(ent/compile) Age often turns fiery passion into tranquility. When Layton Strache portrayed Florence Nightingale, she wrote about her later years:
Fate had always waited so patiently that it played a peculiar trick on Miss Nightingale. The charity and public spirit of her long life are only comparable to her severity. Her virtue dwells in harshness... But now these ironic years have brought punishment to this proud woman. When she dies, she will become a different person than she was before she was born, her stings will disappear, and her heart will soften, leaving only obedience and contentment. ”
So it wasn't a surprise when I discovered that a creature whose name was already synonymous with boredom had also had a passionate youth (although such an analogy might seem profane to some). Mickey Mouse was already a respectable fifty-year-old last year, and to commemorate his first appearance in Steamship Willie, many theaters rerun his debut in Steamship Willie. The original Mickey Mouse was a wild, even somewhat abusive guy. There is a famous episode in the film (taking advantage of the exciting new technology of sound film): Mickey and Minnie Mouse smash, squeeze, and twist the animals on the ship one by one, playing a noisy chorus of "Turkey in the Straw". They squeezed the ducks to trumpet, turned the goat's tail as a handle, pinched the pig's nipples, tapped the cow's teeth as a xylophone, and used its mammary glands as bagpipes.
Mickey Mouse in Steamship Willie. Today's Disney will add this segment to the title of their film. Image credit: Walt Disney
Christopher Finch commented in his semi-official Disney Picture History: "Mickey Mouse, who appeared in the cinema in the late 1920s, is not the good boy that most of us today are familiar with. He also loves mischief and even makes a series of cruel moves. But Mickey Mouse soon turned back, leaving others with gossip and speculation about the relationship between him and Minnie, which had never been clear, and what was going on with his two nephews, Modi and Foddy. Finch went on to write: "Mickey Mouse... It has actually become a symbol of the country, so people expect him to behave well at all times. If he occasionally did something out of the ordinary, immediately there would be a large number of letters from citizens or organizations pouring into the studio, all of whom felt that the moral face of the whole country was in their hands... Eventually, Mickey Mouse became a standard good guy under pressure. ”
As Mickey Mouse's personality softened, so did his appearance. Many Disney fans know that this shift has taken place over time, but I guess few people have identified the unifying theme behind all of these changes — in fact, I'm not quite sure that the Disney artists themselves are clearly aware of what they're doing, after all, the changes are so intermittent and fragmentary. In short, this bland, uninjusting Mickey is getting younger and younger in appearance. (Since Mickey's age has never changed, ignoring the ravages of time like most cartoon characters, the constant change in age but continued appearance is a real evolutionary change.) Progressive juvenileization is an evolutionary phenomenon called "juvenile persistence." This will be discussed in more detail later. ）
Mickey Mouse changes in fifty years. As Mickey Mouse's behavior became more and more restrained, his appearance became more and more juvenile. Image credit: Walt Disney
The characteristic changes in morphology during human growth have spawned a large number of biological literature. Because the head end of the embryo differentiates first than the tail and develops more rapidly in the womb (the term "anteroposterior gradient"), the newborn child has a relatively large head and a medium body, while the legs and feet are small. As the legs and feet grow to overtake the head, this gradient is reversed. The head is still growing, but much slower than the rest of the body, so the relative size of the head is reduced.
In addition, in human growth, the head itself has undergone a whole set of changes. After the age of three, the brain grows very slowly, and the rounded head of the child gradually changes into the shape of the head of the older adult with a thinner and lower brow bone. The eyes hardly grew at all, and the relative size plummeted all the way. But the jaw is getting bigger. Compared with adults, children have larger heads and eyes, smaller jaws, more swollen skulls, and shorter legs and feet. I would regret to say that the heads of adults are much more similar to the heads of apes.
But the fifty years that Mickey Mouse has spent around us have been moving in the opposite direction of this path of genetic occurrence. From the rat-like character in steamship Willie to the cute and uninsurprising master of the magic kingdom, he looks more and more like a child. By 1940, the character who had pinched a pig's nipple had been kicked in the ass for disobedience (a passage from Fantasia in which Mickey Mouse was apprenticed to a magician). By 1953, in Mickey Mouse's final cartoon, he had become a character who could go fishing and couldn't even deal with water-spraying clams.
Disney artists gradually transformed Mickey Mouse in clever silence, and their suggestive approach often mimicked nature's own variations. To make his legs look shorter and fatter like a child's, they lowered Mickey Mouse's trouser line and covered his spindle legs with fat pants. (His arms and legs themselves have also become noticeably thicker, and joints have been added to create a sense of relaxation.) His head is becoming more and more proportionate, and his facial features are getting younger and younger. The length of Mickey Mouse's nose has not changed, but it has been significantly thickened, making people feel that the bulge is not so obvious. The growth of the eye follows two patterns: first, a major discontinuous evolutionary change, in which the entire eye of the ancestor Mickey Mouse became the pupil of the descendant; and after that, it gradually enlarged.
Mickey Mouse's head shape change follows an interesting route, as his evolution has always been constrained by an unchanging tradition: his head must have been round, with upper ears and an elongated nose. The circle itself cannot be changed, and cannot directly produce the effect of a drum head. In fact, it was his ears that moved backwards, increasing the distance between the nose and the ears, resulting in a rounded rather than sloped forehead.
In order to give these observations a name for quantitative science, I used one of my best pointer calipers to measure the three stages of the Mickey Mouse official system of tree occurrence—the first stage of the thin nose and the forward of the ears in the early 30s, the second stage of Mickey and the Magic Bean in 1947, and the third stage of the modern Mickey Mouse. I measured three signs of gradual juvenileization in Mickey mouse: the ratio of eye height to head length; the ratio of head length to body length; and the size of the cranial vault, which was measured by the degree of backward movement of the front ear (the distance from the base of the nose to the tip of the front ear, the ratio of the distance from the base of the nose to the top of the back ear).
Over time, Mickey's eyes grew larger, his head grew larger, and his skull dome grew larger. The bottom line is Mitch's nephew Modi, as a contrast. Image source: s. j. gould
All three percentages are steadily increasing – eye size from 27 percent to 42 percent head length, head length from 42.7 percent to 48.1 percent for the body, and nose-to-front ear distance to back ear distance from 71.7 percent to 95.6 percent. For comparison, I measured data from Mitch's "nephew" Modi. In each case, it was clear that Mitch was evolving toward a young individual of his species—though he still had a long way to go in terms of head length.
You may now have to ask why a scientist who is still a little bit of respectable should deal with this kind of rat. Part of the reason, of course, is to go around making fun of it. (I still prefer Pinocchio to Citizen Kane.) But I do have a serious argument—in fact, two points—to say. Let's start by asking, why did Disney choose to change their most famous characters in one direction gradually and persistently? National symbols don't change casually, and market researchers (especially manufacturers of toy dolls) have spent a lot of time and effort exploring which characteristics make people feel cute and friendly. Biologists have also spent a lot of time studying similar topics in a wide variety of animals.
In one of his most famous papers, Conrad Lorentz argues that the characteristic differences in the morphology of young children and adults are an important behavioral stimulus in the human view. He believes that juvenile traits trigger adults' "inner release mechanisms" that engage in caring and caring behaviors. When we see a creature with baby-like characteristics, we can't help but feel the feeling of letting down our guard and being gentle and caring. The adaptive value of this response is clearly unquestionable, because we must take care of our own children. By the way, lorenz's list of features in his list of releases is precisely the baby trait that Disney gradually gave to Mickey Mouse: "Relatively large heads, head domes dominating, large, low eyes, bulging cheek areas, short, thick limbs, elastic touch texture, and clumsy movements." ”
Lorenz places great emphasis on the control of juvenile traits over us and the abstract nature of this influence—he points out that we measure other animals by the same standards, even though such measurements are completely anachronistic in the context of evolution. Simply put, our evolved response to babies deceives ourselves into transplanting this response to other animals with homogeneous traits.
Human babies have these characteristics that adults do not have, and many animals also have them, but the reason is certainly not to stimulate love in the human heart. Of these features, large eyes, a raised forehead, and a retracted chin are the most pronounced. We are fascinated by these animals, we keep them as pets, we stop in the wild to admire them – and we dismiss our relatives with small eyes and long noses, even if they might be more suitable for companionship or appreciation. Lorentz notes that many animals with similar characteristics to human infants have German names that end with the suffix chen for "small," although they tend to be larger than relatives who do not have these traits—rotkehlchen, eichhörnchen, kaninchen, and so on.
The animal on the left is more cute than the animal on the right: big eyes, a raised forehead, a retracted chin. Image credit: konrad lorentz
In a fascinating passage, Lorenz highlights how we react to other animals—even inanimate objects that mimic human characteristics—that are completely biologically unreasonable. "The most astonishing objects can acquire considerable, highly specific emotional value, and only need to have an 'experiential connection' with human attributes... Steep, slightly forward-leaning cliffs, or high black storm clouds, produce the same effect as a person standing with a slightly forward leaning body" – that is, a feeling of threat.
We can't help but feel that the camel is an unfriendly, rejecting animal thousands of miles away, because it is for other reasons, and not deliberately imitating the "arrogant refusal" gesture shared by many human cultures. In this gesture, we raise our heads, raise our noses above our eyes, and then half-close our eyes and spew out gas with our noses—a typical "hum" gesture from an upper-class Englishman or his trained servant. "All of this," Lorentz argues convincingly, "symbolizes that we reject all the sensual qualities conveyed by the other because we hate each other." "But the poor camel didn't mean to make his nose taller than his eyes and his mouth pulled down. Lorenz reminds us that if you want to know whether a camel wants to beg for food from your hand or spit on you, look at its ears and not at the rest of its face.
Darwin published his important book Expression of Emotions in Humans and Animals in 1872, which traced the evolutionary basis of many common gestures, arguing that they were originally adapted animal behaviors, and then gradually internalized, becoming symbolic symbols in humans. Therefore, he believes that not only the evolution of physical form, but also the evolution of emotions is continuous. We grin our teeth in anger and raise our upper lips to reveal our combat canine teeth that no longer exist. We express disgusted gestures, where repeated facial behaviors are associated with vomiting, which is highly adaptable to the environment when necessary. Darwin's summary unnerved his Victorian contemporaries: "For humans, some expressions, such as hairs that stand upside down in extreme fear, or teeth in rage, are almost incomprehensible—unless we believe that humans were once in a far inferior, animal-like state." ”
In any case, these abstract attributes possessed by human childhood can provoke a strong emotional response in our minds, even if they are in other animals. I think Mickey Mouse's evolutionary path—going in the opposite direction of individual growth—reflects the unconscious discovery of this biological principle by Disney and its artists. In fact, the emotional status of most Disney characters depends on the same traits. In this sense, it can be said that the entire magical kingdom of Disney is selling a biological illusion—a tendency to abstract in the face of the growth of our own bodies that we would have responded reasonably to us and divert them to other animals at an inopportune time.
The image of Donald Duck has gradually acquired younger characteristics over time. His long beak grew shorter, his eyes grew larger, and his tendency to move closer to Huey, Louis, and Devi was like the tendency of Mickey towards Modi. But Donald Duck inherited Mickey Mouse's original prank coat, so it also retained more adult forms — the beak is extended forward, and the forehead is more inclined.
In contrast to Mickey Mouse, mouse villains or witty ghosts always look more like adults, even if they are nominally the same age as Mickey. In 1936, for example, Disney made a short film called Mickey's Rival. Mortimer, a playboy driving a yellow sports car, disrupts Mickey and Minnie's tranquil country picnic. Mortimer is a downright villain with a head length of only 29% of his body, compared to 45% of Mickey's; his nose is 80% of his head, while Mickey's is only 49%. (Even so—never excepted—Minnie Mouse shifted her love until an obedient bull in a nearby field rushed out and eliminated Mickey's love enemy.) You can also compare the exaggerated adult characteristics of other Disney characters, such as petite, the arrogant and bullying villain, and the simple-minded fool Goofy.
Mortimer, the playboy who stole Minnie Mouse, has distinctly adult characteristics: a smaller head and a longer nose. Image credit: Walt Disney
Goofy, like Mortimer, has the body and facial proportions of an adult. Image credit: Walt Disney
With regard to Mickey Mouse's morphological expedition, I would like to make a second serious biological review: Mickey's path to eternal infancy is the perfect symbol of our own evolutionary story. Because, humans are juvenile and persistent animals. One of the ways we evolved is that we retain the original juvenile features of our ancestors until adulthood. Our Australopithecus ancestors, like Mickey Mouse in Steamship Willie, had a protrusive chin and a low cranial dome.
There is little difference between the skull of our embryonic skull and the skull of a chimpanzee, and the path we follow in the growth process is the same: the brain grows much more slowly than the body after birth, resulting in a relative reduction in the size of the cranial dome and a continuous relative increase in the size of the jaw. However, these changes in chimpanzees are very obvious, there are obvious differences in the morphology of adult individuals and juveniles, and we are moving along this path much slower, and we have not gone very far in the end. Therefore, as adults, we still retain our juvenile form. Of course, our changes are enough to make a noticeable difference between adults and babies, but these changes are much smaller than those of chimpanzees and other primates.
What triggers the continuation of this juvenile state is a significant decrease in the rate of development. In mammals, primates are already slow to develop, but we're exacerbating this trend to a point where other mammals can't match. Our pregnancy period is extremely long, our infancy is greatly stretched, and our lifespan is the longest of all mammals. The morphological characteristics of eternal infancy bring us many benefits. Our huge brains are at least partly due to the rapid growth rate before birth that continues into later stages. (In all mammals, the brain grows rapidly in the womb, but it barely grows after birth.) We extend this embryonic growth period until after birth. ）
But the change of key timing is also important in itself. We are first and foremost learning animals, and our extended childhood makes it possible to spread culture through education. Many animals are very flexible and playful in their infancy, but begin to follow a strict pattern of behavior that is pre-programmed in adulthood. Lorentz wrote in the previously quoted article: "The perpetual state of development is so important to the true nature of man; and it is almost certainly a gift from the infantile nature of man." ”
In short, we, like Mickey, are children who will never grow up – unfortunately, we do get old. May you have the same good luck for the next fifty years, Mitch. May we all remain as young as you are, only to gradually become a little wiser. (Editor: Calo)
A biological homage to mickey mouse
s.j.gould, a biological homage to mickey mouse