Tom asks:

> Actually, to keep the alliteration correct, it would be "more than one way
>  to seperate siluriform skin from it's skeleton" [err, do catfish have
>  skeletons?

And a further point (to beat a dead fish), is that the skin of a catfish is
not attached to its skeleton, rather, it's attached to muscle tissue.  This
is also the case for the aforementioned cat.  :-)

Ray Shahan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wirt Atmar [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, June 18, 2001 8:18 PM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Re: OT: mangled metaphores & other obtuse sayings (was MSG
> file problem)
>
> Tom asks:
>
> > Actually, to keep the alliteration correct, it would be "more than one
> way
> >  to seperate siluriform skin from it's skeleton" [err, do catfish have
> >  skeletons?
>
> In the spirit of answering with more information than anyone would want to
> know, the answer is yes. Catfish are the prototypes of humanity, not apes
> as
> most people assume, essentially the DOS version of the Windows 2000 design
> that is you, and they basically have all of the same bones as you do. A
> much
> simplified schematic of the relationship is available at:
>
>      http://aics-research.com/vertschema.html
>
> Fish come in two fundamental design categories, bony fishes ["teleosts",
> meaning "end (of the evolutionary lineage) bones"] and sharks, rays, and
> chimeras ["chondrichthyes", meaning "cartilagenous fishes"]. This second
> group doesn't have any true bones, in the sense that their cartilage isn't
> ossified ("mineralized"), and thus they aren't brittle or hard, in the
> manner
> that your bones are.
>
> You can see the relationship between the chondricthyes, the bony fish, and
> you (which is very ancient, btw) in the diagram at:
>
> http://phylogeny.arizona.edu/tree/eukaryotes/animals/chordata/gnathostomat
> a.ht
>
> ml
>
> ("gnathostomata" means "jawed stomachs" in English, which pretty well
> describes most of the people who eat here at AICS). Gnathostomates are an
> evolutionary invention built on top of a vertebrate platform, which itself
> was built on a chordate ("backbone") platform.
>
> As an aside, you also still retain a few 500 million year old pre-teleost
> attributes, even as advanced a design as you are. Before you were born,
> the
> vast majority of your bones were manufactured under a surprisingly complex
> process where mineralization occurred simultaneous with their formation,
> but
> two sets of your bones weren't. Your clavicles (collarbones) and the
> various
> bones of the calvarium (the braincase of your skull) were formed
> originally
> only as cartilagenous assemblies in order to make you a more "foldable",
> and
> thus allow for your much easier birth. Only as you grew older did these
> "bones" mineralize and harden, employing a slightly different pathway than
> the remainder of your other bones did.
>
> While I realize that this is more than most people want to know, the
> asking
> of the question, "do catfish have skeletons," means that someone has been
> eating far too much processed food. Anyone who has ever eaten a freshly
> caught catfish wouldn't be asking that question :-).
>
> Wirt Atmar
>
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