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Today we are wiping insects as a class, and all birds that prey on them.
by drran 5y ago
Today we are wiping insects as a class, and all birds that prey on them.
- jgwil2 5y agoWe'd better hope not. If insects disappear civilization will not be far behind.
- otabdeveloper4 5y agoI doubt we'll wipe out e.g. ants out as a class. Ants and such seem to be at the top of the evolutionary ladder, like humans.
- naikrovek 5y agowe are wiping out the proper use of things like "e.g." thanks to comments like yours, and the comments you've read to make you think this is the proper use. no one gives a damn about literally anything anymore.
- drran 5y agoI'm not a native speaker.
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago"e.g." is an abbreviation for "for example". So, "I doubt we'll wipe out, for example, ants as a class". Meaning that the comment wasn't particularly about ants, just used them as an illustrative example.
- naikrovek 5y ago"e.g." is for lists of examples. not just one.
- DrSiemer 5y agoNot necessarily. As I understand it, it indicates the presence of a list or group, that the subject(s) mentioned after it belong to. The location of e.g. in the sentence is unusual though: usually it will be found at the end.
- otabdeveloper4 5y agoNo, it's just an abbreviation, nothing more.
- drran 5y agoI checked an old (1 m high) ant colony near to a corn field at the end of summer: this summer it was dead.
- otabdeveloper4 5y agoMaybe it died from old age. They live for decades but will die eventually anyways.
- animal531 5y agoThere are probably 1m ants living beneath my house. They are one of the species that has adapted extremely well to living with humans.