Biologists' Far Side Favorites - 10

I'm sorry to hear he has retired. I thought he was a young guy. I've also heard
he originally set out to obtain a biology degree. Anyhow, I have saved so many 
of his cartoons it is hard for me to keep this short.                          
My all time favorite one is: a kid with a blackened face and dazed look        
standing behind a table with broken glassware (flasks, graduated cylinder),    
ringstand, a charred something, still smoking, on the table surface and
feathers filling the entire frame. The caption reads "God as a kid tries to
make a chicken in his room."                                                    
Another one similar to your lemming: A group of kangaroos travelling in a      
group, all hopping except for one which is running hell bent for leather to     
keep up -- a spring sticking out of his stomach!
Another: bar scene with birds, at one table two drab females talking, at the
other table a male peacock in full display. Caption has one female speaking to
the other, "Don't encourage him, Sylvia." I love this one because it is so true
to current biological views on Darwinian sexual selection theory which has two
components: 1) males compete with other males for access to a limited resource
which is reproductive access to females, and 2) female choice. I use this in
class. I wonder if Larson got the idea for this from Helen Cronin's book, "The
ant and the peacock," which is about sexual selection theory (the peacock) and
social evolution (in ants and other social insects; bees, termites).
Another: Caveman scene with male and female at a table in a cave restaurant.
Female has a cigarette which the male is attempting to light by rubbing two
sticks together. Another slick-looking male approaches the female and lights
the cigarette with a match which very much impresses the lady as seen by her
facial expression. Caption: "As thak worked frantically to start a fire, a
Cro-Magnon man, walking erect, approached the table and simply gave Theena a
light." Again, a clear understanding of sexual selection theory: male-male
competition, and female choice. This cartoon has been used as a test question
on a final exam to test student understanding of sexual selection theory.
Another: a female bird n a nest high in a tree is ironing feathers while
watching television soap operas. From the television comes the voice of one of
the soap actresses: "I'm sorry Roger...but I've met someone else with brighter
plumage." This may have been taken from the Hamilton-Zuk hypothesis which
relates parasite load to plumage brightness. In this hypothesis only males
relatively free from parasites can have sufficiently bright plumage to attract
females. Female should assess males based on the brightness of their plumage.
Again the theme here is sexual selection theory and this is a great cartoon. If
it comes from Hamilton-Zuk it means that Larson has been reading and keeping
current with publications in the journals Science and Nature. Even if not it
means that he is current on the animal coloration literature.
Another: again one of my favorites: a caveman has just finished inventing the
wheel, the stone tool used to create it is still in his hand. At this point a
group of his peers race by in a fancy large four-door convertible automobile as
our "inventor" just stands looking. No caption. I especially like this one for
not only what it says about reinventing the wheel, but also what it suggests
about failing to communicate with others and to research something before
embarking on a project. It has special appeal to me because of the many times
I've heard some scientist expound a "new" idea -- one I can cite in the
existing literature. I'm sure you've read introductions to papers where the
authros state that this is the first published (whatever) while you know full
well that so-and-so published the seminal paper on this issue several decades
before. Well, it happens in biology all the time.
Did you know that there is a species of chewing louse, Order Mallophaga, that
is host-specific to only owls that is named after Larson? It is called
Strigiphilus garylarsoni.
There are many, many more Larson cartoons that I've kept for my office door
art: female bird talking to house guest while some kind of battle goes on
behind a bulging door (feathers coming out), "Oh my God, .... Murray's
attacking the bathroom mirror." I have this one posted next to my parakeet
cages, *very* apropos. I won't wear you down with other examples, but I would
like to mention that his biology/science related ones are not the only ones
that hit home with me. He has anaother series about our romantic notions of
cowboys. I grew up in Texas and have a good friend who is a cowboy in eastern
Montana. I save all the cowboy cartoons to send to him. Larson's dinosaur
cartoons can be found on most any graduat student door in the Yale Gelogy Dept.
In fact, cartoons of his can be found almost anywhere in the Yale Science Hill
complex. They don't have to relate to science either, he seems to be able to
strike almost every human nerve. I especially enjoy his cartoon books where
there is some text by him describing how particular cartoons came in to being
-- very enlightening.

My favorite Gary Larson cartoon is the one about vegetarians returning from the
hunt. It shows a group of primitive men carrying a large carrot. It is
interesting that one of the most popular books in the Indianapolis Zoo Library
is the book of Gary Larson cartoons (he had an affiliation with the zoo in
Seattle, I believe). 

I have a couple of favourite cartoons, most related to evolution. I think my
most favourite is the one where three dinosaurs are laughing at a little furry
mammal as it rambles by, but the dinosaur on the end has suddenly noticed that
it has started to snow! A pretty succinct summary of one theory for dinosaur
extinction!
Another really favourite one of mine is "The Real Reason Dinosaurs Became
Extinct" with the three baddies sneaking smokes.
On a Texas birding trip a number of years ago, we had a poll of our best-loved
Larson cartoon. The winner was the one where a bunch of moon people were
sitting and going Oooh ane Aaah over some mushroom clouds on earth. Did I
mention that there was a very weird group of birders on the trip?
As a marine biologist, I like all the ones with jellyfish, a sadly neglected
phylum in most cartoons.

My favorite Gary Larson cartoon is the one with a group of insects at a
cocktail party and one is saying, "Think about it, Ed,... the class Insecta
contains 26 orders, almost 1000 families, and over 750,000 described species --
but I can't shake the feeling we're all just a bunch of bugs." I guess I like
it partly because of the irony in it -- I think that is exactly what most
people think.

No contest. Deer with target on chest: "Bummer of a birth mark, Hal."

"The Far Side" was my favorite cartoon. I am saddened at its demise. And one of
my other favorites, "Outland", is soon to follow. To be replaced no doubt by
more "pap for the masses".
Anyway, although I am an entomologist I would have to say that my favorite
Larson cartoon is the one showing a bulging, grinning snake wrapped around a
food dish on which is the name "Garfield"! This one is a classic.
However, if I must pick a cartoon related to my field, certainly a close second
to the above is the one where a pair of mosquitoes are on a victim. The female,
beak inserted, is grossly inflated and about to exploce and her mate is
yelling, "Pull out, Betty! Pull out!... You've hit an artery!"

Well, now that someone asked, my favorite shows two people in a landrover and
two lions. One is standing up on its hind legs next to the vehicle trying to
slide an unbent hanger through the window. The caption reads, "Drive
<somebody's name>, drive, this one's got a coat hanger." This one spoke to my
research partner and me because someone sent it to us in Zimbabwe while we were
working at Sengwa Wildlife Research Institute trapping small mammmals, but
regularly encountering lions and actually being charged a few times. Our truck
was, in our minds, a moving fortress.

Two cartoons come to mind as favorites for me:
1. Pictured are two bats flying and a mosquito much much larger than the bats.
One bat is saying to the other, "That can't be right.... What's your radar
saying, Ed?"
2. This is entitled "Wildlife Preserves". It shows a savanna with tourists in a
jeep taking pictures, and lots of wildlife, but the wildlife is all preserved
in huge jars that dot the landscape. Besides the double meaning of "preserves",
this cartoon is particularly poignant because of the rate at which many species
are nearing extinction. In the future many animals will only be available for
viewing as preserved specimens.

Among my favorite Far Sides (I don't have a SINGLE favorite!) is one that I saw
a few days ago on my 1995 Desktop Calendar:
Two bears with hardhats are standing near the edge of a forest and operating a
valve on a pipeline. The pipeline goes from the forest through the window of a
(human) house, and sludge is pouring into the living room.

tyranosaurus mex

Boy, it's hard to pick a favorite among his many wonderful cartoons, but
here are two that come immediately to mind:
Whale approaches a boat from which researchers are dangling a hydrophone
and begins to sing, "Louie, Louie."
A dog riding in the car looks out at several of his buddies and proudly
tells them, "After we go to the store my master is taking me to the vet to
get tutored."

A movie marquee announces, "CATCH WILLIE", with the subtitle "and make him do
tricks". (sent from the Center for Whale Research)

As a veterinarian, 
I find a number of good Larson cartoons about veterinarians.  My 
favorite is a hunched fellow being introduced to an audience 
approaching the lectern-- wearing an eye patch, with a hook for a 
hand and a peg leg.  "Today our guest speaker is Dr. Clarence 
Tibbs whose 20-year career has culminated in his recent 
autobiography Zoo Vet, I Quit!     

I first came across Mr. Larson's cartoons when I was a graduate student in
molecular biology at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay, India.
My favourite cartoon then showed a labcoated elderly balding researcher looking
down a microscope at night with a blurb from the petriplate under examination
saying, "Put your hands up, and your wallet on the table." Dr. X had obviously
"stumbled onto a particularly rough section of the neighbourhood"!
I now work on primate social relationships and cognition. My current favourite
shows Mrs. Amoeba accusing a rather benign Mr. Amoeba thus: "Stimulus-response,
stimulus-response, don't you ever think?"
Finally, a note of thanks for your writeup on Mr. Larson. I am sure you speak
for all of us. He has made many a dreary and tiring night in the lab and in
the field bright and wonderful! (India)

One of my favs was the Bear who was proud of his deer gut

I could not make up my mind, so these are my two favorite Gary Larson
Cartoons:
On the first you see two chimpanzees quarreling in the foreground,
whereas there are some more in the background together with a human
observer who is taking notes. On chimpnzee to the other:
"Don't shush me - and I don't care if she IS writing in her little
notebook; just twll me where you were last night."
The title of the other is "in the animal self-help section"
and you can see animals in a bookstore reading books with titles as
     - predator-prey relationship
     - dare to be nocturnal
     - do it by instinct
     - hibernate the easy way
     - how to avoid natural selection
     - become one of the herd (Switzerland)

     I chortle over the conjunction of science, humour and the ridiculous 
     in many of Larson's cartoons (e.g. the courtroom scene where the 
     defendant is a crocodile and his lawyer is saying "In cold blood? Of 
     course he did it in cold blood, he's a reptile"), but one of my 
     favourites as a botanist is the two foresters looking at the tree 
     rings in the massive old tree that they have just cut down and one 
     forester pointing out to the other a tree ring marking the tree's 
     "miraculous" past survival of a big forest fire. I and my colleagues 
     frequently use Larson's cartoons (often slightly doctored for local 
     conditions) in talks - they certainly catch people's attention!
     (Australia)     

My favorite is where a researcher is stuffed into a rodent burrow with
a notebook, and he's writing something like "finally these creatures
have accepted me as one of their own"...