this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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Science Memes

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submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

I'm not a scientist, but I'm the kind of person to keep black widows as pets and create a website that catalogues all the spiders in my area. I'd allow spiders being called bugs, or even insects. Even poisonous is alright but it does hurt a little.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago

create a website that catalogues all the spiders in my area

You are a web developer looking for other web developers ;)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

We're going to need a link

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

It was a Google site (from years ago) so all that's left is a random archive somewhere. I had all the local spiders+favorites, but the only original content were pictures of Latrodectus and Kukulkania Hibernalis. Beautiful spiders.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

What's your favourite?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Portia jumping spider! It's such a crazy little machine.

What about you?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Smart little cats with 8 legs, and certaily the most lovely spiders, even for aracnophobics

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You need to read read Children of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky then.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Popped to mind immediately upon seeing the word Portia

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I also really liked his Shards of Earth series if you haven't seen that one.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I did, and enjoyed them!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I finished and was so sad Solace wasn't my girlfriend. 😄

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

i like beetles in general. i have a special place in my heart for weevils but not because of memes, Otiorhynchus is my first ID.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Are some spiders poisonous? Are all animals that are venomous also poisonous? Also I'd like to say that there is no linguistic difference between the two in some languages. There is no distinction between the two in German for instance. It's either giftig or it isn't.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

None that I know of. I think the OC was just mocking a bit on how some people can get so bent out of shape when the word is used colloquially.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

It's an unfortunate false friend that the German word Gift means poison in English.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Funnily there is also the word "Mitgift" (Dowry) that has nothing to do with poison at all and is closer to the english "gift".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Same root though. In Dutch it wasn't differentiated until recently so the same word has vastly different meanings between Afrikaans and Dutch. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/gifte#Middle_Low_German

Original meaning seems to be something that was given. So a snake would gift you Poison just like snot nosed brats would gift you a cold during Thanksgiving dinner.

Same meaning as dose in that sense. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/dosis#Latin

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

The word has been used as a euphemism for "poison" since Old High German, a semantic loan from Late Latin dosis (“dose”), from Ancient Greek δόσις (dósis, “gift; dose of medicine”).

I wondered how the heck it got that meaning. Pretty strange to apply a term for giving something in general to poison specifically.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

There is a distinction to make. For example some snake venom is not poisonous when traveling through your digestive system, and only becomes a problem when it enters the blood stream (usually from a bite).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

I don't think it matters in most contexts. When people are casually talking about it, venomous and poisonous are both stand-ins for "it has venom." They're not telling other people, "actually, don't eat spiders." I was just joking about the classic pedant line about spiders.

But it does make a difference on paper. I'm curious how you would express this in German: A black widow is venomous and in theory a healthy human can eat a dead black widow with no ill effects.