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🍺 🍻 (mander.xyz)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] 38 points 10 months ago (24 children)

β€œBug” is a folksy word for any invertebrate with 6 or more legs. For example, they call lobsters and crayfish bugs.

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  • [–] 25 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    many people call slugs, snails, and worms bugs too. So any invertibrate with the right vibes

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    So there is no such thing as a bug, in the same way that there is no such thing as a tree

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Or a fish! If there were, then people would be fish and sharks would not be.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago

    Fish could be defined as the most recent common ancestor of tuna and herring, and all of its descendants. That would exclude sharks and lungfish, but would include most other groups that we unambiguously recognise as fish, while excluding tetrapods.

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  • [–] 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    I've learned recently that "Vegetable" is kind of like that too. Like most vegetables are fruits, seeds, leaves, roots, etc etc. Vegetable is a culinary term, not a botanical one, and it's still foggy. It's basically a plant that isn't sweet, but they also call sweet corn a vegetable so whatever.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    If a pillbug/rollypoly/potato bug/doodlebug/ is a bug? Then lobsters and crabs are absolutely bugs. This actually doesn’t bother me.

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  • [+] -8 points 10 months ago (8 children)

    bug is typically something that stings, while insect is more generic.

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Not always. Flies, ants, and mosquitoes are all considered bugs, despite having no stinging capacity to speak of.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (4 children)

    Well no but yes.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemiptera

    Hemiptera (/hΙ›ΛˆmΙͺptΙ™rΙ™/; from Ancient Greek hemipterus 'half-winged') is an order of insects, commonly called true bugs, comprising more than 80,000 species within groups such as the cicadas, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers, assassin bugs, bed bugs, and shield bugs. They range in size from 1 mm (0.04 in) to around 15 cm (6 in), and share a common arrangement of piercing-sucking mouthparts.[3] The name "true bugs" is sometimes limited to the suborder Heteroptera.[4]

    But wasps can sting and they're not bugs. They can also bite. So the key part is piercing with their mouth. For true bugs (as in the biological sense)

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Whenever I hold up a bug, and say to everyone, "Look, a bug, of the true order of bugs," everyone leaves the room because I'm doing the bug speech again

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  • [–] -1 points 10 months ago*

    Yeah that's because that sounds funny. You should change it to something like "look, a bug. And I say that as this is a member of the order 'hemiptera', also known as 'true bugs.'"

    Or perhaps it's just your face? People listen to me quite easily.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    i said typically, and colloquially. literally zero people refer to hemiptera specifically when they say bug. if you look at the american heritage dictionary, that's the exact order used in the definitions:

    #bug
    /bΕ­g/

    noun

    1. An insect having mouthparts used for piercing and sucking, such as an aphid, a bedbug, or a stinkbug.

    2. An insect of any kind, such as a cockroach or a ladybug.

    3. A small invertebrate with many legs, such as a spider or a centipede.

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  • [–] -2 points 10 months ago

    American

    Very ethnocentric of you. I first heard it from Stephen Fry, so no, not literally zero people.

    Also, it's literally the first definition there. That's the definition of the species in hemiptera. Just because you don't know anyone who knows orders of animals in latin doesn't mean we don't exist.

    I for one always enjoyed reading taxonomy, especially because sometimes translating a species can be quite weird if you don't know the translation and have to essentially hope that the yellow-breasted warbler is the thing they also described it as in the other language. Sometimes it's another feature.

    But I'm sure you'd know roughly what I mean if I refer to the order of primates. Possibly the infraorder cetacean as well. Especially if you've watched Star Trek religiously.

    Stephen Fry on Insects, and the beauty of nature and Evolution

    That's the wrong clip but i can't be arsed to find it

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