[HN Gopher] Consider the Greenland Shark (2020)
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Consider the Greenland Shark (2020)
Author : mooreds
Score : 79 points
Date : 2026-03-27 07:39 UTC (5 days ago)
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| jackconsidine wrote:
| When H Melville stuffed the middle of _Moby Dick_ with a
| "cetology" -- BEFORE _The Origin of Species_ , famously saying "a
| whale is a fish" -- he didn't forget the Greenland Shark. I think
| all the time about how many of those sharks swimming around in
| 1851 are still swimming around today.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Note that Melville was well aware of the reasons that "whales
| aren't fish", and went over those in detail, then said he was
| going to call them fish anyway.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| I think that's perfectly fair. The same way everyone knows
| that chimps are monkeys, it's just brainy losers who insist
| they're just apes
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Yes I agree. All the moreso because the word fish is very
| ancient and was used to mean any aquatic animal long before
| Linnaeus came along and decided to "well ackshully" the
| word.
| jbaber wrote:
| This is a reach, but do you know where to find the essay
| I read about someone explaining to King David that a
| whale isn't a fish and the King laughs at him because his
| modern mammal explanations are useless and impractical
| compared to the ones he uses?
|
| I've been trying to re-find it for ages.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-
| were-ma...
| chrisrickard wrote:
| Thank you, a refreshingly interesting read
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The whale=fish thing is also an old joke about catholics.
| Back when one could not eat meat on fridays, all sorts of
| water-living mamals were declared to be "fish" for purposes
| of eating. So a new world protestant author in the 1800s is
| pointing a critical finger at oldworld religion and science.
|
| We have lost knowledge of such nuance, like rewatching MASH
| or Trek and missing the religious and racial messages that
| made them so controversial then but banal today.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Back when one could not eat meat on fridays, all sorts of
| water-living mamals were declared to be "fish" for purposes
| of eating.
|
| Like what, seals? Otters?
|
| Something tells me that otters were never passed off as
| "fish".
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Capybaras in Brazil were Friday fish.
| joshuaheard wrote:
| Jeremy Wade, host of the TV show "River Monsters", has an episode
| where he investigates the Loch Ness Monster and concludes it's
| likely a Greenland Shark that swam up an underground river from
| the North Atlantic to the lake. He likens the shark's horse-like
| face and the distribution of the low fins on the shark's back to
| descriptions of the monster. A solitary long-living fish could
| explain the occasional sightings, and the scientists' findings
| that there is not enough food in the lake for a breeding
| population of large carnivores.
| RajT88 wrote:
| He is likely wrong (most sharks cannot live long in fresh
| water). But given the show, he has to conclude it is a fish of
| some sort, and it is not going to be 10k arctic char in a
| dinosaur suit.
| ljlolel wrote:
| Doubt a shark could survive in freshwater. They're very tuned
| to salinity
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Bull sharks can, but they're the famous exception to this.
| Sometimes they swim up a river and nip somebody.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| As a sibling comment notes most sharks cannot live long in
| freshwater, and moreover this is soecifically true of Greenland
| sharks, though they do sometimes spend time in brackish river
| mouth environments, so, unless it developed the weird behavior
| of migrating quickly up the relevant underground river to make
| a quick appearance and then inmediately rushing back down the
| river to the ocean, that's one answer we can be fairly certain
| is wrong.
|
| There are a few sharks that can live in freshwater, but they
| tend to inhabit warmer oceans.f_
| RajT88 wrote:
| Totally wild factoid: Bull sharks have been caught in
| tributaries of the Mississippi River in Illinois. (Back
| before they built all the dams)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Yeah, bull sharks are the most common and wide-ranging of
| the sharks that are adapted to survive in a wide range of
| salinity levels.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| That's the kind of rare and highly luck based curiosity
| they ought to give you a plaque for. "From this shore in
| 1973 local angler..." Slap it on the same sign post as the
| flood high water markers they put up.
| darkteflon wrote:
| Bull sharks are often found in rivers tens of kilometres
| from the ocean in Queensland.
| joshuaheard wrote:
| That's too bad. I thought he was on to something.
| the_af wrote:
| The most likely explanation for the Loch Ness Monster, of
| course, is that it's entirely made up and didn't require an
| actual sighting or a real physical phenomenon, ever, to trigger
| people's imaginations.
| frmersdog wrote:
| There's a business lesson in the longest lived creatures being
| the ones that move slow, abide small insults, and make themselves
| generally unappetizing.
| fmbb wrote:
| But are they rich?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| What is being rich, if you die young?
| internet_points wrote:
| Oh, the article is by Katherine Rundell. She has written some
| very nice children's books.
|
| See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46511555
| egl2020 wrote:
| The Greenland shark appears, if I remember correctly, in her
| book "Golden Mole", which is about many interesting creatures.
| This is published as Vanishing Treasures in some countries. Her
| "Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne" is
| interesting and also not a children's book.
| causal wrote:
| A lot of deep sea creatures have very slow metabolisms. It is one
| of the many reasons sea dredging and mining should be held with
| such disdain: these are ecosystems which may take thousands of
| years to recover.
|
| We don't even appreciate how long it takes a forest to recover,
| much less one with glass sponges that are thousands of years old.
| brailsafe wrote:
| > We don't even appreciate how long it takes a forest to
| recover
|
| Don't forget about forests that are thousands of years old too,
| very contemporary serious long-term damage
| keiferski wrote:
| I think the title is a reference to David Foster Wallace's
| awesome article, _Consider the Lobster._
|
| https://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf
| bananzamba wrote:
| So that is where Silicon Valley got the "Consider the X"
| running gag from.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KuVEbBmu1EM
| owlninja wrote:
| Which is homage to Consider the Oyster I believe.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consider_the_Oyster
| rsynnott wrote:
| David Foster Wallace has always irritated me, in that I've
| greatly enjoyed all of his essays that I've read, including
| this one, but I bounced off the novel hard.
| Joeboy wrote:
| Maybe "Consider the ant" from The Bible?
|
| Which I only know about from the John Wyndham story[0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consider_Her_Ways
| ikeashark wrote:
| Consider the elephant when?
| _joel wrote:
| Hello Ordinary Sausage
| technothrasher wrote:
| A buddy of mine made a video of diving to find Greenland Sharks.
| It's apparently not terribly easy to find them.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kS89k6DjnM
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