princess
Explanation
The Joke
A prince (resembling Prince Eric from The Little Mermaid) is arguing with a mermaid princess. He says, "We've been over this. You can't just poop anywhere!" She responds, "Even in the ocean?" He then says, "Oh my God, no, obviously. And you can't eat smaller members of your own species!" The mermaid retorts, "But they are weak! Weak things are food!" The caption reads: "The Little Mermaid's marriage ultimately ended in divorce."
The Humor
The comic takes the fairy-tale romance of The Little Mermaid and extrapolates what would actually happen if a human married a creature from the ocean. The joke plays on the fundamental biological and cultural incompatibility between a human prince and a mermaid. The behaviors the prince objects to -- defecating anywhere and eating smaller members of her own species -- are perfectly normal in the marine world (many fish species are cannibalistic, and ocean creatures obviously have no concept of bathrooms). The mermaid's defense that "weak things are food" is a brutally honest articulation of ocean predator logic. The humor lies in imagining the mundane domestic disputes that would arise from such an interspecies marriage, reducing a beloved Disney romance to an inevitable divorce caused by irreconcilable differences in bathroom habits and dietary ethics.
References
- The comic parodies Disney's "The Little Mermaid" (1989), based on Hans Christian Andersen's 1837 fairy tale, in which a mermaid princess gives up the sea to marry a human prince.
- Many fish species are indeed cannibalistic; this is common behavior in the natural world, making the mermaid's perspective biologically defensible even if socially horrifying.