#occlupanida my favorite class

[duke-of-fire]

Sorry, can you please explain what does "bread clip" mean? Like it sounds cool and interesting (tattoo includes smth about bread???), so I really want to know what it is. Thanks anyway :)

oh abso-fuckin-lutely I can! :D

I do find this topic cool and interesting! but! heads up, this is a bit of a long post. I have a lot to say about this subject because I find it fascinating, but as to not flood others dashboards, I'm hiding it under a read more. I did use your ask to talk about my special interest, and it gets a bit verbose <3

TLDR; Bread clips are the hard plastic things at the opening of bread bags. There's a whole website dedicated to classifying them. I've been collecting them for years and my favorite one has a little heart on it. I use them as a way to bond with my friends, but I also just like sorting mundane items into categories.

So! Picture this: you're going to the store to buy some bread. Maybe you're going to make a sandwich or toast or something. You get home and decide to open the bag, but to do so, you've gotta take this fucker off first.

This is a bread clip! This red one specifically is the most common in shape, but you've probably seen others like these!

These can be found in many places, including, but not limited to: sliced bread, bagels, and english muffins. Not only that, but they can also be found on those mesh bags that hold fruits and vegetables (best example I can think of rn is on potato bags)

The ones I've given as an example so far are all quite similar. They all have the same shaped opening, despite being different lengths and widths. Would be easy if that was where everything ended, but alas! What happens when you run into a clip that looks like this?

What the fuck, right?

This is where HORG comes in. HORG stands for Holotypic Occlupanid Research Group. Basically, their website is a database of holotypes of all these different bread clips. As a whole, the bread clips are called Occlupanids (Occlu meaning "to close" and pan meaning "bread"), and are treated as... parasites.

YES I KNOW. PARASITES. Stay with me on this because it's fucking wild

To quote directly from the HORG website, "Occlupanids are totally adapted to a life of parasitism. Ranging from 2-3cm to 5cm, they are dorsoventrally flattened for ease of moving between the folds of plastic on which they live."

Occlupanids are parasites that live on the bags of bread. Got it? Cool! Let's keep going.

Each Occlupanid is treated as a once living object, to better categorize it. For example! The red Occlupanid from the beginning of this post is categorized as the following:

Kingdom: Microsynthera Phylum: Plasticae Class: Occlupanida Order: Orthogonidectes Family: Toxodentidae Genus: Palpatophora Species: utiliformis

but we would simply refer to it as a Palpatophora utiliformis. In fact, the first three Occlupanids I shared are all part of the same family, that of the Toxodentidae. The families are distinguished by the opening, or to use the official term, the oral groove.

(Fun fact! the weird circle-y one from earlier that's not part of the Toxodentidae family? that's the Coronaspinus gregigelida, or the "Greg's frozen crown of thorns." No, I am not kidding, yes, that is actually what it's called.)

HORG itself is quite interesting as well! I can't pinpoint an exact date of their creation, other than sometime before 2011, as the home page is dated from December 1st of that year, but they claim on their website to have founded in 1632 by someone named Altimus Horg. The image they use for their founder is in fact, a publisher by the name of Aldus Manutius, an Italian man who died in 1515.

They also include a picture of what they claim to be Altimus' personal occlupanid collection, but it is, in fact, an Organum Mathematicum. It had many functions, but none among them included organizing bread clips.

Finally, the rebirth of the HORGanization is directly attributed to a man by the name of Horatio Horg, who the website claims is a direct descendant of Altimus Horg. Just like the case of his ancestor, the image used for Horatio Horg is a real person by the name of Alexander Parkes, the man who invented the first plastic. The whole situation is weird - it's like saying Eugen Baumann invented Funko Pops, while also claiming that Funko Pops are alive, and calling Eugen different name, like William.

Despite my distrust for HORG, their website is fantastic, and if you have the time, you should absolutely go check it out. There's so much on the website that I didn't go into, from the Order Kirigimi, to their film division, to the hypothetical Occlupanids from the 16th century! On top of that, all the pictures in this post are taken directly from their website, save for the image of Aldus Manutius.

This link is for the home page, and then I recommend that you start with their "What are Occlupanids?" page. If you find a Occlupanid in the wild, maybe take the time to categorize it!

To get back to your original question, why do I want a tattoo of a bread clip? I am a proud occlupanologist, collecting and classifying specimen that I find in the wild. I came across my favorite Occlupanid recently, a Quadratopalpus ilex. After years of collecting Occlupanids, this is my only specimen of its species. Mine is a beautiful deep green color, with markings not unlike the one on the holotype. A tattoo of this would be nice. I like the color, I like hunting down these funky little plastic guys and figuring out how to classify them. It's a fun conversation to have when my friends have extras that they bring to me because they know I like them.

If you got this far! Thank you for reading! :D I hope the rest of your day is fantastic!