CARTOON ANATOMY: ANIMAL SNOUTS

Cartoonists are generally pretty smart people so I didn't hesitate to put up this highly scientific discussion of dog snouts. Children will probably find it rough and some of the Latin names may be a little obscure, but keep a dictionary close and you should get through it OK. Alright, here goes....

ANIMAL SNOUTS

Like everybody else I have a special fondness for dog snouts. The dog's whole body seems to be seems to be nothing more than a delivery system for the snout. The nose and the mouth are indisputably the business end of the dog. The decorative fur thins out and the skull streamlines as we head out to the torpedo tip of the muzzle. It looks like a dog was designed to sniff out prey (or other dogs' butts), and eat it.

Amazingly, dog noses are made of leather! Why that should be I don't know. Maybe they're made to sniff on rough ground or poke around in rat holes. Is leather better for smelling? Maybe. Maybe it keeps the nose cold for some useful reason. Look at those little hexagons all over surface. Every time I try to feel them my dog nudges my hand away and licks me. The nose seems to be surprisingly sensitive considering it's an overgrown wallet.



It's hard to understand all that leather because humans aren't like that. Our noses are soft and mushy. We don't have a snout. Everything on our face seems to get equal emphasis. Our bodies seem to be support systems for our heads, which in turn are support system for our hands. We just want to locate and identify things so we can put our hands all over them. Humans are like squids in that respect.

Dogs are doomed never to be able to pass themselves off as high-class. No matter how much they put on airs the floppy, friendly tongue reveals them to be ordinary Joes, just doing the best they can.
Dogs look really scary when you reveal their teeth. Even more scary is the disgusting, saggy, gooey, black lip. John K says that he introduced black dog lips to the world in his cartoon. "Boo Boo Runs Wild." If you've used black lips without authorization then you owe John a nickle.

I also find it interesting that dogs let us do what must seem like incomprehensible things to them, things like brushing their teeth with a clown brush.

It looks like gorillas have leather faces! Hmmm...If I'm seeing correctly the leather seamlessly turns into gray skin. And the big, flat nose? I'll hazard a guess and say that gorillas have flat noses so their big schnozes won't get in the way of their vision... but why is the nose so big in the first place?

The answer seems to be that nature wants wants all apes to have big noses. Only Zeus knows why.

I digress for a moment to point out that gorilla's forehead, or is it a forehead? You could argue that the face is normal, it's just growing way down out of the gorilla's neck. Hmmm...I can see that Theory Corner will have to do a post on foreheads soon.

Here's (above) a camel snout and the nose doesn't seem to be made of leather. Not only that but the nose seems to have slid down from a position on top where it belonged. Puzzling, eh? The mouth has a terrific, purse-lipped, Percy Dovetonsils smile. The eyes have a funny, aristocratic, mocking appearance.


Boy, camels like to mug for the camera! Dig that lower lip!

OK, that's enough science for now! A warning: I may not be able to post tomorrow