Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

tasty

2017-10-21 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
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tasty
Votey panel for tasty
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Explanation

The Joke

Two alien dinosaur-like creatures are eating a human. One exclaims "Oh my God, this part of humans is DELICIOUS!" The other agrees: "Yes, it's wonderful. Though it seems to be shrinking in their populations." The first alien concludes: "We'll have to practice some subtle selective breeding."

The scene then cuts to "Later..." where a human professor stands at a blackboard listing body parts that scientists find mysteriously vestigial or shrinking in modern humans: "Coccyx, Wisdom teeth, Appendix." The professor lectures: "And no one knows exactly why humans retain the vestigial appendix."

The joke reveals that the "mysterious" evolutionary retention of seemingly useless organs like the appendix is actually the result of alien farmers selectively breeding humans to keep producing the tastiest bits. It's a conspiracy theory punchline: the reason certain organs persist despite having no apparent function is that our alien overlords have been secretly ensuring we keep growing them because they're delicious.

The Humor

The comedy operates as a clever inversion of evolutionary biology. Scientists genuinely puzzle over why certain vestigial structures persist in humans, and the comic offers the most darkly hilarious explanation: we're livestock being selectively bred by alien gourmands. The title text ("Somehow, I find the idea of being used as seasoning less horrifying than being a main course") adds another layer by having a human react to this revelation with oddly specific culinary preferences about their own consumption. The joke also plays on the real-world practice of selective breeding in agriculture, where humans have bred animals for desirable traits -- here, humans are on the receiving end of exactly the same process.

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