“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)

A paper I quite enjoy is "Queer Theory for Lichens" which argued that queer theory is genuinely a useful framework for studying lichens; Lichens resist categorisation in a manner that feels like they're actively mocking our taxonomic efforts.

sounds like average republican

Proof that God is fucking with us

It's one of twoish (one species of platypus, three of echidnas) mammals on its order (the other order which has all the more normal mammals — placental mammals) it's so different to the other mammals that really all monotremes have in common with placentals is hair and milk

Some spiders also produce milk.

That coconut is clearly not on a palm tree, mate. /s

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:

If that's not a coconut, what the fuck have I been eating?

Edit: Ok. The edit makes it make sense lol.

Also not a nut.

Coconuts are tropical! This is temperate zone!

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

that looks underripe to me

(from researchgate), Maturity stages of coconut: a) young; b) early ripening; c) ripe

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.

Yes, wiki/Vagina_dentata.

It's in reference to Diogenes being a dick to Plato.

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

I think the culture of not cropping out the person who reblogged this chain (i.e. Julia Louis Dreyfus) is sort of like an informal citation system. It's analogous to if I said "oh man, let me tell you this joke that my friend Julia told me". Whoever made this screenshot likely only saw this thread because they were following Julia Louis Dreyfus

They reblogged the overall interaction but didn't add anything themselves. They reblogged it from gumdrop which is why that name is there.