These "villain" animal professionals are all natives from South America

"The cunning fox took the poisoned apple borrowed from the snake, crossed the creek with piranhas and the cave covered with spider webs and came to the door of Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother. She knocked on the door, and a big bad wolf ran out..." If there is any fairy tale book that dares to start like this, it's really exciting to think about it!

The recent (just released) cartoon "The Bad Guys" is such a story. Wolves, snakes, sharks, poisonous spiders, piranhas, these unpopular animals, formed a "bad guy alliance" that robbed and robbed houses and committed all kinds of evil. The bad guys accidentally got a chance to reform, but they were involved in a bigger routine...

What kind of evil group is this? | "Evil Alliance"

Of course, in line with our usual style of watching movies without paying attention to the main points, let’s talk about the various “professional animal villains” that appear in this animation today!

Throughout the story of "The Villain Alliance", various designs remind us that the story takes place in the warm and humid South America, so most of the animals that appear are native to South America (why is "most"? Let's put it aside for now)

The anaconda that can't vomit out too much

For example, Mr. Snake, the second-in-command of the "League of Villains", the natural enemy of the safe, and the handless Houdini, is more like an Amazon anaconda (Eunectes murinus). As one of the largest snakes in the world, the Amazon anaconda lives in the vast Amazon rainforest in South America. Adult anacondas are over 5 meters long, and there are even legends that they can grow to over 10 meters (but this has not been confirmed). In comparison, the size of Mr. Snake in the animation is a little conservative.

Mr. Snake, who claims to be an escape expert, is he serious about putting handcuffs around his neck? | "Bad Guys"

With such a huge body, adult anacondas have basically no natural enemies in their natural habitat. Their diet also includes many large mammals and reptiles, such as capybaras and caimans, but guinea pigs are not on their common prey list, after all, they are small and not cost-effective.

Mr. Snake in the film likes to eat guinea pigs, which may imply that he comes from an exotic pet store. Guinea pigs, hamsters or mice are indeed used as feed to feed large snakes. It should be pointed out here that anacondas are not a suitable pet to keep at home, so please give up this idea.

Anacondas hunt by physical attack. They will strangle their prey to death with their huge bodies, and then swallow it whole. In this regard, it is a little strange that Mr. Snake's teeth are emphasized in the animation. After all, anacondas, like other non-venomous snakes, do not have particularly prominent and slender fangs.

Choking to death (no)… Amazonian anaconda swallowing a capybara specimen at the Senckenberg Museum | EvaK / wikimedia

In addition, it is true that anacondas can swallow a large prey in one breath, but on the other hand, if they want to vomit something out of their stomach, it is not as easy as Mr. Snake in the play. Just as they need to "squeeze" the food into their stomachs little by little through muscle peristalsis when swallowing prey, when they want to vomit out the indigestible things in their stomachs, they can only squeeze them out little by little. The whole process is very slow, and it will make people anxious and angry just watching it...

The film uses a short joke about "reading the air" to show a snake's ability to find prey. Snakes can capture the smell in the air with their forked and moist tongues, and receive odor information through the extremely developed vomeronasal organ under the upper jaw to find prey or perceive threats. Therefore, the fact that "snakes can taste the air" is indeed not a joke.

There are five species of flying snakes in the world, all belonging to the genus Chrysopelea. They spread their ribs to flatten their bodies, like a piece of paper, to control their fall | natural geographic / youtube

In addition to the above content, the film also fully demonstrates some of Mr. Snake's behavioral characteristics, such as the ability to flexibly climb to high places. In the last short segment of the whole movie, when Mr. Snake fell from the sky for some reasons that I don't want to spoil, it also shows that some small snakes will fold their bodies horizontally into an S shape when gliding in the air, making themselves "wider" to prolong their airborne time - but for snakes of the size of anacondas, this actually doesn't have much effect...

Breaking Bad Spider

Next up is Ms. Tarantula, the computer technician in the bad guy team. Judging from her name, she should be a large spider from the family Theridiidae. The spiders from the family Theridiidae are considered giants in the entire spider family. An adult Tarantula can reach a length of about 15 centimeters, which may be a little bigger than your palm.

The spider's appearance is actually quite cute | "Bad Guys"

Although the name is "bird spider", the main prey of the tarantula family is insects, small mammals and small reptiles. Unlike our stereotypical "spider", the tarantula does not rely much on weaving webs when hunting. In other words, our Miss Spider is not very good at "surfing the Internet", so it is a bit inappropriate to arrange her to play such a hacker role. If you have to find a more appropriate animated character... you can consider the explosive force value of Breaking Bad?

Look at my legs! | Pascal Thiele / wikimedia

Because in reality, tarantulas rely on their size and strength to pin their prey down, and then use their huge chelicerae to inject venom into the prey's body to kill it. The venom of tarantulas can kill mice, but it is not fatal to humans, but it can cause severe pain, tissue necrosis and muscle spasms.

In addition, some tarantulas have unique self-defense skills. When they encounter a threat, they can use their feet to kick off the extremely tiny stinging hairs on their bodies, which will float to the attacker with the wind. Some species of spiders, such as the Goliath bird-eating spider Theraphosa blondi, have stinging hairs that can cause a strong stinging sensation. So please do not reach out and touch a tarantula, even if it is kept as an exotic pet.

The frightened tarantula rubs off its stinging hairs. Under the light, you can see these fine hairs flying like dust | Quees1 / youtube

Have a baby? But you're a male shark.

Next is Mr. Shark. The character in the animation has nothing to do with the real creature except for the appearance. Apparently, the prototype of the character is the world's largest predatory fish and the most famous ocean killer, the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias). However, the film does not show the great white shark's hard-line hunting method of "no more words, just bite first".

In order to attract people's attention, Mr. Shark pretended to be a pregnant woman in the form of a man, but the great white shark is actually an ovoviviparous animal and gave birth to a baby shark directly | "Evil Guys"

In comparison, the performance of the most famous freshwater predator, Mr. Piranha, Pygocentrus nattereri, also known as the "red-bellied piranha," is slightly better, at least showing the extremely aggressive side of this animal. However, in the play, he was given the setting of "farting when nervous"... I didn't find any relevant information.

The piranha lying on the plate (more like a big carrot). In its native place, piranhas are indeed edible | "Bad Guys"

Calendar Girl's Words

Do fish fart? Yes, they do. Some fish fart to expel excess air from their food, and some fish can even release gas through their swim bladders. Fish farts are even mistakenly believed to be the enemy's secret weapon.

Pay attention to the dog ears

After introducing the entire team, let’s look back at the film’s male and female protagonists: Mr. Wolf and Diane Foxington (Spoiler alert: those with names all have stories…), and we’ll suddenly realize how out of place these two are in the whole story: first, among the main characters in the play, only these two are warm-blooded mammals, and second, their hometowns are in the northern hemisphere, not the southern hemisphere.

The dog's ears move according to his emotions | "The Bad Guys"

Perhaps to highlight the characteristics of the protagonist, the descriptions of the gray wolf and Diane are more like "humans" and do not show too many characteristics of the animals themselves. However, the production team also put a lot of details into the big ears of these two canines, especially when expressing the transition of various emotions. For example, when alert or attracting attention, the ears stand up and turn to their target; when angry, the "airplane ears" fold to the back of the head, droop down when frustrated, and stand up high when excited, etc.

It was quite interesting to watch the four furry ears rise and fall and turn around during the whole movie - well, it was so interesting that people could not help but ignore Diane's Schrodinger's tail...

A bunch of bad guys! | "Bad Guys Alliance"

To sum up, when "Villain" uses various animals as character prototypes to tell stories, it does grasp some of the behavioral details of animals (especially Mr. Snake, I even suspect that someone in the production team has a snake at home), but there are also some flaws in some aspects of the display (such as the great white shark).

Author: Wing Wolf

Editor: pee pee shrimp

This article comes from the Species Calendar, welcome to forward

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