B.C. by Mastroianni and Hart for April 09, 2010

Had to look up “chitin”….

now this makes sense. Ha Ha Ha

I had to look it up too. Learned something new: the day was not wasted.

Chitin is what many do when they can’t face the truth!

Re: Bikini Gone and soon to be forgotten.

Well that is one less insect in the world.

And Zot is Zot

\\//_

That anteater looks WAY too happy… lol

Southern anteaters love them chitin’s. Glitz, too.

Anteater’s been reading the nutritional labels.

I was with MontanaLady…

had to look up the word… but, hey!! It’s cool to think that one can learn something new, even from the COMICS!!!

JoeMinotaur–Bikini posts are now all gone.

Good Morning LuvH8, Dogsniff & Grog

Who didn’t have to look up chitin?

Keep the ZOTS coming anteater.

Good Friday Morning, Dogsniff, Lonewolf & LuvH8

And when writting to the Factor don’t be a Chitin

Good Morning Dogsniff!

The way of the Chitin has a nice ring to it.

Your chitin heart, will make you blue…(with apologies to Hank Williams, and yes I know it’s pronounced kite-in).

It looks like he got him on a technicality.

Chitin

Main Entry: chi•tin Pronunciation: \ˈkī-tən\ Function: noun Etymology: French chitine, from Greek chitōn Date: circa 1839 : a horny polysaccharide (C8H13NO5)n that forms part of the hard outer integument especially of insects, arachnids, and crustaceans — chi•tin•ous \ˈkī-tən-əs, ˈkīt-nəs\ adjective

A horny chitin?! Yikes!

Outer integument…. sounds like a lot of vocabulary buiding goin’ on.

But it’s only chitin-deep–under the outer integument, ants are flesh, too.

Anteater succumbed to a deeper temptation!

Not to be confused with chitlins.

(After reading Scientific American for over 40 years, I already knew what chitin is and how it’s pronounced. What I didn’t know was that it is a polysaccharide and that it also forms the cell walls of some fungi. Hey, SOMEBODY has to care about such things!)

Well, I didn’t have to look up “chitin”, either - And whether ants are or have “flesh” depends on how you define “flesh”. To most folks, it’s the outer integument… (and there’s another $64,000 word for you to look up!); to others, it’s anything that’s not bone - including nerve tissue. Then there are religious definitions… which is where the origin of Anteater’s resolution lies - “Temptations of the Flesh” = reproductive activity for pleasure…

@pschearer - is there a fungus among us?

I was going to resist the temptation of gloating, but since Grog specifically asked “Who didn’t have to look up chitin?” I have to say that I have known the word since I was a teen, and that’s been a few decades, now.

And I agree with RadioTom. I would judge that what lies within the ant’s shell/exoskeleton would certainly qualify as flesh. But maybe the anteater spit that part out?

Thanks to MontanaLady, it now makes more sense. My initial reaction was that “chitin” was slang for cheating. Now I know it’s either a horny polysaccharide that forms part of the hard outer integument especially of insects, arachnids, and crustaceans or a tough, protective, semitransparent substance, primarily a nitrogen-containing polysaccharide, forming the principal component of arthropod exoskeletons and the cell walls of certain fungi. Either way, I’m guessing the anteater spits out the hard chitin and sucks up the juicy inner body of the ant. (c:

I’m inclined to side with those who say chitin is not flesh, but I also agree that it’s open to interpretation. I could reintroduce the subject of whether fish is considered “meat” that we chewed over (so to speak) in another strip a few weeks ago, and state that ants are “neither fish, nor flesh, nor fowl”, but that wouldn’t convince anyone whose mind is already made up.

Of course, back in the days when Crayola included “Flesh” as one of their crayon colors, it was certainly intended to resemble the human (Caucasian) epidermis, and not to look like muscle tissue…

grog said: “Who didn’t have to look up chitin?”

I didn’t. I wonder how many people here know that in addition to being a term for an insect’s exoskeleton, a chiton (χιτών) is also the common garment worn by both men and women in ancient Greece? It was the precourser to the Roman toga.

It seems like nobody had to look up the word.

Common now, who do you think you’re chitin?

What’s he talking about in the third panel? :/

I didn’t have to look “chitin” up either. My apologies for gloating; when you have 3 older siblings, you rarely have the chance.

I knew “chitin”, and was vaguely aware of “chiton”, but didn’t know the two words were related etymologically (or entomologically, for that matter). But then, I never had much of a formic education…

OK, here’s MY opportunity to “gloat”. (Not really, but it’s good to set the record straight.)

“The temptation of the flesh” isn’t limited theologically to sexuality, or anything like it (look up “the works of the flesh” in Galatians 5:19-21 and parallel passages with similar phrases). Think of such a thing as anything rooted in the body, or psychologically in the temperament, that leads in a negative direction. That includes inordinate craving for food.

it’s difficult to imagine an anteater having such an inordinate craving, though. He was designed to eat ants, chitin and all. So what’s the problem? :) Either he or the cartoonist is just in the mood for another theological pitfall, “striving over words”. :)

Yes, i knew about both chitin and chiton and even chitlin, but I never bothered to look up the chemical formual for the first (oooh, a polysaccharide no less!) even though I wondered about it. I assumed it was some weird kind of protein, like keratin.