stretch

A two-part comic riffing on Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. In the main panel, a displeased woman with curly hair stands in a doorway and shouts, "Jean-Baptiste! What are you doing in there for hours every night?!" An unseen voice answers, "Stretching! Stretching for the benefit of future generations!" The caption reads: "After proposing his theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics, Lamarck spent most of his evenings trying to lengthen his penis." The joke: Lamarck believed traits acquired in one's lifetime are passed to offspring, so he is stretching to pass on a longer organ. The votey is a simple ink-sketch profile of a man's head with a thought bubble asking, "Wait, is behavior inherited?" — a worried second-thought about whether his nightly habit, not just the result, might get passed down.