I Fucking Hate Phylogeny - Tumblr Posts

I love phylogenetics because you expect something like this (Tarpon)

To be related to this (Milkfish, or herring in general)

But turns out it’s more closely related to eels (due to a stroke of luck that most of their other relatives presumably died out, therefore their respective orders and only a handful of other make up the extant survivors). (Pic: European Eel)

And you’d expect these (Anthias: Hawk Anthias and Lyretail Anthias)

To be related to this (Chromis, or damselfish in general)

But they’re actually related to groupers (Goliath Grouper)

"birds aren't dinosaurs" ❌ wrong, misinformed, way too common

"all vertebrates evolved from fish, and are therefore technically fish" ✅ mischievous, technically true if you look at it from the right angle, demonstrates how cladistics work

"whales are fish but not for the reason you might think" 😈 this is funny to me specifically

Whales technically being fish is the funniest about face evolution has given us

the only bad part about going to the zoo is hearing adult men confidently tell their kids or gfs objectively incorrect information about the animals we’re looking at and having to remain silent. do u know the restraint it takes to say nothing when a grown adult man tells someone “falcons are in the same family as eagles” next to me? no babygirl. no.

"The common bat (Bat bat) is a small bat microbat"

this bat is the most bat of any bat ever

absolute maximum quantity of bat in this guy