Comment by throwup238
19 hours ago
They were missing. Then they used GPS tags to locate them.
That’s why the article is titled “ A Million Falcons Went Missing. Here’s How They Were Found”.
Something was unknown, then we used sensors to solve the mystery. Wild, isn’t it?
I wish I could put gps tags on things after they go missing...
Well you can if those things first come back for a time
According to the dictionary definition of "missing", they were not missing.
At best, our assumptions about where we expected to find them were wrong.
What dictionary are you using?
I just looked it up and MW’s definition of “missing” is “absent” or “lost” or “needed or expected but not included”. Dictionary.com says “absent, not found, or lost” and “lacking”. Wiktionary says “Not able to be located; gone, misplaced”, “Not present when it (they) should be”, and “Of an internal combustion engine: running roughly due to an occasional lack of a spark or other irregular fault.”
Why do you think any of those definitions fit the case of the falcons?
I took a look at “MW’s” web definition and it seems singularly lacking. Perhaps you should consider purchasing a real dictionary.
Cambridge is a bit better: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/missi...
A common theme is that for something to be “missing,” it should not be where you expect it to be. But if your expectation is invalid, then it’s not “missing,” you simply have wrong expectations, which is the case with these falcons.
For example, I could say that there are a million falcons missing from my front yard right now. Do you think that’s a valid way to describe it?
So my keys have never truly been missing, eh?
So everyone else's keys are missing materially all of the time?
You have a valid reason to expect that your keys are in the place you remember leaving them.
That’s not the case with large flocks of living animals. In that case, you’re simply making a category error in imagining that those living animals behave much like your keys.