>says whales are fish fucking droped lol
>>24848223ok
>>24848223It's a metaphor for how whales aren't actually fish
>>24848223>here's all the scientific facts for why whales should not be considered fish>but I'm going to call them fish because that's how it is in the BibleOne of the funniest passages in the book desu. First: The uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his System of Nature, A.D. 1776, Linnæus declares, “I hereby separate the whales from the fish.” But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the year 1850, sharks and shad, alewives and herring, against Linnæus’s express edict, were still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the Leviathan.The grounds upon which Linnæus would fain have banished the whales from the waters, he states as follows: “On account of their warm bilocular heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem intrantem feminam mammis lactantem,” and finally, “ex lege naturæ jure meritoque.” I submitted all this to my friends Simeon Macey and Charley Coffin, of Nantucket, both messmates of mine in a certain voyage, and they united in the opinion that the reasons set forth were altogether insufficient. Charley profanely hinted they were humbug.Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me.
>>24848251also saying that sperm whales are the biggest, when blue whales are in fact bigger (which he seems to conflate with fin-backs)
>>24848258Blue whales were semi-mythical at the time. We know relatively little about them even today.
>>24848223My mother is a fish.
>>24848258finbacks were the biggest at the time. blue whales weren't quite discovered.>>24848251>here's all the scientific facts for why whales should not be considered fishwas why it seemed intentional to me. partly reads as a joke, partly as a continuation of those impossibilities and inconsistencies that signal ishmael's mythologizing, not only painting whales as biblical but also less human.
>>24848223they thought they were fish back then
>>24848223You know, I always thought the only reason why Moby Dick is filled with pointless whaling trivia was because Melville wanted to publish a book on whaling but either scientific academia (or whatever it equivalent was) thought he was a retard or that there was no public for it.
>>24848223stfu nerd
>>24848311You are the retard.
>>24848223He knew it would rile up autistic moderns like (You), OP.
>>24848223>droped
>>24848223Melville was right all along, whales are a type of lobe-finned fish
>>24849348shut up you clade-loathing freak
>>24848251"mammis lactantem" is kind of a clincher t.b.h.
>>24848460Kek
>>24848223"Fish" isn't a real taxonomic clade. There is no consistent line in the sand you can draw to separate "fish" and "not a fish". Either you exclude some things that are very obviously fish, or you include some things that are very obviously not fish. So, by some definitions, a whale is a fish. Even humans can be considered fish. Or not.
Call me Fishmael.
>>24848251Phylogenetically, we are fish as are the whales.After all, we have fish ancestors in common with modern fish and we aren't less related to our fishy ancestors than they are. Either we are fish or these fish aren't fish.
>>24850925slimy fins typed this post
Am I a fish?
>>24851071Your mother is. Or maybe not? I'm still not clear on the whole whale thing.
