Headscratchers / Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs

Dinosaur Belts

• Some dinosaurs, in particular law enforcement, wear belts even though they don't wear pants. What is the point of wearing a belt when the characters don't wear pants?
  • In the cops' case, it's for utility purposes. Somewhere to put a gun holster, handcuff pouches, etc.

Domestic Animals

• How are there modern domestic animals in this world, like goats and cows? The cave people clearly haven't evolved to the point of discovering agriculture or animal husbandry, and it doesn't seem like the dinosaurs have bothered with it either since we mostly see the carnivorous dinosaurs eat live, wild prehistoric mammals.
  • A combination of Rule of Funny and the premise not being rooted in our reality. This allows for both jokes and for social commentary. You might as well ask why the dinosaurs lived in houses and had television. It is not internally inconsistent, nor inconceivable, there would be domesticated animals in-universe, no matter how little it makes sense in our world.

Daddy's Dirty Dancing

• In an early episode of Dinosaurs, the mating dance was basically a dance to impress a mate. Later in the series, it was used to imply the actual mating. So, in the earlier episode, when Earl was practising the mating dance right in front of the Baby—what was he trying to pull?
  • It's just a dance. It's like a woman asking "how does my makeup look?" or "are my seams straight?"
    • Oh yeah? So why is Robbie so embarrassed later on when they catch him practicing the mating dance alone in his room?
    • It's not sex, it's an erection. In public around a girl he likes. Baby is simply to young to understand what it is, so it's not a concern
    • For the same reason that many American teenagers will be embarrassed if you catch them preening before a mirror or practicing how to ask someone out on a date: being caught doing the Mating Dance made it clear he was thinking about sex at an age when even the most harmless sexual impulse is considered humiliating.
    • ...No, sorry, the message is still too mixed for the whole "dancing for the Baby" thing to sit well with me. Robbie suddenly and *involuntarily* kicking into the dance in front of his classmates — something he sees as unbearably humiliating — and Fran's sex ed lesson consisting of showing people a chart of the mating-dance steps (something the class finds shocking and disgusting) and the "mating dance injuries" filmstrip, a clear parody of old military films about STDs... yeah. It's pretty clear at this point that the mating dance is the show's stand-in for either sex itself or for getting an erection.
    • This troper thought that it was supposed to be masturbation at some points (Robbie doing it in bed, for instance).
    • It's supposed to be a cultural thing, rather than physical. You're not supposed to recognize the dance, but rather the shame it brings. That said, it's boners. What the hell Earl?
    • I'm not sure, but didn't Earl specifically tell Fran that this particular dance wasn't the mating dance, but simply a dance he made up to amuse the Baby?
    • Yes but he was lying.
    • This troper's interpretation: The Mating Dance is a way for a male to show off sexual prowess. The baby dance, on the other hand, was a way to show off parenting abilities. The entire point was that Fran was no longer judging her husband by his ability to bring her to orgasm, but rather by his ability to help her raise their children (for example: soothing a baby to sleep).
    • I suspect it would be akin for a dad to do pelvic thrusts ala Ace Ventura in front of a baby. The gesture is usually sexual but here it's for comedy.
    • It's the mating dance, but it's still a dance, it isn't actually mating.
  • Just for the record, Earl's dance was named "Mating Dance" and Robbie's dance was "Dance of Love", and whilst Earl's seem to be voluntary Robbie's was a reflexion (probably a metaphore for an erection), that means both dances are probably different things. Of course the names may be missleading and maybe should be backwards, but the show has certain level of Negative Continuity.

Don't Kill Grandma!

• That episode about throwing senior citizens in the tar pits or something. This is supposedly an ancient thing that everyone does. But Earl's wife and kids don't want him to do it, so he just doesn't. Wasn't even that hard to convince him. No one even seems to care. Is he really the only dinosaur in Pangaea who's afraid of upsetting his wife and kids by killing a beloved grandparent?
  • It was probably a metaphor for putting an aged parent in a nursing home.
  • It doesn't seem to be about upsetting the wife and children — the Baby's too young to understand, Charlene couldn't care less and Fran at first has no problem with it. It's Robbie, who throughout the show is always the dinosaur who challenges the old traditions and thinks outside the box (something most dinosaurs aren't very good at) who opposes the concept of "Hurling Day," eventually getting his mother in on the same line of thought.
    • There's also the fact that the episode presents "Hurling Day" as something that the senior dinosaurs are actually looking forward to since it means they'll be reunited with all the loved ones who went before them — and for most of the episode, Ethyl wants to be thrown into the tar pit, tries to talk Robbie out of rescuing her... and only changes her mind at the last moment when she realizes that staying alive means she'll get to make Earl's life miserable a while longer. So it's not that Earl is the only dinosaur in Pangaea who's afraid of upsetting his wife and kids by killing a beloved grandparent — it's that Ethyl is the only dinosaur in Pangea who hates her son-in-law so much that she's willing to put off her own eternal happiness just so she can watch him suffer for a bit longer.

Sometimes Say "Die"?

• In one of the episodes, Earl nearly destroys the world and Baby asks him if they're all dead yet. However, in the series finale, everyone's very concerned and worried about having to explain to Baby that they (including Baby) are all about to die a very, very cold and unpleasant death, even invoking the Never Say "Die" trope by skirting around that word. Was the earlier episode just for laughs or what?
  • I assume that in the last episode (haven't seen the first one you mentioned), Earl nearly but not completely destroyed the world, whereas in the series finale, he very much caused the future extinction of the planet by his reckless actions and decisions. Throughout the episode, his family (his kids and wife) were pretty much telling him how he shouldn't do this or that, but with a evil boss barking at him and his own stubborn nature, Earl goes ahead and orders them to spray all the plants with an untested chemical which kills all plant life, and then drops bombs in volcanoes, causing huge clouds to form, blocking out the sun and causing a ice age. I think they were having difficulty telling Baby that yes they will all die, and no we aren't going to move or come back...
  • In the first episode mentioned, it was Robbie that was accused of causing the end of the world (because he didn't perform the howling ritual, and that apparently caused the moon to disappear). And yes, it was completely played for laughs. The finale is the complete opposite of what happened in that episode (although both briefly have a Corrupt Corporate Executive trying to profit off the apocalyptic craze).

Spanking

• The "Terrible Two's" episode why couldn't they just spank the little terror?
  • They were probably too scared of what he'd do in retaliation. He was portrayed as being possessed by an evil spirit.
  • They might have thought spanking was unethical.

Knowing vs Not Knowing About Death by Old Age

• At the end of Hurling Day, after Ethyl decides she doesn't want to be hurled anymore, Fran asks Earl how much longer Ethyl could live, to which Earl replies, "nobody has ever died of being old". But then in The Last Temptation of Ethyl, Ethyl clearly knows that she could die from old age.
  • Knowing THAT you can die of old age, is different from knowing when death from old age would hit in a species that never dies naturally.
  • How young can you die of old age?
    • ^In the context of the show, you die of old age when you're old enough to be hurled into the tar pits, which is, old enough for natural causes to kill ya', otherwise.

Wrong Eggs, Wrong Nests?!

• In "Switched at Birth", after going through the Baby's old stuff, she finds the nest that the egg was kept in, labled as property of a former classmate in lamaze class. This is what sets off the plot, due to the fact that an earthquake caused the eggs to roll out. In the flashback, the mothers think they grabbed each others egg by mistake, but why would this have caused them to take home the wrong nests?
  • They probably didn't double check the nests.

Lusting Over Non-Existent Breasts

• In "What Sexual Harris Meant", one of the Double Entendres Al "Sexual" Harris mentions using is remarking to a girl that she had two items he'd like to check out. One could assume that he's talking about breasts, except dinosaurs are reptiles and the dinosaurs of this show clearly do not have Non-Mammal Mammaries.
  • In "Charlene's Tale," it is implied that the tails of females are basically they breasts, perhaps the female has two tails.
  • Maybe the two items are one sexual and one non-sexual item.
  • Another possibility is that he was talking about her legs.

I See London, I See France, I See Frannie's Underpants—How?

• In "The Son Also Rises", Earl uses X-ray specs on Fran and giggles that he can see her underwear. The thing is that nearly every dinosaur character doesn't wear pants and it's unlikely Fran would be wearing a bra considering that the female dinosaurs clearly don't have breasts, so what exactly is Earl seeing?
  • Rule of Funny was often invoked in the show, even if it did not make sense.

Interspecies Family

• How can Earl and Fran have biological children that are clearly different species from either of them.
  • Fran had an affair?
  • They hired an egg-sitter who got a little too carried away with his job.
  • The eggs were switched at birth.
  • Adoption, maybe? Dino society is pretty sophisticated (in most ways), so it's pretty easy to believe they have an adoption system.
  • Seeing as how interspecies relationships are commonplace in this world, the more likely scenario is that this society has mixed genes of multiple dinosaurs, resulting in completely random species being born.

Nuts To War?

• In the Nuts To War 2 Parter, why are the Dinosaurs acting so wimpy? Spitting at each other? Throwing dirt balls and sticks? They're Dinosaurs, and the show continually shows they hurt, kill, and even eat each other! But all of a sudden the idea of throwing sticks is too dangerous for them!
  • The simple answer? Rule of Funny. If you're looking for a real in-universe answer, well...most of the soldiers on the front lines are adolescent males, so maybe they're just inexperienced?
  • It's also possible that it's not the idea of killing that scares the dinosaurs and seems dangerous—it's the idea of killing for no reason. As you say, the show is full of dinosaurs hurting, killing, and eating each other, but those are treated as part and parcel of their lives: dinosaur society runs heavily on "eat or be eaten", and everyone accepts that as part of the natural order of things. However, the war against the four-legged dinos is based on a small land dispute that doesn't need to escalate. It's explicitly stated that this is the first war in history, and the more rational dinosaurs are rightly terrified of the idea of killing at random just because has a different appearance.

Discrimination Against Four-footed Anthros?

• Four-legged dinosaurs are separated from two-legged dinosaurs as if they are different races and often face discrimination because of it. But how does it work? Most of the "four-legged" dinosaurs, such as BP Richfield, are species that are known to have been quadrupedal yet they walk on two legs like humans. IIRC, the only major character who actually walks on four legs is Monica. So how does four-legged discrimination work in a world of anthropomorphized dinosaurs?
  • It looks like it was probably a Your Normal Is Our Taboo thing.
  • For a more meta answer: it's possible that the confusing and arbitrary nature of the discrimination is intentional to further drive home the intended Aesop that bigotry is foolish.

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