Léo

first. we look at the wiki. who is defined as a critter? for this analysis, the specific characters that are designated as critters on the wiki i’ll be looking at are charlie, pim, allan, glep, dj spit, and mr landlord. so first, let’s take a look at the anatomical features of each of these characters.

charlie:

- large protruding nose

- eyes on the front of his head (i think?)

- head and some body hair (chest, stomach)

- 4 fingers

- primary and secondary sex characteristics (nipples and genitalia)

- belly button

- average height

- 27 years old

pim:

- no visible nose

- eyes on front of head

- no hair, one exposed nerve ending

- four fingers

- secondary sex characteristics (nipples) and presumably primary (genitals) given the fact that he is always clothed

- belly button

- short

- 34 years old

allan:

- smaller but still protruding nose

- eyes on sides of head

- no hair

- four fingers

- no visible sex characteristics, no clothing required, occasionally to accessorize (tie, bathing suit, floral vacation clothing)

- no belly button

- tall

- 24 years old

glep:

- can’t tell if he has a nose or if it’s just his upper jaw tbh

- eyes on side of head

- no hair

- no fingers

- no visible sex characteristics, only wears a hat

- no belly button

- incredibly short

- 1295 years old

dj spit:

- prominent nose

- eyes on front of head

- facial and body hair

- no fingers

- secondary sex characteristics (nipples) and presumably primary (pants covering lower half)

- no belly button (as far as i can tell)

- average height

- 23 years old

mr. landlord:

- prominent nose

- eyes on front of head

- hair on head

- four fingers

- no visible sex characteristics, does not usually wear clothes

- belly button

- tall

- unknown age

now. that’s a lot of variation! in My humble opinion i feel like that’s enough to designate different species since there is so much different between some of them, especially in the case of a lack of visible sex characteristics and the presence of nipples/a bellybutton, since the latter are distinct signs of a place tal mammal. however, regardless of what i think, it’s clear that there’s a significant amount of genetic variation in this population. what could have caused this?

theories:

here is what i and a few others who i’ve asked have come up with. scroll down to theory four to see the one i think is most likely, and therefore did the most research/explaination for.

theory one: there is no meaning to any of it and there is no pattern. they look the way they do because it is funny. is this a realistic take? yeah. do i like it? no. it’s boring. so i’m disregarding it.

theory two: the critters are just a species with an incredible amount of genetic variation. i guess this is possible and kind of goes with the first theory but there’s a little more nuance to it so i’m including it as a separate theory. again i keep going back to how i wish there was more specification, like certain breeds or races. different races, though, like the spamtopians, seem to be treated as completely different species. although they also have a lot of genetic diversity. additionally, many of the humans don’t look the same/have the same traits. so maybe there’s just high levels of diversity in each species, and there are other ways they’re each distinctly classified.

theory three: convergent evolution from a few different base species. this one could very well be the truth. several of the critters bear more resemblance to reptiles or amphibians, particularly the ones that are hairless and possess no visible sex characteristics. allan definitely has some lizard-esque characteristics, especially looking at the shape of his eyes, and pim kind of reminds me of a frog, and he does in fact refer to his youth as when he was “a tadpole”. glep also reminds me of a small lizard. the more mammalian critters, like charlie, could also have evolved from apes as humans did. maybe charlie and his big schnozz are distantly descended from a proboscis monkey. and dj spit from. something else ape like. idk. i definitely don’t know what to say about mr. landlord. he has some mammalian characteristics (hair, bellybutton) but he also lacks the sex characteristics. he could be the result of some intermixing but i’m truly not sure. additionally, some of the critters have forward facing eyes (typically indicative of a predator species), while some have eyes on the sides of their heads (typically indicative of a prey species). now, this rule does have exceptions, but i do think the possibility that pim is a predator animal is really funny. this one has its merits, but i don’t see why they wouldn’t be just split into different species at that point if there are distinctly reptilian vs mammalian groups, and the existence of those who are sort of in between, like mr landlord, adds to the confusion. additionally, it fails to account for how the critters all seem able to breed with/have relationships with characters classified as humans, because if there are some that are distinctly more reptilian than the more mammalian critters, it’s so incredibly unlikely that the reptilian descendants would be able to breed with humans, since, at least in our universe, humans cannot even breed with other mammals, so there’d have to be something going on for a primarily reptilian species to breed with humans.

theory four: all the critters we see, with a few exceptions, are a result of many generations of human/critter crossbreeding. this is the one that i am rooting for, and it makes the most sense to me. between all the critters, we can definitely see some that have more human traits, and some that have more animalistic traits. so, maybe charlie and dj spit have more human dna, whereas, say, allan and glep have more critter dna in their lineage. again, we do know that human/critter relationships are very commonplace, as both glep and charlie have human partners. in my opinion, it seems that glep is furthest on the critter spectrum, given his lack of any distinct human characteristics and incredibly high age. he could be one of the last remaining true Critters. on the other end, dj spit appears to be the most human. all the others fall in between.

additionally, many of the human characters don’t display Only humanoid traits. some are live action, some are rotoscoped, and some are traditionally animated. the different ways they’re animated (or distinctly Not animated) seems to indicate a little bit of genetic diversity as well. for example, mr boss is animated, and switches from five to four fingers, and has the ability to turn his face into a dog face. i guess there’s no proof none of the other humans can do that, but he does seem to be a little more non-human, when we take that into account along with his disproportionate features (eg. massive head). and i’m not even gonna open up the can of worms that is the fact that sometimes he has massive bazonkers that he can nurse jason with, and sometimes just has pecs. additionally, we can see that doug and professor psychotic, while presumably biological brothers, have a lot of different characteristics, with doug being rotoscoped, and professor psychotic being animated and honestly sharing more characteristics with dj spit (a critter) than his own brother. someone also pointed out that their mother may be spamtopian, as she looks like the waitress that pim and mr boss encountered on their visit to spamtopia. so, we can divide the humans into four groups, going from least to most human.

- wacky/slightly inhuman animated person (mr boss, professor psychotic, desmond, etc)

- regular looking animated person (zoey, marge simpson, etc)

- rotoscoped person (doug, etc)

(i cant find a good picture just go watch the show)

- live action person (president jimble, tyler, simon s. salty, etc)

(you know what a human being looks like.)

now there’s one thing that kinda throws a wrench in this theory: jason. jason is the son of mr boss and an unknown mother, presumably a critter. jason, while being the son of a character that is classified a human, looks the most like glep: meaning that he displays some of the most critter characteristics when compared to any other characters. additionally, he seems to share glep’s aging patterns, being 18 years old and still a nursing baby. so if he’s definitely part human, and appears like glep, maybe glep isn’t a full critter after all. HOWEVER. the way i have elected to combat this is through the use of a punnet square.

now, if H is the allele for presenting like a human, and C is for presenting like a critter, we can see that a half human half critter, when mixed with a whole critter, will produce offspring that are fully critter 50% of the time. now, with the amount of different critters that have varying amounts of human traits, we can assume that it’s a lot more complicated than two genes. but, if all the genes weigh together, it is definitely possible for jason to have inherited mostly his father’s critter dna instead of his human dna, which, when paired with his mother’s full critter dna, resulted in him looking like a pure critter, like glep. yknow, like how some dogs are mixes but they look exactly like one parent rather than the other. now of course, jason doesn’t stay this way, and ends up growing wings and all that jazz, which could be a result of the variant dna, showing that while he may initially look fully critter and age like one, some traits may emerge as he matures that show his differences.

so, to conclude this theory, here is what i think the spectrum of critter -> human is, and where the line between the two is drawn.

now yes, this is a simplification and does not account for any interbreeding between the less common non human/non critter species, such as spamtopians, demons, sentient animals, forest folk, and so on and so forth. but i think it covers the most likely line of progression between the two species and how they’ve presumably mixed over time, with more input from the less popular species as aforementioned.