Try telling anybody that Humans are animals too and there’s a better than 50% chance they will argue with you about that as well.
Or that we are quite literally apes.
You could see the short circuit in his head when I told my cousin’s husband about how slime mold has something like 13 different sexes, and that birds don’t use x/y but rather z/w.
I listened to a podcast recently about potatoes. The ones in Europe are all one species. They can’t grow variants from seeds because they have 4 chromosomes which means growing from seeds doesn’t give the same variant. They are basically clones. If a variant is lost it cannot be brought back, it’s gone for good.
I never knew how interesting potatoes are!
Lots of crops are like this, like apples! It’s called extreme heterozygosity.
One of the coolest thing about apples imo. All those varieties you love like granny Smith are literally just the same tree grafted over and over again.
That’s the big word I couldn’t remember. I didn’t know apples were the same but that really makes sense now.
We share a common ancestor with mushrooms amd sea horses
if you go back far enough, every living species shares the same ancestor. Or so it would seem.
I have never in my life met a person who thought that insects aren’t animals, what are you talking about?
A lot of people appear to think that animal=mammal or animal=vertebrate. I remember when in history class we had to discuss differences between humans and other animals. The girl I had as my partner told me fish and dolphins weren’t animals.
i envy you. i’ve met people who don’t thrnk birds are animals, including one veterinarian.
Do they also believe that birds aren’t real?
I mean, yeah, government drones are not animals, I don’t see the problem here.
birds must be a carrot. Surely?
I mean, considering that this is a successful meme on two different platforms and that there are multiple comments giving their own examples, I would assume that it’s a behaviour that a lot of people come across, regardless of your personal experience.
We live in a world where people who believe in jewish space lazers and think they’re going to get 5G from vaccines exist, and you find this hard to believe?
Lots of people think that animal means mammal. They are animals, but they are not mammals.
is that kinda like how beastkin aren’t monsters because they can speak?
if that’s the case, are elves people or demons?
further, dragons that talk, should they be considered beastkin or monsters?
I believe some people consider elves demons, but they aren’t really “people” or demons, they are their own classification of beings. I believe they are considered a type of humanoid.
I think the form of the dragon probably matters for determining beastkin or monsters, since monsters is more about the form than the lack of intelligence/lack of speaking ability, I think.
Correct me if I’m wrong but like isn’t every living thing an animal? Like trees and fungi too? Or is there something I’m missing?I was wrong yall
Animals are one group or “kingdom” of life. Plants (such as trees) and fungi (such as mushrooms) each have their own kingdoms, and so do bacteria and a few other forms of life. They’re organized this way to represent how closely related they are. Every single living thing in the animal kingdom is more closely related to every single other thing in the animal kingdom than to anything in any other kingdom.
As an example, chimpanzees, starfish, and earthworms are more closely related to each other than to a sunflower, so we call chimpanzees, starfish, and earthworms animals but not sunflowers. This is called “taxonomy” and there’s a ton of different levels of how related things are, ranging from very distantly related to so closely related you can barely tell them apart. Kingdom isn’t even the most broad!
You might have also heard that fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants, but that doesn’t mean that fungi are animals, just that the lifeform that branched into fungi and animals did so a lot later than the one that branched into plants. In the end they’re still distinct enough that we call them different kingdoms!
That was a well explained reply, thanks!
Thank you for putting my thoughts into much more eloquent words!
This is where the Chinese Language comes to shine. Animal, 动物, literally “moving object”, so if it has roots (aka: plants, fungi), it cannot move on its own, therefore, not a 动物, Animal.
Like the words are self-explanatory, so beautiful.
(Please excuse me for interjecting my knowledge of the Chinese Language into everything lolz)
Wouldn’t that make corals and sponges not animal, despite biologically being animals?
Can’t remember for corals but sponge’s larval stage moves around before deciding on a rock to call home.
Closes Chinese Dictionary
“Listen here you little shit…”
But I mean I guess they should make a new term called 植-动物 with the 植 (to plant, to establish) character from 植物 (planted/established objects, aka: plants), thus making it “planted- moving object”, aka: plant-like animal; or conversely 动-植物 with the 动 (moving) from 动物 (moving objects, aka: animal), thus making it “moving- planted object”, aka: animal-like plant.
Its like word lego.
English isn’t that far off. Animal has the same root as animate, which is the Latin anima, “soul” or “breath.” The English word plant has synonyms and general connotations of fixedness or non-intentionality.
No worries I know someone from hk who loves linguistics this will get me some brownie points
No trees are plants and fungi are fungi. Animals are multicellular organisms that are mobile and seek out food at a very basic description. Plants are multicellular non mobile that make their own food and fungi are somewhere between that. Closer to animals but not. Then there’s the single cell life of bacteria and archea.
Animals are multicellular organisms that are mobile and seek out food at a very basic description.
Sea sponges are animals and don’t move.
Animals are a specific lineage of eukaryotic multicellular (mostly) organisms that lack cell walls.
The problem with evolution is that it likes to make exceptions to any descriptor based taxonomy. Any taxonomic category will ultimately be attempting to say “this genetic lineage”. If a sea sponge species eventually develops chlorophyll and cell walls it’ll still be an animal, but just a really fucking confusing one.
I wish we could use photosynthesis, even if it’s just as a supplement like a hybrid vehicle.
I know some folks who spend their time in Brinstar who’d like a word.
Yep, traditional (non-phylogenetic) taxonomy creates problems like protists, the grab bag of eukaryota.
There are more species labeled protists than the sum of all their descendants.
Are they animals, plants, or fungi? Sure, why not!
Some are heterotrophs (eat things), some are autotrophs (energy from sun or chemicals), and others are mixotrophs (some of both). Some are motile, others immotile. Some are multicellular, most unicellular.
The problem is all taxonomy is arbitrary, and traditional taxonomy is pretty inconsistent. Phylogenetic taxonomy is still arbitrary, but using evolutionary relationships instead of “this monkey looks like other monkey” at least gets you more consistency in that system.
Before they attach to a rock they move around in a larval stage, same for anemones and some jellyfish species. There are exceptions to all of our classifications because nature doesn’t have to play by any rules besides physics. Even the concept of species has no set definition because no matter what we come up with there are exceptions. Also “seek out” was a bit too specific, they have to take in food from outside themselves as they can’t make their own energy like plants.
Paralyzed people too
But that’s due to some sort of injury or disorder, not how they function standard.
I’m still not totally clear on where the line for plants is, what’s the deal with phytoplankton? Why isn’t brown algae a plant? What are archaea? Also wtf is a species? is there a point in learning biology where things start to make sense again or does in only get muddier from here
Well if not animals, what are they? Plants? Mushrooms? lmao
Mushrooms are Plants! /s
And imagine telling someone that Sun is a star…
Imagine seeing Earth from the planet Moon.
It hurts to listen 😫 “Moon is not a planet. It’s a star!” 😩
Just try telling people that they are animals as well.
Say them that they are from regnum animalia and they will understand it as an insult, as some “anomaly”…
Can someone explain the memes template/what it is trying to convey.
I get the text, but I am unfamiliar with the meme and what the face it meant to be portraying.
I took it to be another version of this Homelander reaction. Basically a look of disdain and disgust. Spiked with a bit of superiority complex.
This particular image is just doing the rounds now because it’s from a recent Sweeney Todd interview, or whatever her name is.
Sweeney Todd, Demon Barber of Jean Street
The look to which my response is “Oh… I’m sorry I didn’t know about your disability”.
One of the true Cincinnati Bengals.
I think language plays a factor in how you think.
When I think of the English word “Animal”, I think of a picture of a deer or a cow in a textbook. When I think in Chinese, 动物, I extrapolate the meaning of the word, 动 which means “moving”, and 物 meaning “object”, 动物 = “moving object”, so its easy to know what is and isn’t a 动物 (animal), the word is self-explanatory.
I wonder if this causes a similar confusion about sea cucumbers and venus fly traps.
Tbf, when they coined those terms, they probably haven’t discovered like most of the variety of species yet, but that was the best term they had at the time.
Edit: Also: Venus Fly Trap does not have legs to move. It technically does move, but it’s still pretty much stationary relative to the ground. the 植 in 植物 (plants) basiclly includes the character 植, meaning “to plant”/“to establish”, so anything within the 植物 category cannot relocate itself (excluding via reproduction, spreading seeds, which doesn’t count for this purpose).
Also, doesn’t sea cucumbers move? I mean, snails are animals, theres no confusion about that lol.
A lot of words in English are based on similar patterns, with roots in Latin or Greek. “Animal” isn’t a compound example like 动物, but it does have a root in the Latin “anima”, which has more of a spiritual basis.
The English word “animal” derives from the Latin word animale, a neuter form of the adjective animalis. The ultimate root of the word is the Latin noun anima, meaning “breath,” “soul,” or “vital principle”.
The etymology traces the concept of an “animal” back to the essential quality of having life, specifically the presence of breath or a soul that distinguishes a living being from an inanimate object.
Arguably also a little bit outdated, considering the discovery of phosphorous in pee and how it proved there was nothing fundamentally different about matter in living beings vs matter in inanimate objects.
Effectively both have more or less the same meaning, considering ‘anima’ is the same root for animate.
Problem with latin roots is that the root words don’t really get used anymore, meanwhile the individual characters that compose Chinese words are still used and taught to this day.
True, English is kind of a monstrosity that blends in words from pretty much anywhere with no consistency to hold it all together.
But this word does have a classical root, and many scientific terms at least try to use a semblance of Latin and Greek structure in them (although they are very loose with the rules as well).
That’s suspiciously specific.
Removed the annoying text next to her face.
I know right, just horrible to credit someone who created the content you’re viewing.
slaps text over image grabbed from the internet
I are content creator.
So people that make memes aren’t worthy of credit?
You’re obviously someone who looks at memes, or you wouldn’t be in this comment section. Why would you support someone going out of their way to remove that?
Are you saying that if I go to imgflip and spend 10 seconds putting text on an image; that I can… No, that I deserve to put my watermark on it? That my meme is so sacred, and so important, that I should make sure to plug my Instagram on it? Look at me! Look at me! I made a funny everyone! Please acknowledge me!
If someone slaps their name on something that cost them next to zero time, effort, or creativity, then it’s not credit. It’s just a fucking ad.
If you’re talking about advertising their Instagram or whatever it is yes, I think they should be allowed to do that because its only as successful as the meme is.
The creativity of a memes text has always been the most important angle of it so if someone is good at that why would you want someone to go out of their way to remove any credit to them?
If someone is a twitch streamer playing a video game and has a clip circulating based off of something funny they said in game or a skilled play they make in the game they should be credited too and this isn’t really that different. They didn’t create the game, they added a context to it that drove engagement.
The text the person came up with obviously get engagement or it wouldn’t have ended up here. It isn’t like this person made this all with AI or whatever it takes a moderate amount of skill to make a meme engaging enough to end up on obscure sites like Lemmy so why not credit the funny thing the person came up with?
I’m not saying they deserve a fucking award or a parade, but simply not removing their name to give them credit isn’t asking too much. In fact, you’d have to spend 15 seconds or whatever to go out of your way to remove that.
Why?
You think they took that photo?
You know what a meme is, right?
You usually use an image that already exists and add funny or reflective text to it to make it a meme.
They made the meme. By adding the text and putting their handle on it. No reason to go out of your way to remove that.
Yea but they don’t own the rights to the original image so they have no right putting their advertising on it.
You should show them by not engaging with memes at all!
Actually, this is how I look at people who think stating that insects are animals makes them big brains… Its right up there, with “Spiders arent incests because they have 8 legs.” or “The sun is actually a star!” or “America is actually a continent”. Its always the most basic of shit that people who try to make others feel small use during these annoying conversations.
Insect? Or incest? Freudian slip?
What are you doing,
stepbro? ;)
“Spiders aren’t incests because they have 8 legs.”
Umm, actually, spiders sometimes ARE incests. In fact, an article I saw when googling that said that it was actually safer for the male when they were incests (as they’re less likely to be killed and eaten). And they can be or not be incests for reasons other than their 8 legs…
The other ones being, there is actually no such thing as a fish, and a tomato is a fruit not a vegetable.
That fish thing is gonna be the next big culture war. Some fucking idiot is going to say that if you eat Salmon, youre a cannibal because Salmon share like 60 to 70% of their DNA with humans and then we will be off to the races. Next will be interspecies erotica… And its OK, cos 60% is close enough… or something… lol
“The sun is actually a star!”
I was at a trivia night and a question was, “Apart from humans, what’s the two highest populated species in the animal kingdom?”
Now, I’m not the smartest brain inhabiting a future corpse, but I did do basics in school.
I say to my group, “Maybe plankton? But I don’t know if there’s some technicality over that being a plant or something. If I were to guess, probably ants and then flies.” We agreed and went with that.
NOPE!!!
Cats and dogs apparently!!!
This didn’t even make sense to us if considering just the mammals.
I protested.
The quiz master said “The question is about the animal kingdom.”
“Well, if insects aren’t animals, what are they?”
He dug in his heels, we weren’t getting the points. And to make things even more bizarre, most other teams said cats and/or dogs to get 1 or 2 points.
We found a new trivia night.
Humans aren’t even in the top 10. They’re probably not in the top 100, really.
If he meant mammals the answer is mice and rats.
There might be the nuance that there are many species of ants and flies, though still idk if any one of them outdoes humans, their pets and chickens.
Wikipedia’s page on biomass says that ants can compete with humans in global biomass (though the estimates vary wildly), but there are 15700 species of ants.
Antarctic krill is the safest bet with shittons of them in just one species.
im really intrested. what is their answer for if insects were not animals?
They didn’t have one and just doubled down on them not having vertebrae so therefore weren’t part of the animal kingdom.
Also isn’t there like 12 bazillion chickens per person? No fucking way could it be cats/dogs.
26 billion chickens globally, apparently.
That’s a lot less than I expected.
We probably churn through that amount every six months 🫤 But would they even still exist without us? The existential crisis of the chicken.
Fucker crosses the road gets made kebab.
Thought I’d make a “What is my purpose?” meme
Needed a picture of a chicken to cover the robot…
Welp, no need to make the meme anymore…
looks pretty good ngl
Rats? There are millions and millions of them. They breed rapidly. But, I would’ve assumed it was some type of insect.
Yeah, we had originally thought mice until our brains went exoskeleton.
Edit: That makes it sound like we were so open mind d our brains fell out 🤣
If they’d fallen out you’d probably have gone with cats and dogs like the other brain dead people at that quiz.
The most annoying part of that is that cats and dogs both eat meat! He thinks there are more cats and dogs than the chickens and cows (etc) we feed them? What demented food web did they teach him in elementary school biology?
I would have guessed ants, but I think they’re just in the top 10? I wonder if humans are even in the top 1000, lol.
Cats and dogs aren’t even species; they’re vague categories. I tried to find the actual answer to this question, but trying to nail down individual species is proving impossible. Every source is like “copepods” or “ants” like that isn’t incredibly broad. ChatGPT says it’s the Antarctic krill with 5x10^14 individuals. Going from there, the WWF says there’s over 7x10^14 , and Wikipedia only says they’re one of the most abundant species. I’m not going to get an answer to this question, and I’m going to be mildly annoyed about it infrequently for the rest of time.
Krill were my first choice, squids might be up there too, but the word ‘species’ instead of a more broad taxonomic term is a special limit.
Some kind of jellyfish might be a good candidate, but I’d probably go with smaller plankton for sheer numbers (as opposed to biomass).
I know it’s the formatting being goofy, but 7x1014 is a very, very large number.
“What animal breathes through its butt”
I answered sea cucumber. They wanted sea turtle. But we complained and they accepted our answer too :)
Arson out of the question due to rain?
OMG in still confused at this.
“I don’t eat animals”
“Do you eat fish?” (My thinking people say they are vegetarian but are actually pescaterian but don’t like saying it for some reason)
“Yea but thats not an animal”
“Hahaha yea it is”
“No it isnt”
“Wait what? … If its not an animal what is it? A tree? Haha”
“It’s a fish!”
“Which is an animal”
“No! An animal is an animal, and a fish is a fish!”
“Fish are animals. Look, we can look it up to check if you want”
“I’m not going to look it up because I know a fish isn’t an animal. I don’t need to look it up!”
“… … I guess I can’t argue with that”
This all took place during pre drinks which is why I thought I was getting fucked with at the start. But I never realised how so many people are walking around blindingly, confidently, unshakeably wrong. She got mad.
It’s wild to me… And then to get mad? Like “how dare you make me learn something”
Proud ignorance is basically a religion in the US now.
Not the US BTW.
I was just speaking to my own experience here.
More people need to be told to their face that they’re imbeciles.
Just confusing animals and mammals. Cause they’re both mals.
She got mad
Laugh in her face then walk away and let her be mad
I have a workmate who loves to act dumb. We’ve decided fish aren’t animals, they are indeed fish, we’ve also decided jellyfish are crustaceans.
Do we have to decide to share the Nobel prize or does a committee decide that for us?
I’m vegan, but i eat cows. Cows aren’t animals, cows are cows.
This is how I felt as a kid when my peers insisted the thumb is not a finger. Like what are you talking about bro? If I asked before this came up, you’d have said you have ten fingers, not eight.
this is how I feel as a Spanish speaker when English tell me toes aren’t fingers
In English, they aren’t. Toes and fingers are both digits, but not both toes or fingers.
I acknowledge that you are right, however I also acknowledge that I don’t like it and I rather be wrong about it
Language created a thing where Spanish speaker have twice the finger than English speakers.
You can always call them foot fingers in English if you like, although you might get some strange looks.
to differentiate them from hand toes
They are kind of right … there is no such thing as a fish.
If I went down that rabbithole I think she would have punched me
Of course there’s such a thing as a fish! A fish is any swimming vertebrate (or its descendant), such as a tuna, or a duck, or a human.
You believe in cladistics or you don’t, cowards!
Being cold blooded and living “wholly in water” are also requirements.
Nah, phylogenetically speaking, all descendants of fish must also be fish, by definition. Therefore, “being cold blooded” cannot also be a criterion (not that it would work anyway since tuna are warm blooded, BTW, and nobody would argue tuna aren’t fish).
The “living wholly in water” criterion actually works, though: land-fish (e.g. humans) live inside a bag of water that we carry with us.
Podcast mentioned.
Still an animal though
No such thing as birds.
Yes there are, they’re a kind of dinosaur
I’m able to understand conceptually that “meat” doesn’t literally mean any animal’s muscle tissue in every language. Sometimes it’s a more vague concept of a large mammal’s meat and excludes fish, poultry, etc. And that’s okay. But I also hate it.
I’ve never once voiced this thought out loud, but every time someone says something like “I don’t want fish, I want to eat meat” I think “Well, you’re wrong, but OK.” There’s some arbitrary dividing line people assume is logical, but I don’t think it would hold up to serious scrutiny.
Are organs other than muscle not meat?
“Organ meats” is definitely a phrase used for offal, but I think the “organ” qualifier is doing work there. Offal is certainly meat in the sense that if ordered a dish with no meat and got liver, I’d be upset. But I’d also be upset if I said I want meat for dinner and my partner made liver. I guess it really depends on context.
My mom often cooks “meat free”. There’s always some sausage in there like Chorizo. Tastes great, but it’s certainly not free of meat.
“reduced meat” doesn’t sound as good
What about “meat lite”?
Ok, but you are wrong. While biology means animal is a member of animalia, people usually mean an animal that is capable of higher functions, e.g. a dog, sheep etc.
Most fish don’t express themselves in an understandable way. Mussels barely have neurons.
You gotta relax. Any sane human being should have clearly understood where they draw the line.
You also do wrong stuff all the time because it is useful to be wrong.
I don’t think people “usually” mean that at all. And even if they did, why would I care what people mean by it if it’s wrong?
Nah buddy, we all went to school, and it’s abundantly clear that in modern English, an animal is part of the Kingdom Animalia.
So, the only people (in the English speaking world) who don’t think of insects or fish an animals, either are of a much, much older generation, or didn’t do very well in school.
Most fucking 6-year-olds, in Australia at least, would be able to answer yes to “is a fish an animal?”.
Yeah, that’s not what animal means.
I don’t understand your nonsense… you must be a fish.
Fish just express themselves in a way different from mammals, and just as capable of ‘higher functions’ as any other animal. Also the fact that you mentioned mussels, which are molluscs, doesn’t exactly make you seem like an expert on the subject.
deleted by creator
I’ve only ever known Christians to think fish aren’t animals. I’m pretty sure that’s something random that the Vatican decided for bending lent rules or some shit.
at least in my life most people do not have a “reasonably underseood line” where they arbitrarily stop considering animals as animals due to their perceived lack of communication. they have a line where they stop caring about them, but that’s usually about how cute they are, not about how they communicate. if more people understood koalas better they’d be way less popular. they barely have a brain, can’t communicate much, sound absolutely awful…
most people just don’t actually think that much about it. trivia is for the people that do think about things. and it certainly should at least have its answers checked on google.
I’ve only ever known Christians to think fish aren’t animals. I’m pretty sure that’s something random that the Vatican decided for bending lent rules or some shit.
iirc from a class I took 17 years ago (I probably don’t), that is essentially correct. I believe it was to help with getting Scandinavian and/or Baltic countries to convert to Christianity. At least that’s the gist of what I remember.
and it certainly should at least have its answers checked on google.
Just not the LLM part since it’s often wrong
What the fuck are you on about???
I think you mean fish don’t express themselves in a way you understand. Some are lone hunters who have to rely on their wits to survive, while some have complex social interactions. Some even pass the mirror test.
I don’t think you should make excuses for why some things deserve life or kindness and others don’t. I think it’s better to just be honest with yourself about your personal biases and say you like dogs too much to hurt them, but that you don’t care as much about fish.
Mussels aren’t fish.
Now that I think about it “shellfish” a misnomer
Cuttlefish are molluscs. Smart mussels then!
You’re somehow both wrong, and useless here. How did you manage to disprove yourself so thoroughly?
