New Species?

[Weasel Freak]

We all know that cartoons have been around for about 100 years. But there was no such thing as animation, or television period, back in 1750. So does that mean that, in fact, Toons are a fairly new species?




BTW My thoughts are that Toons are their own species. Different Toons, however, are subspecies.
Example: Anime and classical Toons are different subspecies, but different animals, such as Shenzi the hyena and Kaa the snake are still referred to as different species.

[psychoangel51402]

i agree! ^_^ sorry, i'm not much help.

[Fatal hilarity]

There WAS such a thing as cartoons, though, before animation. The term predates animation. Caricatures of the rich and famous, for instance. I went to a museum exhibit about humorous art, and they had stuff dating back to the Renaissance. Silly little doodles by da Vinci- I think you could call those cartoons.
Obviously, though, they're different from the cartoons we know today, especially since there was no such thing as cartoon physics. But you see, my theory is that humorous and/or implausible characters, such as talking foxes in Aesop's fables, could roughly fall into the category of cartoon character. (Emphasis on roughly...)
Looking it up on Wikipedia, the term cartoon, in reference to humorous drawings, dates back to the mid-1800's. But before then, humorous drawings date as far back as Roman times, at least- there was graffiti that caricatured politicians.