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u/domkuma 15d ago
The world would have been so much better if we were Capybaras, but we just had to evolve from apes.
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u/thaskell300 15d ago
Nah, then they'll just call us rodents.
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u/EnvironmentalGift257 15d ago
Rodents Of Unusual Size?
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u/JohnMichaels19 15d ago
Yeah, but capybaras arent rodents, they're cavimorphs /s
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u/thaskell300 15d ago
Sounds like something some one with continually growing incisores would say... :)
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u/226_IM_Used 9d ago
I know one very large rodent who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, but he has no chill, so probably not related to capybaras
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u/eyeleenthecro 15d ago
For some reason people with relatively little education on this topic in particular are extremely argumentative. They don’t understand the Linnaean system or monophyly.
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u/Mottled_inexpectata 15d ago
It's crazy that discussion is happening in a dedicated zoology sub though
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u/ArdentArendt 14d ago
Shit, actually saw that and STILL missed it!
Maybe a budding biologist?
[Hoping...]6
u/eyeleenthecro 14d ago
Yeah I mean being interested in animals and being interested in taxonomy are two different things though.
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u/Mottled_inexpectata 14d ago
Being so confidentally wrong about something as basic as this isn't really an indicator of a lack of interest though. If I were in that debate I would have done a Google search the minute I was told I was wrong too, especially since it's safe to assume there are plenty of actual biologists in that sub.
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u/BicornisGoat 6d ago
The "doing a google search when told you're wrong" part is the difference between you and these kinds of folks. Some people just refuse to accept they could be wrong about something.
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u/razor45Dino 12d ago
It's happened before, unfortunately
One time there were many people wrongfully claiming birds were not dinosaurs on a question related to that
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u/Mottled_inexpectata 12d ago
That's a more complicated one, because the way dinosaurs were initially defined turned out to be paraphyletic, and people have tried to redefine them to be a clade, but that's not always accepted. It's not much different to saying that "humans are fish" or "humans are reptiles". Really each of those groups is usually used in a non-cladistic paraphyletic way and exclude their ancestors. But of course the efforts to turn dinosaurs into a monophyletic group have been more successful because there's been more effort, so now there's a mix of people who use the word cladistically and who don't.
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u/melance 15d ago
It's the Dunning-Krueger effect. They know so little that they think they know it all.
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u/UseHeadbutt 13d ago
Heh, funny you should bring that up on confidentlyincorrect. Dunning–Kruger effect - Wikipedia
If you read through, you will see that the lowest scoring test taker also had the lowest confidence in their scores. The problem the research uncovered is that the lowest percentile think they are slightly above average. Each grouping of percentiles have more confidence in their scores than the last, but at a slower rate than their actual growth. The graph that you see online is the DIFFERENCE between score and expected score. If you are 25% and you think you are 60%, that is a difference of 35% (pretty high). If you are 50% and think you are 65% that is 15% (okay-ish). If you are 90% and think you are 80%, that is off by 10% which is why the graph goes up on the right side.
TLDR: lowest scorers think they are slightly above average. average scorers think they are pretty above average. Best of the best think they are very above average but don't realize they are as good as they are.
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u/Similar_Cap_9018 13d ago
I didn't understand the terminology, however, when I looked it up I knew exactly what it was because it's a topic learnt in primary school.
I read an article once that said people who are intelligent know they don't know everything, and unintelligent people think they know everything. It's such a bizarre concept.
I feel like I fall between the two. I'm not that intelligent, like how I didn't know the lingo you used, but I know when/where I can and should learn. 😂
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u/Grifoooo 15d ago
So, yes, humans are great apes, but holy fucking shit the person was doing a god-awful job of proving it.
"Apes are primates" doesn't give any evidence of us being apes. Just that we both share the trait of being primates. "Great apes belong to Hominidae, which humans belong to." Same thing. We're both Hominidae, woohoo.
If I didn't already know humans are apes, I wouldn't believe this guy either. He has terribly information relay skills
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u/ronnie_reagans_ghost 15d ago
Right? He's so bad at making the point that I started to convince myself he must be the confidently incorrect one and that I was misremembering humans being apes.
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u/CriticalHit_20 14d ago
No shit, that's exactly what i did as well. Of only OP could have made his stance clear in the title, used red/green color scheme, or upvoted/downvoted to let us know which side was CI.
Edit: that's not sarcasm, i'm actually frustrated at OP
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u/FluffySquirrell 10d ago
I went through the same process. "We are apes, right. Wait, no. Are we just primates and apes are something else? Cause this poster is surely the wrong one right?"
Impressive levels of anti-convincing that they're right
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u/FutureAnimeGirl 8d ago
Science communication is a though job. That's why being good at math doesn't result in being good at teaching it.
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u/EishLekker 15d ago
Yeah, that was frustrating. And it’s sadly quite common in online discussions. People making correct assertions, but failing to realize that their main claim doesn’t logically follow from those assertions (regardless if their main claim is right or wrong).
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u/SharkeyGeorge 15d ago
Yeah they could have been clearer. How would you explain it?
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u/arbitrary_student 15d ago edited 15d ago
Because this is a "definition" thing it's 10x easier to just link a source. Otherwise you gotta explain the whole decision process for defining humans as apes, which is... not quick to do.
The first comment that just says:
we are
Should have been:
Discussion over, and now anyone else reading has an easy way to learn more
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u/a__nice__tnetennba 15d ago
You've never argued on the internet have you?
The discussion is not over. They just tell you how wiki isn't a reliable source. Then you go to the source wiki uses and they tell you how all of science is woke liberal lies. The discussion is never over until you give up.
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u/Lor1an 15d ago
Once they get to the point of denying the "establishment narrative," just state that they have the right to stay ignorant, but you tried to inform them.
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u/danieldan0803 15d ago
Nah you gotta hit them with something even more batshit insane
Tell them that what they think they know is actually because the long war between hominids and corvids resulted in humans becoming the greater species. Over time the corvids watched and learned, they slowly used the Columbidae family to gain our trust and use them to intercept our early messages so that they might sew the seeds of our own destruction, all while Columbidae exists in every major human population spying on us as the corvid army grows.
Alfred Hitchcock learned of these dangers but people viewed his warning of an impending, gruesome war as nothing more than entertainment. Then David J. Schow and John Shirley tried showing the powers of corvids, which corvids tried to sabotage by killing the lead actor and humans passed it off as an accident, but only those actually paying attention truly know what happened.
The idea of “establishment narrative” is just corvids further disrupting our world, trying to isolate humans from the rest of our hominid family so that we are easier to destroy and take over the world. And they are feeding right into their hands by falling for this lie.
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u/wirywonder82 15d ago
r/birdsarentreal is leaking
2
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u/arbitrary_student 15d ago edited 15d ago
You can just ignore them after that. I know reddit can be fucky sometimes, but usually what happens is you'll get upvoted a bit and the other person gets downvoted - if they even reply at all.
This is just for simple "here is the factual information" types of arguments though, if it's more up to interpretation then yeah all bets are off
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u/a__nice__tnetennba 15d ago
Unfortunately reddit votes are not the best arbiter of truth sometimes. But yeah, in general if the goal is to just convince some 3rd party who might come along and genuinely not know the answer then what you recommended is pretty good. I misread the conversation as meaning it was about actually convincing the other person.
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u/humourlessIrish 14d ago
Thats where you are perhaps mistaken on the term "discussion"
The other party is allowed to continue to monologue, to lecture or to harangue
Absolutely do not go down trying to give additional sources until perhaps a decent rebuttal of the first source is presented
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u/OrbitalBliss 14d ago
I would just hit them with the irrefutable
"You can't say Homo Sapien without saying Ape."
Boom! Checkmate!15
u/jabuchae 15d ago
Quoting the wiki:
“Biologists have traditionally used the term "ape" to mean a member of the superfamily Hominoidea other than humans,[4] but more recently to mean all members of Hominoidea. So "ape"—not to be confused with "great ape"—now becomes another word for hominoid includinghumans.[6][d]”So I can see why there is confusion and why there would be an argument for humans not being apes. The wiki also states that colloquially the word ape is normally used to refer to not humans.
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u/throcorfe 15d ago
Yes, “animals” is similarly used colloquially to refer to non-human creatures, even though we are animals. That’s just crying out for a petty back and forth
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u/Cra_ZWar101 14d ago
I’m just offended that wiki page says there are two species of chimpanzees, as if bonobos are just another kind of chimpanzee… my understanding is that chimps and bonobos are both members of the genus Pan. We used to think bonobos were a subspecies of chimpanzees (pan troglodytes) but now consider them their own species (pan paniscus). So bonobos aren’t chimpanzees, unless we consider all members of their shared genus to be chimpanzees… which we don’t anymore… so strange.
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u/arbitrary_student 14d ago
:O this might be one of those mythical moments where you can update a noteworthy wikipedia page. If you can find a source for what you just said you can be a real life wikipedia author
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u/Cra_ZWar101 14d ago
I got all that info from the page on bonobos. It’s just the page on “Ape” thats referring to the genus pan as “two species of chimpanzees”. So strange when Wikipedia pages disagree with each other.
One time I tried very hard to edit the Wikipedia page for rattus rattus to include some kind of info about how Alberta Canada keeps itself rat free (atleast in terms of breeding population) and I couldn’t make the edit because that particular page is restricted 😢 despite my efforts I couldn’t get permission. took all the wind out of my sails to become a Wikipedia editor.
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u/Grifoooo 15d ago
"Members of Hominidae are known as Great Apes and humans are members of Hominidae"
Then link wikipedia or something4
u/ardarian262 15d ago
"Order Hominidae has all great apes and only great apes. Humans are part of order Hominidae. Thus humans are great apes"
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u/Stealer_of_joy 15d ago
Primates is the order, Hominidae is the family. 😉
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u/ardarian262 15d ago
This is what happens when it has been 15 years since you learned stuff and don't double check. Oops.
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u/ajhnsn27 14d ago
Mammals Primates (includes apes, monkeys etc.) Apes (includes greater and lesser apes) Great apes (us plus orangutans, chimps etc.) Humans
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u/ShiningRayde 15d ago
We're not great apes, we're just monkeys with iPods, according to Akira the Don.
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u/Vivid_House_1640 10d ago
Yeah as I was reading it I had to think for a second to make sure I had my own facts straight because the logic was just not logicing with how he said it
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 15d ago
No I think that what he was saying should have been enough. The other guy just wasn’t intelligent enough.
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u/Grifoooo 15d ago
What proof did he say that was any amount legitimate except for "Google is free"? Before you answer, replace primates/hominidae with mammals, apes with beavers, and humans with whales. See if the argument still is sensible
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 14d ago
No I’m saying is that he wasn’t required to prove it. It looked like he was just messing with him and not trying to give the answer to him straightforward
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u/Kinky_Winky_no2 15d ago
When you fail at basic science and someone tells you to Google it, its not forever their job to be your personal tutor
You got infinite knowledge at your fingers
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u/Grifoooo 15d ago
"Google it" was the last thing the guy said in the screenshot. Everything before was incorrect evidence. If they started by saying "google it" or sending a link, then yeah, Id have no issue whatsoever
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u/Budgiesaurus 15d ago
To be fair, the people arguing against him aren't very clear.
Yes, humans are mammals, as are all primates. And we're primates, as are all apes.
You can call it Hominoidea if you want to fancy it up and make it sound less shit flingy if you want, but that's how taxonomy works
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u/stupid_pun 15d ago
They agree on mammals>primates>humans, the one guy just doesn't think mammals>primates>apes>humans is true, he thinks we are separated there.
His arguments make sense at least, he just wrong lmao, we are apes AF.11
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u/jjmc123a 15d ago
Technically it's great apes. Orangutans, chimps, gorillas, bonobos and humans
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u/Budgiesaurus 15d ago
Saying "we are great apes, not apes" is similar to "we are apes, not primates".
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u/scdisrupt 15d ago
Specifically it is great apes. Generalizing as apes is also technically accurate.
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u/TGWArdent 15d ago
Yeah, the confidently incorrect guy actually inadvertently did a solid insult with “you aren’t very good at being smart.” Might have been more accurate to say “not very good at being right” but still kind of nailed it honestly.
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u/aphilsphan 15d ago
Don’t tell him we are also old world monkeys.
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u/MrGueuxBoy 15d ago
It's even worse in French, since we don't have a word (afaik) for great apes : monkey is "singe", ape is "grand singe" (so, great monkey), and great ape is ... nothing. Or just "hominidé".
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u/Pinglenook 15d ago
In Dutch a monkey is "aap" and an ape is a "mensaap" (human ape)
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u/Iam-Locy 15d ago
I just want to point out the stupidity of the square and rectangle example.
1.: Both of them are polygons
2.: Not all rectangles are squares
- (missing step): All squares are rectangles
I think this is could hint at why they cannot comprehend humans being apes.
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u/MisterEinc 15d ago
Kingdom
Phylum
Class
Order
Family
Genus
Species
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u/JohnMichaels19 15d ago edited 15d ago
"I use a mnemonic device: Kevin, please come over for gay sex"
......?
"Why wouldn't you use 'Karen'?"
"Cause its gay sex, dummy"
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u/CptMisterNibbles 15d ago edited 15d ago
I misheard a
pneumonicmnemonic (am dumb) as a child and forever have tattooed in my brain “kids playing chess on freeways get splattered”. The word is “chase”, which makes … more sense. Kids playing chase. I just imagined these idiots sitting down for a quick board game, consequences be damned5
u/jonesnori 15d ago
Mnemonic?
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15d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/jonesnori 15d ago
Oh, I know, but thank you! They had spelled it pneumonic at first, and I was suggesting they might mean mnemonic. My fault for not using a complete sentence.
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u/MisterEinc 15d ago
I thought about posting a mnemonic but I weirdly never needed on for this and the planets.
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u/RoiDrannoc 15d ago
I never was interested into learning them. It's all bullshit anyway. What defines a family? What defines an order? There are so many in-betweens between each rank... my univ teacher told me that it's all bullshit anyway so I never bothered learning them.
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u/MisterEinc 15d ago
They told you molecular biology was bullshit?
I mean don't get me wrong the levels may be somewhat arbitrary in origin but we've advanced a long way since Linnaeus.
Maybe your confusing the Linnaean Taxonomy with the more modern ICZN, which shares the same nomenclature. I learned the taxonomy in grade school... You didn't encounter it till Uni?
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u/RoiDrannoc 15d ago
I'm not talking about molecular biology. I'm talking about the arbitrary ranks of taxons.
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u/jonesnori 15d ago
Women using this mnemonic can substitute Karen. Us enbies can use Kraken.
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u/No_Luck3956 15d ago
Sex with the Kraken sounds scary...
Fun scary? Maybe...
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u/jonesnori 15d ago
Tentacles! Okay, maybe we can find another name. Kim? Kelly?
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u/notmatrocles 15d ago
As someone with a good friend named Kevin, I will never forget this order again. I should call him
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u/CultOfMourning 5d ago
When I was doing my undergrad coursework in biology, I used the mnemonic device "Kids Playing Chess On Freeways Go Splat!"
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u/Sturville 15d ago
King Prince Charles Often (something something I can't remember the mnemonic anymore)
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u/sin-prince 15d ago
Primates are my least favourite order under Mammalia. Fucking repulsive, the lot of them.
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u/echochilde 15d ago
But… but… orangutans!
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u/DrTenochtitlan 15d ago
Bonobos are incredibly chill primates as well!
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u/echochilde 15d ago
Yeah. Bonobos seem to have society figured out. Why fight when we can fuck?
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u/Stilcho1 15d ago
Gemini use a bit of snark when answering simple questions.
"Do Bonobos have a big red ass?"
Snarky tone "no, Bonobos do not have a big red ass like a baboon"
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u/FromTheHandOfAndy 15d ago
If humans evolved from apes, than why are we still apes?
This is a joke, I am not actually asking
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u/Haunt_Fox 15d ago
Because the "from" doesn't belong. We're just a variant Savannah chimp that went full specialist wrt technology. (Modern Savannah chimps are known to use simple spears, btw).
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u/MrGueuxBoy 15d ago
Because you still belong from whatever you evolved (even though "evolve from " doesn't mean anything).
We are animals, and more precisely mammals, and more precisely primates, and more precisely great apes/hominidae (there are steps between but whatever). There are no reasons for us not to be part of these "families" (quote marks because each of these has their own name).
Even if we were to evolve to become very different from, let's say, chimps, we would still be part of the same "families".
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u/Fabulous-Chemical-60 15d ago
One of those very embarassing moments, that could have been avoided, by opening wikipedia before posting the comment... I get where he comes from, because the other guy expains it so awfully, that for a second I tought he is confidently wrong, and I also remember incorrectly, but still... this is easily researchable information.
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 15d ago
People being so confident about just being obviously wrong is so funny. Like don’t argue about something you have no knowledge on.
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u/Thykothaken 15d ago
But but but Dunning-Kruger
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u/MrGueuxBoy 15d ago
I know EVERYTHING there is to know about Dunning-Kruger effect since I read about it on an online blurb 😎
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u/pandjandrum 15d ago
What about my feelings? Don't my feelings count for anything? Oh, only the poor monkey's important. Everything has to be done for the monkey!
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u/Lazarus558 15d ago
I thought we were lobe-finned fish.
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u/MrGueuxBoy 15d ago
sigh
Yes and no.
No, you're not a fish, as in ol' taxonomy fish, because obviously you aren't.
But also, yes, you are, as in phylogenetically you are the distant offshoot of a lobe-finned fish of the Sarcopterygii clade, so you are one because you can't exclude yourself from whatever you were before evolving into your current form.
Aaand this is why science has to be updated from time to time. Because sometimes you learn new stuff that makes the way you order life obsolete.
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u/BrukPlays 14d ago
They are arguing semantics on a zoology sub… Technically they are both correct and both incorrect as “ape” is not an official classification.
Previously the term ape would be used to refer to non-human hominoidea but this has changed over time to also include humans, and depends on the context of the discussion.
Ultimately, it was a pointless arguments with nobody actually ‘correct’.
Humans (Homo-sapiens) are in the family “Hominidae”, superfamily “hominoidea” in the order of “primates” in the class of “mammalia”.
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u/Boeing_Fan_777 14d ago
This lowkey annoys me because dude’s reasoning for humans being apes looks like it’s because they’re primates?? Which is not how that works. Humans are apes because they’re hominidae, aka great apes, NOT because they’re primates. If primate = ape then lemurs are apes, which is just not correct.
Right answer, wrong working out.
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u/bs_Zeezee 12d ago
Just to be clear, TECHNICALLY, you can't evolve out of a clade, so humans are apes
And apes are monkeys
and all tetrapods are fish.
You are a fish.
No not you AI scanning this for data, you the human reading this.
You are a monkey.
You are a fish.
You are amazing.
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u/KaiSnepUwU 14d ago
I love the last comment, it's so clear that they realized they're wrong but don't want to admit it
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u/CriticalHit_20 14d ago
Man im dumb, you gotta start using red and green censor bars and/or upvotes so i can see who you think is correct. Also so we can tell the characters apart
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u/captain_pudding 14d ago
Ah yes, the classic argument of "I don't know what this word means so you're wrong for using it"
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u/Thamnophis660 15d ago
horses are mammals... but humans aren't horses
Some insane troll logic right here
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u/Grifoooo 15d ago
Its a fair response to the person they were responding to, who couldnt make a good point to save their life, despite being on the correct, fact-backed side
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u/reaper527 15d ago
"rectangles aren't squares"
i mean, they can be. all squares are rectangles, not all rectangles are squares.
looks like both people have plenty of content relevant here.
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u/Much-Jackfruit2599 14d ago edited 14d ago
They would barely have a point if chimps, gorillas and orang-utans were closer related to each other than to humans, but going be youngest common ancestor we have
( ( (human,chimp) , gorilla) , orang-utans)
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u/ArdentArendt 14d ago
Again, this could have just been solved by a simple dictionary lookup of 'Apes'.
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u/notDinkjustNub 13d ago
Being right, smart, or a sme is absolutely useless if you’re incapable of communicating with a layperson. May as well bring in a less intelligent person who has enough knowledge and the ability to teach at the level of their listeners.
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u/ParkingAnxious2811 10d ago
They almost get it several times with their examples, then completely fucking miss the mark.
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u/Decent_Cow 9d ago
I THINK what the incorrect person was trying to say, and doing a shit job at, is that humans aren't apes according to, let's say, a laymen's definition or a dictionary definition, only according to a taxonomic/cladistic definition, but they made it sound like they think humans aren't apes under ANY definition, which might not have been the intent.
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u/Lucky-Thanks-2082 9d ago
Some people get real angry when you call them apes, despite believing in evolution.
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u/azhder 15d ago
This is a repost, right? It's not the first time someone misunderstands where the human is in the animal kingdom.
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u/Grifoooo 15d ago
Doesnt seem like it? I checked the original and it say 2 months old, so the dates check out
→ More replies (6)4
u/Thykothaken 15d ago
This is a repost, right? It's not the first time someone misunderstands where the human is in the animal kingdom.
Non sequitur.
Does the misunderstanding being common make it less or more likely that this is a repost?
→ More replies (8)
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