Crabs are the trees in the crustacean kingdom

That comment reminds me how much I hate having been told in biology classes that "a banana tree technically isn't a tree but a giant herb", leaving me wondering 1- isn't herb just a vague synonym for plant, or maybe specifically a smallish plant with some food or medical use?

And 2 - "Tree" just is a body plan of plants. Same classes would tell us how apple trees are closer to garden flowers than pine trees, so we've already established that "tree" isn't a photogenic group. Just what they hell were they getting at with "banana isn't really a tree" anyway?

"banana isn't really a tree..." yet. It's not a "tree" yet.

Maybe in a several more thousand years, the banana herbaceous plant will eventually grow hard bark-like skin, roots, and branches.

That is, until Monsanto decides to force bananas to be fungus resistant and sturdy like a tree.

It's like broccoli. There's nothing like it except cabbage, cauliflower, kale, brussels sprouts, collard greens, and kohlrabi. They're all selectively grown from Brassica Oleracea.

I coincidentally was thinking about the last section the other day, about what makes humans distinct.

It's not speech, because other animals have vocal (and non-vocal!) methods of complex communication. Like birds, ants, bees, whales, dolphins.

It's not tool use, because animals like crows, dolphins, and apes are tool users.

It's not problem solving, because there are animals like crows (realizing how much they show up in my examples) or the octotpus that can solve complex problems. And while they might not be drafting the math equations, insects have been shown to instinctively solve complex calculus problems for flight and distance.

It's not buildings, because creatures like ants and termites make their own complex structures.

It's not art (or at least music), as dolphins and whales sometimes just sing for the hell of it.

It's not adaptability, as we've seen many animals succeed (and unfortunately fail) at adapting to new environmental pressures from mankind or natural events.

Maybe it's clothes? I mean, animals like hermit crabs put on a shell, but that's really more like tool use. Birds use plumage to send messages, but they don't really choose what their feathers are going to look like in the morning when they wake up.

I dunno, just shower thoughts.

Introspection.

So...shower thoughts?

I think it's our penchant for story telling

So, It's almost as if there is not such thing as a crab either

Don't tell me. There were two crabs. They work in pairs.