QI | No Such Thing As A Fish

Did you know there's no such thing as a fish?

This clip is from QI Series H, Episode 3, 'Hoaxes' with Stephen Fry, Alan Davies, Danny Baker, Sean Lock and David Mitchell.

[squam]

"How can something not be something? Something can't be not be not something, can it? If you've created a something, then something has to be that something, otherwise you haven't created a something." -Sean Locke, philosopher

[observethemfdynamic]

Hearing “they can feel no love” while the camera wasn’t on David made me laugh so hard that my dog got annoyed and left the room

[GalacticAstroparticles]

So what the dolphins in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy were *really* saying is *"goodbye and thanks for nothing"*

[bioLarzen]

The really priceless thing was that one of the next questions in this episode was "how many fish can you see in this picture?" - and the "right" answer wasn't zero...

[JacksonBockus]

Sean Lock here making the ontological argument for the existence of fish.

[rhyanbennett]

And as such, an excellent podcast was born.

[carlmoore]

If you think this is crazy, you should hear what they say of the acropolis where the Parthenon is!

[RS]

So basically this guy spent his life devoted to red herrings

[BG_Dave]

"She left me! I'm all alone!"
"Don't worry mate, plenty more fish in the sea."
😐

[williamwallace]

He was speaking about monophyletic clades in cladistics. Any group that contains what we colloquially call fish will either leave out some fish or include obvious non fish. Therefore the term fish as we generally use it is a paraphyletic artifact and is inconsistent in taxonomy, so the term is ultimately arbitrary with no place in cladistics or phylogenetics.

[AgentOracle]

An excellent podcast to boot. Love those guys

[EdoKwin]

"It often comes in the same bit and separate from puddings". XD

[realspacemodels]

But of course there is such thing as No Such Thing As A Fish podcast.

[jessicalee]

Since commenting on this video 5 years ago, I have learned that there is also no such thing as a tree. For example a horse chestnut tree is more closely related to broccoli than it is to a normal chestnut tree. The "family tree" of trees is like a series of branching dotted lines containing mostly flowers and vegetables with trees interspersed at random, and many trees are hardly genetically related to each other at all.

[Ciphonn]

David Mitchell and Sean Lock are the best on any panel show

[BornAgainCynic]

So, my wife is right, when I say I am going fishing, she says it's an excuse to do nothing. So next time I catch a nothing with my nothing rod I will regard myself as a successful nothing-er-man.

[streglof]

"ooo, haven't got any legs"

[hiroshikari]

This might be my favorite video on the internet. Makes me laugh every time.

[biscuitsalive]

After a lifetime of study of chocolate, I’ve discovered there’s no such thing as my feet.
(At least I can’t see them anymore.)

[BambooAcrobatVerte]

I’ve smoked Camels my wholesale life and they taste nothing like salmon.