sheep-2
Explanation
This comic features two women walking past a field of sheep. One asks the sheep breeder what she's breeding them for: "Mmm, ahh, or aww?" The breeder has a horrified realization: "I... oh god those are the only options, aren't they?"
The joke hinges on the observation that humans have domesticated animals for an extremely narrow set of purposes, which the comic reduces to three visceral reactions: "Mmm" (food -- the delicious sound), "Ahh" (wool/clothing -- the comfort sound), and "Aww" (cuteness/pets -- the endearment sound). The bottom caption reinforces this by stating: "Animal breeding is a 10,000 year quest to make every creature into food, clothes, or babies."
The humor mechanism is a reductio ad absurdum applied to the entire history of animal domestication. By compressing thousands of years of selective breeding into three onomatopoeic reactions, the comic makes the listener (and the sheep breeder herself) confront how anthropocentrically narrow humanity's relationship with animals really is. The breeder's dawning horror is the comedic payoff -- she's been participating in this system without ever framing it so bluntly.
This fits SMBC's recurring interest in taking commonplace human activities and reframing them through an unflinchingly logical or philosophical lens, making the mundane seem absurd.