Damn, I live in San Jose and eat a lot of tilapia cooked various ways since I had Covid and can't stand the taste of animal meat anymore. I think I'll try salmon.
Technically speaking, tomatoes and chilis are fruits, while strawberries are not fruits (they are fruit clusters - each "seed" is an individual fruit). This is such a point of contention (apparently) that there's a whole "culinary" vs. "botanical" fruit distinction made.
Logically, eggs are meat. It's a giant animal cell. Culinarily speaking, meat refers to the tissue of mammals, particularly muscle tissue from pigs and cows and other ungulates. Fish usually excluded, poultry is often excluded, and offal may be excluded as well.
It's for the same reason why we call blackberries and strawberries both fruits (even though they are not). Culinarily speaking, they're similar. Used in a similar way. Deer, beef, and pork are interchangeable in many recipes. Beef, chicken, and salmon, are not.
You're dead on about there being different botanical and culinary definitions, but I have never heard fish or poultry being excused as being meat. They are just different types of meat.
Your local grocery store probably is organized the same way. Many people think of fish flesh and meat as being different things. Words are made up and all categories are artificial, whatcha gunnuh do.
And “San Jose” translates into English as “Saint Joseph”, a title associated with Catholicism. So was the practice of not eating meat Fridays for much of the 20th century. In this practice, fish was not counted as a meat, just as it wasn’t in the comment you’re referring to!
The more closely you examine it, the more interesting you can make this sentence become :)
I have to imagine that the way this person describes fish is the least interesting thing about them, I don't know why we are subjecting them to such microscopic scrutiny.
It doesn't seem kind or curious to me, it seems like we're mocking them for having a slightly different conception of what category fish go into.
You can speak for yourself, but I certainly didn’t mock anyone.
I’ve had a multi-decade interest in languages, though. IMO, it’s very natural to find patterns and associations like this and finding different ways of organizing taxonomies is fun.
I’ve also thought about why watermelons, pumpkins, cucumbers and bitter gourds all have the character 瓜 in them in Chinese. Not to mock speakers of language, but because I was nerdsniped. Have a nice day.
I understand being nerdsniped dissecting language, but doing it in front of them and amid jeers is kinda different imho. While I understand you weren't jeering, the context of this subthread makes it pretty weird to me.
It's not like saying "enjoyed the animals and the big cats". If English is your second language then perhaps this will help you speak colloquial English.
English is my first language, which is why I understand the analogy I gave is accurate, both in colloquial and technical forms of English.
Fish are animals, and only the extremely uneducated would think otherwise. Now that this has been pointed out to you, perhaps you will start to speak correctly from this point on, and educate your friends and family to do the same.
Knowledge and education in the US is bad enough. The last thing we need are people advocating to use incorrect language and spreading misinformation.
People using language differently isn't misinformation.
I think maybe it's time to let this disagreement go. The stakes are so small, their immediate response to someone pointing out that were animals was "you're right," it's been 18 hours, and it's been a difference of opinion this entire time.
Q: Is common for English speakers using colloquial English to refer to fish as animals? They technically are animals, but people don't often refer to fish as animals in every day speech. Is this correct?
A: In colloquial English, people often categorize living organisms in ways that may not align perfectly with scientific classifications. For example, many people might refer to "animals" as creatures that are mammals, birds, or reptiles, but might not immediately include fish in that category during casual conversation. This is despite the fact that, scientifically speaking, fish are indeed animals.
In everyday speech, people might say things like "I saw some animals and fish on my hike," separating fish from what they casually refer to as "animals." This is similar to how people might separate "birds" or "insects" from "animals" in casual conversation, even though both birds and insects are technically animals as well.
So, while it's scientifically accurate to refer to fish as animals, colloquial usage often makes distinctions that aren't scientifically rigorous. This is a feature of everyday language, which is shaped more by cultural norms and common understanding than by scientific taxonomy.
I agree fish are animals, but it's perfectly ordinary to use lay definitions rather than scientific definitions. Most people don't call fish animals, and that's fine.
Most of the people in my life have a strong interest in biology, my friends are nerds who are liable to use binomial names they picked up in Seek. But I doubt we're reflective of the broader culture. I think a lot of people couldn't tell you the difference between a kingdom from a phylum, and again, that's fine, it doesn't make them stupid or something.
Why would you need to know anything about taxonomy in order to know fish are animals? Sorry, but no one I've ever known has made any distinction between the two.
I think maybe there is some overlap with op and the idea that "fish" is different from "meat." That's something that basically everyone said at some point.
Fish is meat. It's just that people are used to associating "meat" with "red meat". But if you press people, they are not going to say that in no way is fish flesh considered meat. They just don't generally use the same word to describe both things.
You don't need to know any details of taxonomy as a discipline to know that fish are animals.
For the record, the original meaning of "meat," was just food, in general. So we have sweetmeats, mincemeat, etc.
It only requires a working brain to look at two similar things and categorize them similarly. You don't need to have any familiarity with any kind of scientific field or terminology. You just need to be familiar with fish, and other types of organic life.
Here's an experiment I performed, you can try it if you care to. I just went to my preferred search engine and did an image search for "animal".
I had to scroll down about thirty images to find something that wasn't a mammal. It was a lizard. Most of the animals were fuzzy. (I may have missed some marsupials, to be fair.) I believe these search results are reflective of what people are looking for when they search "animal," and it isn't fish.
Are fish animals? I would agree. Is it normal to feel differently? I believe so.
You have to go down pages and pages to even find a hedgehog, and you find very few birds. I think you find very, very few people who wouldn't call an ostrich or a hedgehog an animal, so I don't know how much that experiment says really.
You are right. I first wrote mammal but change it to animal, because I've never thought of fish as animals. I've never heard anyone refer to them as animals. I have never read anything that refered to them as animals.
Edit: The Surprising Answer: Are Fish Truly Animals? Exploring the Debate Around Fish as Animals
For reference, here's the scientific definition of "animal" - which is broad enough to include insects and various microorganisms as well as humans and other mammals:
> Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, have myocytes and are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and grow from a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula, during embryonic development. As of 2022, 2.16 million living animal species have been described — of which around 1.05 million are insects, over 85,000 are molluscs, and around 65,000 are vertebrates. It has been estimated there are around 7.77 million animal species. Animals range in length from 8.5 micrometres (0.00033 in) to 33.6 metres (110 ft).
That “Jerry’s Fishing Blog” just demonstrates the problem with using google to try to support a point. It way overstates the “debate” on the subject. At least since Linnæus developed his biological taxonomy in the 1700s, fish have been considered animals.
> Always inhabiting the waters; are swift in their motion and voracious in their appetites. They breathe by means of gills, which are generally united by a bony arch; swim by means of radiate fins, and are mostly covered over with cartilaginous scales. Besides the parts they have in common with other animals, they are furnished with a nictitant membrane, and most of them with a swim-bladder, by the contraction or dilatation of which, they can raise or sink themselves in their element at pleasure.
> Fish are aquatic vertebrate animals that have gills but lack limbs with digits, like fingers or toes. Recall that vertebrates are animals with internal backbones.
Out of curiosity, are you a Christian who observes Lent? Many of my Christian friends do not consider fish to be “meat” as that is not allowed during Lent, but fish is allowed, therefore fish != meat.
There's no debate about fish being part of the animal Kingdom.
If you've never heard anyone refer to fish as animals, you probably never took biology in grade school. I mean no offense, but literal children with single-digit ages know that fish are animals.
You have never heard of or read about fish being referred to as animals? Not even in your biology classes at school? That you haven't is extremely strange to me, I understand what people mean when they say fish aren't animals, in terms of the colloquial usage when referring to meat, but I didn't think that most people thought that fish literally weren't animals at all.
In a class room setting sure, but in every day conversation, no. Not on the West Coast of the United States. Kurt Cobain made the distinction and didn't think fish had feelings:
And the animals I've trapped
Have all become my pets
And I'm living off of grass
And the drippings from my ceiling
It's okay to eat fish
Cause they don't have any feelings
- Something in the way
Could you give me some samples of how you and your friends refer to fish as animals?
If you use exact match, and craft a phrase that is 11 words long, it's almost guaranteed that you'll be the first person in the universe. You're just being disingenuous.
Why don't you ask Google if fish are animals? You absolute moron.
We've already established that fish are animals ad nauseam... technically that is correct. Perhaps you don't read the other comments before commenting? What people like you don't seem to get is that I'm talking about everyday language between friends. You don't seem like a moron, so I'm going to assume you are trolling
Farmed fish, including salmon, and other seafood can contain nematodes that aren't killed by freezing in residential freezers. Your best bet is to source seafood from a reputable market, know where it comes from, and that it's sustainable. Wild caught is usually best, with lower parasite levels.
Got a source for the wild has less parasites claim? I have heard the opposite a lot and have seen studies backing it. Curious to know if thats changed.
My understanding is that wild-caught fish have more parasites, but they're required to be frozen for sufficiently long to kill the parasites, whereas farmed fish are exempt from this requirement:
3-402.11 Parasite Destruction.
(A) Except as specified in ¶ (B) of this section, before service or sale in READY-TO-EAT form, raw, raw-marinated, partially cooked, or marinated-partially cooked FISH shall be:
(1) Frozen and stored at a temperature of -20°C (-4°F) or below for a minimum of 168 hours (7 days) in a freezer;
[other temperatures/durations elided]
(B) Paragraph (A) of this section does not apply to:
[...]
(4) Aquacultured fish, such as salmon, that:
(a) If raised in open water, are raised in net-pens, or
(b) Are raised in land-based operations such as ponds or tanks, and
(c) Are fed formulated feed, such as pellets, that contains no live parasites infective to the aquacultured FISH.
