People will downvote this comment as it s about butterflies.
In a high-traffic site it's almost guaranteed that at least one lost soul will read you comment, maybe vote/flag it, and maybe maybe reply to it.
But like you said, someone sometimes replies and you get pulled into threads like this - which is somehow way too much fun lol - so agree about commenting to start/participate in such convos.
Personally, more often than commenting, I forward the articles I know will be interesting to people in different group chats. And there is a lot more back-and-forth there.