this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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Science Memes

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hippocampus (mander.xyz)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

literally looks exactly like my uni lmao

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Thats the way it goes

[–] [email protected] 38 points 5 months ago (2 children)

When you figure out hippocampus is the genus name for seahorses, and then see the little tail on the coronal MRI it makes a much stronger visual image.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This happened to me, but then I went to investigate where the name "campus" came from, since campus has nothing to do with sea in Greek. All I found is that there was a sea monster in Greek mythology of that name ...

(In Percy Jackson, there are sea horse which are proper horses only of the sea, I'm not sure where Rick Riden took the inspiration for them from)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Campus might be from the Latin "campus, ī, 2m" for field or plain... maybe something to do with the "horse" part of it?

EDIT: nope. Kampos is also from Greek, it means sea monster or shark in this context... and hippos of course is horse. They had a "hippocamp" in mythology with the front end of a horse and rear of a dolphin, hence the "sea monster" etymology. Real sea horses are thus named because they resemble a miniature hippocamp.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Interesting.

I wonder what I did wrong in the first time I searched for this that I couldn't find anything.

So if I understand this correctly it is Greek mythology -> actual sea creature -> brain part.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Pretty much. And for etymology searches like this Wiktionary is a life saver. Just type in hippocampus and follow the link rabbit holes, and it gives you the etymology: hippocampus < hippocamp (mythical sea monster) < hippos (horse) + kampos (shark).

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Our brains are our real form and our bodies are just fleshy seashells

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

There must certainly be a scifi book around this premise

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I bet hippocrates is a professor there

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

Nah, Hippocrates is the local moving service.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

New theory: Hippocrates is just Socrates from the hippo-verse.