Eels are fish
Newsletter & Link Mechanics
- Several comments focus on the newsletter’s URL: it embeds identifiers, won’t load without tracking parameters, and lacks a public, indexed archive.
- Some see this as a broader problem with “email‑only” newsletters, worrying they’ll become “modern lost media” compared to blog-style sites with open archives.
- Others note that many newsletters do have web archives, but those marketed explicitly as newsletters often don’t.
Eel Biology, Migration & Weirdness
- Readers are struck by the European eel’s life cycle: hatching near the Sargasso Sea or Tonga, drifting as larvae (“glass eels”), transforming through multiple stages, then migrating vast distances to inland lakes and rivers.
- Eels can cross land to colonize disconnected lakes, and some can breathe air via their mouths.
- People highlight how late science was to connect eel life stages as one species, and mention historical scientific interest (e.g., Freud’s eel research).
- There’s fascination with how eels navigate back to specific ocean spawning grounds, which remains unclear.
“What Is a Fish?”: Taxonomy vs Common Usage
- A long subthread debates whether “fish” is a meaningful biological category:
- Cladistics: land vertebrates (including humans and whales) descend from lobe‑finned fish; strictly monophyletic “fish” would therefore include us, or else “fish” isn’t a valid clade.
- Common usage: many argue it’s still useful to call things “fish” based on traits like water habitat, gills, and fins, even if the group is paraphyletic.
- Related discussions touch on:
- Analogous fuzzy categories like “tree,” “crab,” “reptile,” and “quadruped.”
- Convergent evolution (similar body plans evolving independently) and horizontal gene transfer complicating tree-like taxonomies.
- Legal and linguistic quirks (e.g., bees being “fish” under a specific California statute; whales sometimes called fish in literature).
Conservation, Ethics & Culture
- Multiple comments emphasize that European eels are critically endangered yet still widely eaten; some express discomfort with casual references to eating eel.
- Others mention local delicacies (e.g., glass eels in Portugal, unagi in Japan) and note shifting tastes among younger generations.
- Historical notes include eels used as medieval rent/currency and place names derived from eels.
- The thread surfaces numerous eel-related media: books, long-form articles, podcasts, videos, and even a song about eel mating.