Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

jawing

2024-08-01 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
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jawing
Votey panel for jawing
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Explanation

The comic features a person praying to or questioning evolution (depicted as a cosmic entity), asking, "Why are jaws so jaw-ey?" -- essentially asking why the human jaw has its particular form and quirks. The cosmic evolution figure notes that the question is "very interesting" and responds by asking if the human is aware that women have been giving birth successfully for around 300,000 years without the questioner's help, and that they have had a "deflated balloon" (a less-than-impressive physique) the entire time.

The next panel continues: evolution points out that most of the questioner's grandmothers "probably had very little say in the matter" of choosing partners, hinting at the darker aspects of human mating history. The person then asks why they get bored at work so often, and evolution basically tells them to take some time to think about it more carefully, as a lot of what they think matters actually does not.

The humor is multi-layered. On the surface, it mocks the kind of pop-evolutionary thinking where people ask "why did evolution make X this way?" as if every trait has a neat adaptive explanation. The comic punctures this by having evolution itself point out that many human traits persist not because of careful selection but because of messier historical realities. It also satirizes the human tendency to think of themselves as the pinnacle of natural selection while being, as evolution bluntly notes, not particularly impressive specimens.

View History (1) Original Comic