Significance To Humans
Gar flesh is edible, and sometimes available in markets, but unlike the sturgeon that they resemble, their eggs are highly toxic to humans. Several species are traded as aquarium fish.
The hard skin and scales of the gar were used by humans. Native Americans used the scales of the gar as arrowheads, native Caribbeans used the skin for breastplates, and early American pioneers covered their plows in gar skin. Not much is known about the precise function of the gar in Native American religion and culture, but besides using the gar, Creek and Chickasaw people have ritual "garfish dances."
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Famous quotes containing the words significance to, significance and/or humans:
“For a parent, it’s hard to recognize the significance of your work when you’re immersed in the mundane details. Few of us, as we run the bath water or spread the peanut butter on the bread, proclaim proudly, “I’m making my contribution to the future of the planet.” But with the exception of global hunger, few jobs in the world of paychecks and promotions compare in significance to the job of parent.”
—Joyce Maynard (20th century)
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)
“...there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its root grows old in the earth, and its stump dies in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth branches like a young plant. But mortals die, and are laid low; humans expire, and where are they?”
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 14:7-10.