Editing 2608: Family Reunion

==Explanation==

Because all humans are descended from a {{w|Mitochondrial Eve|common ancestor}}, every human is, at some point, related to every other human, albeit distantly. Similarly, all life forms on Earth are presumed (with good reasons) to be descended from a single {{w|Most recent common ancestor|even more distant relative}} whose ultimate lineage {{w|Last universal common ancestor|became more relevant}} than any from its own 'cousins' at the time, and thus ''all'' life forms are distantly related. This makes every interaction with another life-form, technically, a family reunion, if not in the traditional sense.

The general English definition of a {{w|cousin}}, which is a person sharing an ancestor who is not a direct parent of either party, can be qualified by two numbers. There is the ''n''th-ness of the relationship (the fewest generations you need to go beyond one's parentage, "a first cousin" implies that a grandparent is the key link) - for example, [[Cueball|this Cueball's]] relation to [[White Hat]] is via a great-grandparent, whilst that with [[Hairbun]] is through a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent. A "removed" number is any difference in this number between the two individuals, such that a child of a direct cousin invokes a "once removed" relationship between the two (without individually qualifying who is the 'senior' generation, from whom the 'nth' count is determined). You would normally only qualify "first cousin" if this fact is considered important, and "zero times removed" would also be considered implicit.

In this strip, all the humans are shown to be no more distantly related than 35th cousins. This may seem closely related for randomly selected humans, but the number of cousins a given person has increases exponentially with successive degrees of separation. For example, if family lines are separate, each person would have 64 pairs of sixth-generation great-grandparents. How many descendants those grandparents have now depends on how many living children each couple has, and how often breeding lines cross, but [[https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/theres-a-1-in-300-chance-that-a-complete-stranger-is-your-cousin/ studies in Britain]] concluded that the average person in that region has nearly 200,000 sixth cousins. 35th cousins is probably nearly the most distant relationship you're likely to find among people who have ancestors from the same geographical region.

As pointed out in the title text, cat lifespans (or, more importantly, inter-generational breeding cycles) are somewhat different from those of humans. Although they would have still been very similar immediately after the divergence from the appropriate most recent common ancestor (MRCA), the differences will have built up to a generational-count displacement of a similarly extreme nature. i.e. that while the shared ancestor is Cueball's 17-million-or-so-Great Grandparent, the cat is in turn the 31-million-or-so-Great Grandchild. Exactly how accurate, or even precise, Randall considers these numbers is unknown, but it is the kind of fact that we know he likes to research and use expert opinion for.

 

 

 

:[Megan, White Hat, Cueball, Hairy, Danish, a white cat with black patches on its back, Hairbun, a chair with a half-full wine-glass on the seat, and a potted plant on a cabinet are "standing" in a line. White Hat is holding a glass and Hairy has his hands to the side in a "shrug" position. Megan and Cueball are facing right and everything/one else is facing left (except for the potted plant, which is not facing any direction). There are arrows pointing to each of the living creatures.]

:35th cousin [Danish]

[[Category:Comics featuring Danish]] <!-- Danish? Could be Megan. Should delete.-->