Biological Inaccuracies In Animal Characters

ONLY butterflies are depicted as metamorphosing; all other insects hatch as tiny winged versions of their adult selves, NEVER as wingless nymphs or wormlike larvae. This is the issue that annoys me the most.

Ladybugs are shown eating berries by drinking them via their strawlike mouths. Real ladybugs are carnivorous and have mandibles.

The black spider’s anatomy does not match any real arachnid.

Both the inchworm-like caterpillar and the saturniid-like caterpillar metamorphose into swallowtails instead of the moths that they would actually turn into.

The cicadas immediately take to the trees singing after hatching instead of spending a long time underground as a nymph before surfacing and molting into adulthood.

Ladybugs and Caribbean caterpillars weaponize their farts; neither do this but the former do have foul-tasting blood that they can excrete from their leg joints and many caterpillars do have venomous spines. It is stinkbugs that primarily weaponize noxious gas.

Most of the cast get gendered as male even when they would not be (e.g. hymenopterans, larger spiders).

Praying mantises are depicted as having hypnotic abilities. A (presumably) female mantis is also seen flying; female praying mantises are too heavy to fly and thus do not.

Chrysalides are depicted as leathery sacks rather than the chitinous shells that they are in real life.

A tarantula is depicted as having spun a web & dancing like a jumping spider.

The Caribbean moth caterpillar elder is a) biologically impossible (there is no such thing as an elder caterpillar) and b) incredibly racist (it’s the black witch doctor stereotype in bug form).

The hyper realistic style is actually limiting the animators, rather than freeing them. The style makes it much harder to have memorable character designs and good expressions. Real lions don’t need to do things like emote in a way that humans can understand – but characters in a film do. The original movie was more cartoony not due to animation limitations of the time, but because that style genuinely serves the story better.

To show you what I mean, compare these two shots of Simba, from right after Scar says “run away and never return.”

Here is a clear reaction, with a strong beat for us to connect with before the character makes a decision. Even without any dialogue, even without any context, you can understand the emotion there just by the expression and the mannerisms. Is it realistic? No! He’s bright yellow and has eyebrows. But do we empathize with him? Yes!

Meanwhile, here is… a lion. Turning and running. No expression, no beats, no character moments, nothing. He actually can’t express himself because the animators are locked into the realistic style. If they tried to animate a strong expression as warranted for the scene, it would look terrible. Is it realistic? Hell yeah! Look at those textures! Look at that fur! But do we empathize with him? …nah. Not really.

To conclude: when you’re retelling Hamlet with a bunch of animated lions, cartoonish-ness is your friend, not your enemy.

There are no gentle nods and prods between the lions, Simba looks like a very young kitten instead of a more mature cub all the time.

The most natural movement is shown twitching of ears.

The walk cycles look very sameish on them all.

It looks all so unfinished and boring.

Every documentary shows more emotions of real animals, cause they Do emote.

They should have looked more at Aslan and made the faces a little less photorealistc ffs.

Left: animated male calico cats Right Animated female calico cats

Tortoiseshell and calico patterned cats are almost always female due to the codominant O (orange) gene being sex-linked. Only one in 3000 torties and calicos are male, and male ones are the result of chimerism, are Klinefelters, or have a somatic mutation. </p>

Left: animated male calico cats Right Animated female calico cats

Tortoiseshell and calico patterned cats are almost always female due to the codominant O (orange) gene being sex-linked. Only one in 3000 torties and calicos are male, and male ones are the result of chimerism, are Klinefelters, or have a somatic mutation.

“If I give this thing a human face it will make it less scary right???”

Beakface McGee

The Siphon is the mouth but only in Japan

Drawn by looking at an actual octopus

I’m gonna say they are the best of the bunch, but I also think they are the least interestingly designed bugs in the movie

They did this very weird thing with the eyes where they clearly have a pupil and iris most of the time, but the texture of the eyes up close still looks multifaceted at the service. Its an interesting touch.

They only gave the male workers “"mandibles”, which ended up just being dinky little tusks on their cheekbones. They kinda bother me and I almost wish they didn’t bring them up in the movie as something they use since it makes me more aware of how useless they would be.

The book ants were cuter

finished nyctosaur redesign for the good dinosaur

now with NO TEETH, a full coat of pycnofibres, vestigial hands, rounded leg-connecting wings, and tiny feet for walking