• TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      The killer almost had me, but I learned in self-defense class that “poisonous [organism]” only inherently means ingested in colloquial usage and that venoms are more properly a subset of toxins (naturally-occurring poisons) which are a subset of poisons. Consequently, it’s like the killer showed me a square and called it a quadrilateral: I’m too pedantic to be affected.

  • Etterra@discuss.online
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    2 months ago

    “Joke’s on you, venomous snakes won’t recognize chopped up human meat chunks as food; you’re just gonna have a mess to clean up.”

  • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    My even-more-pedantic take is that poisonous is correct, but imprecise. There’s lots of ways to be poisoned. Ingestion, inhalation, dermal contact, and, yes, injection. But it’s all poison.

    A poison is a harmful substance. A toxin is a poison created by a living organism. A Venom is a toxin that’s delivered subcutaneously.

    Poison is the parrallelogram to venom’s square.

  • python@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I’d be much more bothered by the fact that there is no venomous or poisonous snake in the world that could swallow a whole adult human. The only ones that could arguably get close to food of that size are all constrictors.