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Watch nobody actually get angry at this. It would be just my luck
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this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2026
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Yep, that would be the fish clade. The only way to draw a clade that includes all extant animals we'd consider fish is to include all of vertebrata. You could also consider the fish clade to just be ray-finned fishes if you want, but then sharks, rays, coelacanths, mudskippers, etc would not be fish, which seems absurd to me (but is also cladistically valid).
But fish are not a clade. Mice are not fish. Birds are not fish. I don't know how else to explain it to you. Do you understand that there can be terms for groups of living things that are not clades or that have no scientific basis whatsoever? Did you know that there is no difference between frogs and toads except that, broadly speaking, we call the ugly warty ones toads?
You are right, but... Then there's logic. People say cartilaginous fish (like sharks) are fish and bony fish (like carps) are fish, the only clade that contains both is the vertebrates, hence language is dumb and we all should hug each other.
WHALE IS FISH, NO HUG (unless...?)
Sure they are, smallest clade that includes coelacanths and hagfish, which would be vertebrata.
I can find plenty of places with authority that describe Vertebrata as a clade. I can't find any that describe fish as a clade.
If fish are a clade, people uninfluenced by internet memery would refer to all vertebrates as fish, yet I'm pretty sure this also doesn't happen. If the guy in the restaurant today had told me that the varying fish on the menu was not sea bream, but a sodding gecko, I'd have been pretty miffed.
I'm confused why you think the common usage of the word fish has any relevance to a discussion about choosing a definition for a fish clade. I'm not making the claim that this is how people use fish in common usage. My claim is that if you want to draw a fish clade, the only consistent way to do that is to include all of vertebrata. Scientists defining clades don't concern themselves with how laymen group animals together, because that would be dumb.
My point is that scientists do not define a fish clade precisely because to do so would be so far removed from the common understanding of the word fish, and there being a different term for the same thing to hand.
And this is the point I'm making because I believe further up the thread people were saying stuff based on a false impression that you had to think of "fish" cladistically in some situation or other, and hence that some creatures were fish when in fact they are not.