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.
king crabs arnt really crabs, but a type of hermit crab.
Ooh that means hermit crabs aren’t really crabs but actually hermit crabs!
Ah, more of an autonomous singleton.
So you are telling me that Mayfly may or may not fly?
It may fly.
Hmmmm… The guide didn’t say the mountain goat isn’t a mountain… So I guess I’ll go catch me me own mountain!
They’re called Mountain Goats 'cause they’re the GOAT.
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
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
Not sure what the original source of this was, other than an old tumblr post
Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal.
Here’s the original tumblr thread just in case
Nobody has mentioned mountain oysters.
Is the guy on stage squatting one out?
Prairie oyster: Not an oyster
See also: Rocky Mountain Oysters
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.
Mostly found in the ocean
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.
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.
it’s just not in genus Capra
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 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.
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.
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.
now do it with fish!
Phylogenetically, “fish” are simply all non-tetrapod vertebrates.
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.
This is very jackdaw.
It’s clobberin’ time.
Wait until you find out what a fish is.
Found the python programmer.
Nice ouroboros definition
genus Capra
Ahh so thats what Capra Demon is
The goat head on the dude didn’t give it away?
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
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.
- 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.
We’re headed toward a weird collision of memes, where everything becomes crabs, but nothing is one.
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‽
Were.
Coconut crab - Not a coconut
Have you ever fucked a coconut?
Tried, once. Dick was too big.
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.
But, in fact, a hermit crab!
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.
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.
Porcelain crab – Not a crab.
And not made of porcelain
- Imitation Crab - a crab
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 🤔
The Eastern Kingbird may perhaps rule over the eastern part of the west.
