The Far Side

6331 readers

283 users here now

Hello fellow Far Side fans!

About this community and how I post the comic strip… Many moons ago, I would ask my Dad to save the newspaper for me everyday so I could read my favorite comic strips and one of those was The Far Side. These days of course you find just about anything online including www.thefarside.com where they post several comics a day and I repost them here. Just to note, the date you see in my posts is not the initial release date, but the date they were posted on the website.

The Far Side is a single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Chronicle Features and then Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995 (when Larson retired as a cartoonist). Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world, logical fallacies, impending bizarre disasters, (often twisted) references to proverbs, or the search for meaning in life… Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Far_Side

Hope you enjoy and feel free to contribute to the community with art, cool stuff about the author, tattoos, toys and anything else, as long it’s The Far Side!

Ps. Sub to all my comic strip communities:

Bello Bear !BelloBear@lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/c/bellobearofficial

Bloom County !bloomcounty@lemm.ee https://lemm.ee/c/bloomcounty

Calvin and Hobbes !calvinandhobbes@lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/c/calvinandhobbes

Cyanide and Happiness !cyanideandhappiness https://lemm.ee/c/cyanideandhappiness

Garfield !garfield@lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/c/garfield

The Far Side !thefarside@sh.itjust.works https://lemmy.world/c/thefarside@sh.itjust.works

Fine print: All comics I post are freely available online. In no way am I claiming ownership, copyright or anything else. This is a not for profit community, we just want to enjoy our comics, thank you.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

MrSebSin@sh.itjust.works

102

21 April, 2025 (discuss.online)

submitted 4 days ago by m_f@discuss.online to c/thefarside@sh.itjust.works

2 comments fedilink hide all child comments

🔗

Caption:

As the flock of monarchs, in a silent burst of black and gold, rose from the puddle’s edge, a sudden “crack” knifed through the still morning air. A spider’s shotgun had found its mark.

Alt text:

All Right!

Disqus comments

Archived Page

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] zabadoh@ani.social 18 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That spider won't be cheering for long.

Monarch butterflies taste terrible due to toxins built up in their bodies from feeding on milkweed as caterpillars.

https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Invertebrates/Monarch-Butterfly under "Diet"

[–] m_f@discuss.online 13 points 4 days ago

Huh. I was wondering if spiders would still eat them, and apparently some spiders are known to avoid them:

https://www.monarchscience.org/single-post/new-study-invasive-joro-spiders-do-not-like-eating-monarch-butterflies

An invasive species of spider from Asia doesn't eat them, and even frees them when caught, but native spiders don't mind at all:

So it turns out that our native North American spiders will gladly eat monarchs, but yet the invasive spider from east Asia will not? Hmm...This is certainly a head-scratcher. It's almost as if the native spiders have somehow learned "how" to eat the toxic monarchs, perhaps in the same way that some birds have - i.e. by only eating the body parts that don't have the cardenolides. Just guessing here.

One other cool thing we learned is that the jorō spiders seem to have the ability to detect the monarchs' distastefulness even without physically tasting them!