"Insects are animals damnit" Topic

I got into this realy stupid argument about wether insects are animals.

It might because Norwegian is not a very scientific language.

But even the norwegian words SAY it's an animal.

Take a look, the Norwegian word for animal is Dyr, and insect is as you know an arthropod, the norwegian word for it is leddyr, it even has the norwegian word dyr in it.

And just for the record ANY organism that is under the domane Animallia is an animal, that includes insects which is just one of many many Classes of animal.
To be honest I don't realy know what the hell the other guy thought animals was, I think he confused animal with mammal

Right on, Gunfreak!

My wife actually got me going once way back when we were dating when she verbally substituted "animal" for "mammal", and insisted that fish, lizards, etc. were not animals. At the time, I didn't realize just how fiendishly playful she can be (nor did I know that she had placed out of AP Zoology), and I argued with her for some time about it, not realizing she was teasing me until much later.

BTW the "AP" in "AP Zoology" is "Advanced Placement", and is a US High School class with college equivalent material. In other words, she was VERY clear on the taxonomical classifications of fish and lizards.

Does Norwegian have the same problem that English does, where there are common everyday phrases like "animals and birds" which imply that birds aren't animals? A lot of people hear that phrase, and deduce that animal = mammal.

And then you get ludicrous legal things, where for instance there is old legislation that classifies shrimps as a type of insect!

Well I talked to another guy, hwo is actualy my friend, and he has even taken Biolgiy in highschool so he should have know better, but he had this REALY just out there way of classifying animals.

He said.

When he sees a bird, he said oh look a bird, and not oh look an animal, therefore a bird is not an animal, so I said, so you mean animals mean mammal?
Well no, because when I dug a little deeper he did say that crocodiles are animals.
So what I'm guessing he thinks an animal is, is something that has four legs.
But to be honest I realy don't know what he means.

Yes. Norwegian does have simular problems like Animals and Birds, but not exactly that phrase.

But we do often have people saying now this is an intresting animal, when takling about mammals, while they say this is and intresting insect when takling about insects, hinting that insects aren't realy animals

Wasn't there a supermodel or something once came out with something like 'I'm a vegetarian, I I don't eat animals, just fish and chickens'.

And that begs the question what the hell is a fish or Chicken if they are not animals?

Fungus? Bacteria? Plant?

I can see it now, look at all those Chickens they grow so nice on the vines, lets make a nice shardonay of them

And delicious as well-

link

I've gotten into similar arguments about fruits vs. vegetables… just because there are tomatoes, squash, and zucchini in 'vegetable soup' that doesn't mean they are vegetables.

This is silly. Everyone knows insects are a type of mineral.

Well even of people can't agree on wether it's a fruit of vegetables, they can agree on that they are plants? right?

They aren't saying it's an animal or a car?

Its a car.
I'm just saying…

The English language is imprecise and inconsistent … to put it mildly.

Granted "animal" usually has its scientific meaning so most other uses are just errors.

OTOH, "vegetable" and "fruit" do have different meanings in different context. In cooking, squash, tomatoes and zucchini are indeed vegetables and not fruits. In science they are all fruits. Likewise in the kitchen mushrooms are usually vegetables even though they are not plants.

"The English language is imprecise and inconsistent … to put it mildly."

One of the reasons that people the world over learn English is because it is more precise than many other languages. What I think you meant to say was that the common *usage* of the English language can be imprecise.

Any high school freshman knows the difference between connotation and denotation.

I remember years ago watching some TV quiz show (maybe Hollywood Squares or something equally inane). William Shatner, fresh from his gig as captain of the Enterprise and right full of himself answered the question in just the same way -- equating "animal" with "mammal".

In all justice, English (like every other natural language) has been around a lot longer than scientific taxonomy; it should be expected to have common usages that differ from the more precise recent definitions.

Yeah well, the greeks had the diffinition animal about 2300 years ago, sure it wasn't that spesific only seperating animal from plant, but even they would have said that an insect was an animal or a chicken was an animal

Any high school freshman knows the difference between connotation and denotation.

I invite you to visit any of the high schools down here and ask the kids the difference.

I also hate the term "organic vegetables"…

Of course they're organic, they're all carbon-based!
-Kle.

Just to show how, unscientific Norwegian is.

In english it's called Cephalopod.

In Norwegian it's blekksprut, which is something as unscientifc as inksqurter.
And English has, Squd, octopus, Nautiloid and cuttlefish.
While in norwegian, it's ALWAYS inksqurter with just the nubmer of arms infromt,
so a squid is just ti armet blekksprut(ten armed inksqurter)
To me it just sounds very childish

Kjempetorsk anyone? Or guleböj? Please tell me those are just jokes that we Swedes tell, Gunfreak, not actual Norwegian words.

Never heard on any of those, so I doubt they are words.

But then again there are littarly houndreds of diffrent dialects so there might be someone somewhere that uses those words

And whales are not fish.

They're really insects.

"I also hate the term "organic vegetables"…"

My pet chuckle is 'chemical free' on a product. Really? No water? No, well anything else either I guess.

I remember an old joke about ingredients lists on food

General use – Flour, Sugar, Egg White, Salt, etc, etc

For chemists
Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus etc etc

Physical Chemists
Protons, Neutrons, Electrons

Physicists
Quarks

I'm waiting for the day when instead of foods having amount of calories on the back of them, they have the nubmer of strings.

A loaf of break is 250 in the power of 100 strings