Snakes can’t smell. They flick their tongues to taste scent.
So if a snake gave up smoking they could smell and hunting would be easy.
Hmm, yeah, seems like any animal that uses scent to track prey would be better off quitting smoking. The peculiarity of snakes sensing thru tongues doesn’t add anything , that I can see.
I have no idea why (or how) a snake would smoke, but thinking about it reminded me of this 42-year-old Garfield strip:
I don’t know if he started it, but Jim Carrey was the first I saw/heard using “SSSmokin’!” as an adjective meaning “hot stuff!” Garfield here reminded me of that.
@woozy, snakes have both standard olfaction using their nostrils and the ability to pick up scent using the vomeronasal organ and their tongues.
… but when it comes down to it, I think my favorite is seeing Garfield getting grilled.
Carl Fink: >Yes, I’m being pedantic. I’m a biology teacher.
And right you should be.
1) I should know better to repeat oversimplified trivia of my childhood as though it were absolute. I usually do know better than that.
2) Mitch4’s eloquent comment that *any* scent tracing predator would do better if they quit smoking made me realize the factoid of snakes not having sense of smell isn’t particularly relevant.
Smoking impedes smell and taste. So particularly advantageous for a snake to stop, since it uses a tongue to smell and taste, as well as nose. Smoking is quite a bad habit, no matter how much fun.
But snakes don’t hear well, at least in the typical sense, as they don’t have external ear openings or eardrums. Their hearing is mostly used for detecting ground vibrations, although there is some evidence that airborne sounds can be detected to a certain extent.
@Brian in STL: so what you’re saying is snakes should give up listening to loud music on their headphones?
https://www.thefarside.com for today (7/7/20) has smoking as the reason dinosaurs went extinct. Unfortunately, the site is set up so I can’t copy it, and doing a screenshot to include here seems unethical to me (if you all think it isn’t, let me know and I’ll gladly do that and post it).
@ Andréa – Here’s Larson’s original (monochrome) drawing (not from his website, of course):
The ‘Bears eating cub scouts’ one is a CIDU for me.
Yeah, I think it’s mostly just the absurdist / violent / turnaround that is funny. Though I kept trying, and failing, to see a syntactic-ambiguity-pun (headline style) akin to “MAN EATING SHARK”.
I don’t know about bears eating Cub Scouts, but one kid I knew claimed he got kicked out of the Cub Scouts for eating Brownies.
Anything like the guy who got kicked out of university where he majored in Animal Husbandry, when one day they caught him at it?
Comics I Don't Understand 
Snakes can’t smell. They flick their tongues to taste scent.
So if a snake gave up smoking they could smell and hunting would be easy.
Hmm, yeah, seems like any animal that uses scent to track prey would be better off quitting smoking. The peculiarity of snakes sensing thru tongues doesn’t add anything , that I can see.
I have no idea why (or how) a snake would smoke, but thinking about it reminded me of this 42-year-old Garfield strip:
I don’t know if he started it, but Jim Carrey was the first I saw/heard using “SSSmokin’!” as an adjective meaning “hot stuff!” Garfield here reminded me of that.
@woozy, snakes have both standard olfaction using their nostrils and the ability to pick up scent using the vomeronasal organ and their tongues.
https://www.livescience.com/32235-can-snakes-smell-anything.html
Yes, I’m being pedantic. I’m a biology teacher.
Also because the prey can’t smell THEM.
Reason #2: Smoking means closing your mouth around a cigarette/cigar/pipe, thus making the tongue unavailable for scenting.
My interpretation has nothing to do with the sense of smell. The snake has a lot more energy since he quit smoking.
I saw it like Mark M. I didn’t laugh.
is it worth mentioning how hard it would be for a lipless animal to smoke?
@Kilby: I thought for sure if you were going to dig up a 40-year-old Garfield cartoon about him smoking you would pick this one:
@ larK – I had completely forgotten (or had repressed) the fact that Jon used to smoke a pipe. The following day’s strip is almost even better:
… and there was another take on the subject seven months later:
… but when it comes down to it, I think my favorite is seeing Garfield getting grilled.
Carl Fink: >Yes, I’m being pedantic. I’m a biology teacher.
And right you should be.
1) I should know better to repeat oversimplified trivia of my childhood as though it were absolute. I usually do know better than that.
2) Mitch4’s eloquent comment that *any* scent tracing predator would do better if they quit smoking made me realize the factoid of snakes not having sense of smell isn’t particularly relevant.
Smoking impedes smell and taste. So particularly advantageous for a snake to stop, since it uses a tongue to smell and taste, as well as nose. Smoking is quite a bad habit, no matter how much fun.
But snakes don’t hear well, at least in the typical sense, as they don’t have external ear openings or eardrums. Their hearing is mostly used for detecting ground vibrations, although there is some evidence that airborne sounds can be detected to a certain extent.
@Brian in STL: so what you’re saying is snakes should give up listening to loud music on their headphones?
https://www.thefarside.com for today (7/7/20) has smoking as the reason dinosaurs went extinct. Unfortunately, the site is set up so I can’t copy it, and doing a screenshot to include here seems unethical to me (if you all think it isn’t, let me know and I’ll gladly do that and post it).
@ Andréa – Here’s Larson’s original (monochrome) drawing (not from his website, of course):
Yep, that’s the one. BTW, he’s starting new comics today . . .
https://www.thefarside.com/new-stuff
“Taxidermist!”
The ‘Bears eating cub scouts’ one is a CIDU for me.
Yeah, I think it’s mostly just the absurdist / violent / turnaround that is funny. Though I kept trying, and failing, to see a syntactic-ambiguity-pun (headline style) akin to “MAN EATING SHARK”.
I don’t know about bears eating Cub Scouts, but one kid I knew claimed he got kicked out of the Cub Scouts for eating Brownies.
Anything like the guy who got kicked out of university where he majored in Animal Husbandry, when one day they caught him at it?