As I was reading I kept waiting for gills to be mentioned, and then it was satisfying to see that it was one of the two un-dolphinlike characteristics in the dictionary definition. I figured, if someone asks me “how do fish get oxygen if they live underwater?” I’m going to say “because they have gills,” not “because they either have gills or return to the surface to breath.”
But then, vaniver’s comment mentioning sharks got me thinking. What if someone asks “do fish have bones?” The more I think about it, the harder it is for me to think of sharks as the same kind of thing as salmon.
I don’t know what lesson to draw from this, except that I find it uncomfortable, want better words, and am suddenly motivated to learn fish taxonomy, a subject that never interested me before, just for vocabulary that leaves me more mentally comfortable.
As I was reading I kept waiting for gills to be mentioned, and then it was satisfying to see that it was one of the two un-dolphinlike characteristics in the dictionary definition. I figured, if someone asks me “how do fish get oxygen if they live underwater?” I’m going to say “because they have gills,” not “because they either have gills or return to the surface to breath.”
But then, vaniver’s comment mentioning sharks got me thinking. What if someone asks “do fish have bones?” The more I think about it, the harder it is for me to think of sharks as the same kind of thing as salmon.
I don’t know what lesson to draw from this, except that I find it uncomfortable, want better words, and am suddenly motivated to learn fish taxonomy, a subject that never interested me before, just for vocabulary that leaves me more mentally comfortable.