this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2025
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Science Memes

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Text TranscriptionA series of Tweets, each a reply to the previous.

  1. ABC News @ABC: Scientists have discovered a giant new species of stick insect in Australia, which is over 15 inches long and researchers say may be the heaviest insect in the country. [With a picture of a brown stick insect among some green leaves.]
  2. mary @theoceanblooms: can I ask a question: how does something like this go undiscovered until now
  3. soul nate @MNateShyamalan: Entomologist here ๐Ÿ™‹โ€โ™‚๏ธ๐Ÿค“๐Ÿœ Great question! It may seem surprising that the scientific community could miss an entire bug species after all this time, especially when it's THIS big. The answer might surprise you more ๐Ÿ‘€ Let's dive in ๐Ÿ‘‡๐Ÿงต (1/?)
  4. soul nate @MNateShyamalan: he look like stick (2/2)
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[โ€“] ech@lemmy.ca 40 points 2 days ago (2 children)

People put far too much faith the idea that we as a society know most, or even all there is to know. Humanity has advanced far and increasingly faster in recent years, but we still know basically nothing in terms of the grand scale of things to discover and know.

Even now, our methods of discovering things like new species are far less advanced than people like this probably imagine - it basically boils down to time, persistence, and luck.

We don't even know how much there is to know or if such a limit can exist at all

That, and every grad student and upwards worst nightmare: funding