• Nikls94@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    BEHOLD! THE MAMMAL! IT GIVES MILK AND HAS HAIR!

    (And has venomous claws, lays eggs, has electroreceptors, glows under UV, has 10 sex chromosomes, genetically it’s a mix of reptiles and mammals…)

  • icelimit@lemmy.ml
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    6 hours ago

    I think a rabbit would be more accurate. Seeing as how a chicken has a beak. Also something cloaca

    • rapchee@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      in ancient greece, they asked a philosopher, “what is a man?”. he said “a featherless, bipedal creature”. and then diogenes entered the scene

        • dumbass@aussie.zone
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          5 hours ago

          Just learn about Diogenes, he’s awesome as fuck, hung around with a pack of wild dogs, told Alexander the great to get out of his sunlight, while laying in a pile of trash, dude did not give a fuck.

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.deOP
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      11 hours ago

      “taxonomy is a social construct”

      i mean for bacteria it actually is because bacteria can exchange genes across “species” so it’s not really a species… at least not in the sense of eukaryotes (where species are defined such that different species cannot exchange genes with each other)

      • flora_explora@beehaw.org
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        7 hours ago

        Even for anything else, it actually is. Taxonomy is our construct that we came up with as a society to classify life. We cannot ever be “right” about it, it can just be more or less useful for us to understand life.

        • icelimit@lemmy.ml
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          6 hours ago

          We don’t decide the baskets, if any, that this primordial soup decides to branch into.

          Real “taxonomy” probably looks more like a web with nodes.

          • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.deOP
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            2 hours ago

            fun fact: i have the conspiracy theory that the USB symbol:

            represents the phylogenetic tree of live. there’s a big node right at the beginning which are all the bacteria that aren’t really species (as i explained in another comment in this thread) but groups that can all exchange genes with each other and are therefore “one big species” and a lot of eukaryotic species that a long time ago developed out of them which only branch out, but don’t come back.

            • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.deOP
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              2 hours ago

              Is there such a thing as real taxonomy

              in the unlikely case that this is a serious question: yes, there is, at least for eukaryotes.

              for eukaryotes (things that have a cellular nucleus) there are “species” which are groups of organisms that can’t produce offspring with each other. The reasons are typically (i think?) that the genetic differences between two species are too great and any offspring would therefore have such a self-incompatible set of genes that they cannot live with.

              for prokaryotes (bacteria) the situation is a bit different. due to horizontal gene transfer, they can exchange genes with practically ever other strain of bacteria, as long as the environmental circumstances are right. (and the result is often viable, i.e. the resulting bacteria can live that way). as a consequence, there are not so clearly defined “species” for bacteria. however, there are still groups of bacteria that have a higher similarity to each other, so we still group them together and give them names.

              • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                2 hours ago

                Are there not worthwhile distinctions between sepcies that can interbreed? I remember learning from an anthro professor there are horses for examples that literally have different amounts of chromosomes that can interbreed fine. I still don’t see how ability to have viable offspring isn’t also just an arbitrary distinction I guess, especially when there’s whole classifications of life that break that rule into pieces.

                • runner_g@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                  24 minutes ago

                  While a little arbitrary, we use “ability to produce viable offspring” as a metric of speciation. Two animals can bone and create an offspring, but that offspring has to have live gametes (egg/sperm) for the parents to be considered the same species.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      Conservatives hate this one trick!

      (The trick: literally everything in all aspects of reality, from the larges to smallest scales to every branch of life and consciousness is a motherfucking SPECTRUM. No hard lines. Nothing is solid. Not even the matter you’re standing or sitting on.)

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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    19 hours ago

    I wonder how many people think that this;

    is what a coconut actually looks like.

    EDIT:

    Coconut as it looks on the palm tree

    • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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      12 hours ago

      To be honest, I’ve noticed that with lots of foods. I know what the thing looks like in stores, but I have no idea what it’s like in nature.

      Cashews were another recent one, where I never would have guessed what they look like:

      Yellow cashew apple hanging on a tree. It looks almost like a bell pepper. There's a green bit at the end, which contains the cashew nut.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      I got to travel Southeast Asia for a time, it’s atrocious how much we’re missing out on in the USA.

      Even the really fresh coconuts here just don’t compare to the ones you get fresh off a tree. It’s unreal. Don’t get me started on my Mango Rant.

      • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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        11 hours ago

        I lived in the US Virgin Islands as a kid. Our back yard had a seemingly endless supply of mangoes, bananas, avocado, lime, oranges (the real stuff, not the engineered shit we eat in the mainland), grapefruit, bread fruit, acerola, plantains, and pigeon peas. It wasn’t even that big a yard. Shit just grows.

      • ameancow@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        Go get those weird looking white ones from an Asian grocery store, they look like styrofoam cylinders with carved pointed tops. Use a butcher’s knife to chop the point off. (carefully, they are full of juice, you might be able to cut it just right so it leaves just enough meat over the water cavity.) Insert straw and long spoon to carve the natural jell-o out with. Thank me later.

        Edit: this is also a great date-night activity.

      • ameancow@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        From experience: all stages of a coconut are distinct, edible and used for different dishes, treats, condiments and ingredients. It’s truly a wonderous plant and sad that most Americans are only familiar with the overripe, hard kind with hard flesh.

        • BeeegScaaawyCripple@lemmy.world
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          14 hours ago

          i think they’re only familiar with it (edit: the overripe stuff) because they don’t pay attention to their thai food. that has exploded in popularity over the last few decades and fuck yeah.

      • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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        15 hours ago

        Underripe is when it’s nice and full of water. Best when thirsty. Dry and ripe, best when hungry.

      • Rothe@piefed.social
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        5 hours ago

        Yeah, I know it is a joke and all, but coconuts doesn’t have hairs or contain milk, so that particular example doesn’t undermine “morphology-based phylogeny” at all.

        • Mr. Semi@lemmy.world
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          18 hours ago

          This is not an equivalent process to extracting juice from a fruit.

          Saying coconuts have milk is akin to saying oranges have marmalade.

          Or more accurately, that oats or almonds have milk.

            • Mr. Semi@lemmy.world
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              17 hours ago

              It literally is not the same process. 🤦‍♂️

              Seriously you bucket of derps, the answer to this is the simplest of internet searches away, but I guess I understand why you would prefer to remain ignorant and confident in your mistaken assumptions about the world rather than risk learning that you don’t actually know everything intuitively.

              I eagerly await you attempting to explain how shredding notably dry and juiceless coconut flesh and stewing it in hot water to extract and emulsify the fats is somehow equivalent to just squeezing a fruit for the juice.

                • Mr. Semi@lemmy.world
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                  17 hours ago

                  And coconut water has precisely nothing to do with the production of coconut milk.

                  Even your own quote mentions the coconut pulp. Try reading the rest of the article, and also the article on coconuts themselves.

                  Coconut milk is produced from flesh of mature coconuts, which is referred to as leathery.

                  I’m curious as to what about that term strikes you as particularly moist and juicy?

                  Coconut water is produced from Young coconuts, before the pulp hardens.

                  Seriously. Get a grip and read more than the precis.

    • marcos@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      On related news, the salmon fish is not salmon color… And beef comes in larger packages on nature.

      • stray@pawb.social
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        9 hours ago

        Maybe we just disagree on what color “salmon” is, but the meat is what I would call that color. They’re like flamingos in that they take on pigment from their diet. For this reason, farmed salmon will not be “salmon” color unless their diet has been supplemented with the pigment.

    • TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      I’m a little sad that everyone’s focused on the coconut and missing the reference to the naked man who lives in a barell trolling the father of western philosophy.