machines with different submasks can ping each other, why?
 

I am trying to learn networking from my redhat 9 book:

On one machine I have:
ip: 192.168.33.33
netmask: 255.255.128.0

On another machine I have:
ip: 192.168.33.34
netmask: 255.252.0.0

And they CAN STILL PING EACH OTHER, why is this?
From my reading I understand that it is the point of submasks
to create different AREAS to have unique IP addresses?

Thanks.

the first one is
11000000 10101000 00100001 00100001

the second one is
11000000 10101000 00100001 00100010

so a netmask to exclude all others is
11111111 11111111 11111111 11111100

or
255.255.255.252

anything more unrestrictive than that also contains these addresses

255.252.0.0 is netmask that includes well over 65,000 addresses