life-8
Explanation
This comic takes place in what appears to be a natural history museum's "Hall of Sea Life."
A visitor asks a museum guide a question: "Yes, I do have a question. What if whales or other sea mammals ever developed the ability to transmit electromagnetic waves into space?" The guide, seemingly confused, asks "What? No." The visitor says "Woo! Great! Just checking."
The caption at the bottom delivers the punchline: "If whales ever developed radio, there would be centuries of ever more desperate distress signals coming from Earth, begging aliens to save them from us."
The humor works on several levels. First, there is the absurd premise of whales developing radio technology. But the real joke is the dark implication: if whales could broadcast to the cosmos, they would be sending distress signals about humanity's treatment of them -- centuries of whaling, ocean pollution, habitat destruction, and climate change. The visitor's relief ("Woo! Great! Just checking") suggests he is a human who recognizes how badly we have treated marine life and is relieved that whales cannot yet tattle on us to any alien civilizations that might be listening.
This connects to the broader concept in SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) of monitoring radio signals from space. The comic inverts this: instead of us searching for alien signals, the joke imagines other intelligent Earth species wanting to signal aliens for help. It is also a commentary on humanity's ecological track record, particularly regarding cetaceans -- animals now known to be highly intelligent, with complex social structures, languages, and cultures -- making our historical treatment of them all the more troubling.