Fish... or Not a Fish?

Fish / Not A Fish

The name of this has a great ring to it for a game.

This isn't fish related, but in New Orleans, I was taught to play 'Costume / No Costume' by some locals. It essentially consists of people-watching while guessing whether passers-by are in costume or not. I remember being impressed by folks who seem to hit the sweet spot in-between. But then, I was wearing a tutu and eating a sandwich.

Lamprey belongs to the phylum cyclostomata and not Pisces therefore lamprey are eel like creature and does not belong to fish

So why didnt you make a comment about eel being categorised as fish here??

Cyclostomata is not a phylum, is a subclass. Lampreys are chordates/vertebrates. It's long been called a fish, regardless of its taxonomy.

Lampreys are an ambiguous case, I don't think it's a good idea to include them in such a quiz.

Somehow I got fooled by the seahorse... And also we were taught sharks and ray were a different subclass but it was so drilled in like you have fish and the cartilaginous fish (chondrichthyes). Obviously in more elementary school level words, "you have fish and sharks and rays". That division was taught so early and strongly that I dont really see them as fish, which they obviously are, because they are definitrly not mammals or birds. But I cant help but to think of them separately (the seperation obviously exists, but as two subclasses chondrichthyes and osteichthyes)

Btw the word fish looks soooo weird now

Well, they are considered distinct classes, not even subclasses. In fact, there is the class of cartilaginous fish, the class of ray-finned fish and the... superclass? of the rest of vertebrates, which includes only eight species of lobe-finned fish.

That's what they always taught us at school, too! In my language, we even have a more reasonable name for them (fish - ryba, chondrichthyes - paryba) that implies that they're ancient, fish-like creatures.

I looked it up on Wikipedia and it seems that "fish" is a rather general term that is not part of the phylogenetic classification. It's only typological and as such includes sharks and rays etc. In Czech, however, the term for this is a little different (even though we often use the word for fish in this sense, as well, but it's done just for simplification and is considered incorrect).

What we mean by "fish" (ryby) in Czech is the paraphyletic superclass "osteichthyes" (bony fish). That's why we don't consider sharks as fish.

So the term fish isn't part of the scientific classification but it's a popular, demotic word which has a different meaning in each language. I find it quite interesting how the meaning of this word, which I thought was quite unambiguous, is so different in different cultures.

I got all of them except Seahorse.

Me too. I remember thinking, "Surely bearing live young disqualifies you from fishhood!"

("Thinking" is probably an exaggeration.)

This is a cute comment!

Look at the picture of an eel, it clearly has fins and a fish head, though the are long (sea snakes, on the other hand, are, well, snakes). Rays and Sharks are cartilaginous fish, which are considered a distinct class to bony fish. Anyway, both classes are what are commonly called "fish".

I am the fish master

heh. Depends on the mythology if it's even a sea creature or not. But then, if it is, those originally writing about it had no concept of what a fish was apart from whales, dolphins, et cetera.

This is scientifically accurate. The category of a fish is arbitrary.

Funny. I got most of them right. Only missed Lamprey (because it's ambiguous) and Silverfish which I should have translated because we call it the same way in French ("poisson d'argent")... by the way, its description is wrong, it is wingless, not winged ;) (and rather a protoinsect than a true insect but it doesn't really matter).

Fun quiz. Got all but seahorse, manta ray and eel.

Almost got silverfish wrong; that's what we call whitebait. Realised quickly that this one probably referred to the insect.

To fish or not to fish

I guess my knowledge on sea creatures is a little... FISHY! Ah? Ah? Hey, where's everybody going?

Error in the explanation, silverfish do not have wings (in fact nowhere in their evolutionary line is there a species that has wings. They diverged before wings evolved. Unlike other insects without wings that do come from a lineage after wings have evolved, but have lost them again along the way.)

Correction checkbox

( not sure if I checked the box or not, it's 2am and gone back and forward to all kinds of pages if I am not carefull it will be morning and I will have read up all about insects, evolution, flight dynamics and whatever I will come across, which links in with the previous subject.. Kind of what some people have with youtube, I have with research, before you know it you will have spend hours, going from one subject to the next.)

I got full in this, I guessed 18 of the as XD

I did much better than I thought I would! 14/22. :P

I got 21/22, guess I really like fish :D

You never resubmitted it

Out of curiosity, what's your basis for defining fish in this quiz? Are you going by general categorization in everyday language or do you count certain biological groups, and if yes which ones?

Guessed most of these and only got one wrong

same, got manta ray wrong

I just missed silverfish and manta ray!!

In the explanation, you say silverfish have wings. This is false, at least for the silverfish I’m thinking of. Please change it.

Wow - I never knew seahorses were fish!

Genuine question - what did people think seahorses were if not fish?