Comic 867: Randall learns biology

Alt text: Birds are Aves, which is part of the clade Theropoda, which is in Saurischia, which is in Dinosauria. Those birds outside our windows are dinosaurs. We can clear out the rest of our brains because we now have the best fact.

It's clear from this comic that Randy has discovered phylogenetics and evolutionary biology. Good for him! It's about time he widened his knowledge base beyond maths, physics and out-of-date pop culture.

Unfortunately for Randy, he only found out about phylogenetics and failed to research it to any depth. There are a number of rather telling clues to this:

1) He says that lizards should be folded up into ornithology. Why not any other reptiles? Because Randy believes that lizards and reptiles are entirely interchangeable words, that's why.

2) He is making a reference to the contention between paraphyletic and monophyletic classifications, but he has picked 'herpotology' as the battleground, a discipline that has obvious reasons for studying the groups they do.

3) Notice how you need little to no knowledge of evolutionary biology to understand this comic? The geek references are spoonfed to us this time. 

4) He acts like the whole 'birds used to be dinosaurs' is new, groundbreaking knowledge, rather than something first proposed in 1868 and known to any fucking child who took more than a passing interest in Jurassic Park. You know, geeks. How has this little tidbit of info passed by someone so goddamn obsessed with raptors?

Kudos to him for passing up the opportunity to draw a close-up diagram of genital herpes, but he again frustrates us by taking a fairly funny idea (cladistic insults) and giving it a terrible, half-baked execution. Why two conferences? Why not one with an audience member supplying one side of the debate? 'Assholes' and 'douchebags'? Why not science it up a bit, give the Latin names or use something more creative?

Because he's a lazy motherfucker, that's why. Like Rob.

BINGO TIME!

Ooh! So close! If only there were a 'Robdall' in there somewhere.