Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald has been released. If you're planning to take your kids to see this film, you might want to preview it in advance. Rest assured, there are no spoilers! In addition, jam also brings more "magical animals" to everyone, and they may help you and your children open a magical door.
The movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is based on J.K. Rowling's book of the same name and tells the story of magical animals in the world of Harry Potter. Imaginary animals have no more than "cuteness" or "fierceness"—the former evokes our love for our babies and wants to hold them in the palm of our hands; the latter, with all the power and power that dominates everything, makes people feel awe (according to evolutionary psychology, this is an emotion of obedience of humans as primates to higher-status individuals). Magical creatures may be fascinating precisely because they touch the "animality" that remains in our brains, directly to the most primitive parts of human nature.
Count how many magical animals are on this poster.
Beast: Gold Seeker and human companion
Where is the treasure
Niffer, whose appearance is between a platypus and a mole, is good at finding gold, which makes people yearn for it, but it brings countless troubles to the protagonist. It seems to indicate that the greater the temptation, the more dangerous it is.
Sniff
Even "Muggles" can rely on animals for treasure hunting. Several fungi of the truffle genus, that is, truffles, have a unique and strong smell, even if separated by soil layers, they can still attract animals such as deer and rabbits, dig it out and eat it. Truffles use this to spread spores. So, the traditional way to find these precious mushrooms is to let the pig arch it out with its nose.
The problem is that pigs love truffles as much as people, and with them looking for truffles, there is a risk of a few thousand dollars being swallowed up at any time. So there are also people who train dogs with the same keen sense of smell and more obedient to find truffles. Dogs lack the innate affinity between pigs and truffles, though— for sows, truffles have a fascinating taste because they contain ingredients similar to boar exosteroids.
Truffle sniffing dogs.
This tree is guarded by me
Bowtruckle, who looks like a thin branch, is very cute and clingy in the movie, and also saves the protagonist at a critical moment. But in the original, this animal loved trees, and if the wizard wanted to harm the tree it inhabited, it would use its sharp fingers to hit people in the eye.
Protect the tree and the pot.
Some trees in the genus Acacia (Acacia spp.) do have "bodyguards"—a herd of pseudomymex spp.
Acacia and pseudo-leaf cutter ants, these two thorns have not yet grown, and when they grow, they will become the dwelling place of ants.
These ferocious ants often patrol the trees, biting insects that eat leaves and sap, and within a 40cm radius around the acacia, other plants will be "weeded" by them as soon as they sprout - bite off. The poisonous needle of the pseudo-leaf cutter ant is also very powerful, and when you touch the acacia, the ant soldiers will flock out and start stinging, feeling like falling into a clump of nettles.
Acacia offers its protectors a generous reward for both food and shelter. At the top of its tiny leaves, small, nutritious particles grow, and a nectar-like sugary liquid oozes from the base of the leaves. The center of the acacia spine is spongy, and ants can bite a hole in it to get a ready-made house.
Ants pluck small particles at the top of the tiny leaves of acacia trees.
There are hundreds of known species of plants that raise ants, belonging to different subjects, and their ant guardians are also different, indicating that this plant's close alliance with insects has appeared many times in evolutionary history.
Ant holes in acacia thorns.
Allied with humans? Not no, you can't
Another type of ant is not only the patron saint of trees, but also an ally of humanity. Unlike the vegetarian pseudo-leafcutter ant, the yellow fox ant (Oecophylla smaragdina) is a predatory hunter. The nest of the yellow fox ant hangs from the tree and is made of live leaves and silk spit by the ant larvae. Ants hunt various insects in trees for food.
A leaf nest of a yellow fox ant.
As early as 304 AD, in the book "Southern Grass and Trees", it is recorded that when the market sold ant nests and hung them on citrus trees, the ants would eliminate citrus pests. This is the earliest example of "biological control". In today's citrus groves, you can still see yellow fox ants that are "allied" with humans. In the winter, the growers would build small sheds to keep them warm, and eggs and honey water would replenish the ants.
In order to protect the nest, the yellow fox ant wiggles its tail and makes a fierce appearance.
Beasts of Prey: Bird-shaped snakes and serpentine birds
The most powerful and magnificent monsters in the movie are undoubtedly the "thunderbirds" that call the wind and rain and the birds and snakes that can become larger and smaller according to the environment. What these two animals have in common is that they are like birds and reptiles.
The Thunderbird is also one of the representative creatures of the four schools of the Ifamani School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Half-crawling, half-bird god
The film image and prototype of the "Thunderbird" (a mythical creature in Indian legends) are obviously birds, and its long, dragging tail behind it is also reminiscent of bird feathers, such as the tail feathers of the bird of paradise, or the winged nighthawk's special winged wings.
Flag-winged nighthawk (scientific name Macrodipteryx longipennis) For courtship, the two wing feathers of the male bird become extremely long.
But its three pairs of wings can flap, and the last two pairs of wings are attached to the tail, and if this tail is just a bunch of feathers, the bones and muscles inside the wings will have nowhere to attach. So, this is a tail with flesh and bones, belonging to the reptile. In addition, its vertical pupils are also very lizard-like.
"Thunderbird"
In the myths and legends of various races, the connection between reptiles (especially snakes) and birds often appears. These two are like earth and heaven, water and fire, with corresponding nature. A cold, silent, low-key, meandering in the shadows, ready to take a bite, seemingly clumsy but in mortal danger; a noisy, cheerful, daytime-loving one, with beautiful fluffy feathers and high body temperature, as if the embodiment of the sun and flames. However, many ancient cultures combined the two to conceive of a bizarre image of a half-crawling, half-bird.
The feathered serpent god of the Aztecs
The feathered serpent god, believed in by the Aztec and Mayan civilizations, was a good and wise god who created human beings and taught them knowledge and virtue. The Aztecs called the feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl, and "Quetzal" means Pharomachrus mocinno, a very beautiful bird loved and revered by the indigenous people of Central and South America, who used its feathers to make the headsdress of nobles and wizards.
Anchovy green bites the cuckoo
A snake that can fly and deform
Basilisk, which appears in the second harry pottery, is also a creature with dual characteristics of birds and reptiles. The early basilisk image, which appears in Pliny Sr.'s Natural History, is the most venomous of snakes. Later adapted in Europe as a chicken snake monster, legend has it that it was born from a male egg, hatched by a toad, and looked like a poisonous snake and a rooster, and the gaze could turn life into stone.
Basilisk
Occamy has bird wings and feathers, a body as gorgeous as a peacock, and its nest is coiled with branches, like a bird's nest. The bird snake looks a bit like the feather snake god, but according to the original book, the bird snake is an animal from India and the Far East. It seems that Rowling has other ideas. Maybe we should look for flying, deformed snakes among real animals: the Chrysopelea paradisi ,) that can open its ribs and turn itself into a flat shape for more lift. Jumping from a tree, it can glide up to 100 meters. What is even more exciting is that the "flying snake" lives in Southeast Asia and is distributed in India.
The cross-section of the heavenly golden snake's body as it glides. A shows the morphology; B shows the ventral view; C is the geometric section, c=25.4 mm.
Flying dinosaurs
The semi-reptile, half-bird animals not only attract wizards, but also "Muggles". The word "dinosaur," like "wizard," is enough to appeal to children and childlike adults all over the world. Since dinosaurs were reptiles, early paleontologists (and dinosaur fans) took for granted that they were cold-blooded, scaly, clumsy animals with bent limbs and belly landing on the ground like ugly crocodiles and pythons.
Drawings of dinosaur models drawn in 1855, which were built and exhibited in Crystal Palace Park in The United Kingdom, were the first public display of restored images of dinosaurs.
But with the progress of paleontology, the image of dinosaurs gradually moved from "snakes" to "birds", dinosaurs are warm-blooded, can walk upright, agile, and more gorgeous appearance than crocodiles. Since the discovery of the Chinese dragon bird in 1996, dozens of dinosaur fossils with feather marks have been unearthed in China. Some dinosaurs of the microraptorinae subfamily Were of small stature, with long, hard feathers on all four legs, like four wings, and feathers on their long tails. No one who has the ability to observe can see their similarities with the "Thunderbird" in the movie.
Changyuraptor yangi
In 2011, paleontologists Xu Xing and Zheng Xiaoting published an article in the journal Nature that shocked the Muggle academic community as much as the thunderbolt of the Thunderbird. They compared a variety of feathered dinosaurs with feathers to a well-known "bird with reptile characteristics," Archaeopteryx spp., and drew an evolutionary tree of birds and dinosaurs. Archaeopteryx has both plump wings and a long tail of a "lizard" with flesh and bones, and has always been revered as the "oldest bird". Xu Xing and others believe that Archaeopteryx is closer to dinosaurs than birds, a finding that is not contrary to evolution: some newly discovered small dinosaurs are related to birds, even close to Archaeopteryx.
Archaeopteryx fossils
The idea that dinosaurs were the ancestors of birds has been widely recognized by the paleontological community, and reptiles and birds seem to be very different, but "Muggles" have found that there is a real connection between the two. There are even some animals that are so confusing that you can't tell if it's a bird or a reptile, something that even wizards don't expect.