On: Beetle grows ‘termite’ on back to steal food

[bpodgursky]

There really aren't that many people studying insects. Even fewer studying and cataloging plants.

Everyone assumes there's some large academic cohort of etymologists that are busy indexing and recording all natural insect life, but it's usually just some guy paying attention to one thing at a time. And sometimes there are whole families of animals or plants where there's no guy at all.

[omnicognate → bpodgursky]

I expect there are very few etymologists studying insects, but more concerningly there aren't enough entomologists doing it either [1].

[1] https://time.com/5144257/fewer-scientists-studying-insects-e...

[bpodgursky → omnicognate]

oops

[eru → bpodgursky]

> Even fewer studying and cataloging plants.

Depends. Agriculturally important plants (and their pests of all kinds, including other plants) do get a lot of attention.

[DonHopkins → eru]

Crime pays but botany and entomology don't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFScyio4lwI&t=752s