It’s the age of political correctness and it’s also pretty hot out this time of the year, so when we get a little overheated we shouldn’t say things like, “Gosh, I’m sweating like a pig.”
First, we don’t want to offend any pigs. Worse, the statement would be inaccurate. That’s because pigs don’t sweat. Why? Because they don’t have any sweat glands.
So, if we want to be precise, we need to say, “I’m sweating like a chimpanzee or perhaps like a horse.” My apologies to any horses who may read this.
Also, it would not be correct to say we are sweating like a raccoon. They do have sweat glands, but they are mostly in the hair follicles.
So, maybe we could say something like, “Gosh, I’m sweating like the hair follicles of a raccoon.” Your friends might wonder whether your brain has been sweating.
So, what are we to do? Maybe we can look more closely at our friends the pigs. They regulate their body temperature by rolling in the mud.
Maybe we could modify the heat comparison by saying, “It’s so hot I feel like rolling in the mud.” Maybe we should just drop the whole thing.
But since I brought up the subject of pigs, I feel an obligation to finish what I started. So, I’ll let you in on what the paleontologists tell us.
At one time there were pig-like animals that weighed a thousand pounds and stood seven feet tall at the shoulder. No wonder they’ve been nicknamed “terminator pigs.”
Languages hadn’t been invented when these animals roamed the earth, but if they had, no one would have called any of these animals Porky—at least not where they could hear it.
It may also interest you to know that dinosaurs were the ancestors of today’s chickens. So if this were not so, we would not have bacon and eggs today.
Despite their propensity to squeal and grunt, pigs aren’t dumb. For intelligence, pigs rank about third in the animal kingdom. Only apes and dolphins are smarter. And, just so you’ll know, apes sweat though not profusely, and dolphins don’t need to because they are in the water all the time.
You should know, too, that cold-blooded animals don’t sweat. In fact, they have no way at all to regulate their body temperature. That’s probably why snakes keep messing with the thermostat.
Got a hot tip? Contact Ted at
tblankenship@cox.net.
