evolved-2
Explanation
The Joke
The comic features a woodpecker asking "Dear Evolution, why are we like this?" Evolution responds with a beautiful, poetic explanation about how nature is filled with "endless forms most beautiful," comparing the process to water flowing downhill and finding every pool. Evolution describes how life trickles toward every niche, making use of every way of being: the dolphin swims free, the ant knows the love of a million fellows, and the woodpecker... well, evolution says, "here you bash your face into trees all day so you can eat bugs."
The woodpecker's response -- "Kiss my ass" -- captures its understandable frustration at being given perhaps the least dignified ecological niche in all of nature.
The Humor
The humor comes from the contrast between evolution's lofty, eloquent description of the beauty and diversity of life and the woodpecker's blunt realization that its particular role in this grand tapestry is deeply undignified. Evolution starts with sweeping, Darwinian poetry -- "endless forms most beautiful" is a direct quote from the final paragraph of Darwin's Origin of Species -- but when it gets specific about the woodpecker, the romantic framing falls apart entirely. Bashing your face into wood to eat bugs is, objectively, a tough sell compared to being a dolphin. The woodpecker's vulgar, two-word response is the perfect deflation of evolution's grandiose speechifying.
References
The phrase "endless forms most beautiful" is from the closing paragraph of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" (1859), one of the most famous passages in all of science writing. The full quote reads: "There is grandeur in this view of life... from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."