Life — January 11, 1929 — page 11: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "Big Game Hunters Return with the 'Homo Racoonus'" This satirical illustration mocks an expedition by Colonel P. Vosdewell McPhoogle and his wife, who claim to have discovered a previously unknown species called "homo mulierum litteratum"—literally "woman of letters" or educated woman. The cartoon presents the "discovery" as a stuffed specimen hanging alongside other game trophies, with hunters posing proudly beside it. The satire targets early 20th-century attitudes dismissing educated women as curiosities or oddities rather than normal members of society. By framing an intelligent woman as a rare "big game" find worthy of mounted display, the cartoon ridicules both the hunters' condescension and the broader cultural resistance to women's intellectual advancement and independence.