Ahhh so it seems it’s the semantics that are troubling.
She did know that a picture of a chicken was a chicken. She had failed to connect that there were two wings and two legs. Not two wings and 4 legs.
Picking on was also not quite the right word - belaboring it perhaps? It seemed odd to me that of all the things I have said, my mother’s story was the bone of contention. 
I’ve said a lot of things that could and should be debated…so it just struck me as odd!
Ooh was that sharknado? Most terrible awesome movie ever.
Good to know. I’m not squeamish about eating fertilized eggs, we had one accidental rooster (I ordered sex-links…they sent one extra that I did NOT want). I don’t particularly want to eat ones with a fully developed chick in them but some might find that a delicacy. However, with the speed at which commercial eggs are refrigerated and the length of time they spend in storage, I’m surprised people were able to brood them. I was under the impression that the warmth had to happen fairly quickly.
No, you can wait up to 10 days normally with fertile eggs before you put them under heat (the only way an embryo will start, btw), which is what is funny about those older commercial eggs possibly months old. I think I remember some from Aldi’s. Some people have even said they pulled fertile eggs from their fridge and hatched them (to fill the incubator).
I guess Nature has a way…
Yes, this. It is just the same with plants. Growing up in a passionate gardening environment (at one time there were three Master Gardeners in my immediate family, with three others working in the landscaping/nursery industry), where latin binomial nomenclature was just part of ordinary language, it always gave me pause how bizarrely ignorant the general populace is, even those who profess to “love gardening”. Goes double for anything to do with animals, whether it be domestic or wild.
I can’t remember a time before I was fascinated with animals, all animals but of course particularly horses (and dogs). I too was one of those people who read and re-read the entire row of 636 in the public library, and every single book of fiction that had a horse in it. By the time I was ten I could distinguish between a rhea and a cassowary, and had read long articles on the intelligence of cephalopods.
In my teens and early twenties I worked on various farms – an organic vegetable and flower farm, a sheep ranch, a diversified subsistence farm (where they put me to work baking the weekly bread and churning vast quantities of butter to freeze for the winter, while trying to train their half-wild horses). I helped butcher and process chickens, ducks, pigs, sheep.
It’s really hard for me to comprehend just how tiny the span of knowledge in the general public is. They know how to drive to the store and buy things, and use a computer. They barely read and write. They know nothing of the natural world – aka the real world. Come the climate disasters ahead, I think a lot of people won’t do well.
And we’ll use “use” a computer really loosely here. I had a friend (in her early 40s) call me about 4 years ago (I’m a techie by trade) who couldn’t get to her bank account on the web. I asked her what browser she was using, and she said “what’s a browser?”. I then had to think creatively about how to ask her how she got to the internet, at which point she said she clicked the “internet button”. I then had to ask her what that “internet button” looked like to be able to diagnose that she was using an old version of Internet Explorer and the bank’s website wasn’t compatible. She’s my age, so we can’t blame a different generation.
I know many people who think growing vegetables is a complete mystery that “takes an expert”. My garden mostly thrives on neglect. I dig holes, put seeds in them, and occasionally weed. My biggest challenge right now is the freaking deer and moles which came with the place.
I have my indoor hydroponics for the delicate stuff (in this region, it’s lettuce…it gets too hot too fast and bolts) and for kitchen herbs in winter. This, they find completely amazing (although the setup I have is pretty cool tbh).
I do think there’s a general disconnect between what people learned at school and what they know and remember. I also think there’s a disconnect between being able to do something (say…drive) and understanding how an engine works. Some people just aren’t curious.
Well I am my barnworker lol
But at the farms I worked for in the past, I used to volunteer to do Thanksgiving and Xmas morning feeding/ stalls etc because I was one of the few people that lived locally and didn’t have to travel to see my family plus there’s something so peaceful about being with the horses on a day when the barn is empty and quiet
Yes, the barn I board at is exactly like this. I love it! When it’s show season, it’s show season, but thru the winter, each month has a different ‘theme’ like No Stirrups (Saddle) November. I do them all right along with the kids. Keeps my horse from getting bored and helps me remember those carefree rides of my own childhood. The barn is filled with kids in the summer doing all the things you mentioned. We had our horses at home so I never lacked horse time, but I love riding with the kids and seeing them grow. I even get some ‘wows’ from them when we do something really dressage-y (instead of ‘he blew thru my half halt’ which can be tough for them to see 
).
Well, I can relate. There are things my whole being revolts at learning, like pointless software ‘upgrades’ that simply move all the buttons and add even more options I won’t ever use. I also have no affinity for machines, and have a strong impulse to see if throwing them across the room won’t recall them to their duty, something that my engineer/plumber/electrician/mechanic husband finds horrifying. But then he can’t look at an animal and know what it is thinking, either, and to me that’s usually obvious (with mammals anyway).
It’s been a big thing on the backyard chickens forums to hatch Trader Joe’s commercial eggs, they’re well-known for being fertilized. It’s not ideal, but eggs can indeed develop after being refrigerated and shipped.
Who knew! That’s cool. I mean I knew that eggs can cool off for quite some time after laying but TJ’s! That’s wild.
Yes. I once argued with someone here about climate in the distant past (the dinosaur eras, the ice ages). They insisted that people were so stupid and uneducated that they didn’t know about those things.
I said don’t be silly, of course they do. They learned it in school, but it isn’t anything they think about routinely, or ever. In addition, lots of that stuff is taught as an isolated fact and never connected to related information and ideas. If you stop someone on the street and hit them with a question about it, they may well say, “Uhhhh, I don’t know,” when in fact they do know and with better questioning, they could likely tell you about it.
Oh my goodness this gave me a flash of fabulous childhood memory. I’d forgotten that number and what it meant until just now!
Just like the questioning on the street about geography or politics. Plus there’s the general “thing” people have about potentially being wrong.
There are things I’ve never truly thought about. My husband and I were talking about the earth’s core and geothermal heating the other day when I realized that I hadn’t really thought about the rate at which the core might be cooling (obviously not any cause for concern). Just something I hadn’t factored in to my understanding of the planet. Was I educated? Sure, I took lots of courses in both high school & college that mentioned how this all worked. Was I ever taught about this? Possibly? Not that I can recall.
Although on the dinosaur era…there are lots of people who don’t believe it to this day. I’m always surprised to run into them, even though…like flat earthers…I know they exist.
The disconnect is ridiculous in so many ways
Things I’ve recently had customers ask for (and mind you, my customers are professional landscapers so they 100% should know better)
As an avid gardener (and always learning) this makes me nuts. Co-worker who has quit planting roses because they die in the winter…Daffodils (world’s most idiot proof plant) bloom then die…Drives me nuts. Get a book. listen to a garden show, anything.
My mother and grandmother always included me as a toddler in helping in the garden and identifying plants and wildflowers. My dad included me in helping in the vegetable garden.
Like @BigMama1, I was an omnivorous (ha) and early reader as a child. The first book I read was Animals Can Be Almost Human, a Reader’s Digest anthology of animal stories not even intended for kids. I probably did pick up on some incorrect beliefs (like, the fact I read so many outdated British horse care books from the library gave me some weird ideas) but I never had a total disconnect of where meat came from (or, given that my suburban mom planted flowers, the difference between annuals and perennials). At some level, I think basic agricultural knowledge is just that, basic knowledge everyone should know when making decisions about what they buy and how they vote.
Not to give my whole life history, but I was a vegetarian for 13 years. I would never go back to it, since I feel much healthier eating fish (and more rarely chicken). But although I was occasionally a pretty strict one diet-wise, I was never militant because I knew where my dog’s food came from and my leather saddle. And the fact that both human and animal medications are tested on animals.
People have all sorts of complex reasons for eating the way they do from culture to economics to food allergies and intolerances and having empathy and compassion for those choices (and for the animals involved) requires open-eyed understanding.
lol!
Reminds me of doing my moms gardens…
Mom: “I want X Y Z there though”.
Me: " We can’t do that because this requires full sun, it will die"
Mom: “It will be fine, I want it there”
Me: “No you actually have to plant them where the conditions are what they require”
Mom: “Oh really? It matters”?
LOL
Well, the first rose I planted in New England DID die in winter. As in dead as a doornail dead. Now I plant hardier ones …
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