saw this on the main page of cbsnews.com a couple of months ago

  • TIN@feddit.uk
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    1 month ago

    My old neighbour had one of those kebab shop bug zapper lights which she hung outside and ran all day and all night. I couldn’t sit out because the sound of insects being disassembled was too much for me to cope with.

    • TIN@feddit.uk
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      1 month ago

      Of course German has a word for it! I did some bee research a long while back and we used to stick a tiny bit of numbered card on bees to track them. That has a German word as well, something like opalithplatchen.

      What kind of language has a separate word for a tiny bit of numbered card that you stick on a bee?

        • TIN@feddit.uk
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          1 month ago

          Those are the ones! It’s quite a distinctive word so must have stuck in my head!

      • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyz
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        1 month ago

        It’s literally just that the language uses compound words constructed on the spot, as opposed to compound phrases. When you say “insect death”, German grammar just dictates that if it’s written without prepositions as “insect death” and not “the death of insects”, you have to write it in one word.

        The same works in Hungarian as well. “The death of insects” would be “a rovarok halálozása”, while “insect death” has to be written as “rovarhalálozás”. Every compound phrase without a preposition to clarify the relationship of the words becomes a compound word.

        Actually, Hungarian is even worse, because prepositions and some other stuff also become suffixes, and are thus attached to the word. So the phrase “happening at the time when insect death is caused” can be translated word for word as “a rovarok halálának okozásának idejében történő”, but it is equally right, and more succinct to use the adjective “rovarhaláloztatáskori”.

        • TIN@feddit.uk
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          1 month ago

          Amazing, thank you for that. There’s so much that’s fascinating in linguistics!

  • FQQD@lemmy.ohaa.xyz
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    1 month ago

    The bees are fine, the wasps are shitty. Especially if you’re allergic to their stings.

      • saltesc@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Possibly. People that have allergic reactions to venomous stings can see it for multiple insects, though it’s not common. The only way to know is testing, by whacking a stick on the nests of different wasp species and taking note if any make you anaphylactic. If you’re all good, you can be more assured it’s just bees, but nothing’s 100% certain until you aggravate insects with a stick and test.

      • Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        No, i dont think so. They are different. I think wasp stings are slightly alkaline, and bee stings are acidic. They need different treatments.

        • variants@possumpat.io
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          1 month ago

          So wasps inject you with stuff too? I always figured it was just bees since they leave their butt behind. Wasps can sting multiple so they hold on to their butt and made me assume they just stabbed you but didn’t inject anything

          • Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            I looked this up after typing a response to make sure I wasn’t mistaken, but its only honey bees that die when they string you

            From google “First off, male bees in any species cannot sting as only females have the bodily anatomy to do so. Secondly, only the honey bee can die after stinging, this is due to the honey bee’s stinger. A honey bees stinger is made up of two barbed lancets, meaning when they sting, the stinger cannot be pulled out again.”

            I didnt realise that the worker bees were female! Male bees are good for nothing but breeding. They cant even sting. Bloody layabouts!

          • sinkingship@mander.xyz
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            1 month ago

            I recently read somewhere that it’s actually just very few bee species that die after stinging, among them honeybees. They have a barbed stinger that gets stuck while most bees have flat stingers and can sting repeatedly.