Oh, the things we teachers
sometimes say. Without intent. I was talking about evolutionary concepts in my
comparative psychology class the other day and was discussing a type of finch
found on the Galapagos Islands called a Vampire Finch. This finch obtains some
of its food by pecking at the feet of other, larger birds, and then drinking
the blood that runs from the wound. Its favorite prey is a species of bird
called a “Blue Footed Booby,” which is much larger with big, somewhat fleshy
feet. I’m going along in my discussion when I announce to the class: “So here we have a creature that makes its
living sucking blood from boobies.”
It did not occur to me that
what I’d said could be taken another way until I heard a couple of snickers
from students in the class. Quite often when I make such a “slip,” I will call
attention to it so we can all get a good laugh. We are still very early in the
semester, though, with mostly sophomore level students, and this was just
creepy enough that I decided to rush on to another topic. I’m quite sure there
were some repetitions later outside of class. I also got quite a laugh out of
it myself after I got back to the office.
Oh, the imprecision of
language!
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