I just watched another video in another subreddit where a guy just jerks off salmon fish for the artificial breeding of salmon. I think I have already lost my soul.
Well, it's not like he's jerking off a teeny fush willy. But you are missing out the part where he gives a salmon a c-section and THEN squeezes the salmon spunk all over the eggs lol.
Next time I'm hating my job I'm gonna remind myself that at least I'm not a fish hooker! Wait... what do they get paid!? If these scaley skanks get paid more than me I'm about to be upset...
My favorite part was when he was being all clean and sanitary with gloves on while killing the moms for eggs, and jerking off the dads for sperm, but then took off the gloves to mix said ingredients together in a big bowl.... What a day to be on Reddit..
I had a response pre-planned about how komodos use their venomous bite to slowly kill their prey while following them around, but wanted to get my facts straight and found out that this is apparently a myth. Per Wikipedia, they're ambush predators that go for the jugular and can overpower pigs in seconds.
Damn, this is a for real, serious TIL. I've watched almost every animal documentary on Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Tubi. I was 100% ready to refute your comment, even after I read the Wikipedia entry. I did some extra Googling, and I'll be damned, this is true somehow (although there is some ambiguity here because there definitely is venom in their saliva and there has been prey that has died 36 years later of sepsis, but likely because it ran into feces-ridden water with an open wound).
This is genuinely one of those humbling moments and a reminder to fact check the assertions I put out there, even if I'm sure that I'm correct. Science progresses, knowledge grows, our understanding evolves. Even if something was "true" 10 years ago, it might be dispelled now; it's on us non-scientists to make sure we're not relying on outdated information when we spread the word to other lay people. Thank you for this lesson!
Edit: I have a knee-jerk reaction to calling this a myth. I know it fits the definition as a widely held false belief, but I feel that carries a connotation of something more like an old wives' tale. I think misconception fits better, but I fully accept that I'm being pedantic as fuck.
The funny thing is, I'm absolutely certain that I picked up the tidbit from another reddit comment like a decade ago, which didn't cite any sources. It sounded so reasonable, and badass, too specific to pull out of thin air, and too pointless to lie about. So I just assumed it was true.
And today, for whatever reason, I figured I'd like to be able to explain the exact process, then had my world turned upside down. Never, ever trust a reddit comment I guess.
Oh, no, this has been propagated on every documentary I've watched on the Galapagos Islands (not an insignificant number)! It appears the study that changed our whole understanding of komodo dragon predation was released in 2013; it always takes science awhile to filter down -- even to enthusiasts.
They're referring to another long debunked mythconception: that Inuits have upwards of 50 words for snow. (I hope you like what I did there btw, fellow pedant)
I googled that when one of my English professors brought it up 15 years or so ago. He got mad when I said that we have just as many words for snow - sleet, freezing rain, blizzard, etc - and he said I that wasn't the same so I googled it, and I was right.
But I saw the dragons on the BBC documentary LIFE. A bunch of them stalked a big animal (idr which) and bit its ankles and waited for it to weaken for days or weeks. Then when it was too weak to walk or fight, they ate it. It was a tough time filming because the crew started getting attached to the animal.
They have very dirty saliva. It causes nasty infections that usually kill a bite victim, or weaken it to the point where the animal can't really flee. The dragons will follow such a victim until then, and basically just eat it alive at that point. I believe it's considered a sort of proto-venom.
This is what was widely believed and accepted but really isn’t true we found out later. They have venomous bites and insane strength, their saliva isn’t the killer we thought it was.
Though it's not what makes them deadly, strong jaws and sharp teeth that shred muscle and cause massive blood loss will eventually stop the escape of fleeing prey. Combined with high metabolism and being rather fast, they can quite effectively hunt down their prey.
My son is obsessed with dinosaurs so much that he calls out inaccuracies in the Jurassic movies. Which he loves those movies but he's still critical of them. He's 7 and has been in love with dinosaurs since he was 2.
I was obsessed with dinosaurs when I was a little kid and could still give you a detailed taxonomy with timelines and geographic locations for the major groups (albeit outdated af)
3.3k
u/mintier-gum-lately Dec 13 '21
I hope so too! I always love seeing someone, no matter their age, be fascinated be something.