Orangutan Memes

This 1871 cartoon from "The Hornet" shows the Victorian-era scientific community's favorite pastime: drawing Darwin with monkey parts. Nothing says "I have a compelling counterargument" like depicting your intellectual opponent as half-primate! The caption "A Venerable Orang-Outang" is peak 19th-century wit—about as subtle as a lab explosion. This was the original scientific clickbait, published when evolution was still the spicy new theory making religious conservatives clutch their prayer books. The real irony? Darwin never claimed humans evolved FROM apes, but rather that we SHARE common ancestors. But why let facts get in the way of a good caricature? Victorian satirists: missing the point since 1871.

Family reunion day! Nothing like standing in a lineup with your evolutionary cousins to make you feel both special and humbled at the same time. The numbers at the bottom? Those are just the population counts - humans winning the reproduction game at 7.9 billion while Eastern Gorillas hanging on with just 5,700 left. Next time someone asks about your extended family, just point to this chart and say "these are my bros from different evolutionary nodes." 😂 Evolution really said "let's try different body hair distributions and see what happens!"