People normally feed ducks food like bread. The woman was used to this, so she was startled to see someone feeding ducks birdseed.
We’re used to birdseed being used to feed songbirds or the various tree birds.
When the woman was directly informed that ducks are birds she was directly confronted with the knowledge that we put waterfowl in a different mental category than arboreal birds.
It’s easy to imagine the feeling of realizing you’ve had a very basic, totally benign blindspot in how you conceptualize something as simple as ducks, and the woman’s reaction captures that deep feeling of “now that you say it it’s obvious” that a lot of people have felt. Knowing the feeling, it being slightly uncomfortable but harmless, and the general whimsy of ducks makes it funny.
It’s funny because feeling empathy for silly mistakes makes us laugh.
A fishing net is also long and narrow, but we usually wouldn’t call it a spear because that’s not how you use it. If you spear something with your net you’ve made a mistake.
Personally, I’d say a duck beak is “spoonish”, and the fish hunters are “grabby”. Some are tweezery, and some are tongy.
And now folks, realize that this is true of every single thing that humans think about.
You put a duck and a sparrow side by side and maybe it seems obvious that, while not the same, these two things have something deeply in common. But most people have never considered them in one thought. When you get into abstract ideas like “freedom” or “socialism” is it any surprise that most people can’t even recognize them, let alone agree on any commonalities?
You spend all day arranging dogs next to bears going “do you see how these are both canine-form mammals?” and the public is watching a tiktok while dismissing you going “Uh bears aren’t pets, what a dumbass!”
Honestly it’s more relevant to classify them by beak shape. Birds are 100% based on their beak shape, because that determines what they can and can’t eat.
This generally works for teeth as well, the shape of teeth shows what kind of food an animal eats.
Carnivores have sharp pointy teeth and generally big canines, herbivores have big flat molars and flat incisors, and where something falls between these extremes indicates what their diet probably is.
For example bears and humans are both omnivores, but bears have muuuuch larger canines while ours are… maybe useful for gnawing off a small tendon i guess?
And lo and behold bears are carnivores that eat a lot of non-meat things, while humans are primarily foragers who’ll eat meat when we make prosthetic canines to hold in our hands :^)
People normally feed ducks food like bread. The woman was used to this, so she was startled to see someone feeding ducks birdseed.
We’re used to birdseed being used to feed songbirds or the various tree birds.
When the woman was directly informed that ducks are birds she was directly confronted with the knowledge that we put waterfowl in a different mental category than arboreal birds.
It’s easy to imagine the feeling of realizing you’ve had a very basic, totally benign blindspot in how you conceptualize something as simple as ducks, and the woman’s reaction captures that deep feeling of “now that you say it it’s obvious” that a lot of people have felt. Knowing the feeling, it being slightly uncomfortable but harmless, and the general whimsy of ducks makes it funny.
It’s funny because feeling empathy for silly mistakes makes us laugh.
I’ll be honest I personally assumed ducks only ate fish.
Wrong shaped beak for that, shovel instead of spear
Shovels work fine for itty-bitty fishies, since there’s a lid to keep them from splashing out. Also water bugs as well as of course plants.
They work, but aren’t they primarily for plants and bugs?
Pelican.
How is this not a spear?
Even the shoebill stork has a pointy end
Less the long and narrow and more how it’s used.
A fishing net is also long and narrow, but we usually wouldn’t call it a spear because that’s not how you use it. If you spear something with your net you’ve made a mistake.
Personally, I’d say a duck beak is “spoonish”, and the fish hunters are “grabby”. Some are tweezery, and some are tongy.
“Duckweed” is named such because ducks like to eat it. I believe aquatic plants like that are a pretty big part of their diet.
And now folks, realize that this is true of every single thing that humans think about.
You put a duck and a sparrow side by side and maybe it seems obvious that, while not the same, these two things have something deeply in common. But most people have never considered them in one thought. When you get into abstract ideas like “freedom” or “socialism” is it any surprise that most people can’t even recognize them, let alone agree on any commonalities?
You spend all day arranging dogs next to bears going “do you see how these are both canine-form mammals?” and the public is watching a tiktok while dismissing you going “Uh bears aren’t pets, what a dumbass!”
Honestly it’s more relevant to classify them by beak shape. Birds are 100% based on their beak shape, because that determines what they can and can’t eat.
This generally works for teeth as well, the shape of teeth shows what kind of food an animal eats. Carnivores have sharp pointy teeth and generally big canines, herbivores have big flat molars and flat incisors, and where something falls between these extremes indicates what their diet probably is.
For example bears and humans are both omnivores, but bears have muuuuch larger canines while ours are… maybe useful for gnawing off a small tendon i guess?
And lo and behold bears are carnivores that eat a lot of non-meat things, while humans are primarily foragers who’ll eat meat when we make prosthetic canines to hold in our hands :^)
There was a study that found that chewing tough raw meat with human teeth is very ineffective. Fire makes eating meat much easier.
https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-raw-meat-stone-tools-evolution-20160309-story.html