I read a fish caught in time in one sitting! Loved that book.

Ya, the Hitch is definitely not as charismatic as say, a golden trout. But the internal workings of that group of fish is pretty cool! They have great acoustic communication. Their swim bladder is like a drum that sends vibrations like a telegraph through a weird series of bones, up through 4 vertebrae and into the auditory receptors. They also have crazy teeth inside their throat and a hard surface with which they pound or scrape the teeth to make the noises that they communicate with.

I am totally in the school of thought that there is just an intrinsic value to biodiversity. Its unfortunate, that not everybody thinks that way. Luckily, there is a logical and utilitarian backbone to preserving biodiversity.

What's also neat to me is that we are fish. On the tree of life, we are right in the middle of a bunch of fish really. We are sarcopterigians - lobe finned fish. see pic below (we are tetrapods)

http://whozoo.org/fish/fishtaxa.jpg

Ryan Thoni


If people concentrated on the important things in life there would be a shortage of fishing poles.
~Doug Larson