114 points

Creepy. And I learned something. Reminds me of another comic strip that cracked me up. The gist:

God said to the insects “you may each pick three traits.” The millipede said, “I want legs!” The centipede agreed. God nodded. “And for your second trait?” The millipede smiled brightly and said “More legs!” The centipede request the same. God asked for their final request. “More legs!” The millipede shouted smiling even brighter The centipede gave a sinister grin and growled. “Teeth.”

permalink
report
reply
10 points

Millipedes speced all their stat points into beauty

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

Same with pill bugs but smol

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

That’s a great joke. The millipede’s enthusiasm is oddly endearing

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

Neither centipedes nor millipedes are insects.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-13 points

You have them backwards. Centipedes are the ones with more legs

permalink
report
parent
reply
18 points
*

Google tells me you’re the one who has them backwards. Here’s an article from Carnegie Natural History Museum explaining the difference.

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

it’s extremely obvious that you’re incorrect if you simply look at the words, “centi” means “hundred” and is smaller than “milli” which means “thousand”.

centipedes look like they have a hundred legs, millipedes look like they have a thousand legs.

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

Ah, but millimeters are 1/1000 of a meter, which means millipedes actually have 1/1000 of a leg /s

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points
*

“Centipede” means 100 feet.

“Millipede” means 1000 feet.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Pede means feet. So does the pie in piedmont.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-3 points

I am aware of how prefixes work

permalink
report
parent
reply
65 points

Makes me wonder if we ever do meet intelligent aliens will we instantly try to kill them not because we’re a tribe based war loving species, but if it’s simply because we’re so absolutely and deeply repulsed by something so different than us on an instinctual level.

permalink
report
reply
51 points

Have you ever met a Belgian? Same thing

permalink
report
parent
reply
32 points

permalink
report
parent
reply
20 points

There’s two things I can’t stand. Intolerance, and Belgians.

permalink
report
parent
reply
15 points
*

Or, as various sci fi stories have laid out, will they immediately try to kill us, because they are an insect based race and we are dealing with drones that only follow basic instinct, and we’d need to commune with the queen or some such to get them to understand that each of our species has a consciousness and free will, and we don’t exist in a hive mind

permalink
report
parent
reply
26 points

It’s fine, we’ll train a ten year old prodigy to kill their entire race.

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

I just want to state on the record that the book is a short read and extremely better than the movie and that anyone here who hasn’t read Enders Game, should do so.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

the one huge and quite funny flaw with that idea is that queens have absolutely jackshit power over a colony, if anything the queen of a colony is basically a slave that gets constantly pampered and directed by the workers with no free will whatsoever.

If we met an alien hive-mind species it’d probably be much like interacting with a military, just much more tightly integrated and profoundly devoid of corruption, imagine HAL 9000 but made up of a million people working together to run the computations.

So they’d likely work tirelessly to figure out what precisely we are, if they determine we’re a threat they’d attack without mercy, and if they determine they can benefit from cooperation with us they’d be the best ally we could ever imagine albeit extremely manipulative.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Interesting deduction. After analyzing all of the data, we have decided to expend zero effort and go around.

Not our problem, sorry, fly-past planet.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Have you met the Borg?

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Speak for yourself, I exist in a hive mind.

permalink
report
parent
reply
14 points

Bold of you to assume there won’t be humans trying to fuck them.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

Porque no los dos?

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Didn’t feel the need to state the obvious lol

permalink
report
parent
reply
11 points

That’s the plot of Starship Troopers.

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

nah, people work with deep sea creatures all day and just find them cool.

it’d just make international relations with them extremely difficult, honestly district 9 is probably the most realistic take on how we’d treat aliens. We’d be sufficiently unable to empathize with them that we’d treat them like shit, but there’s no real reason to actively try to wipe them out.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

The District 9 aliens are a direct and extremely obvious metaphor for apartheid. The lack of empathy had nothing to do with capability, just a cultural hatred of the other, and it will, and did, like all apartheids, end with genocide.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Embrace the framling, study the ramen, kill the varelse.

permalink
report
parent
reply
62 points

Creepiest house bug ever. I let them be because they eat other bugs.

If you ever see a lot of them you’ve got another problem, that means they have a lot to eat. Could be an infestation of other bugs like roaches or a dead animal in the walls.

permalink
report
reply
30 points

If you ever see a lot of them you’ve got another problem, that means they have a lot to eat.

But… not for long, so problem solved soon, right? Right?

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

According to a random comment I saw once, these things will happily eat each other if there’s no other bugs to eat. So basically yes… unless your house has a continuous influx of new bugs.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

This is also why they aren’t actually great at pest control. They are pretty territorial so their populations never get big enough to make a serious dent. It’s perfectly fine to kill them.

permalink
report
parent
reply
60 points

these mfs are usually a canary in a coal mine. if you start seeing these everywhere in your house, chances are you have roaches.

permalink
report
reply
41 points

If you start seeing canaries everywhere in your coal mine, chances are you have a lethal gas leak. wait what?

permalink
report
parent
reply
23 points

canaries are gases’ natural predator

permalink
report
parent
reply
20 points

If you start seeing canaries in your living room, get a CO monitor.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

permalink
report
parent
reply
57 points

Despite the name, no centipede has exactly 100 pairs of legs; number of legs ranges from 15 pairs to 191 pairs, always an odd number. (wikipedia)

wtf is going on with these guys

permalink
report
reply
55 points

I mean, I have an odd number of leg pairs. You probably do too?

permalink
report
parent
reply
11 points

Woah

permalink
report
parent
reply
11 points

i mean, our arms are just fucked up legs, so technically we have an even pair of legs.

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

Four legs good, two legs bad.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

This sentence took me multiple attempts to parse.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

yeah but the range of leg pairs for humans is (comparatively) much more tame. this would be like if humans had 1-12.3 leg pairs. and crazier still, humans were named something like “6 legged beings”

permalink
report
parent
reply
-15 points

Even stranger, the OP shows a millipede, not a centipede

permalink
report
parent
reply
17 points

That’s very clearly a house centipede

permalink
report
parent
reply

Science Memes

!science_memes@mander.xyz

Create post

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don’t throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.


Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

Community stats

  • 12K

    Monthly active users

  • 3K

    Posts

  • 72K

    Comments