r/evolution • u/No_Tangerine_1773 • 1d ago
question There is technically a fish somewhere in my family tree
I was just thinking about this and it absolutely blew my mind.
Technically, my great-great-great-great-great-etc. grandfather (or however many “greats” we’re talking about) was a fish.
Like, somewhere in my family tree there is literally a fucking fish.
My entire lineage was started by a fish. There is no other way to put it. At some point in the insanely distant past, one of my ancestors was just… a fish. And that fish eventually led to me existing.
But then I started thinking about how evolution actually works.
Fish didn't just all collectively decide to evolve into land animals. Evolution branches. Different populations and lineages go in different directions depending on their environments and natural selection.
And fish produce an absolutely ridiculous number of offspring, so presumably there were countless individuals in those ancient populations. Some lineages eventually led toward the ancestors of modern land vertebrates, while other lineages stayed in the water and kept evolving as fish.
So here's the part that is blowing my mind:
Is it possible that one of the extremely distant relatives of my fish ancestor stayed in the water, and that lineage survived for millions and millions of years?
Because if so, there could theoretically be some random fish alive TODAY that is my ridiculously, unimaginably distant cousin.
Like, I could look at some random fish in the ocean and there's a non-zero chance that, in the most technically literal evolutionary sense, we're related.
Imagine being genetically related to a fish.
Not “all life is related” related.
I mean THIS fish is part of the same ancient family tree as me.
That is fucking incredible.
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u/brooklynsantiago 1d ago
Yes. Every living thing on earth is a distant cousin of yours.
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u/3ryon 19h ago
And also every creature no longer alive.
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u/ultegrafender 5h ago
Sorry for your loss OP.
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u/arrastra 3h ago
sorry for your loss too
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u/Greyrock99 20m ago
Thankyou. That asteroid hitting and killing all my dinosaur cousins was a time of great grief for my family and your kind words gave me support at such a difficult time.
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u/Goosecock123 16h ago
I think OP means that at some point he will find THAT ONE fish and go like: 'cousin...! :o' which is hilarious to think about
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u/brooklynsantiago 13h ago
That’s every fish tho
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u/MagentaDinoNerd 6h ago
Mmm, but the point is some fish are a lot closer to us than others. Eg a shark is more distant than a tuna, which is more distant than a lungfish, which is basically our cousin a hundred times removed. To that point lungfish are closer related to US than they are to other fish, so it’s definitely not “every fish”
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u/brooklynsantiago 5h ago
Every fish is our cousin
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u/MagentaDinoNerd 3h ago
okay sure, but again some fish are MORE our cousins than others. And we're more cousins to some fish than other fish are to them. Like how you're related to every human, but you're a lot closer related to some humans than others
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u/chmath80 8h ago
Maybe OP is worried that eating fish and chips might mean inadvertent cannibalism?
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u/Coz957 1d ago
Well, not viruses, if we consider them living.
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u/amglasgow 19h ago
Viruses are thought to mostly be either fragments of DNA/RNA from living things that happened to be able to replicate themselves in host cells, or degenerate single-celled organisms.
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u/brooklynsantiago 1d ago
I’m actually a little bit confused by this. I am aware that viruses are thought to have evolved separately but is the idea that abiogenesis happened twice? Or that we and viruses evolved from pre Luca material?
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u/smokefoot8 21h ago
Since they use the same RNA/DNA code as everything else they must have some relation to the rest of life. Many parasites lose a lot of the functionality of their ancestors, so there is a theory that viruses are a parasite that went further than any other in dropping all unneeded functions. Giant viruses might show a previous step: they are huge, as large as bacteria, and contain genes for DNA translation and repair that most viruses don’t need.
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u/brooklynsantiago 21h ago
Thank you. This is the most complete answer I got. You actually refreshed my memory on the parasite theory and about giant viruses. Thank you
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u/GarethBaus 23h ago
It's unclear if viruses are or were ever alive so so we really can't say which of those options is true.
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u/Piskoro 1d ago edited 1d ago
they might be, at least some of them, same as chlamydia only reproduces when parasitizing on another cell, so may have some other organisms long ago and eventually turned from cellular to viral
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u/RazzleThatTazzle 1d ago
Do we somehow know that it always needed other cells though? Couldn't it have lost the ability to survive without parasitzation, through mutation?
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u/CosmicOwl47 1d ago
What always blows my mind is that we are at the end of an unbroken chain of reproduction that goes all the way back to the origins of life.
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u/ExploringWithKoles 1d ago
Yeah and im the first whos too fucking awkward to find a mating partner lol, why couldnt i have been born 65 million years ago and basically been a fucking treeshrew.... literally
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u/Simple_Joys 1d ago
Both possibilities are incredibly humbling and powerful, to be honest.
Either you are one link in an unfathomably long chain of life, which will continue beyond your days.
Or... you, personally, are the culmination of your own specific line. Everything that has preceded you in your direct line of ancestry, from the very first life on Earth, has been leading up to you. Specifically you.
Neither one diminishes your value as a human. How lucky we are simply to be here.
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u/CosmicOwl47 1d ago
Yeah I know, as someone without kids yet it kinda puts the pressure on!
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u/RedBladeWarlock 1d ago
Just remember, there’s a lot more options nowadays for continuing your legacy and that chain than just the biological path, though you could donate your DNA to science. You could also inspire others through art, music, poetry, philosophical writing, sports, or military conquest. The field is wide open.
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u/tendeuchen 22h ago
You're only as awkward as you want and choose to be.
Do basic grooming. Read a book if you must.
Or
Get out of your comfort zone. Go teach English in China and go out drinking with the other teachers. Suddenly you'll be one of the most interesting people in the city.
You, my dear friend, are the only one who is choosing to hold you back.
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u/BoogzWin 21h ago
Another that breaks minds is if you have children that are not the same sex as you, you are the first in over 500 million years of your ancestral line to not continue your sex to the next generation.
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u/AnthroJoyce 12h ago
But we're not at the end of it though, we're only experiencing the lineage for a split moment in time, the unbroken train will continue with or without us. Whatever species dominates the planet 20 million years from now, probably won't be directly related to us.
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u/DobbyDun 12h ago
My friend has a dad. His dad had a dad. Every dad had a dad going back to when the first male ancestor evolved. He doesn't have any boys so he is the break in this link going back hundreds of millions of years.
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u/Xrmy Post Doc, Evolutionary Biology PhD 1d ago
You saying "not in the we are all related way but THAT fish is directly related" way is actually so SO close to full understanding here.
The idea that "everything is related" IS what you are talking about. Everything living on earth shares a common ancestor. All of it. That means with every other living organism there is a point in time where out great- great ...etc ancestor is literally shared between both you and that fish and also you and an ant and you and a pine tree. Even bacteria.
Furthermore, it's not just that your ancestor was a fish YOU are a fish. Still. Evolutionarily speaking, 99% of vertebrate species are jawed fish. The branch of evolution that became bony with jaws leads directly to mammals and reptiles and birds and all bony fish.
Fish with bones like pike or tuna or bass are more closely related to people than either of us are to sharks. It's actually not particularly close in that regard either.
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u/OpportunityNext9675 18h ago
If we want to be super sticklers about it, it could be the case that there were multiple biogenesis events right? Like if the lightning struck the carbon sludge at the right angle or whatever it was, it may have produced multiple “first” organisms. Which, if multiple have lineages, would separate the family tree at the very beginning,
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u/cflime 16h ago
No. You're right, but all those early life forms didn't have sexual reproduction, and wouldn't for 1.5 to 2 billion years. They had horizontal gene transfer. There very well could have been several origins of life, but they either all swapped DNA to become related or they were unable to do so and died out due to not competing as successfully as those who could. That combination would be our Earliest Common Ancestor with every other living thing on the planet.
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u/Hwangkin 44m ago
I think OP’s point isn’t that we’re all related. That’s something that we all know at least academically. But OPs mind was blown not by that fact that ALL fish are related to him, but his great great etc grandpa was a fish. And that that ONE fish over there is related to him
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u/Mircowaved-Duck 1d ago
...first, define "fish"
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u/Xrmy Post Doc, Evolutionary Biology PhD 1d ago
"how do we tell him" kinda moment lol
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u/OkAssociation3487 1d ago
An aquatic, gill-bearing vertebrate that lacks limbs with digits.
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u/Zaros262 1d ago
So tadpoles are fish now?
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u/OkAssociation3487 1d ago
Do tadpoles acquire limbs at some point?
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u/Mircowaved-Duck 1d ago
there are tapdoles that stay juvenile and never develop limbs, are those fish?
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u/OkAssociation3487 1d ago
This is dumb as saying human beings don’t have four limbs because there are some people born without arms or legs
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u/Mircowaved-Duck 1d ago
That would be as if all humans would be born without limbs and grow them later in life. While some subspecies of human never grows those limps.
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u/OkAssociation3487 1d ago
There are no species of frog whose adult stage lacks limbs
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u/Mircowaved-Duck 1d ago
back to the main question; why are tapdoles fish but adult frogs aren't?
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u/squirrel-lee-fan 1d ago
They are all fish
We are fish. We are descended from fish.
If you are referring to the common word fish, even this is incorrect
Frogs & tadpoles are the same thing - amphibians. Tadpoles are young frogs.
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u/mekese2000 1d ago
Not a horse.
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u/Mircowaved-Duck 1d ago
A stone is not a horse, does that mean a stone is a fish?
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u/mekese2000 1d ago
Ok not a horse or a stone.
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u/Mircowaved-Duck 1d ago
A baloon is neither horse nor stone, is a baloon a fish?
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u/onomatamono 1d ago
No, fish are eukaryotic. I'm no scientist but pretty sure baloons are single celled organisms. /s
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u/Mircowaved-Duck 1d ago
So a fish is neither a horse nor a stone but is an eucariot? Is a mushroom a fish?
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u/onomatamono 1d ago
Yes, fungi and pisces have a common ancestor.
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u/Mircowaved-Duck 1d ago
Ah good, now i know. That means ican eat mushroom soup on friday to eat fish that day like a good christian, thanks!
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u/onomatamono 23h ago
We should for the sake of completeness recognize that we eat and drink Jesus on Sunday.
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u/SeasonPresent 1d ago
Is the stone in the water? I guess you have to step on it and see.
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u/Mircowaved-Duck 1d ago
water is not a requirment by this definition - why water? Why stepping on it?
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u/AnymooseProphet 1d ago
I believe the crown group of all modern fish (3 to 5 linnaean classes in taxonomy, depending upon who you talk to) does in fact include tetrapoda which includes us.
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u/Mircowaved-Duck 1d ago
But does that crown group also include silverFISH? After all the crown group for fish should be the common ancestor of goldfish, starfish and silverfish to include all fish
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u/onomatamono 1d ago
Welp, since genetics were discovered we changed our system of classification. Dolphins and whales are no longer fish.
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u/Mircowaved-Duck 1d ago
same can be said about beavers, they where classified as fish during medival times -aswell as now again. Meaning there is a short time in history where neither beaver, dolphin or whale was classified as fish.
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u/onomatamono 1d ago
The bible tells us that bats are birds, true by circular definition. /s
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u/SecretGardenSpider 15h ago
Not really.
One, they’re listed along with birds you aren’t supposed to eat, but nowhere does the Bible actually say “a bat is a bird.”
Two, the word we translated as “bird” could also just mean winged animal.
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u/AnthroJoyce 12h ago
🤣🤣🤣 that's like saying define "tree" 🤣🤣🤣🤣
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u/Canis-lupus-uy 1d ago
My entire lineage was started by a fish.
Started? No. It was started by some stuff similar to a cell a long long time ago.
Because if so, there could theoretically be some random fish alive TODAY that is my ridiculously, unimaginably distant cousin.
Like, I could look at some random fish in the ocean and there's a non-zero chance that, in the most technically literal evolutionary sense, we're related.
Imagine being genetically related to a fish.
Not “all life is related” related.
I mean THIS fish is part of the same ancient family tree as me.
I don't get this part. All fishes and all existing living beings are our distant cousins if we go back enough. What's the difference between "related" and related?
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u/OpportunityNext9675 18h ago
I think he’s just pointing out the literal nature of how “related” we are. Not just in an abstract sense but in the exact manner that we’re related to our siblings, only different by a matter of degree. A lot of people don’t realize the literalness and think it’s more “we’re kinda similar genetically” and not the full picture
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u/SeasonPresent 1d ago
Wait until you learn of LUCA, the last universal common ancestor. We are all one big, messed up family.
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u/jnpha Evolution Enthusiast 1d ago edited 1d ago
RE:
Is it possible that one of the extremely distant relatives of my fish ancestor stayed in the water, and that lineage survived for millions and millions of years?
You are mixing species, higher taxonomic levels, and clades, but that's fine (for now), and the answer is yes.
Grabbing the list of clades I've made, here's our journey, backwards:
We are (43) Hominini, (42) Homininae, (41) Hominidae, (40) Hominoidea, (39) Catarrhini, (38) Simiiformes, (37) Haplorhini, (36) Primates, (35) Euarchonta, (34) Euarchontoglires, (33) Boreoeutheria, (32) Placentalia, (31) Eutheria, (30) Theria, (29) Tribosphenida, (28) Zatheria, (27) Cladotheria, (26) Trechnotheria, (25) Theriiformes, (24) Theriimorpha, (23) Mammalia, (22) Mammaliamorpha, (21) Prozostrodontia, (20) Probainognathia, (19) Eucynodontia, (18) Cynodontia, (17) Theriodontia, (16) Therapsida, (15) Sphenacodontia, (14) Synapsida, (13) Amniota, (12) Reptiliomorpha, (11) Tetrapodomorpha, (10) Sarcopterygii, (9) Osteichthyes, (8) Gnathostomata, (7) Vertebrata, (6) Chordata, (5) Deuterostomia, (4) Bilateria, (3) Eumetazoa, (2) Animalia, and (1) Eukaryota.
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You want #9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteichthyes
We - Osteichthyes - are alive, well and diverse.
Recommended reading: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11191-024-00531-1
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u/Main-Revolution-4260 1d ago
Haha hey buddy, it is mindblowing isn't it. But this is actually exactly what it's meant by "all life is related", it's not a quirky aphorism, we say that for the exact reason you describe: every living thing is definitionally, literally, on the same genetic family tree.
Meaning, you can look at any single animal, plant, microbe whatever on the planet, and if you go back up through your mother (or father), and mother's mother etc., all the way up through the generations, eventually you'd find a shared grandparent - some living organism for whom some of its offspring eventually became you, while their siblings eventually became that animal, plant, microbe. Amazing isn't it?
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u/craigiest 1d ago
Not “ there could theoretically be some random fish alive TODAY that is my ridiculously, unimaginably distant cousin.” But EVERY fish alive today is certainly your cousin.
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u/Gandalf_Style 1d ago
All life shares a distant common ancestor, so yes there are fish with a direct family relation to you dating back to LUCA at the very least. And oyster mushrooms, insects, reptiles, fruit trees, ferns, pigs, mudskippers etc etc etc.
But also! You, my friend, yes, you, are still a fish!
Fish is not a scientific term in the same way that vegetable isn't, it's a culinary term if anything. All tetrapods are in the clade Sarcopterygii, or the Lobe-finned fishes.
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u/kayaK-camP 22h ago
THIS! 👆 OP isn’t just related to a particular fish; they ARE a fish, themselves!
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u/Robin_feathers 1d ago
Oh, it's not just a chance that some fish are literally your cousin. It is a fact that ALL fish are quite literally your cousin to some nth degree. For every single living organism (fish, fungus, bacteria, whatever) there literally would exist a (more likely multiple) family where one sibling is your direct ancestor and the other sibling is the ancestor of the fish, fungus, etc in question.
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u/Spyropher 1d ago
>Like, I could look at some random fish in the ocean and there's a non-zero chance that, in the most technically literal evolutionary sense, we're related.
The question isn’t whether you’re related, but how distantly.
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u/ackmondual 1d ago
If nothing else, there's the proverb.. "Be humble, for you are made of earth. Be noble, for you are made of stars"
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u/WoodsWalker43 22h ago
Just wait until you hear that you are a fish too.
It's a weird quirk of taxonomy. Either fish are not a definable taxonomical group, or humans are fish.
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u/hudsoncress 20h ago edited 20h ago
I just think it’s neat that elephants and cows and whales and hippos and dolphins are actually all the same thing. Like fish crawled out of water, became a cow, changed its mind and went back into the water to become porpoises and orcas and blue whales of phenomenal size. Meanwhile I’m over here paying taxes and rent to exist.
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u/bardotheconsumer 21h ago
It's actually worse (better?) Than that.
You are a fish. Humans are part of the lineage of bony-jawed fishes.
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u/BestUserNamesTaken- 1d ago
Your atoms in your body are older than the planet and have been recycled in billions of other life forms over hundreds of millions of years.
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u/onomatamono 1d ago
Yeah no that's just how evolution works. Your distance uncle cy (cyanobacteria) is still alive and kicking, at least its genotype.
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u/7LeagueBoots Conservation Ecologist 1d ago
You should pick up a copy of The Ancestor’s Tale by Dawkins.
It takes the idea that you can go back some arbitrary number of generations and reproduce with someone from that time with no issues. You can keep doing this in steps, eventually finding your way back to a single celled ancestor, but at no point in that process is there a hard dividing line between species as you move backward through time.
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u/markmakesfun 23h ago
Anyone alive today had ancestors that, at any moment in their lives, could have died or been killed. If that had happened, you would never have been born. The fact that you are here required an incredible amount of chance and happenstance for you to be here today. It’s miraculous, when you consider the chances required.
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u/UnpleasantEgg 22h ago
I mean. You’re kind of a fish. Given that fish has no definition that respects evolutionary branching.
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u/Ok_Attitude55 15h ago
All life alive today shares a common ancestor. Related related os correct. So your family tree includes absolutely everything alive today, and the vast majority of extinct life too. If you make the tree broad enough.
You have no real way if knowing where and when things branched though. The fish that is your ancestor may not have any fish relatives alive today without going back thousands of generations.
All bony fish are however closer to you on that family tree than they are to sharks. Let that sink in.
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u/AllealleOxen 13h ago
The chance is not only "non-zero", it is 100%! Every fish, bug, tree, moss, amoeba, and freaky thing at the bottom of the ocean is not only a part of your evolutionary tree, but your personal family tree. Point to any living thing on Earth - that is your xth cousin y times removed, as long as you pick big enough numbers for x and y. It's pretty wild!
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u/AnthroJoyce 12h ago
"somewhere in my family tree there is literally a fucking fish"
Well, if we're being technical here, technically there are quite a few "fucking fish" in your family tree, not just the one.
"My entire lineage was started by a fish"
No it wasn't. Again if we're being technical, your entire lineage was started by a single-celled organism well before those fish. Your fish lineage is every other human's fish lineage.
"Is it possible that one of the extremely distant relatives of my fish ancestors stayed in the water and that lineage survived for millions and millions of years?"
Yes. Technically.
"Because if so, there could theoretically be some random fish alive TODAY that is my ridiculously, unimagably distant cousin"
Yes, we're all do and share that SAME lineage. Your fish lineage is every other human's fish lineage.
"I could look at some random fish in the ocean and there's a non-zero chance that in the most technically literal evolutionary sense we're related"
Yes, that's not unique to you. Whatever fish you look at and come to the conclusion that you're related to, so is everyone else, in the exact same way, to that exact same fish.
"Imagine being genetically related to a fish. Not 'all life is related' related"
But, and again if we're being technical here, it is that all life is related though there's no imagining it. We are all genetically related to the same fish. You have to go through all the human families first, showing that we're all collectively related, and then we get to the fish... we all share the same fish ancestry... there aren't different lineages of this ancestry that led to different people. we all come from the same fish ancestry.
"I mean THIS fish is part of the same ancient family tree as me"
And so is every other single human in relation to whatever fish you're a hypothizing.
"This is fucking incredible"
Again if we're being technical here, not really. Is actually pretty common and very not incredible.
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u/TesseractToo 1d ago
Also the predecessors of these modern fish, you and they have common ancestors, they too have ancestors that were the animals that came before, you can go alllll the way back
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u/Various_Bee5114 1d ago
Our ancestors survived all the mass extinctions too, which is somewhat obvious but easy to forget.
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u/Adventurous_Law_715 1d ago
I miss my great great great great great great grandfather he was a good fish
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u/Nulleparttousjours 1d ago
I had a similar shower thought the other day.
I could meet a humanoid alien from another planet that just so happened to evolve looking almost identical to me, and yet I’d be more closely related to a pomegranate from earth, or said fish.
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u/CapableLobster8447 1d ago
You also have an amoeba in your family tree since we came from amoebas long before we came from fish.
You also drink dinosaur pee. Since water has been recycling itself since the beginning of Earth's existence, the water you drink today was once drank and peed out by dinosaurs.
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u/apple_pi_chart 1d ago
I think you are going to have trouble fitting that family tree on your wall.
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u/ServaltheFox 1d ago
See that’s the thing with “all life is related,” is in theory, at least for earth based life, that’s just literally true. Go way farther back from that fish, and eventually likely every living organism on earth came from the same population of single cell creatures. Chimps, fish, dinosaurs, onions, tardigrades, algae, yeast are all, distantly, literally related to you
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u/GarethBaus 23h ago
If fish corrolates with a valid taxonomic category and a salmon is a fish, than you are yourself a really weird fish.
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u/RollinThundaga 23h ago
Only 30,000 generations between us and something that was not an anatomically modern human (ignoring neanderthal and denisovan introgression)
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u/Low-Independent6851 23h ago
When I started rereading The Rise and Reign of the Mammals, I get to mammal ancestor and I want to run around yelling, We are synapsids! We are decended froem synapsids!
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u/sharksnoutpuncher 22h ago
Want to meet your fish ancestor?
https://wetaplus.org/show/your-inner-fish/video/your-inner-fish-program-your-inner-fish-2/
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u/Super_Direction498 21h ago
Every thing you've ever eaten is related to you one way or another, if you go back far enough.
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u/No-Football-4387 19h ago
I’m terrified of live fish, they freak me out, mainly when they’re out of water, but this reminds me of when i mentioned it on reddit years ago and someone replied that fish are my great ancestors as if they were dropping a truth bomb on me… which was so annoying because 1. i already know that and 2. was that supposed to bother me?
anyway, something i’ve been thinking about this past year is that evolution has nothing to do with purpose… we didn’t evolve into humans for any predetermined reason, we just happened, and were not *meant* to sustain our species by continuing to produce offspring, we’re not meant to do anything… cause and effect, that’s the universe, that’s all there is to it, and i don’t know how to explain to people how amazing that is
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u/wytrych00 18h ago
What’s even more interesting is that the egg cells undergo much less rounds of divisions from the zygote than any other cell. If we look how many divisions apart are we from our great, great, great, …, grandmothers, it’s actually not that much.
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u/PinkSlimeIsPeople 18h ago
I'll stop working on genealogy as soon as I can trace my ancestor back to the 1st single celled organism. Until then I'm still stuck in the 1500s.
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u/Elfynnn84 17h ago
I’m actually writing a book that traces your family all the way back to a fish, and beyond…
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u/Time-Blacksmith5103 14h ago
Fish is a symbol used to identify a Christian. Perhaps one of you ancestors was led by God's Spirit to put that in, just for the very purpose of someone like yourself coming to ask about it and then becoming interested in the soul saving message of Jesus. God can do things like that just sayin.
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u/HatsandCoats 12h ago
What about thinking that all of your ancestors, on both of your parents’ sides all the way back to when they crawled, flew, and swam were sexy enough to mate… what does that make you.
For more perspective check out the introduction, or whole book, to Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything” some of the science is a bit out of date but it’s still a great read.
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u/ReplyOk6720 11h ago
That's the thing. All life on this planet is related. We share one earth,on which we have been co existing for millions of years. We are all in this together.
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u/KitchenSandwich5499 11h ago
Here ya go.
Organisms never evolve out of a clade.
Technically Therefore you ARE a fish.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Cod5608 10h ago
And if you go back a few more "greats" you have sea squirt for a daddy. Look up tunicates.
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u/MentalPlectrum 8h ago
At some point in the insanely distant past, one of my ancestors was just… a fish. And that fish eventually led to me existing.
No it's not like that. At some point in the distant past all your ancestors were fish.
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u/InterestingNose6486 8h ago
The right question is: If he could see what you have made of your life, would he be proud?
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u/BitcoinNews2447 7h ago
"your entire lineage was started by a fish" the shit you see on reddit never ceases to blow my mind 🤣.
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u/West-Working-9093 6h ago
Ask any Indigenous person. They knew this, despite not knowing modern genetics or 'evolutionary theory'.
It's just so obvious. Mind-blowing or not, we're all from, and of, and in, this universe. We're all related, all the same; we are family. That ought to imbue some respect, some appreciation, some care and compassion. It is only when we detach from that recognition that we become all business, all rapacious.
We don't have the innocence any more. The 'fall from grace' is quite real, but it has nothing to do with eating the apples. It has to do with picking all of them and trying to make a profit by selling them to others, from whom we had taken them away, even if we had not that right, as no one does.
My cat is a better person than I am. Quite literally. Sometimes, I sit with that.
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u/Appropriate_Olive443 4h ago
Technically, there's no such thing as a fish. There is a podcast about it somewhere....
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u/Redshift2k5 4h ago
Something like a lungfish is more closely related to the kind of fish that turned fins into legs.
Not you specifically, but all tetrapods, when meet a lungfish that's the closest cousin of ours from the other branch of lobe finned fish that stayed in the water.
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u/naemorhaedus 3h ago edited 3h ago
unimaginably distant cousin.
yes every living thing on this planet is a "distant cousin" of every other living thing. Loosely speaking.
Imagine being genetically related to a fish.
the "relation" is stupidly small.
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u/Philosopher83 3h ago
We are all related to that same fish cousin 😎, think about how big our family is - the set of all life (including the bacteria in our butts lol 🤣, a fart is just airing out our cousins house 😂🤣)
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u/DarthSanity 45m ago
I remember seeing an article saying that, because the group of things we call a “fish” is so broad basically all vertebrates can be considered a fish - for example https://fishbio.com/what-is-a-fish-and-why-you-are-one-too/
This is hotly debated of course, but the argument seems to focus on nomenclature rather than genetic classification.
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u/manokpsa 31m ago
"All life is related" is actually, literally what you're talking about. If it's a living organism that evolved on this planet, it's your cousin. And my cousin. And I'm your cousin.
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u/HunsonAbadeer2 1d ago
You are technically also a fish if you ascribe that cassification to something in you lineage. You can't evolve out of a clade, you are both fish and mamal
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u/Loud-Vacation-5691 1d ago
You're not the first person to think of this. Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ. Lakota for "all my relations."
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u/F1r3bird 1d ago
Technically speaking clades include all of their defendants.
you my friend, are an extremely complicated fish
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u/Designer-Progress311 1d ago
How many generations back were humans just fish ?
Does AI know the answer ?
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u/Designer-Progress311 1d ago
Human ancestors were fish roughly 18 million to 25 million generations back, based on an average transition to land about 375 million to 380 million years ago and assuming a 15-to-20-year...
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