>>> "can fire venom-filled stingers out of its body and into passing victims" - doing both those things, sometimes at the same time...
>>> No, it's the "and". A conjunction of TWO things, at least so it makes it sound.
>
>My understanding is that this is a concise way of saying
>
>can fire venom-filled stingers out of its body
>
>- and -
>
>can fire venom-filled stingers into passing victims
>
>Is the "and" redundant? In this case, probably.

It is. Unless in the latter case the stingers aren't fired out of its body, but from somewhere else. Mind?

The so-called concise, laconic, expression requires more thinking than the verbose one. Just like one guy said "english language has all the tools it needs to avoid ambiguity" - sure does, because it needs them. But it needs them precisely because it is easy to be ambiguous in it, and to use these tools one first has to be aware when they may be needed. Which is often not the case, and we have an everyday festival of unintended consequences.

Remember "now with real chicken"? Obviously the guys didn't think it through, but it must be good for it has two sure-fire buzzwords, "now!" and "real!".

Or the one which amused me endlessly, "the surgeon general has decided that quitting smoking now greatly reduces your risk of cancer". I remember I had several questions
- what if he just woke up indecisive that day, so he didn't make the decision... then the risk should have no fear?
- when was that "now", there's no date
- is it wrong to have quit smoking two years ago, was that premature?
- damn, the pack on which this was printed is from last year, no use quitting so many months after his "now"
- could he have made a different decision and how would that affect the risk?
- science is irrelevant; we need just one fake general (an admiral by rank, as I heard, impersonating a general) to decide things and so they are.