Ok i know it’s dumb as hell and means absolutely nothing, but one of my least favourite popular tumblr jokes is that one about a salmon getting all freaked out because we named the colour salmon after it’s flesh. It just hits my biology pet peeve so hard bc i hate it when people assign human morals and values to animals. I hate it even more if they’re INACCURATE ones. The majority of animals are opportunistic cannibals. Fish eat other fish. Toss some chum in the water and it looks like it’s in a rolling boil. A salmon would not be freaked out that we devour it’s flesh on a regular basis, because they would gladly eat each other if the opportunity presents itself. I went to a salmon farm on the south island once, and one of the gimmicks was you could catch your own fish (it was as fun as shooting fish in a barrel–or rather a large, enclosed pond, but you get the picture). You toss in a handful of feed pellets and nothing happens. Absolute silence. I dropped it right on top of a passing fish and it gave me the stink-eye. If i was prone to anthropomorphising i’d say one could almost sense their fishy disdain. Some guy gave us a piece of salmon to use as bait, and the instant that piece of flesh hit the water it was like a bomb had gone off. Every single fish in a ten meter radius converged on that single point and fought each other for the chance to devour their brethren. The hook was in the water for 3.5 seconds on average. If a salmon was cognisant enough to talk, it’s main beliefs would be DEVOUR. FEAST. FLESH. FLESH. FLESH.
Also while we’re on the topic, the life process of a salmon is so utterly alien and unthinkable to a human, the ‘being eaten’ part would rank so low on their list of Fucked Up Shit it’s not even worth talking about. you hatch in a river with no parents, no name, and no one to guide you or tell you who you are. You simply am. your mother laid up 10,000 eggs, but you are one of the 15% who hatched. You and your siblings were born to die, only a scant handful will reach maturity. When you’re big enough, an unknown force tells you GO TO THE OCEAN. You don’t know why. Hell, you don’t even know what the ocean is, but you don’t have a choice in the matter, your body has already changed so much that you can’t survive in freshwater any longer, if you don’t leave your nursery, you will die. You spend 1-7 years in the ocean, swimming the length of the continental united states of america (as far as alaska), until one day the unknown force tells you IT IS TIME and it tells you to retrace your steps (fins?) and return to the SAME STREAM YOU WERE BORN IN. you do this by smell in a way that baffles the apes studying you. Your body metamorphosizes into a SUPER SEXY version of yourself. Your entire body begins to slowly deteriorate, all energy goes to swimming and your reproductive organs. Getting eaten by a bear would be the kindest, cleanest death at this stage. You travel up rivers by swimming against the current, jumping small waterfalls, ect. If you’re one of the survivors who successfully mates, then your life ends here. You spend your last 15 days in the river you were born in, mating as much as possible if you’re male, or guarding your clutch of eggs if you're female, until your body slowly disintegrates. Maybe you find this horrific. Maybe you find this peaceful and satisfying. Getting named after a colour is low on your list of cares rn.
