this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 170 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Had to look it up because I didnt beleive

sure enough its correct

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree

[–] [email protected] 136 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Something poetic and quaint about a link to a Wikipedia article titled "Tree"

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 week ago (5 children)

reddit has broken me. I was expecting it to point to weed.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Reddit has broken me. I was expecting a rickroll

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[–] [email protected] 108 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

Also cool that for a period of like 60 million years, nothing decomposed dead trees. As they would die or fall over, they'd just stay there, piling up. This is where most oil came from. The massive amounts of trees stacking up before bacteria and fungus evolved to decomposed them. Imagine 60 million years worth of trees just lying around.

*Thought I'd add an edit, since this post got quite a few eyes on it: It was mostly coal that all those trees turned into. Not oil.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Didn't those trees become coal, not oil?

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Mushrooms are the great undertaker, the great decomposer. The Langoliers. They are just waiting to eat you, and they're happy to share their fruits in the meantime. They're fattening you up. They can wait.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I imagine dead trees were flammable, even back then. And oxygen levels were 15% higher. Can you imagine the forest fires?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fire wasn't invented back then

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago

I thought that was coal

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[–] [email protected] 81 points 1 week ago (11 children)

I'm a billion years, crabs will start turning into trees and trees into crabs. merging into the ubercreature

[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I'm a billion years

Damn. You look good for your age.

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Nature likes things that turn hard- Wait what?

[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Weren't there like, several millions of years where trees evolved but nothing had come yet to break down wood, so like, generations of dead forest just fell on top of each other until some fungus was like "that looks yummy"?

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The molecule is called lignin. And yes, there was a good 60 million years before that particular problem was cracked.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 week ago (2 children)

First, we bio-engineer bacteria and fungi to prefer plastic as food.

Second, these bacteria become a serious endopathogen in the human body while scavenging our precious bodily microplastics.

Third, we engineer a bacteriophage to attack the bacteria in our brains.

Fourth…

The whole human comedy just keeps going and going

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The beautiful part is that when wintertime rolls around the gorillas simply freeze to death

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

here’s a cool blog post that expands on this There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)

i didn’t even put it in a bookmark folder, it’s just loose on my bookmark bar because it’s such an interesting post that i reread from time to time

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 week ago (4 children)

So that's why every stargate planet looks like Canada

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 week ago (1 children)

My sister in law recently quipped that "Trees are a social construct" and at first I thought she was just being glib but now I can't get that statement out of my head.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I listen to a podcast called Completely Arbortrary. They talk about a different tree species each episode. They say trees are a strategy, not a strict definition.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I think palm trees are a kind of grass

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Its called convergent evolution and you also have some shit you wouldnt believe that makes all apes similar to us.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago

Apes are so similar to us because we came from a common ancestor. I'd love to hear if there are traits we evolved independently after we split though.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 week ago (4 children)
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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Also, no such thing as fish.

Google it.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Impossible. If there were no such thing as fish, how could bees be fish?

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

I don’t have the tools to know how to respond to this comment. You win.

Edit: Holy shit. I just did a quick google. Boydster is not shitting us. Just google “bees are fish.” Oddly enough, this actually furthers the thesis of fish not existing.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

To add on for anyone who is lazy like me, the thing where Google summarizes says California has classified bees as fish under an environmental protection act. According to the first result (Reddit) it's because fish is a catch all term in that law. Instead of listing all the animals they just use fish. Because fish,bees, and the other animals are all invertebrates.

Now whoever reads this has three Lemmy comments, a reddit thread reference, and an ai overview reference as some solid sources

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Fish are vertebrates they have a backbone

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 week ago

Same for roots, btw, just earlier.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago (10 children)

And it's not even one creature or even type of creature. Look up rhizobium.

Tbf, as we learn more about our gut microbiomes, it turns out that humans are that way as well. Maybe that's why we have the thoughts in our heads vs. the feelings in our guts... (no that's actually not it at all, except... isn't it though?).

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There are fern trees, conifer trees, and flowering trees. Where are my moss trees?

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