I had been playing on and off with the idea that an ecological argument would show dolphins to be ultimately fish-like, but with my switch in general approach to things, I think ultimately the “dolphins are not fish” side wins out. Some of the most noteworthy characteristics of dolphins is that they are large, intelligent, social animals which provide parental care for extensive periods of time. There are literally 0 fish species with this combination of traits, whereas meanwhile the combo obviously screams “mammal!”.
I was wondering if it was specific to mammals or if it applied to land vertebrates in general. Other animals that have evolved to live in the ocean include sea turtles and sea snakes, but they are quite land-animal-like to me. Frogs are an interesting edge-case in that at least they have marine-like offspring counts, but they literally have legs so obviously they don’t count.
I had been playing on and off with the idea that an ecological argument would show dolphins to be ultimately fish-like, but with my switch in general approach to things, I think ultimately the “dolphins are not fish” side wins out. Some of the most noteworthy characteristics of dolphins is that they are large, intelligent, social animals which provide parental care for extensive periods of time. There are literally 0 fish species with this combination of traits, whereas meanwhile the combo obviously screams “mammal!”.
I was wondering if it was specific to mammals or if it applied to land vertebrates in general. Other animals that have evolved to live in the ocean include sea turtles and sea snakes, but they are quite land-animal-like to me. Frogs are an interesting edge-case in that at least they have marine-like offspring counts, but they literally have legs so obviously they don’t count.