lions
Explanation
This comic is about the disconnect between rational thinking and the body's stress responses.
In the first panel, one character screams: "Aaah! We're being chased by lions!" The other character calmly responds: "No we aren't. Brian, I'm just stressed out about some scheduling stuff at work."
Brian tries to be rational about it: "There's no way our heart rate would be this high just because you double-booked a 10am meeting. There might be an existential threat." The calm character insists there isn't, saying "No! Stop!" But Brian keeps insisting: "It is lions! Lions by God! Muscles! Adrenaline! Giddy up!" as they both start running.
In the final panels, after running, Brian says: "I think we've outrun them! I think we are safe!" The other character says: "I hate how great this made me feel."
The comic illustrates the well-known mismatch between our evolved stress responses and modern life. Our bodies evolved to respond to genuine physical threats (like being chased by lions) with a fight-or-flight response -- elevated heart rate, adrenaline, heightened awareness. But in the modern world, this same physiological response gets triggered by mundane stressors like scheduling conflicts. The joke is that Brian takes the body's stress signals literally and concludes there must be lions, and the absurd act of actually running from imaginary lions ends up being therapeutic -- the physical exertion resolves the stress response in the way the body was designed to handle it. The final line, "I hate how great this made me feel," acknowledges that exercise and physical action genuinely do relieve stress, even though the rational mind finds this annoying.