2013-07-04
Explanation
This comic poses the question "What if Linnaeus had been a cat?" and imagines how biological taxonomy would look if it had been devised by a feline mind. A professor stands at a chalkboard explaining that there are three kingdoms of life: "Meat, Non-Meat, and Meat-But-Pointy." The chalkboard shows drawings of three animals labeled M (a cat-like creature representing "Meat"), NM (a bird-like creature representing "Non-Meat"), and MP (a spiky creature like a porcupine or hedgehog representing "Meat-But-Pointy").
The joke is a play on Carl Linnaeus, the 18th-century Swedish botanist who developed the modern system of biological classification (taxonomy). Linnaeus organized all living things into hierarchical categories based on shared physical characteristics. The comic imagines that if a cat had devised this system instead, the entire framework would revolve around what matters most to a cat: whether something is edible. All of life would be divided into things you can eat (meat), things you cannot eat (non-meat), and things you could theoretically eat but would hurt to try (meat-but-pointy).
This is a classic SMBC riff on how perspective and motivation shape supposedly objective systems of classification. It also plays on the well-known behavior of house cats, who tend to view other animals primarily as potential prey or threats. The simplistic three-category system is funny because it reduces the magnificent diversity of life on Earth to a predator'''s practical concerns.
The votey panel continues the joke with the professor musing, "Did meat and pointy meat share a common ancestor? Nobody knows for certain," parodying genuine evolutionary biology debates through the absurd lens of cat-based taxonomy.