the-caterpillar-and-the-ant
Explanation
The Joke
The comic presents a dark fable titled "The Tale of the Caterpillar and the Ant." Two ants discover a caterpillar. One observes: "The caterpillar is made of nutrition." The other adds: "There is no more to existence than this." The caterpillar's body is brought to the ant queen. One ant notes: "Aww... she fell asleep." The other ant immediately responds: "Feed her to the queen!"
The joke is that the ants have a purely utilitarian, materialist worldview -- everything that exists is either food or not food. The caterpillar is food. And when one ant sentimentally observes that the caterpillar appears to have "fallen asleep" (i.e., died), the other ant immediately redirects to the only thing that matters: feeding it to the queen. The brief flicker of empathy or sentimentality is instantly overridden by the cold biological imperative.
The Humor
The comic parodies the format of a children's fable or Aesop-style morality tale, but strips it of any moral lesson. Instead of a heartwarming story about cooperation or friendship between different creatures, the ants are pure biological machines who view everything through the lens of nutrition and survival. The line "There is no more to existence than this" is a bleak philosophical statement delivered with cheerful matter-of-factness. The moment of apparent tenderness ("Aww... she fell asleep") is immediately undercut by the pragmatic command to feed the sleeping/dead caterpillar to the queen. The comic plays on the contrast between how we anthropomorphize insects in children's stories versus the brutal reality of insect behavior.