Originally published at: Bees are now legally fish in the state of California | Boing Boing
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Whatever gets them protected by the state and keeps them from going extinct.
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This kind of reminds me of the Babylon Bee’s favorite transphobic joke: “[A] identifies as [B] to [gain advantage of some kind].”
That said I’ll echo @Mangochin’s sentiment “whatever keeps them from going extinct.”
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I know what I’m eating next Lent!
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Don’t eat the bees. They are endangered and probably taste lousy.
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Plus they’ll sting the inside of your mouth, as a dog I had as a kid learned the hard way…
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Wow. talk about short-term thinking. The very people whose livelihoods depend most directly on the natural world, pollination and ecological balance just throwing that all away for the expedient use of pesticides.
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The “fish” of Fish and Game Comission is defined as “ ‘[f]ish’ means a wild fish, mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, amphibian, or part, spawn, or ovum of any of those animals” according to California law. That seems intended to include any endangered animals in need of protection.
And anyone going to court to fight for the right to kill endangered bumblebees can go straight to hell
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The Pope defined beavers as fish, so, I guess, OK?
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My dogs are still always snapping at those things. We call them “spicy flies.”
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Perhaps using bread from Subway that isn’t really bread.
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Why not just give the commission the ability to protect insects?
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It requires amendment or redrafting of the legislation which gives the commission its authority. State Congressional red tape. The same agricultural interests which initiated the lawsuit against the State may tie up such efforts through lobbying.
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It’s kinda sad that “fish and game” implies animals are only useful in as much as they can be hunted. glad at least that their purview has been expanded a bit. even if, in the case of bees, we’re still thinking of their usefulness to humans as a reason to protect them.
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That’s because all life evolved out of the water. Reptiles, mammals, birds - even dinosaurs - all came from something that we would say looked pretty much like a fish. And there’s so much more diversity among what we call “fish” in every day conversation that they spread far around the outskirts of these subgroups.
That’s kind of like saying “there is no such thing as an African person” because all humans evolved out of Africa and there is more genetic diversity among the people we call “Africans” than in any of the human subgroups who left Africa.
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Although this does raise an interesting conversation about whether bees might qualify as locusts under Talmudic Law. It seems settled already, but who doesn’t love a good argument?
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And also…
The state had previously classified the trinity bristle snail as “threatened” all the way back in 1980 — thus establishing that “fish” is in fact a “legal term of art” that includes
otherterrestrial invertebrates as well.
(Maybe… it could perhaps be reasonably argued that “other” refers to the snail, not fish. English grammar is tight!)
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Does this mean that, like with capybara, you can eat them on Fridays if you’re Catholic?
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