XKCD: Bee orchid alt text
Today's XKCD (http://xkcd.com/1259/ ) was lovely and sad. I wanted to provide an alt text version of it.
You should know that the people in XKCD comics are stick figures and the comics are mainly done in black and white. Color is very rare. The comic uses the title attribute to make an additional comment, but if you cannot see the comic, you may not understand the point.
Here is the comic text.
Frame 1. The XKCD man and woman stick figures are walking through a forest. He is wearing a beret, which is how we often identify him in this strip. She has short, dark hair. They are drawn with no faces.
Her: There are these orchids whose flowers look like female bees. When males try to mate with them, they transfer pollen.
Frame 2. She kneels next to an orchid. He remains standing.
Her: This orchid - ophrys apifera - makes flowers, but no bees land on them because the bee it mimics went extinct long ago.
Frame 3. She stands up and faces him.
Her: Without its partner, the orchid has resorted to self-pollinating, a last-ditch genetic strategy that only delays the inevitable. Nothing of the bee remains, but we know it existed from the shape of the flower.
Frame 4. They begin to walk away from the orchid.
Her: It's an idea of what the female bee looked like to the male bee... as interpreted by a plant.
Him: Wow, so...
Frame 5.
Him: ... the only memory of the bee is a painting by a dying flower.
(This frame is a colored painting-like image of an orchid in rich purple, green, rust, and yellow colors on a grayish background.)
Frame 6. The orchid stands alone on the forest floor.
Frame 7. The man comes running back into the frame.
Frame 8.
Him (squatting in front of the orchid): I'll remember your bee, orchid. I'll remember you.
Frame 9. The orchid is standing on the left as the man runs out of the frame on the right.
The title tag content reads, "In sixty million years aliens will know humans only by a fuzzy clip of a woman in an Axe commercial."