explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

3127: Where Babies Come From

2025-08-12T19:09:18Z

62.92.112.171: Fix typo and phrasing

{{comic
| number = 3127
| date = August 11, 2025
| title = Where Babies Come From
| image = where_babies_come_from_2x.png
| imagesize = 652x362px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Historians: Contemporaneous documentation of the initial events is often sparse, and in fact people often get testy and uncooperative when we urge better documentation for the historical record.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by a mommy and daddy who love each other very much. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

Children are often curious, and ask a lot of questions about the world around them. One such question that tends to come up at some point is "where do babies come from?" and it's notable as one that many adults are uncomfortable giving correct answers to, because of the common reluctance to discuss sex-related matters with youngsters. While children are sometimes told that there's a baby inside a pregnant woman's tummy, the issues of how the baby got in there, or how it's supposed to get out, are often dodged. There are a variety of common myths about where babies come from, as told to children, such as "brought by a stork", "found in a cabbage patch", or [https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1987/04/18 "built from a kit"]. This comic presents a variety of answers to that question, supposedly from the point of view of specialists in several different areas of science, some of which are incorrect, others of which are allusions to the process of conception or childbirth expressed in the vocabulary of the specialist's field.

They might be deliberately misleading the questioner by using very euphemistic terms to avoid personal embarrassment, deliberately over-'simplifying' the explanation as a {{w|Lie-to-children|stepping stone}} to the eventual more specific truth or else they are themselves ignorant/misled about the process. In each case, however, their abstraction of the process is described in terms that are actually relatively technical ones from their own field, to the presumed audience, showing that they are not necessarily able to find the right level of explanation, as well as not having used a less obtuse reframing of the topic much closer to that of actual reproductive biology.

;Geneticist: An admixture event refers to new genes being introduced into a population (for example, intermarriage adding genes for blue eyes into a population that previously lacked them). The comic uses this term to describe the gene mixing of two people having a child. Population-level admixtures are commonly dated to thousands or even millions of years ago; KYA = "one thousand years ago". 0.001 KYA = 1 year, [[2205: Types of Approximation|approximately]] the duration of most human pregnancies. The joke is in the use of such large scale terms to describe the creation of one child, and how the technical language being used hides the answer, especially from a child.

;Astronomer: Ejections of matter from parent bodies are common events in the galaxy and the observable universe, at scales ranging from comets to black holes. The process of giving birth is compared to a "low-impulse" ejection, such as the casting off of rocks and dust from a rotating asteroid. Such a comparison, while it may make sense in cosmology, is unlikely to find favor with any woman who is, or has ever been, in labor.
:Alternately the "low-impulse ejection" could refer to ejaculation, not the act of giving birth. The former would have a considerably higher impulse than the latter but it's still very low on a cosmic scale and would still qualify as "low-impulse".

;Software Engineer: An {{w|off-by-one error}} (aside from [[2248: New Year's Eve|being a difficult theme to build a party around]]) is a common programming mistake in which a value is, well, off by one. A birth could be described as a "population" metric increasing by one, or alternately, a baby could cause a static population metric to become off-by-one. This could also be referring to an unplanned pregnancy, which would lead the local population to be one higher than the parent(s) may have calculated.

;Geologist: The baby is said to have been created by the process of differential erosion, in which softer rocks are eroded more quickly, leaving harder rocks behind. Arguably, a geologist who was making a serious attempt to compare geological and biological processes would recognize that the growth of a fetus has much more in common with accretionary, rather than erosional, mechanisms. Granting that the geologist depicted is witty and not clueless, this explanation is the most intentionally farcical, the most {{w|List_of_Calvin_and_Hobbes_characters#Mom_and_Dad|Calvin's Dad}}, of the five.

;Meteorologist: Turbulent mixing of air masses ("turbulence") has been experienced by just about everyone who has ever been in an airborne aircraft. Turbulence can occur at all levels of the atmosphere from the ground up, and is frequently accompanied by clouds and precipitation. It is a pungent metaphor for coitus. Fasten your seat belts.

;Historians (title text): Instead of proffering an explanation for "where babies come from", the historians (plural) lodge a complaint about the difficulties they have encountered in obtaining the data needed to substantiate the babies' provenance.{{cn}} The plaint is a common preamble and disclaimer in formal history publications. Rather than answer the question in the general, they appear to be trying to answer it for each individual baby by questioning those thought to be responsible. The historians express surprise and indignation that their efforts to obtain "better documentation" of the "initial events" (the mating behavior) leading to baby formation are seen as prurient and voyeuristic, and are met with resistance.

==Transcript==

:Various experts answer the question “Where do babies come from?”
:[Five characters are shown, left to right, each saying their answer. Below each character is their respective occupation.]
:Hairy [Geneticist]: Recent admixture event, roughly 0.001 Kya.
:Ponytail [Astronomer]: Low-impulse ejection from a parent body.
:Hairbun [Software engineer]: Off-by-one error in the population calculations.
:Cueball [Geologist]: The area was originally a uniform plane, but the non-baby parts eroded at higher rates.
:Megan [Meteorologist]: Moist ground-level turbulent mixing.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Weather]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Sex]]

3127: Where Babies Come From

2025-08-12T19:05:11Z

62.92.112.171: Change style of "geneticist" section to be more direct and clear.

{{comic
| number = 3127
| date = August 11, 2025
| title = Where Babies Come From
| image = where_babies_come_from_2x.png
| imagesize = 652x362px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Historians: Contemporaneous documentation of the initial events is often sparse, and in fact people often get testy and uncooperative when we urge better documentation for the historical record.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by a mommy and daddy who love each other very much. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

Children are often curious, and ask a lot of questions about the world around them. One such question that tends to come up at some point is "where do babies come from?" and it's notable as one that many adults are uncomfortable giving correct answers to, because of the common reluctance to discuss sex-related matters with youngsters. While children are sometimes told that there's a baby inside a pregnant woman's tummy, the issues of how the baby got in there, or how it's supposed to get out, are often dodged. There are a variety of common myths about where babies come from, as told to children, such as "brought by a stork", "found in a cabbage patch", or [https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1987/04/18 "built from a kit"]. This comic presents a variety of answers to that question, supposedly from the point of view of specialists in several different areas of science, some of which are incorrect, others of which are allusions to the process of conception or childbirth expressed in the vocabulary of the specialist's field.

They might be deliberately misleading the questioner by using very euphemistic terms to avoid personal embarrassment, deliberately over-'simplifying' the explanation as a {{w|Lie-to-children|stepping stone}} to the eventual more specific truth or else they are themselves ignorant/misled about the process. In each case, however, their abstraction of the process is described in terms that are actually relatively technical ones from their own field, to the presumed audience, showing that they are not necessarily able to find the right level of explanation, as well as not having used a less obtuse reframing of the topic much closer to that of actual reproductive biology.

;Geneticist: An admixture event refers to new genes being introduced into a population (for example, the addition of genes for blue eyes in a population that previously lacked them due to intermarriage). The comic uses this term to describe gene mixing of two people having a child. Population-level admixtures are commonly dated to thousands or even millions of years ago; KYA = "one thousand years ago". 0.001 KYA = 1 year, [[2205: Types of Approximation|approximately]] the duration of most human pregnancies. The joke is in the use of such large scale terms to describe the creation of one child, and how the technical language being used hides the answer, especially from a child.

;Astronomer: Ejections of matter from parent bodies are common events in the galaxy and the observable universe, at scales ranging from comets to black holes. The process of giving birth is compared to a "low-impulse" ejection, such as the casting off of rocks and dust from a rotating asteroid. Such a comparison, while it may make sense in cosmology, is unlikely to find favor with any woman who is, or has ever been, in labor.
:Alternately the "low-impulse ejection" could refer to ejaculation, not the act of giving birth. The former would have a considerably higher impulse than the latter but it's still very low on a cosmic scale and would still qualify as "low-impulse".

;Software Engineer: An {{w|off-by-one error}} (aside from [[2248: New Year's Eve|being a difficult theme to build a party around]]) is a common programming mistake in which a value is, well, off by one. A birth could be described as a "population" metric increasing by one, or alternately, a baby could cause a static population metric to become off-by-one. This could also be referring to an unplanned pregnancy, which would lead the local population to be one higher than the parent(s) may have calculated.

;Geologist: The baby is said to have been created by the process of differential erosion, in which softer rocks are eroded more quickly, leaving harder rocks behind. Arguably, a geologist who was making a serious attempt to compare geological and biological processes would recognize that the growth of a fetus has much more in common with accretionary, rather than erosional, mechanisms. Granting that the geologist depicted is witty and not clueless, this explanation is the most intentionally farcical, the most {{w|List_of_Calvin_and_Hobbes_characters#Mom_and_Dad|Calvin's Dad}}, of the five.

;Meteorologist: Turbulent mixing of air masses ("turbulence") has been experienced by just about everyone who has ever been in an airborne aircraft. Turbulence can occur at all levels of the atmosphere from the ground up, and is frequently accompanied by clouds and precipitation. It is a pungent metaphor for coitus. Fasten your seat belts.

;Historians (title text): Instead of proffering an explanation for "where babies come from", the historians (plural) lodge a complaint about the difficulties they have encountered in obtaining the data needed to substantiate the babies' provenance.{{cn}} The plaint is a common preamble and disclaimer in formal history publications. Rather than answer the question in the general, they appear to be trying to answer it for each individual baby by questioning those thought to be responsible. The historians express surprise and indignation that their efforts to obtain "better documentation" of the "initial events" (the mating behavior) leading to baby formation are seen as prurient and voyeuristic, and are met with resistance.

==Transcript==

:Various experts answer the question “Where do babies come from?”
:[Five characters are shown, left to right, each saying their answer. Below each character is their respective occupation.]
:Hairy [Geneticist]: Recent admixture event, roughly 0.001 Kya.
:Ponytail [Astronomer]: Low-impulse ejection from a parent body.
:Hairbun [Software engineer]: Off-by-one error in the population calculations.
:Cueball [Geologist]: The area was originally a uniform plane, but the non-baby parts eroded at higher rates.
:Megan [Meteorologist]: Moist ground-level turbulent mixing.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Weather]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Sex]]

Talk:3127: Where Babies Come From

2025-08-12T18:39:28Z

62.92.112.171: Add comment about article style.

First, I guess. [[User:B_for_brain|B for brain]] ([[User_talk:B_for_brain|talk]]) ([https://www.youtube.com/@bforbrain youtube channel] [https://bforbrain.weebly.com/ wobsite (supposed to be a blag)]) 21:41, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

The geology one seems to be more just an inference that a baby would emerge through differential erosion/weathering from the parent rock body. The meteorological one is both a near actual weather related event description and also a pun on what happens during conception. Other entries also vary between being puns on conception or birth (technically kind of true) or just wrong inferences using their field (such as the “off by one”) [[Special:Contributions/2A09:BAC2:39EE:240A:0:0:397:5A|2A09:BAC2:39EE:240A:0:0:397:5A]] 22:09, 11 August 2025 (UTC)pakers
:Yea I think the geology one reminds me of the reverse footsteps after snow (when you step in snow it compresses it which reduces melting compared to soft, noncompressed snow, meaning once the snow has melted the footsteps are now elevated) [[User:TheTrainsKid|TheTrainsKid]] ([[User talk:TheTrainsKid|talk]]) 22:18, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

0.001 kya (kilo years ago) is 0.001 x a thousand years ago (i.e. around a year ago) [[Special:Contributions/82.42.161.198|82.42.161.198]] 22:36, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

: .001kya is a one digit approximation for 9 months (technically .00075kya) [[User:MAP|MAP]] ([[User talk:MAP|talk]]) 01:59, 12 August 2025 (UTC)
::Actually, an approximation with precision of 1 year (= 1 a = 0.001 ka). A 5× more precise one-significant-figure approximation is 0.0008 kya (technically within actual variation, but further from the average than 0.00075). [[Special:Contributions/2001:4C4D:12CE:DA00:11BB:2E59:DD89:1F6A|2001:4C4D:12CE:DA00:11BB:2E59:DD89:1F6A]] 05:59, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

;Why did Randall make this comic?
My theory: he's gonna be a father soon and he's trying to figure out how to break the news to us. [[User:CalibansCreations|'''<span style="color:#ff0000;">Caliban</span>''']] ([[User talk:CalibansCreations|talk]]) 15:25, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

:[https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2386:_Ten_Years This seems unlikely]. Unless they're adopting ...? [[Special:Contributions/205.175.118.102|205.175.118.102]] 16:57, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

I think the article could be a bit more clinical and direct. Right now, it's low on information, and high on vauge implication, aiming for wit. I'll take a crack at improving some sections, but I'm not sure what the intentions were for every part.
[[Special:Contributions/62.92.112.171|62.92.112.171]] 18:39, 12 August 2025 (UTC)