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Whales are Fish (and Everything Else is Beetles) with Lindsay Nikole

2024-11-15 · collab / interview · Hank, Lindsay Nikole · 5:54 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Science & nature · mode: Curiosity & trivia · tags: guest or collab, self promotion

Hank asks zoologist Lindsay Nikole for her favourite fact (a quarter of discovered animal species are beetles), then tests on her his argument that whales are fish, but only in the sense that humans and all land vertebrates are; he plugs her SciShow Deep Dive and adds an outtake about worms and animal reproduction.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Lindsay's favourite fact: a quarter of discovered animal species are beetles; weevils; why beetles succeeded

  • ★★ Lindsay Nikole: Lindsay says 25% of all discovered animal species are beetles, some 350,000 species; Hank had heard it only as a share of insects. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Lindsay Nikole: Lindsay says many species remain unfound: scientists estimate about 10 million insect species alone, and 1.5 million have been found. (hedged) — 00:00:30
  • ★★ Hank compares beetles to cichlids, a fish form so good at what it is that it evolved in countless variations, and asks what made beetles so good at being animals. — 00:00:30
  • ★★ Lindsay Nikole: Lindsay says weevils are beetles and the biggest group of beetles; the weevil, especially the acorn weevil, is her favourite beetle form. — 00:00:58
  • ★ Hank says beetles have good protection but also wings, which they can hide. — 00:01:28
  • ★★ Hank imagines the first flying insect able to hide its wings as a big unlock; Lindsay bets beetles did it first, and Hank says that is what let them take over. (speculative) — 00:01:28

00:01:57 — Hank's argument that whales are fish, and what makes a fish; Tiktaalik; sign-off

  • ★★★ Hank tries out on Lindsay an argument he has been working on, more argument than fact: whales are fish. — 00:01:57
  • ★★ Lindsay Nikole: Lindsay says we humans are fish; Hank says only taxonomically, not morphologically, and Lindsay says whales fall under the same category. — 00:01:57
  • ★★ Lindsay Nikole: Lindsay objects that whales swim with different undulations and have no gills. — 00:01:57
  • ★★ Hank asks what makes a fish and in what way a whale is not morphologically one: fish swim in all kinds of ways, and Lindsay notes that manatees and walruses are fish-shaped too. (playful) — 00:01:57
  • ★ Hank suggests you have to live in the water to be a fish, then allows that mudskippers don't always live in water. (hedged) — 00:02:42
  • ★★★ Hank says bony and cartilaginous fish are extraordinarily distantly related, further apart than he is from a bony fish, and asks what, if both are called fish, makes them fish. — 00:02:42
  • ★★ Hank says all the bony animals are fish; Lindsay adds lizards, platypuses and rats, though not beetles, and Hank names all land vertebrates, the tetrapods. (playful) — 00:03:04
  • ★★★ Hank concludes that whales are fish, but only in the same way that humans are. — 00:03:04

00:03:49 — Plug for Lindsay's SciShow Deep Dive on the Chimpanzee War and her channel

  • ★★ Hank says Lindsay was in town filming and recommends her SciShow Deep Dive, a long-form episode on the Chimpanzee War, and her channel. — 00:03:49 · SciShow

00:04:16 — Outtake: returning to the water, worms, earthworm sex and Hank's hoped-for book on animal reproduction

  • ★★ Hank says worms are like fish, a group of animals not related to each other, only more so. — 00:04:16
  • ★★ Lindsay Nikole: Lindsay says there are about seven different phyla of worms. (hedged) — 00:04:16
  • ★★ Hank says most animals on Earth are probably worms, because of nematodes. (hedged) — 00:04:16
  • ★ Hank recently made a video on how earthworms procreate, which blew his mind; watching them, he was astounded how much their mating looked like sex. — 00:04:16
  • ★★ Hank wants someday to write a book about all the ways animals reproduce, as a testament that life is whatever works; Lindsay adds that it is often heinous. — 00:04:52

Humor (significant)

  • Lindsay says weevils look like they live in a fairy tale. — 00:00:58

    “And wear wizard hats and sell you potions and things.”

  • Hank repeats that a quarter of all animals are beetles, then tops it with a statistic about the band. — 00:00:58

    “And four quarters of all of the Beatles–”

  • Lindsay says beetles look very crunchy. — 00:01:28

    “And so I feel like that gives them a leg up in general.”

  • Arguing that fish shape proves nothing, Lindsay calls manatees fish-shaped and Hank says they are also fish. — 00:02:42

    “Walruses are also fish.”

  • They name Tiktaalik, the fossil ancestor of land animals, as the reason for taxes. — 00:03:04

    “The reason you have to pay rent is that. Piece of junk. Decided to crawl out of the water.”

  • The outtake ends on earthworm and leopard slug sex. — 00:05:21

    “Yeah, well, this will get edited heavily.”

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: beetle · fish · Lindsay Nikole · whale

Also: Projects: SciShow

Groups: The Beatles

Concepts: adaptive radiation · categorization · Chondrichthyes · cichlid · earthworm · insect · mudskipper · nematode · Osteichthyes · platypus · Taxonomy (biology) · tetrapod · Tiktaalik · weevil

Events: Gombe Chimpanzee War

Only in the description or credits: Milo

Also centred on fish: LLAMAS Are NOT What You Think

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