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.
I’m impressed how common these “sightings” are given how rare I would have assumed this type of person would be. But lo and behold…
I was visiting the aquarium some years ago and there was an expert at one of the exhibits talking about “these animals this and these animals that” when suddenly I heard a woman who had several children with her exclaim “Fish are animals?”
I don’t recall at the moment how the staff member responded, other than I remember being impressed because it was a very non-judgmental and informative reply to her.
Admittedly, my partner in crime and I were struggling with the darker elements of our animal nature – beet red from holding back our laughter and our eyes-only conversation wasn’t helping.
Guess that dealing with public in that context everyday ot would be a common occurece and they already have a easy non judgmental answer for that
And they get mad when you tell them humans are, too.
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”.
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.
One of the true Cincinnati Bengals.
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 sun is actually a star!”

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














