That’s interesting. I’ve never heard of fish fights!

I assumed they were salt water fish because of the colours and long fins. I used to call this section underwater tweets, so maybe I should go back to that.

Yes, my biology teacher in my first year of secondary school (she was already old, died decades ago) gave a very useful heuristic. Six segmented legs: insect or related, eight segmented legs: spiders, scorpions and their ilk (chelicerata), 10 segmented legs crustaceans: crabs, lobsters and shrimp (although there are crustaceans with more legs).
As far as I know they are all ‘good’ taxonomic groups, ie. all six-leggers (insects and springtails etc) are more related to each other than to arachnids or decapods, all eight-leggers more related to each other than to insects or crustaceans etc. etc.
There are other overlapping characteristics taxonomists are interested in, like the 2 pairs of appendages per segment, or having lost a pair, such as the uniramia, which would include hexapoda and myriapoda (centi- and millipedes), but as a rule of the thumb I always found my teacher’s rule quite practical.
And yes, Heather, the lepidoptera (scaled wings), such as butterflies and moths are indeed insects, as ratabago pointed out above.
Note, the larvae of the lepidoptera, aka caterpillars, appear to have more than 6 legs, but closer observation shows that only the first 3 pairs are actually segmented legs. The others are pseudo-legs, as you can clearly see in that beautiful photograph of the Great Peacock Moth caterpillar, the red thingies are it’s real legs.

Thanks for the lesson, and your nice comments.

Cheers
Heather

I’ve been enjoying your top tweets. Good stuff.

That’s what Jerry keeps saying – he spent a month here but there’s still so much left to see that he has to come back.

I have to admit though, I haven’t been to the Abel Tasman National Park either! The best I can say is I’ve flown over it. It’s a gorgeous part of the country – every guide book is full of photos taken around there.