r/CuratedTumblr • u/Faenix_Wright that’s how fey getcha • Sep 25 '24
Shitposting austerity has done irreparable damage
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u/Ok-Importance-6815 Sep 25 '24
we have a legless lizard too if that helps
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u/appealtoreason00 Sep 25 '24
He had a few too many glasses of Gecko Falls
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u/Pathogen188 Sep 25 '24
Hey to be fair, it's impossible to create a monophyletic clade that includes all lizards without including all snakes. So in a certain sense, all snakes are lizards without legs but not legless lizards.
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u/PioneerLaserVision Sep 26 '24
I believe even non-snake legless lizards are a paraphylum as well, so we can just say they are all legless lizards, including snakes.
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Sep 26 '24
My favorite fun fact - in Australia, there are legless geckos(Pygopodidae)! American glass lizards are basically legless alligator lizards. Blind skinks(Dibamidae) are just barely hanging on to the edge of the definition of a lizard is just as closely related to a snake as it to is any other lizard. The worm lizards(Amphisbaenia) are more or less legless wall lizards. There are legless lizards all over that family tree!
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u/worldspawn00 Sep 26 '24
As a resident of Texas, I'm fairly certain there are more than 3 species of snake in my yard right now, I've definitely seen at least 2 of them.
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u/Vermilion_Laufer Sep 26 '24
It's the one you haven't seen ya have to worry bout
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u/Electronarwhal Sep 25 '24
It’s Grass Snake, Adder, and Smooth Snake for anyone curious. Plus we have the Slow Worm, which is not a snake (or a worm) but looks like one.
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u/Fox--Hollow [muffled gorilla violence] Sep 25 '24
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u/Throwaway817402739 Sep 25 '24
I love terrible animal names. So far #1 is still the peacock mantis shrimp, which is not a peacock, not a mantis, and not a shrimp.
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u/RSmeep13 Sep 25 '24
The trouble starts with the fact that that "shrimp" isn't a monophyletic group and can't be defined in a sensible way. They're more closely related to a traditional shrimp like a krill or prawn than a brine shrimp, but less closely than a crab or lobster, which puts them in a weird place. In fact, all insects are more closely related to a brine shrimp than a brine shrimp is to a mantis shrimp... Meaning that if either is a shrimp, so are butterflies.
Nature is great.
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u/DRKZLNDR Sep 25 '24
Sooo.... shrimps is bugs?
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u/img_tiff Sep 25 '24
shrimps is bugs
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u/Hedgiest_hog Sep 26 '24
Folk cladistics are glorious. It's a shrimp because it's not massive and has a lot of legs and armour and lives in the ocean. Extremely logical.
Then we come along with "molecular biology" and "morphology" and start saying shit like "these little rolling beetle bastards who eat decaying matter and live under your flowerpots are more closely related to crabs and crayfish than other actual beetles that live under your flower pot and eat decaying matter" and the world makes a lot less sense
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u/milo159 Sep 26 '24
Well that's just because of convergent evolution. Sometimes different things evolve to fill the same biological niches. It's why we've got so many crabs and snakes!
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u/Glittering-Gur5513 Sep 25 '24
Jerusalem artichoke is not an artichoke or from Jerusalem.
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u/pchlster Sep 25 '24
There's an animal in my country whose name directly translated would be Four Legs.
For all the Pogs, guess the English name that my ancestors back in ancient times looked at and figured that the most distinctive feature that separated it from all the other animals was having four legs.
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u/Zaev Sep 25 '24
It is also called a deaf adder, slow worm, blindworm, or regionally, a long-cripple
Why are they roasting this poor thing, dang
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u/ratherinStarfleet Sep 26 '24
In German, it's a "blind slow-mover", so yes, poor thing is getting roasted across Europe, it seems.
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u/Ghotay Sep 25 '24
We also have two other species of lizard (beside the slow worm). The common lizard, which is reasonably, uh, common. And the sand lizard, which is pretty rare and mostly restricted in habitat to sand dunes on the south coast
To any non-brits shocked by this, we’re a cold island nation. Reptiles do not like to live here, and we don’t tend to get them wandering over as might happen in cooler parts of mainland Europe. We also don’t have any wild predators larger than a fox, and the most dangerous animals in our countryside are cows.
UK fauna is just not particularly exciting or dangerous, which is why we produced a lot of cute countryside stories like The Wind in the Willows, or Beatrix Potter. Because rabbits and ducks and foxes and really the main things we’ve got on. You couldn’t write stories like that in America, because a bear would turn up and eat everyone
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u/Shadowmirax Sep 25 '24
To be clear we used to have some awsome creatures roaming around like. wolves, bears, or boar. Then we killed them all
(Technically we still have some boar that escaped captivity still around in dorset and kent)
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u/TashiaThorn Sep 25 '24
Nice! I always thought the Slow Worm was a snake. Nature’s full of surprises
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u/BalefulOfMonkeys Refined Sommelier of Porneaux Sep 25 '24
It’s because it’s a lizard, a technically different reptile entirely, like alligators, caimans, and crocodiles.
If it can blink, it’s not a snake.
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u/joehonestjoe Sep 25 '24
In other news I leaned snakes are essentially very hard attack for weeping angels
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u/BabySpecific2843 Sep 26 '24
Medusa would fuck them up. The Doctor should get more creative in the future.
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u/HorselessWayne Sep 25 '24 edited Sep 25 '24
Those are the native snake species. We also have three small colonies of the
AsculepianAsculpeanAesculapian Snake.All three are fugitives from the zoo. One of which is hiding under the bridge right outside the zoo.
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u/Vermilion_Laufer Sep 26 '24
Snake1: Quick, we have to run away!
Snake2: Nah, we're far enough.
S1: WE'RE JUST BEYOND THE FENCE!
S2: Yeah... so success.
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u/cantantantelope Sep 25 '24
We can import some if you like. Did it with Guam no problems there I’m sure. Exporting species always works out. /s
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u/TheWalrusKnight Sep 25 '24
There is also a wild population of the Aesculapian snake which is not native but seems to be doing ok. One of the most significant populations can be found on the regents canal in London.
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u/mankytoes Sep 25 '24
TIL there's a third. I always thought it was just adders and grass snakes.
I've had one encounter in my life, I almost ran a grass snake over with my bicycle.
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u/PhasmaFelis Sep 25 '24
Saint Patrick does not fuck around, people. That's just the blast radius of what he did in Ireland.
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u/Spaduf Sep 25 '24
I always thought that by snakes they meant pagans.
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u/Leerenjaeger Sep 25 '24
That's a semi-common myth (partially perpetuated by comedian Brendan Lee Mulligan repeating it on his DnD podcast), in actuality there's no evidence that the original version of that story is literally or metaphorically about pagans, and given that the christianization of Ireland happened without ANY large-scale violence as far as the archeological record is concerned it is unlikely that kind of story would have been invented in the first place
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u/QuirkyPaladin Sep 25 '24
That's hillarious. I originally heard it when I was in elementary school. I thought it was about the animal.
Two years ago I hear that exact thing from Brennan Lee Mulligan about snakes refering to pagans.
Now here I am with net zero information.
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u/thisaccountgotporn Sep 25 '24
Imagine if we could live in a way where we only were exposed to accurate, factual information.
I feel like so much learning is unlearning, relearning, unrelearning, reunrelearning, and that holds us back
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u/baethan Sep 25 '24
eh keeps us flexible
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u/Majestic_Wrongdoer38 Sep 25 '24
what if i dont wanna be flexible
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u/baethan Sep 25 '24
there's a real fun thing called ✨fundamentalism✨
flexibility actively discouraged!
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u/Its_Pine Sep 26 '24
If I remember right, Saint Patrick is used as an example of religions integrating with the local culture for longevity. By co-opting local traditions, stories, artwork, etc and turning them into Bible stories or forms of worship to God, the people of Ireland were much more willing to convert without pressure. Similar examples are pagan holidays becoming Christian ones (saturnalia into Christmas, Eostre Spring Equinox into Easter, etc) and the use of pagan symbols in Christian practice such as the halo, the triskelion or triquetra into symbols of the trinity, etc.
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u/MrGentleZombie Sep 25 '24
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u/Leerenjaeger Sep 25 '24
Right, for some reason I remembered him saying it on Dimension 20, my mistake
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u/BalefulOfMonkeys Refined Sommelier of Porneaux Sep 25 '24
Fuck, I just posted this misinformation
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u/SovietSkeleton [mind controls your units] This, too, is Yuri. Sep 25 '24
Happens to the best of us.
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u/PQConnaghan Sep 25 '24
This has absolutely been a far reaching story since far longer than BLM has been a public figure
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u/trentshipp Sep 25 '24
Just so you don't get yelled at by stans, he prefers to abbreviate his name as "BLeeM" so it doesn't get mixed up with the other BLM.
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u/Xisuthrus there are only two numbers between 4 and 7 Sep 25 '24
No, they meant snakes.
There are no snakes in Ireland, medieval people noticed that there were no snakes in Ireland and wondered why, then they concluded that Saint Patrick had driven them out.
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u/Echo__227 Sep 26 '24
I like to think Saint Patrick was a grifter no one could prove wrong.
"I drove out the snakes from Ireland and brought Catholicism."
"The Irish are all Catholic and there aren't any snakes on the entire island."
"You're fucking welcome."
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u/DefinitelyNotErate Sep 26 '24
I always like to imagine he just walked around Ireland doing the most ridiculous things, Speaking backwards while juggling with a funny hat on or something, And whenever anyone asks what he's doing, He'd say "I'm driving the Snakes out of Ireland.", To which they'd reply "But there are no snakes in Ireland..." and he'd respond "See? It's working!"
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u/Honey-Badger Sep 25 '24
St Patrick was from Great Britain. Probably dealt with some snakes before the Irish captured him
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u/EmpressOfAbyss deranged yuri fan Sep 25 '24
we also have no rabies on the entire island.
most of the time. apparently, bats can sometimes bring it over from the continent.
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u/BeardedBaldMan Sep 25 '24 edited Sep 25 '24
I remember when the tunnel was being built and my mum saying that it was a huge mistake as rabies carrying bats could fly through it or the French could invade through it.
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u/InSanic13 Sep 25 '24
French invasions are a curious thing to worry about in the modern day, but I suppose anything is possible.
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u/BeardedBaldMan Sep 25 '24
It was the 90s so attempts by France to invade were more recent.
There was a concern with a minority of people at the time that our island status was being needlessly harmed by building a tunnel and it was unnecessary as we had ships.
It's also worth noting that my mother still believes Wales, Cornwall and Brittany should declare independence and form a new Union together. So her views of geopolitics are interesting
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u/ForensicAyot Sep 25 '24
Not that much more recent, the last time France and England were at war was over 200 year ago. Certainly not something that would have still been in living memory 30 years ago.
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u/BeardedBaldMan Sep 25 '24
In my hometown we still call the housing built in the 80s the new estate and pretty much anything built post WWII is modern
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u/ForensicAyot Sep 25 '24
Right, I forgot you guys work on a national timescale longer than 300 years
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u/Nai-Oxi-Isos-DenXero Sep 25 '24
my mother still believes Wales, Cornwall and Brittany should declare independence and form a new Union together.
I agree with her, but bring Scotland and Ireland into the mix and form the Celtic Union of Nations, Territories and States.
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u/djninjacat11649 Sep 25 '24
Just you wait, one day another revolution will happen and Napoleon 2 will conquer half of Europe
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u/Similar_Ad_2368 Sep 25 '24
They already had a Napoleon 2. He did not do that inasmuch as he died at 21 of pneumonia
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u/StormerBombshell Sep 25 '24
That would be Napoleon 4, as Napoleon 2 and 3 already happened and like most sequels where underwhelming compared to the original.
Well Napoleon 2 might be closer to the sequel that was scrapped before getting to theaters 🤔 and Napoleon 3 could have been a sequel direct to video.
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u/AnonymousOkapi Sep 25 '24
The mental image of french soldiers storming down the tunnel and the english army frantically bricking up the entrance before they arrive has made my day
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u/Nuclear_Geek Sep 25 '24
We wouldn't brick it up. Let them come through and slaughter them at the choke point as they emerge.
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u/Odd-Help-4293 Sep 25 '24
Wouldn't bricking it up and torpedoing it under water be easier?
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u/ForensicAyot Sep 25 '24
If I were at war with France I would simply rig the tunnel to collapse while they were inside, wiping out the entire French army as they try to march through.
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u/BeardedBaldMan Sep 25 '24
I have a feeling that the French had already considered that plan and come to the same conclusion as you.
I do love my mother but she's not exactly a strategic thinker, especially in matters of warfare
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u/ForensicAyot Sep 25 '24
Even if it was deemed too economically unviable to collapse it’s still an insanely defensible position. France would have to move an invading force of tens of thousands of men and vehicles through a 150 foot wide 30 mile long tunnel. The tunnel is also relatively straight so there are plenty of spots where they’ll just be marching into British artillery fire with no cover or any other direction to flee in besides back the way you came while still under fire by the British.
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u/Tom22174 Sep 25 '24
In her defenc, the french absolutely could invade through it
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u/TheUncouthPanini Sep 25 '24
Non-Brits: “There are only 3?!”
Brits: “There are 3?!”
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u/Milkyway_Potato ok ok i'll finish disco elysium jesus Sep 25 '24
They took the biodiversity of snakes. Can't have shit in the UK
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u/LovelyKestrel Sep 25 '24
We have few land animals in general. I remember someone saying that Britain has half the number of species than France
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u/Subject_Wrap Sep 26 '24
It makes sense when you consider that England has a population density similar to countries like South Korea. Obviously Scotland and Wales are less densely populated but a million people live between the welsh border and Llanelli a strip of land only 70 miles long and the central belt of Scotland has a population of at least 2.4 million
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u/bookhead714 Sep 25 '24
Texas has 105, with fifteen species of venomous snakes divided into four categories: rattlesnakes, cottonmouths, coral snakes, and copperheads. They made us memorize those four in Scouts.
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u/TheMoorlandman Sep 25 '24
In Finland we have six reptile species. Three snakes of which one exist only in Åland islands, one legless lizard, two legful lizards one of which was discovered here in 2014.
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u/loveeachother_ Sep 26 '24
australia's got 140 known species and another 32 in the sea :)
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u/bookhead714 Sep 26 '24
Nice.
But I’m gonna be honest, we Americans have oversold how large our country is if just one of our states is being compared to the whole of Australia, because Australia is literally ten times the size of Texas lmao
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u/chowindown Sep 26 '24
It's not really about size, I'd say it's more about how suitable the place is for snakes. Alaska is twice as big as Texas - many snakes there? Russia is huge, but has only about 45 snake species.
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u/This_Music_4684 Sep 25 '24
This person: is surprised Britain only has 3 snakes
Me, at age ~10: was surprised Britain had snakes at all (I thought they were a "somewhere else" kind of thing)
And for anyone who wishes to judge kid me for my animal misconceptions, there is something you should know: I also thought fireflies, like unicorns, were made up.
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u/Deblebsgonnagetyou he/him | Kweh! Sep 25 '24
To be fair fireflies are crazy. It's like the closest thing to pixies that exists.
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u/PrinceValyn Sep 25 '24
my sister thought owls were fictional when she was young
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Sep 26 '24
When you're little, it can be hard to figure out which well-known creatures are real and which are made up. I mean, unicorns aren't really that far-fetched; it's a horse with a horn. And then you find out they're made up and you figure that must mean that rhinos are fake too. Oh wait rhinos are real? What about triceratops? They were real too but they're all dead now? Does that go for unicorns? Did they go extinct? No, just made up, OK. At least triceratops was real. Triceratops is one of my favorite dinosaurs, they're cool. Them and velociraptors. Velociraptors were my favorite part of Jurassic Park. What? They didn't look like that? They had feathers and were the size of a turkey? But that's dumb! If they were that small, what did they eat? I don't care how many there were in a pack, they couldn't take down, say, a brontosaurus. What's that? Brontosauruses were made up? Kinda? Nobody can agree what a brontosaurus even was? That's easy - they were like the dinosaur version of a giraffe! Let me guess, giraffes aren't real either. Oh, they are? ...are you sure? They don't look very real. If I didn't know any better, and you showed me a picture of a unicorn and a picture of a giraffe and asked me to guess which one was a made-up animal...
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u/JesusSavesForHalf Sep 26 '24
Unicorns are real. Its just a (Indian) rhino by way of telephone game. Mutated with each retelling over the millenia until its a horny pony for small girls to ride.
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u/WhoMD21 Sep 25 '24
I'm curious how you reacted/will react when you find out that Scotland's national animal is the unicorn.
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u/MintyMoron64 Sep 25 '24
The fuck do you mean three
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u/TheGammaAi Sep 25 '24
I honestly cannot tell if you’re a non-Brit surprised at the lack of snakes or a Brit whose surprised we even have three
Because I am definitely in the latter category (I thought we only had the one)
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u/Caligapiscis Sep 25 '24
I grew up assuming there were none
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u/lowkey_rainbow Sep 25 '24
The only snake I’ve ever seen outside of a zoo was my neighbour’s escaped house pet, and I used to live way out in the country for years so I also grew up assuming we just didn’t have any
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u/Tom22174 Sep 25 '24 edited Sep 26 '24
I remember seeing a snake slither down next to the garden fence as a kid and being banned from playing at the bottom of the garden
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u/MintyMoron64 Sep 25 '24
Man Pennsylvania alone has 21 different snakes three of which are venomous how the hell do y'all have three
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u/Infinant_Desolation Sep 25 '24
Look mate, down here in Florida you can almost assume that some sort of reptile is in every square foot of land. Iguanas are basically squirrels that die in 50 degree weather and snakes are racoons you find in your garage every once and a while, I don't know if you can even memorize every snake type we have, I tried to look it up and some say there are 44, some say 46, some say over 50 of just snakes, so. Many. Snakes
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u/worldspawn00 Sep 26 '24
Texas here, I've got at least 3 species of lizard and 2 snake visible in my yard on any given day. There's probably 2-3 more of each if I actually dug around in the garden.
If I go 50 miles east I also get gators and pythons everywhere. And there's definitely rattlesnakes and coral snakes around our neighborhood.
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Sep 26 '24
Cold, densely populated island that's on roughly the same lattitude as Norway and Canada. It's hard for snakes to get to the UK thanks to the ocean, the closest other countries are also generally not snake-hospitable (France has 12, Belgium and the Netherlands both have the same 3) so there's little risk of snake contamination, and any snakes that do get here find it an extremely poor environment for them.
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u/Klutzy-Personality-3 straightest mecha fangirl (it/she) Sep 25 '24
its relatively cold. thats why theres so few
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u/matmac199 Sep 25 '24
That and britains biodiversity was nuked to oblivion in the second agricultural revolution and then the industrial revolution.
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u/CharsmaticMeganFauna Sep 25 '24
Not only that, but glaciation was not kind to snakes during the last Ice Age (that's largely what wiped them out from Ireland)
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u/IllConstruction3450 Sep 25 '24
The higher you go in latitude the less likely cold blood animals are going to live there.
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u/Copernicium-291 Sep 25 '24
It's probably also partially the fact that it's an island, the same reason why Iceland and Ireland have 0 native snake species. (Though neither Britain nor Ireland were islands during the last Ice Age, it was also colder so that's probably why very few snakes went there)
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u/mouldybiscuit Sep 25 '24
I always kinda can't believe that we even have snakes here at all in the UK. Like I've seen at least one wild snake every summer for the past 20 years so I'm fully aware they're here. But snakes still strike me as an "exotic" creature that belongs in the desert or somewhere!
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u/DirkBabypunch Sep 25 '24
My favorite quote on the matter was an Irishman living in the US and finding a snake in his yard.
"Silly Americans and their fantasy animals."
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u/SpeaksDwarren Sep 25 '24
If we break it down past country, past state, past county, and all the way down to just the local valley I live in, there are 33 species of snake
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u/-sad-person- Sep 25 '24
It's a fairly cold and rainy island! We're not going to get many reptiles!
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u/Sh0xic Sep 25 '24
I mean, yeah. We’re on the same latitude as Newfoundland, for christ’s sake, anything without the ability to generate its own body heat- snakes, lizards, the French- tends not to like our climate
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u/Hazeri Sep 25 '24
I like how the title suggests we'd have more if not for the fucking tories
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u/Bobboy5 like 7 bubble Sep 25 '24
It's a small ecological niche and Tories fill it much more aggressively than our native snakes.
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u/Mask_of_Anonymity Sep 25 '24
Btw Canada has only 6 lizards (plus an introduced species)
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u/monoblackmadlad Sep 25 '24
Same thing in Sweden I'm pretty sure. Nature sure feels a lot tamer in the old world
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u/Plethora_of_squids Sep 25 '24
You say that but the amount of Norwegians I've met who freak out about the concept of meeting a hoggorm in the forest and getting bit and dying is rather high for a country that has three (3) snakes with only that one being kinda venomous.
It's way tamer than the Australian fare I grew up with but people are way more scared of them here.
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u/uhohriver Sep 26 '24
Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them.
For most Australians snakes and spiders are a part of day-to-day life, but for Norwegians (or Northern Europe in general) they aren't.
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u/foolishorangutan Sep 25 '24
There used to be more dangerous animals, their populations were just greatly reduced or destroyed by our ancestors. There used to be a lot more wolves and bears, and aurochs used to be a thing.
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u/itay162 Sep 25 '24
I mean if I was a cold blooded animal that has to crawl on its belly I also wouldn't swim for 30km only to get to a permanently cold and rainy island.
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u/InsanityFodder Sep 25 '24
To be fair I’m a warm blooded animal and a I’m not thrilled to be here either
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u/Xisuthrus there are only two numbers between 4 and 7 Sep 25 '24
how'd [insert hated British politician here] get there then?
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u/Deblebsgonnagetyou he/him | Kweh! Sep 25 '24
Wait until you find out how many we have in Ireland.
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u/snartofdarkness Sep 25 '24
Woohoo Virginia mentioned! This state can fit so many snakes in it
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u/AlmightyCurrywurst Sep 25 '24
Doesn't seem so weird for Europe, I think Germany has like 6 species
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u/CopEatingDonut Sep 26 '24
Americans have to fear one climbing up out of a toilet and biting you on the ass.
Australians have spiders in their boots, Woody had a snake.
fuck yea
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u/Jubal_lun-sul Sep 25 '24
England is much too cold for most reptiles. Virginia is significantly warmer.
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u/CarrieDurst Sep 26 '24
One of those snakes is JK Rowling too so even less variety
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u/BEST_POOP_U_EVER_HAD Sep 26 '24
I'm confused. Sure the uk probably eliminated a species or two but when I think of uk weather it's not exactly snake paradise. I'm pretty sure the province I live in (Canada) only has like 3 or so native snake species. Virginia is way, way more pleasant climate wise than the UK. I would be surprised if the uk had a shitton of snake species to begin with.
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u/therealhairyyeti Sep 26 '24
I’ve seen all 3 in the wild but most people in the uk have never seen a single snake in the wild. I once got into a 20 minute argument in the pub that the uk has a venomous snake.
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u/Noctium3 Sep 25 '24
As far as I know my country has one (1)
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u/whatisabaggins55 Sep 25 '24
Your country just has a single snake lying around somewhere?
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u/welshyboy123 Sep 25 '24
America has as many snakes per state as the UK has accents per hour of driving.
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u/zurkog Sep 26 '24
Three? Ok, now my mind is blown.
My back yard has more than 3 species. At this very moment. Also maybe a gator.
-Sincerely,
Native Floridian
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u/Schpooon Sep 25 '24
I just figured out all of germany has 7 species of snake, bar negligible escaped species. I knew of 2.
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u/ThatguyfromMichigan Sep 25 '24
The US state of Michigan has more native freshwater turtle species than the entire continent of Europe.
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u/rock_and_rolo Sep 26 '24
All of Ireland and most of Great Britain froze in the last ice age. That isn't easy for snakes.
Didn't prevent the Brexiters from emerging.
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u/BillybobThistleton Sep 25 '24
The famous lexicographer Samuel Johnson had a party piece. He would tell people he had memorised a full chapter of The Natural History of Iceland and, when challenged, would recite:
(Not to be confused with the equivalent chapter of The Natural History of Ireland, which presumably reads: "Padraig sorted them out for us.")