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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
You think these people know biology nowadays? Come on now, look around you. If anything, they’re trying to get rid of biology courses in schools
Everyday language don’t care about biology. Language is about communicating concepts. Sometimes the evolution history may be of relevance. Sometimes it is a hindrance.
Don’t worry ladies and gentlemen, language doesn’t matter anymore.
Really they’re trying to get rid of education as a whole in schools.
Indeed, especially science that explains reality in any form
In the US, yes.
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.
“What animal breathes through its butt”
I answered sea cucumber. They wanted sea turtle. But we complained and they accepted our answer too :)
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 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.
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.
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.
Rats? They 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.
Arson out of the question due to rain?
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.
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?
same with birds, like people don’t count them as animals where i live
Today I learned about a whole new type of stupid I didn’t even know existed 😩
i’m guessing it’s some old kind of classification idea, where only furry things are counted as animals, so not stupid per se, just an outdated thing people were taught decades ago
It’s annoying as shit though, in some countries when you ask if a restaurant has vegetarian options and it turns out they mean the ones with chicken because they don’t consider chickens animals.
Same thing with fish
I was staying with my aunt and uncle in France when I was around sixteen, after about 12 years of vegetarianism, due mainly to my squeamishness, and we went to my aunt’s mother in law’s (my grandmother/great aunt in law?) for dinner. My aunt was desperate for me to behave perfectly because of some family drama I was too young for and made me promise to eat the dinner.
My uncle’s mother was a rural French woman born in ~1910 who was not familiar with the concept of vegetarianism (or maybe she was being an asshole to my aunt, but she seemed very sweet to me, just extremely formal), so she prepared whole rabbits just for me to avoid all of the examples my aunt listed.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen or eaten rabbit meat, but it looks like a dead cat with tons of tiny bones and tastes oppressively gamey and greasy. I know how it tastes because I’m a fucking bro, but it was awful. I couldn’t eat the whole portion I was given, but we implied that I had my period, which she accepted and changed the conversation topic asap.
It sounds like your great aunt just doesn’t know how to cook rabbit.
Could be, but honestly, even if it was great, I wouldn’t have been into it. It really looked like a cat and I stopped eating meat at age 4, so anything other than chicken breast would probably be too gamey for me.
That’s definitely fair. I’ve never eaten a whole rabbit, but I’ve had it cooked properly and it’s not bad at all.
But I’m half Cajun, and the rule of Cajun food is not to think too hard about what’s in it. So that philosophy bleeds into other foods as well.
That’s insane wow
It’d be more like a century and a half… I’m guessing it might be from the places that teach creationism, if there’s no evolution there’s no tree to clarify things into I guess. It’s very sad
I would be more inclined to believe that it is due to the archaic Linnaean classification
Even Linnaeus classified everything as “animal vegetable or mineral”
Like mammal = animal?
yeah, even my father in law, a farmer, argued with me honey isn’t animal product because it’s made by bees
Or metals for an astronomer
That’s pretty normal, historically-speaking. The modern classification system isn’t really very old compared to how long we’ve been talking about animals.
Aristotle thought bugs and fish and birds are all animals. I literally don’t know any classification system, or definition, that doesn’t.
Exactly! Everyone in this tread is hating on people that just learned a different “truth”. In 50 years everyone here will be wrong about something as fundamental as the animal kingdom and insist on being right. Science advances and previous truths become false.
There is also the aspect of biological classification not being very useful for everyday live. Do people go “uhm actachully biologically fish don’t exist” every time they see a meal advertised as “fish …”. People can have a concept of “animal” that is different from the taxonomy. And classifying mammals+reptiles+amphibian(+birds) as something different than fish and different than insects is a pretty reasonable classification (based on phenotype and not on phylogeny)
Well, yeah. They are government drones. (/s just in case someone needs it)
This is historically the case in Japan (birds and fish/seafood not being considered “meat”/animals when it comes to eating them). It started with Buddhism proscribing a meat-free diet, with that being impractical for the vast majority of the population unless some animals were still okay to eat.
It swims; it’s a fish.
No matter how you feel about her, this is one of those pics that speak a thousand words.
Is there context to this picture?
It’s from an interview where she was offered a chance to comment and distance herself from the racist tone of the jeans ad she featured in, and wouldn’t.
The viral posts largely portrayed Sweeney as dominating the interaction.
In what universe does this image not scream:
Second hand embarrassment | Overconfident idiot
Are we supposed to know who this is?
an animal for sure
Big booba lady from Euphoria tv show and half a dozen flop movies.
How?
I think her face is always like that
One of the true Cincinnati Bengals.
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
To be fair I had a good crack at convincing my missus that manimals are a subclass of animal and she’s smarter than me - just at practical humanities subjects instead of STEM bollocks.
manimals
Heh.
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 animal. 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.
They are kind of right … there is no such thing as a fish.
No such thing as birds.
If I went down that rabbithole I think she would have punched me
Podcast mentioned.
Still an animal though
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.
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.
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”?
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.
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
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.
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?
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 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.
Yeah, that’s not what animal means.
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
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.
I don’t understand your nonsense… you must be a fish.
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?
What the fuck are you on about???
You’re somehow both wrong, and useless here. How did you manage to disprove yourself so thoroughly?
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?”.
Mussels aren’t fish.
Now that I think about it “shellfish” a misnomer
Cuttlefish are molluscs. Smart mussels then!
She got mad
Laugh in her face then walk away and let her be mad
More people need to be told to their face that they’re imbeciles.
Just confusing animals and mammals. Cause they’re both mals.
The look to which my response is “Oh… I’m sorry I didn’t know about your disability”.
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.
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?
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
Removed the annoying text next to her face.
I know right, just horrible to credit someone who created the content you’re viewing.
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.
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.
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”…
