin
Porpoise
Narwhal
Beluga whale
Sperm whale
Pinniped
Seal
Sea lion
Leopard seal
Elephant seal
Walrus
Sirenian
Manatee
Sea cow
Dugong
Otter
Sea otter
Beaver
Hippo
Platypus
Muskrat
Water shrew
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redbean-nom · 6 months ago
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Cadets
(aka trash children, chaos children, and children who understand 98 is getting graded on this)
Inspired by @thefoundationproject! Closeups under the cut:
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jesse got this pic from jangotat:
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copepods · 9 months ago
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give them cozy hoodies NEOOWWWWW
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3584-tropical-fish · 3 months ago
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I’m such a sucker for the ways that a medium shapes a piece of art, and I’ve especially always been a sucker for the way that applies to Minecraft roleplay, so watching Whitepine has been phenomenal
There are so many moments where a character will do something that isn’t easily portrayed in Minecraft (thinking at the moment of the sequence where Pyro is waking up), and so the camera will cut away and we’re left to infer what is happening based on previous actions and sound design. And it works stunningly! It fits right in with the rest of the cinematography, what with there being so many shots of stillness and silence.
(Not to be too silt verses brained in a mcyt post, but it brought to mind something that jon ware said once about moments of silence being just as important as moments of speech when it comes to voice acting. I thought the silences in Whitepine were so, so impactful)
And that stillness was all perfectly contrasted in the last minute or so when the camera shakes for the first time! We get a moving shot too, which really hadn’t happened if I remember correctly. God, the cinematography of this was simply beautiful, and I am incredibly excited for the rest of Whitepine.
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honkceasar · 3 months ago
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Thinking about riptide 86 again. Shocker to absolutely no one
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windcarvedlyre · 5 months ago
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(Second fish is called Formalo Ray, sorry for the awkward crop)
God damnit. God fucking. This is a metaphor for Teyvat and otherworldly knowledge/the abyss, isn't it? Innocence giving way to greed, which could be described as a form of ambition, and wording that may imply the world will be consumed by it.
With an additional link between the colour gold and innocence, which is interesting considering that's associated with Celestia- and potentially Aether and Lumine as well.
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activatebutterflyshield · 7 months ago
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I was compelled last night and I’m quite honestly scared of whatever 11:59 PM me intended for those middle sections. At least I still know my colors when sleep deprived, and I’m sure someone else on here can fill the blank spots out better than I can on a full eight hours of shut-eye.
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sunrisespeedway · 18 days ago
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some kyle + colton doodles <3 happy belated birthday kyle !!
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squiddcakes · 2 years ago
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Ladies and gentlemen (and, creatures), I have finished my second PD villagers line-up! My favorites to do were Molly and Emmalyn they're just <3 (I also re-did my first line-up with some minor changes since my art skills have improved since).
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tigers1o1 · 9 months ago
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Strap in boys, famous tumblr user Tigers1o1, aka The FNC Guy, is going to begin relistening to JRWI Riptide soon in order to do an arc by arc micro analysis of Chip’s character, development and relationships to others throughout the campaign
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kvetchinglyneurotic · 1 year ago
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Thinking about love in season 2 of The Bear and how Carmy seems to conceptualize "love" and "fun" as opposites — because for him, they historically have been. It's something I really noticed in Fishes (2x06): how vocally and genuinely everyone in his family — including in-laws and functionally adoptive members like Richie and the Fak siblings — loves each other, but also how deeply entwined that love is with stress and chaos and criticism.
Natalie is nicknamed, by people who love her, after a mistake she made years ago and which is still held over her head when she tries to help in the kitchen. Donna loves her children and is loved by them in turn, but she's constantly on the edge of a meltdown, unable to offer or accept support. She spends hours cooking them a beautiful dinner, and then she drives a car through the wall. Michael reminds Carmy he loves him and tries to give him advice, and then he gets in a massive fight with Uncle Lee at the dinner table and starts throwing forks. Cooking is clearly so important to his family, but doing this activity they love, and especially doing it around the people they love, so rarely results in a feeling of "amusement or enjoyment."
And so it's no surprise, really, that the career Carmy loves is one that gives him panic attacks and made him throw up before work every day, or that he (and Natalie and Sydney) not only decide on such a radical transformation of the restaurant but give themselves a ridiculously sort timeline to complete it. He's stressed and miserable a lot of the time, but is it really something he loves if he doesn't feel that way?
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fishyfishyfishtimes · 1 year ago
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What Is and Isn't a Fish: an Essay and Guide by Fishyfishyfishtimes
A simplified list of the animals I discuss can be found here!
Hello folks! I created this post to have a kind of definitive essay/explanation of what is and isn't a "fish", starting with defining the term and going over animals that fit and don't fit the bill. As other fishblr artists, writers and educators must know too well, some people are confused about where this term begins and ends, mistaking other aquatic animals for fish. I have my fair share of arthropods and cnidarians as fish fact requests in my own askbox, heck, some years back a friend of mine asked me if clams were fish. The event that finally made me decide to write this was someone requesting that a fish-only account draw a crustacean, pondering to themselves if they count as fish.
I don't want to hold it against these people. It's impossible to know something when you've never been taught! So that's what I'm here to do, hopefully achieving a pretty correct and universal view ^^' If I make any mistakes please correct me. I'm learning all the same as everyone else is.
Definition of fish
Immediately, we run into a bit of a problem with the definition of fish. See, what the term "fish" means has fluctuated for centuries! For a long time, pretty much any animal that lived in water was a "fish" — I say "pretty much any" instead of "every" animal because for a long time sessile animals like sponges or corals were thought to be plants. This is why we have such remnants in our language like shellFISH, starFISH and jellyFISH, they lived in water so they were called such!
Occasionally these definitions would be changed for cultural convenience too. Many Christian churches take part in Lent, and in the Catholic church red and white meat is forbidden on Fridays and Ash Wednesday. In the Middle Ages, in my own country, Finland, this abstinence of red and white meat could last up to 140 days! To make fasting easier, many animals were labelled fish for convenience so they could be eaten as well. These newfound "fish" included seals, beavers and swans, pretty much just anything that was aquatic or semiaquatic in nature.
Nowadays just going off of looks or behaviour won't do, though. There has been much more of an effort to define fishes coherently based on their anatomy and phylogeny, which is great! Problem is, that's easier said than done: fishes are an extremely diverse group, and uh.. not really a single group, either. I'll show you:
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As you can see from this heavily simplified phylogenic tree, fishes are not a singular group like, say, mammals are! The animals that we group under "fish" are actually a part of several distinct lineages of animals, some more closely related to us than each other. Heck, tetrapods, which include amphibians, reptiles*, and mammals, are fish themselves! Phylogenetically speaking. Our ancestors were lobe-finned fish, and, well, you never stop being the previous taxon even when you evolve into something else. If you try to exclude tetrapods, no such unified group as "fish" exists. Still, when discussing fish, we tend to want to avoid talking about every vertebrate ever and instead focus on the very specific aquatic ones we mean when we say "fish". This is why many definitions of the term "fish" still exclude tetrapods, even if we share a common fishy ancestor. "Fish" describes more of a lifeform than it does a clade, much like the term "worm"!
(*birds are reptiles! This could be a whole post in and of itself, but I'm not here to write about that. Someone else has most likely taken up the task!)
Hooray, it's definition time! As stated previously, fishes are an extremely diverse group of thousands of species, and what terms might apply to the Atlantic cod may not apply to the yellowfin tuna or giant mudskipper, let alone a Pacific lamprey! Encyclopedia.com defines a fish as "an ectothermic chordate that lives primarily in water and possesses a cranium*, gills that are useful virtually throughout life, and appendages (if present) in the form of fins". Encyclopedia Britannica notes that "the term fish is applied to a variety of vertebrates of several evolutionary lines", instead highlighting five classes. These five classes are left partly unspecified, but ones that are mentioned are jawless fish, cartilaginous fish and bony fish (which still includes tetrapods, however), and the two classes left can be assumed to be two classes of extinct fish. Wikipedia defines a fish as "an aquatic, craniate**, gill-bearing animal that lacks limbs with digits". Tim M. Berra, an academy professor and ichtyologist, defines fish as "poikilothermic***, aquatic chordate with appendages (when present) developed as fins, whose chief respiratory organs are gills and whose body is usually covered with scales".
(*cranium=upper part of the skull **craniate=an animal with a skull ***poikilothermic=an animal whose internal temperature varies considerably)
From these more or less detailed definitions we can gather many defining features for fish: a cranium-having chordate, primarily aquatic, gill-bearing and uses gills as their main respiratory organ, lacking any limbs with digits, instead having their limbs be in paired and unpaired fins when present. Most fish are also ectothermic, meaning their body temperature is determined by their environment, but some can heat up parts of their body or their entire body in the case of the opah. Most fish also have scales, but not all, just like how most fish are fully aquatic, but some like lungfish or mudskippers can spend considerable time out of the water. Such is the way of these magnificent and diverse animals!
Finally, with all this out of the way, we can get into...
What is a fish!
Here, I will be detailing animals that are fish! Well, at least the broadest strokes; there are more than 30 000 fish species and if I listed them all we'd be here all life. I shall instead go over the major classes and list, in short, some groups that belong in them.
Jawless fish (Superclass Cyclostomi)
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Jawless fish are often a topic of debate, especially in matters of their relation to each other and to jawed vertebrates. Evidence seems to point to hagfish and lampreys being closest related to one another and to lampreys being more closely related to jawed vertebrates than to hagfish (which would make hagfish craniates but not vertebrates). In the phylogeny tree above I decided to portray hagfish and lampreys as a monophyletic group, as molecular studies and microRNA analysis seems to point to a monophylegic superclass. Please note that this could go either way, though.
Jawless fish is a group containing two extant fishes, hagfish (class Myxini) and lampreys (order Petromyzontiformes)! Jawless fish are more "primitive" than other groups, for example both lack true vertebrae and scales. Still, they both have craniums and gills and they are aquatic, and so they have earned their place among fish!
Cartilaginous fish (class Chondrichthyes)
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Surprisingly, I've found that this group has a lot of confusion surrounding it. I have received many a request confirming if sharks are fish, or asking if I'd cover a shark "even if it's not a fish". So I'll say it now: good news, sharks are indeed fish! So are their cousins, rays, skates and chimaeras, also known as ghost sharks! All of these fish have a primarily cartilaginous skeleton, tooth-like dermal denticles and lack gill covers and a swim bladder. Out of all the sharks, I also want to highlight that the whale shark, despite its confusing name, is a shark and not a whale. So, it is a fish!
Ray-finned fish (class Actinopterygii)
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Name any fish, and there's a 96% chance the species name you said belongs to a ray-finned fish. Unless, like, you really like sharks. But this isn't about them.
Ray-finned fish are the biggest group of fish and incredibly diverse! It has your seahorse, your pufferfish, your bass, your tuna, your anglerfish, your clownfish, your salmon, your sturgeon, your lanternfish, your perch, your oarfish, your gar, your sardine, your moray eel... and this is only a tiny, tiny fraction of the groups that belong to this class! Defining features of ray-finned fish are that they tend to have a swim bladder and a bony skeleton (some exceptions though. Sturgeons, for one, have evolved a cartilaginous skeleton but they're still ray-finned fish). The largest group of ray-fins, the teleosts, also have leptoid scales, which are thinner and more flexible and grow with growth rings.
I want to bring special attention to some members of the ray-finned fish which tend to have a lot of confusion surrounding them and their heritage: eels and seahorses. Many people think these two are not fish due to their strange anatomy, like lack of scales or (many) fins and their elongated bodies, and I wouldn't blame them! Seahorses belong to family Syngnathidae, which also includes seadragons and pipefish. Eels, meanwhile, make up the order Anguilliformes. All of these long friends of ours are fish!
Lobe-finned fish (clade Sarcopterygii)
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I shall merely focus on the fishy fishy fish individuals of this class, which excludes tetrapods. Lobe-finned fish house the two extant species of coelacanths, and six extant species of lungfish! These fish are bony and their fins are placed at the tips of fleshy, lobelike stalks, resembling the limbs of tetrapods. It is thought that the common ancestor of coelacanths and lungfish and tetrapods had similar structures that then became the four limbs the members of our clade typically have. Coelacanths and lungfish are wonderful fishes and deserve a lot of love and respect, not only because they're our closest cousins but because they're unique and we have so much to learn about them!
So, these are the fishes! There are also extinct groups of fish, namely class Placodermi (armoured fish) and class Acanthodii (spiny "sharks"). I'm moreso an extant fish account however, and so I shall move onto...
What isn't a fish?
Now we get into the real meat of this post. Without further ado, here are some aquatic friends of ours that can be mixed up with fish very often!
Crustaceans (subphylum Crustacea)
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Many of our hard-shelled many-legged friends belong here! Crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill, isopods, triops, barnacles, copepods, you name it! Even though many crustaceans are aquatic or semiaquatic and have gills, you'll find that they're invertebrates that lack an internal skeleton (so no cranium, not even vertebrae)! We still love them though!
Mollusks (phylum Mollusca)
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Creatures both soft and hard-shelled! Cephalopods like octopuses, squid, nautilus and cuttlefish, bivalves like clams, mussels, oysters or scallops, gastropods like sea slugs and snails and chitons go here! These friends of ours are also aquatic and have gills, some even have the suffix -fish (cephalopods used to be called inkfish, even!), but their lack of an endoskeleton is even more obvious than the crustaceans'. They're invertebrates, and therefore not fish!
Chelicerates (subphylum Chelicerata)
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This group has many animals that are very hard to mistake for fish, namely spiders and scorpions, but horseshoe crabs and sea spiders are two groups of extant marine chelicerates! Both groups are aquatic, and horseshoe crabs have gills. However, they're both invertebrates, lacking a cranium or vertebrae. Other aquatic chelicerates exist, but they're usually very small, like water mites.
Cnidarians (phylum Cnidaria)
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This phylum has the sessile corals and sea anemones and the usually more mobile jellyfish and siphonophores (includes the infamous Portugese man o' war!). I imagine corals and sea anemones are mistaken for fish less due to their sessile nature, but they're good to bring up nevertheless. None of these animals have a backbone, or, any bones really. They lack gills, they lack fins, they even lack the bilateral shape of fish. Jellyfish, despite the name, are indeed not fish! Some people suggest the name sea jellies be used for them instead, and I think it's much cuter.
Echinoderms (phylum Echinodermata)
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Animals like starfish, sea urchins, brittle stars, sand dollars, sea cucumbers and feather stars go here. It seems that this pesky "-fish" -suffix is hard to shake off, as now we have the starfish. Once again, all of these slow-moving bottom-dwelling friends of ours are invertebrates, as they lack vertebrae or a cranium. Interestingly though, they are among our closest invertebrate relatives! So we ought to give them some props for that. I also want to mention that starfish can also be called sea stars, which ought to lessen confusion about their being too.
Comb jellies (phylum Ctenophora)
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Comb jellies look a lot like jellyfish, but they belong in their own unique phylum! They have the same deal going on; they are invertebrates, they lack gills, they lack a cranium, they are simply aquatic.
Lancelets (subphylum Cephalocordata) and tunicates (subphylum Tunicata)
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A double feature, because I wanted to save space didn't want these guys to be all alone! Lancelets and Tunicates, like sea squirts and salps, are chordates, which you can find in the phylogenic tree I drew all the way in the definitions section. They share many a feature with vertebrates, like a bilateral bodyplan, a notochord at some stage of life and a post-anal tail, but I'm afraid they're still not fish. They lack a cranium and their notochord does not develop into a vertebral column! Sorry friends, you tried. We can still hang out at the chordate convention.
Annelids (phylum Annelida)
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The infamous bobbit worm, bone-eating worms, sea mice, giant tube worms, feather duster worms, spoon worms, bristleworms in general, leeches... many, many worms go here! Pretty self-explanatory: they are invertebrates, even when they live in water. They're extremely cool invertebrates too! I suggest taking a look at some of them, there's many interesting species.
Flatworms (phylum Platyhelminthes)
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Flatworms are another very diverse group of worms, having many species both terrestrial and aquatic, however mostly I want to put attention into the free-swimming marine flatworms. They may swim beautifully (and fence with grace), but they are nevertheless invertebrates! Flatworms can live a variety of different lifestyles, from predators to parasites.
Amphibians (class Amphibia)
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We've made it into vertebrates now! Amphibians include frogs, salamanders, and caecilians. While they have limbs with digits in their adulthood*, they can be easily confused for fish in their larval stages! This is no surprise, as they use gills to breathe underwater and tadpoles lack any limbs at all for a while. Many amphibians later transition into a terrestrial or semiaquatic way of life and lose their gills, not to mention gain their digit-having limbs.
(*excluding caecilians)
...Well, many amphibians do this, but not all. It's important to mention there are also species of aquatic salamanders which can bear great resemblance to fish with their elongated bodies! Amphiumas, which are sometimes mistakenly called "conger eels" (which is an actual species of fish), are aquatic salamanders with small residual limbs and both working gills and lungs. Giant salamanders and mudpuppies/waterdogs have lungs and gills as well, and lead an aquatic lifestyle — olms are close relatives of mudpuppies. Sirens, meanwhile, lack hind limbs and only have small front limbs, along with retaining their gills in adulthood. Among aquatic salamanders I also want to bring up one most often talked about species: the axolotl! They remain in their larval form, have external gills and lead an aquatic lifestyle. It can be hard to tell with aquatic salamanders sometimes, but these friends of ours are amphibians and not fish, even if they've rejected the land life.
Caecilians are a bit less known overall, but they can also cause a lot of confusion due to their long, limbless body. While most caecilians live underground, some are aquatic in nature, and can therefore be mistaken for fish! However, caecilians breathe via the use of their lungs and through the skin and don't have any gills at all.
Reptiles (class Reptilia)
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Most commonly mistaken for fish in this group are sea snakes, sea kraits and water snakes, sea turtles, turtles, penguins, and other (semi)aquatic birds. Sea snakes and water snakes bear a very strong resemblance to eels, but they are indeed just snakes adapted to an aquatic or a semiaquatic lifestyle! The same goes for sea turtles, turtles overall, and penguins. They all need to breathe air and they lack fins, even if their flippers, webbed feet and built-in paddles may look like fins! They also have wholly different types of scales (or feathers!!) than what fish have, even if they share the feature. I assume that other aquatic reptiles, like the marine iguana and crocodilians are better read as reptiles thanks to their limbs with digits, but I want to give them a reptile shoutout anyway. They’re aquatic or semiaquatic, but they are air-breathers and fin-lackers all the same!
I also want to mention one specific extinct group of reptiles, ichtyosaurs! These marine reptiles were rather shark- or dolphin-like in appearance, which is actually a really good example of convergent evolution! Like all other reptiles, they also needed to breathe air and they had... erm... well, I'm not sure if I can call the bones in their flippers digits, but, that's what they used to be, so...? They were cool reptiles and among my favourites! There were many other aquatic reptiles too, but I will only mention just the ones now. A paleontology account would be better-suited to list you allll the marine reptiles.
Mammals (class Mammalia)
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Our home class! Some of the aquatic friends we have in this class include whales like baleen and beaked whales, dolphins (orcas go here), porpoises, belugas, narwhals and sperm whales, pinnipeds like seals, sea lions, walruses, and sirenians like manatees, (occasionally known as sea cows) and dugongs! We also have some semiaquatic buddies like hippopotamids, otters, beavers and platypuses! Whales and pinnipeds especially often cause a lot of confusion due to their very streamlined, fishy appearance. They are, however, air breathers that feed their young with milk (some dolphin calves are even born with some hair), and their ancestors were land mammals! The same goes for pinnipeds and sirenians too. True seals, fur seals and sea lions still have fur even! Hippos, otters, beavers and platypuses are a bit more obvious as mammals with their fur and.. distinct air-breathing.. but I wanted to mention them anyway. Their adaptations to aquatic life are just one example of how fascinating evolution can be!
And here we are! A hopefully comprehensive list of fishes and non-fishes, beginning with the ever-shifting story of the term "fish", phylogeny, and why some animals are called fish when they really aren't. I hope you have found useful and interesting information in this post, and perhaps learned something new! I bid you a farewell! :D
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trainingdummyrabbit · 1 year ago
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cant come in to work today they put on poems of a machine again. yea its gonna be an all day thing. sorry
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here-there-be-drag0ns · 2 years ago
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due to personal reasons i will be donning my seal-coat and escaping my responsibilities by returning to the sea
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3584-tropical-fish · 1 month ago
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I’ve said it before and I’m sure others have, but whitepine 2 once again uses stillness so well. We have time to linger on shots and moments. Pyro leaves the frame and we stay for several moments, looking on an empty alleyway. We stay sitting in the stillness with him while Ivory moves around. Ivory stands still at the edge of the forest, and we take the time to watch her walk out into it
And that contrasts so well with the moments where we aren’t still! Time passes and we’re barely there as Ivory helps out in the kitchen, the music and the shots going by fast as Ash (I think was their name? I’ve not gotten everyone down yet) yells out short, chopped instructions. Everything feels so, so frantic, and then all of a sudden everything is still again. And I love it
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deadqueernoldor · 6 months ago
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Thinking thoughts about those from Cuivienen and how they later treated the Valar, especially after Cuivienen was destroyed.
I imagine a foundation of sorrow and a layer of betrayal and pettiness. They had promised safety. And how did it turn out? Kin of Tata and Tatie their first leaders, slain in Valinor by the Dark Hunter from which the Valar promised protection in Valinor.
And then, the War of Wrath comes and with it the destruction of Cuivienen.
If any of those were re-embodied in Aman, I wonder if they make it a point to always turn their back to Valar and Maiar. I wonder if they only speak in the tongue they had first devised all those millennia ago and spoke in Cuivienen before time and different kindreds changed the tongue, not Sindarin or Quenya from the Great Journey's time or later. I wonder if they sing songs in their ancient tongue, songs about the beauty and unsullied health of Cuivienen every time any of the Ainur are near.
I wonder if the Valar feel any shame when those who they once looked upon in wonder and love gaze back at them with indifference or disgust.
#i am so normal about the elves of cuivienen feeling the betrayal worse than anyone in aman including feanor and co#they PROMISED safety from Morgoth and orcs. they PROMISED beautiful lands without sorrow. they PROMISED all that and down the line#decided Mogoth had played pretend well enough to warrant him probation during which he immediately killed again#returns to the east and sullies what beauty had been left. and then even from afar he manages to hurt those from cuivienen with the WoW#dont get me wrong i think the cuivienen elves knew there had to be war against Morgoth for him to be defeated. but the fact that the valar#decided not to only abandon those of beleriand for over 5 centuries before that AND once the war is won also abandon#those of cuivienen to watch their beloved lands drown without as much a warning must sting.#i want there to be a concious decision of 'you abandoned your promise to us twice why should we ever trust you again even in your own lands'#a 'you promised our people who folowed you safety. you didnt deliver. you promised us freedom from morgoth. you didnt deliver. in fact your#inadequacy and decision to let him loose made everything worse for us in the east. why should we ever listen to anything you say'#and thus a concious effort to shed association with Aman as the Valar govern it. they cant leave. the way is shut. but they can establish#a sticking to their own tongue and traditions without the interference of the Ainur. they've done enough. not enough and yet quite enough.#the avari are welcome should some be reborn.#i never know if i want those of cuivienen to be reborn in aman or fade into unexistence entirely both have merit and sexy hcs#but if any were reborn i think they would get along fairly alright with the exiles. kinslaying exiles? 50/50 depending on repentance#but anyone who does not believe the valar's words and respects their decision to not ever be associated with them is welcomed neutral-warmly#they teach them songs about cuivienen. the sweet waters. beautiful meadows. the birdsong that sounds extra cheerful. fish in abundance#and in turn they get taught songs about beleriand. bewitched forests. victorious battles. wild rivers. frothy shores.#it is seen as an honour to be taught a song about Cuivienen by the people who sat by its shores once. in their language/dialect/whatever#instead of in sindarin or quenya. some millenia into the 4th age tou have a surge of ppl speaking cuivienen dialect#it becomes a clear distinction of who still has fondness left for the valar and who would feel indifferent if they vanished suddenly.#this tag essay has gotten way too long again. sorry besties it will happen again.#tag essay longer than the fucking post???? help#tolkien headcanons
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