<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > preface</h1>
A long time ago, there was an animation that haunted me for a long time, that is, "Pokémon" released on April 1, 1997, of course, I am more accustomed to calling it "Pokemon", "Pokémon" or "Pokemon".
The strange elves in the work seem to be able to find prototypes in real life, but the "image spokesperson" of this work, the prototype of the cute and bubbling Pikachu has bothered me for a long time, and it has caused a lot of controversy on the Internet, everyone generally believes that its prototype will be some kind of rat, and even some people directly call it "yellow skin rat", so who is the prototype of this guy?
This has to start with the predecessor of this work.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > prototype of Pikachu</h1>
In fact, "Pokémon" was not originally an animation work, but a game released in 1996, when the game was released, the developer told reporters that Pikachu's design prototype was a squirrel.
Later, in May 2018, Pikachu's development company GAME FREAK first announced that Pikachu's prototype was a red squirrel!
PokemonCo, a franchise company for Pokémon, added this information to its website at the end of May, and years of debate have been settled.
If it weren't for the official statement, the author would not have thought that the prototype of this round little guy would be a red squirrel, but after the connection, the more it looks like it.
Aiya and U, based on the love of Pikachu, the author has developed a strong interest in this prototype red squirrel.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > Eurasian red squirrel</h1>
Distribution map of Eurasian red squirrels
Squirrels are a relatively successful population, their footprints spread to all continents beyond Antarctica, and red squirrels are a branch of the 285 species of squirrels in 58 genera, the scientific name is Sciurus vulgaris (Eurasian red squirrel), listening to this name can vaguely guess the distribution location of this guy - central Europe to West Asia and other entire cold temperate forest areas.
The amazing thing is that this guy doesn't have the perverted discharge ability like Pikachu, but his fur will be distributed according to the seasonal location, showing different coat colors, light red, brown, red to black.
Because of the characteristics of not hibernating, they are also good at hiding things, they always get up at dawn, run around for life, climb and jump between jungles, hide the collected food into their own nests, to ensure that winter will not be hungry, everyone knows that squirrels eat pine cones, in fact, they do not only eat pine cones, other hard seeds, conifers, mushrooms, berries, insect larvae, ant eggs and so on are in their rich recipes.
However, don't look at this guy who looks harmless on the outside and does not "cute" things behind his back.
A little-known secret under the cute exterior
According to National Geographic, scientists have found evidence of north American red squirrels killing babies and cannibalism in the Yukon
Although squirrels are one of the most agile animals in the world, even adult squirrels are still difficult to escape death in front of birds and animals at the top of the food chain.
The baby squirrel is even more difficult, by calculating about 75% to 85% of the newborn squirrels can not live in the first winter, the lucky 50% survive the next winter, that is to say, a squirrel with up to 6 cubs, in the winter of the second year, there is a high probability that there is only one left, and this squirrel is about to usher in the average life expectancy of the squirrel - 3 years. Only a very small number of squirrels with a full lucky point can live for more than seven years, but not more than 10 years.
And even in such a harsh living environment, they will kill each other and cannibalize.
According to a study published in the Naturalist of Science, young North American red squirrels are often attacked by nearby male red squirrels, and sometimes these murderers will eat them.
At the University of Alberta, canada's capital city, a researcher witnessed infanticide.
Baby killers
The researcher's name is Jessica Haines, and for the sake of convenience, let's call her Haynes.
In 2014, a "Clune Red Squirrel Research Project" was launched near Lake Clune in the Greater Yukon region of Ghana, of which Haynes was a member. In order to facilitate the observation of the researchers, the squirrels studied are tied with small pieces of colored wire on their ears.
On this day, Haynes went out to see if the squirrel had any special behavior.
Shortly after she went out, she found a marked red squirrel climbing a tree not far away, so she followed, this is a male red squirrel, its target is the nest of the female red squirrel, taking advantage of the absence of the mother, this male squirrel bites the little squirrel, and then throws the little squirrel under the tree, and the poor little squirrel dies.
A few days later, Haynes found the carcass of a small squirrel in the same place, and later, the entire nest of small squirrels disappeared.
Haynes was very surprised, she was thinking about tiger poison and not eating children, what happened to this red squirrel?
So researchers were called to conduct DNA analysis on the squirrels, and it turned out that they were not related.
Is it an attempt to reduce competition for food by lowering the "rat" mouth?
To solve this question, the research team continued to study squirrels, through haynes and other researchers over the years, found that the killing of small squirrels occurs more frequently in years with enough food, so it seems that things are moving in a strange direction, but if you think about it another way, small squirrels do this in accordance with the law of survival.
First of all, in the era of abundant food, the possibility of the mother squirrel having another litter of small squirrels is higher than that of the era of food shortage.
Secondly, the female squirrel will mate with different objects many times during the estrus period, so the male squirrel who has not mastered DNA technology can only kill the cubs, make the female squirrel stop breastfeeding, mate with her, and guard her to ensure that the children born later in the year are all their own offspring.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > concluding remarks</h1>
This prototype of Pikachu, a relatively successful creature almost all over the world, can be said to have once again impacted the author's three views, and further made the author have a deeper understanding of such a point of view mentioned in "The Selfish Gene"
"One of the standout characteristics of the success gene is its ruthless selfishness"
In order to ensure that their genes are continued, the act of killing the same kind of people is very bad in our opinion, because although it is not in line with the values passed down from generation to generation by human beings, it is in line with the laws of survival of nature, in addition to squirrels killing cubs, adult male bears will also kill the same kind of cubs, and lions will also kill all young lions after becoming the leader... This can be said to be a common problem in animals, and perhaps only humans in nature will feel uncomfortable with cannibalism.
Therefore, I understand why "The Selfish Gene" says:
"We were built as genetic machines, we were bred as mother-seeking machines, but we had enough power to oppose our founders. In this world, only we, we humans, can resist the tyranny of selfish gene-copying. ”
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