The Same Difference

We often take similar things for granted. In our subconscious mind, we either know they are the same or we know they are different, but it is very possible that we don't really KNOW at all. This post hopes to provide some light reading on similarities or difference between such things.

ALLIGATORS vs CROCODILES -- different

Alligators and crocodile belong to different families of crocodilians. Crocodiles are from the crocodylidae family, while alligators are from the alligatoridae family. (I can hear my siblings yelling, "NERD!" Hey, I had to look this up.)

A crocodile has a long, narrow, V-shaped snout while the alligator's snout is wider and U-shaped. Another physical difference between the crocodile and the alligator is that the crocodile's upper and lower jaws are nearly the same width, so the teeth are exposed all along the jaw line in an interlocking pattern, even when its mouth is closed. As compared, only the teeth of the upper jaw of an alligator is exposed when its jaws are closed.

COUGAR vs PANTHER vs PUMA -- the same

The cougar, also known as panther, puma or mountain lion, is an unspotted, large cat found in the American continents. The tip of the cougar's tail is usually darker than the rest of the animal. The throat and chest are often white. This animal is a powerful leaper and a great hunter.

OCTOPUS vs SQUID -- very different (Yet this is what caused me to write this post. At the dinner table, someone INSISTED that octopus and squid were the same. Perhaps this will help clarify things and convince her otherwise.)

Octopuses have eight arms (not tentacles), usually bearing suction cups. They have neither a protective outer shell nor any sort of internal shell or bones. The only hard part of their body is their beak, similar in shape to a parrot's beak.

Squids are distinguished by their distinct head and bilateral symmetry. This animal has a mantle with two fins, which encloses its main body mass. Squids have eight arms and two tentacles arranged in pairs. The tentacles do not grow back when they are severed.

Octopuses and squids belong to the same subclass Coleoidea but belong to different superorders. (Nerd alert! Nerd alert! Give me a break, I surfed the web for these answers to give the post more credibility.)

JAM vs JELLY -- definitely different

Jam is made with the whole fruit, cut into pieces or crushed. The fruit is then heated with water and sugar to activate the pectin in the fruit

Jelly is made by a similar process to jam, with the additional step of filtering out the fruit pulp after the initial heating. This means that jelly is made from the fruit juice and has no fruit bits.

COOKIES vs BISCUITS -- both the same and different

In the US, a 'biscuit' is a small form of bread made with baking powder or baking soda as a leavening agent rather than yeast. It is more common to call the sweet variations 'scones' while the savory ones 'biscuits.' The food chain Popeye's serves biscuits as a side dish to their chicken.

A 'cookie' on the other hand, is a small, round, flat baked good. It is more like a cake which has substituted some form of oil for water as the medium of cohesion. (Water in cakes make the batter as thin as possible, allowing bubbles to form better, resulting in a fluffier cake.) The oil used for cookies can be in the form of butter, egg yolks, vegetable oil or lard. Cookies are more dense than cakes. Cookies are most commonly baked until crisp or just long enough that they remain soft. (Think Mrs. Fields.)

However, in the UK, a biscuit is more like the American cookie. Two biscuits can have a layer of cream or icing sandwiched between for sandwich type biscuits. But apparently, the term cookie in the UK is being used to call the softer, more chewy baked product as opposed to the harder, more brittle biscuit. (Is this true, LondonEye?)

It is interesting to note that Nabisco, which is a prominent maker of cookies and crackers in the US, stands for the National Biscuit Company.

In the Philippines, if an American or British were to ask for biscuits, they would get something different altogether. They would be given SkyFlakes, Blu-Skies or Sunflower, which is something closer to a cracker.

(A cracker in American terms, by the way, refers to a flat biscuit with salty/savory flavor which has holes. Think Graham crackers or Ritz crackers. The holes are placed in the dough to stop air pockets from forming in the crackers while baking. The rule-of-thumb is that crackers are salty/savory while cookies are sweet.)

STREAM, RIVER, CREEK, BROOK -- sort of the same

A stream is a body of water with a current.

A river is a large, natural stream.

A creek is a small to medium sized natural stream.

A brook is a stream smaller than a creek. Brooks are shallow and its bed is composed solely of rocks.

Shall I stop? Me and the kids came up with lots of other things which could be compared ... watch vs clock (different since watches are worn on the body), backpack vs knapsack (same as far as we could tell), and more.

Let me conclude with something I'm sure all of you know are different.

NERD vs GEEK vs DORK -- different

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

(For the record -- for this last one, I went through the motions of taking THE test. I scored less than 50% in all three, earning me the title of Joe Normal.)