Edit: The Surprising Answer: Are Fish Truly Animals? Exploring the Debate Around Fish as Animals
https://jerrysfishingblog.com/the-surprising-answer-are-fish...
> Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, have myocytes and are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and grow from a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula, during embryonic development. As of 2022, 2.16 million living animal species have been described — of which around 1.05 million are insects, over 85,000 are molluscs, and around 65,000 are vertebrates. It has been estimated there are around 7.77 million animal species. Animals range in length from 8.5 micrometres (0.00033 in) to 33.6 metres (110 ft).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal
(Fish are in the category of vertebrates.)
And the animals I've trapped Have all become my pets And I'm living off of grass And the drippings from my ceiling It's okay to eat fish Cause they don't have any feelings - Something in the way
Could you give me some samples of how you and your friends refer to fish as animals?
Friend 2: In my fish tank I have fish, turtles, and snails.
"What kind of fish do you keep in your fish tank?"
"Oh, well, I actually have more (animals) than just fish in there."
"Oh really? What else (what "other animals") do you have?
"Turtles and frogs."
Why don't you ask Google if fish are animals? You absolute moron.
Here’s what Linnaeus wrote around 1758 (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisces_in_the_10th_edition_of_... ):
> Always inhabiting the waters; are swift in their motion and voracious in their appetites. They breathe by means of gills, which are generally united by a bony arch; swim by means of radiate fins, and are mostly covered over with cartilaginous scales. Besides the parts they have in common with other animals, they are furnished with a nictitant membrane, and most of them with a swim-bladder, by the contraction or dilatation of which, they can raise or sink themselves in their element at pleasure.
And here’s a modern take, from https://manoa.hawaii.edu/exploringourfluidearth/biological/f... :
> Fish are aquatic vertebrate animals that have gills but lack limbs with digits, like fingers or toes. Recall that vertebrates are animals with internal backbones.
If you've never heard anyone refer to fish as animals, you probably never took biology in grade school. I mean no offense, but literal children with single-digit ages know that fish are animals.
Google Product Taxonomy:
Food, Beverages, & Tobacco > Food Items > Meat, Seafood & Eggs
GPC:
Food/Beverage/Tobacco > Fish - Prepared/Processed (Frozen) > Attribute: Type of Fish = Tilapia
Versus:
Food/Beverage/Tobacco > Meat/Poultry/Other animals - Prepared/processed> ...
Your local grocery store probably is organized the same way. Many people think of fish flesh and meat as being different things.
Logically, eggs are meat. It's a giant animal cell. Culinarily speaking, meat refers to the tissue of mammals, particularly muscle tissue from pigs and cows and other ungulates. Fish usually excluded, poultry is often excluded, and offal may be excluded as well.
It's for the same reason why we call blackberries and strawberries both fruits (even though they are not). Culinarily speaking, they're similar. Used in a similar way. Deer, beef, and pork are interchangeable in many recipes. Beef, chicken, and salmon, are not.
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/good-question-why-isn...
The more closely you examine it, the more interesting you can make this sentence become :)
I have to imagine that the way this person describes fish is the least interesting thing about them, I don't know why we are subjecting them to such microscopic scrutiny.
It doesn't seem kind or curious to me, it seems like we're mocking them for having a slightly different conception of what category fish go into.
I’ve had a multi-decade interest in languages, though. IMO, it’s very natural to find patterns and associations like this and finding different ways of organizing taxonomies is fun.
I’ve also thought about why watermelons, pumpkins, cucumbers and bitter gourds all have the character 瓜 in them in Chinese. Not to mock speakers of language, but because I was nerdsniped. Have a nice day.
Have a good one.
"I went to the San Francisco zoo and aquarium and enjoyed the animals and the fish" is a perfectly acceptable sentence is it not?
I certainly didn't intend to presume to speak for you, apologies if I was overbearing.
It's like saying "I went to the San Francisco zoo and aquarium and enjoyed the animals and the big cats"
Fish are animals, and only the extremely uneducated would think otherwise. Now that this has been pointed out to you, perhaps you will start to speak correctly from this point on, and educate your friends and family to do the same.
Knowledge and education in the US is bad enough. The last thing we need are people advocating to use incorrect language and spreading misinformation.
I think maybe it's time to let this disagreement go. The stakes are so small, it's been 18 hours, and it's been a difference of opinion this entire time.
I'm happy to let it go, but if I get a reply that I feel warrants a reply, I will.
Even just "meat" by itself wouldn't have been interesting to me as that often is short for "red meat", but "animal meat" is.
Most of the people in my life have a strong interest in biology, my friends are nerds who are liable to use binomial names they picked up in Seek. But I doubt we're reflective of the broader culture. I think a lot of people couldn't tell you the difference between a kingdom from a phylum, and again, that's fine, it doesn't make them stupid or something.
See also this comment for some citations about how they are categorized in the context of commerce: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37542165
I had to scroll down about thirty images to find something that wasn't a mammal. It was a lizard. Most of the animals were fuzzy. (I may have missed some marsupials, to be fair.) I believe these search results are reflective of what people are looking for when they search "animal," and it isn't fish.
Are fish animals? I would agree. Is it normal to feel differently? I believe so.
I think maybe there is some overlap with op and the idea that "fish" is different from "meat." That's something that basically everyone said at some point.
If fish aren't meat but are animals, it should tell you how arbitrary these distinctions are.
You don't need to know any details of taxonomy as a discipline to know that fish are animals.
For the record, the original meaning of "meat," was just food, in general. So we have sweetmeats, mincemeat, etc.
During lent, Catholics don't eat meat on Fridays but can still eat fish. In fact, some people practice it all year long.
Q: Is common for English speakers using colloquial English to refer to fish as animals? They technically are animals, but people don't often refer to fish as animals in every day speech. Is this correct?
A: In colloquial English, people often categorize living organisms in ways that may not align perfectly with scientific classifications. For example, many people might refer to "animals" as creatures that are mammals, birds, or reptiles, but might not immediately include fish in that category during casual conversation. This is despite the fact that, scientifically speaking, fish are indeed animals.
In everyday speech, people might say things like "I saw some animals and fish on my hike," separating fish from what they casually refer to as "animals." This is similar to how people might separate "birds" or "insects" from "animals" in casual conversation, even though both birds and insects are technically animals as well.
So, while it's scientifically accurate to refer to fish as animals, colloquial usage often makes distinctions that aren't scientifically rigorous. This is a feature of everyday language, which is shaped more by cultural norms and common understanding than by scientific taxonomy.
What's even weirder is the amount of people that don't know insects are animals.
Some people have a really limited idea of what animal means.