2349: Rabbit Introduction

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Rabbit Introduction

Title text: Washington state is seeing great success with reintroducing the Columbia River Basin subpopulation. We cannot allow them to further widen the interstate bun gap.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by A RABBIT RESEARCH GRANT. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

Cueball is giving a presentation on the pygmy rabbit to a group of skeptical panelists. Once they confirm that he wants to introduce the species to a new area for no other reason than that he finds them adorable, Blondie moves to deny his grant requests. However, the other three panelists - (L to R, White Hat, Megan and Hairy) are swayed by this unconventional argument.

See https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/columbia-basin-pygmy-rabbits-washington (They are native to WA and were nearly extinct)

Transcript

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Discussion

Comic posted shortly after this made national news in the USA: https://www.newsweek.com/why-hundreds-millions-genetically-engineered-mosquitoes-will-soon-released-florida-1526375 172.69.34.56 05:06, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

This comic was posted incredibly early compared to the other recent comics 172.69.34.232 07:22, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Yeah wtf it's so early 172.69.33.25 07:50, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

There's a twitter thread at @xkcd, one word every few days, from 2020-05-15 until 2020-06-01, reading "How's it going I saw a small bun (picture)", continuing the sentence until 2020-06-25, "and an airplane crossing the moon (picture)" Chrullrich (talk) 07:53, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

I recognise that 'bun-gap' looks like a pun, but what's it punning about? 162.158.154.131 10:14, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't think it's really a pun, just an instance of the general X-gap pattern, meaning a significant difference in the amount or rate of X between two entities (e.g. the "wealth gap" between countries). Barmar (talk) 17:47, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Bun-gap having nothing to do with thigh-gap in this case.

ProphetZarquon (talk) 21:04, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Could the "bun gap" be a reference to the "basselope gap"? https://img.fireden.net/co/image/1481/09/1481091884617.png mwburden (talk) 22:44, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Former POTUS Jimmy Carter is unapologetically completely oppposed to the spread of any species of bunny. Cellocgw (talk) 12:33, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
For those that don't remember the 1970's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_rabbit_incident mwburden (talk) 22:44, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

The explanation should probably distinguish between the pygmy rabbit which is not at all endangered and the Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit which is an isolated population that the US government (but not the IUCN) treats as endangered independently from the species as a whole. Shamino (talk) 12:57, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

So would it be impossible to introduce an isolated population into another location and have it count as the same population? Which would make this proposal impossible in addition to silly... I feel like that increases the humor, although I'm not sure if there's any specific term for why 162.158.63.60 14:12, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Captain Video, if you can cull speculation here, then shouldn't you be culling a lot of speculation in 1417? 162.158.74.61 22:53, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Note how carefully (brilliantly) Randall uses objective wording in panel #3, consistent with a scientific discussion or proposal, when the meaning is clearly "but it's so CUTE!". 172.69.42.50 15:10, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Category:Buns sent me down the bun hole. Promethean (talk) 00:42, 26 August 2020 (UTC)