Earth Becomes a Disney World?
Anthropocenic Evolution may already be altering life as we know it
Mickey Mouse in STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928). No longer (C) Disney.
1. Walt Disney Presents A Silly Symphony of Neoteny
In 2024, the earliest version of Mickey Mouse entered the Public Domain.
Mickey Mouse is far from a real mouse, and yet we humans have imagined this talking rodent for close to 100 years.
Real mouse. Not (C) Disney. This adorable little creature will poop everywhere if it gets inside your house. (CC image source: Wikipedia.)
I used to sometimes joke in private, that people are going to get themselves maimed and killed by wild animals because Disney cartoons have conditioned gullible children into believing that wild animals are friendly.
Most wild animals are terrified of humans - and why shouldn’t they be? We are their enemies! Exhibit A: The tragic protagonist of Werner Herzog’s documentary GRIZZLY MAN, who thought he could befriend dangerous bears. It didn’t end well for him.
GRIZZLY MAN (2005). Note the slogan “In nature there are boundaries. One man spent the last 13 years of his life crossing them.” Is the slogan misleading, though? Nature has already been thoroughly invaded and polluted; there is no “untouched land” left on the surface of the Earth in 2024. The boundaries are gone.
Why do people like cartoon animals?
Partly because they are cute and adorable and stir our nurturing instincts.
Partly because they are “humanized” so that we can see ourselves in them.
These “toons” appeal to us much in the same way as a puppy dog or a cute cat that we want to pet and feed. The “humanized” traits are a bonus, that allow us to make stories about humans in the guise of animals.
Cartoon animals such as Mickey Mouse tend towards neoteny. To quote Wikipedia:
”Neoteny in humans is the slowing or delaying of body development, compared to non-human primates, resulting in features such as a large head, a flat face, and relatively short arms.”
And:
”Neoteny is seen in domesticated animals such as dogs and mice. This is because there are more resources available, less competition for those resources, and with the lowered competition the animals expend less energy obtaining those resources. This allows them to mature and reproduce more quickly than their wild counterparts.”
Walt Disney’s guide to neoteny in cartoon characters. (C) Disney.
Anyhow… I put it to you, that real, wild animals may already be evolving to become not only more like humans, but also more like “cartoon” versions of themselves. The process is happening across the globe. And it’s all because of us.
Let’s call this pet theory of mine Anthropocenic Evolution. (Or perhaps “Disneyfication.”)
2. Hakuna Matata
The Earth’s environment is now dominated by human civilization; there’s no “unspoiled nature” left (except for Earth’s vast underground).
The entire surface, the atmosphere and most of the oceans, rivers and lakes are now shaped by our presence, directly or indirectly. There are plastic particles everywhere in the biosphere (except underground). Global tourism is like a plague of locusts. The entire surface biosphere is in effect being domesticated (where it’s not being destroyed).
”Disneyfication” is, summed up: Humanity’s presence on Earth is forcing a speeded-up evolution, towards making other animals more emotionally appealing to humans - in order to protect them from us and gain our support (and our food supply). This includes neoteny and “cute” behavior in general.
In other words: Resembling a Disney animal cartoon has become a viable survival strategy.
Take dogs as a plain example. They have already evolved from wolves, which do not have very expressive faces, into modern dogs - bred to have a more "humanized" capacity for expression. A dog that can look “soulfully” into the eyes of a human and beg for food has an advantage over a dog that’s afraid to look humans in the eye.
Scientists argue that the domestication and selective breeding of dogs has altered the genes of dogs. In effect, we have “molded” the dog into an animal that is exceptionally skilled at understanding and communicating with humans.
In general, "wild" animals would be safer if they looked and acted so "cute" that humans would recoil at the sight of them being hunted or hurt.
If an animal can shed tears - or passably simulate them - then that will impress humans even more. Cheap sentimentality as an evolutionary strategy.
Lion waiting in Namibia (circa 2004). Creative Commons image source: photographer Kevin Pluck.
Cartoon lion Simba from THE LION KING (1994), (C) Disney.
CGI version of Simba from THE LION KING remake (2019). This one did not go down too well with fans of the cartoon original.
Picture a lion on the savannah, staring down the barrel of a human hunter’s rifle. The lion’s large, expressive eyes gaze sadly at the hunter, its lower lip trembles; its brow creases with concern, large briny tears run slowly down its cheeks. And then it emits a pathetic, mournful sound…
The hunter - or his wife - can’t take it any more: “No! We can’t kill him… he’s so cute! So human!”
Picture the evolved elephant of the future: It may resemble Dumbo. No, really. (The thought makes me uncomfortable.)
DUMBO (2019) in its CGI incarnation. (C) Disney. It seems that the animators learned from the negative reactions to the overly realistic CGI Simba, and made CGI Dumbo much more cartoonish. He’s part elephant, part puppy dog, part human baby. Gosh, isn’t he adorable…? (Or do you feel an urge to gag?)
The “Disneyfication” of the domesticated wolf (i.e. dogs) may in fact continue, until dogs look distinctly cartoonish - like, for example, Pluto.
However: Dogs are now so completely dependent on humans, that their forms will be shaped by a variety of fashions and fads. (For example, there have been reported attempts to breed dogs that look ferocious but are in fact docile.)
Pluto ((C) Disney, for now). The future evolution of dogs is up in the air; they are now so domesticated that they completely lack evolutionary pressures except how to please humans, Not everyone wants a dog to look friendly. Perhaps some dogs will be bred to look disturbingly humanoid. Expect things to get weird.
Science fiction writers have speculated that domesticated animals will eventually be bred into very humanoid forms, for the purpose of serving humans. See also: “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell” (1962) by Cordwainer Smith.
“The Ballad of Lost C’Mell” (1962) by Cordwainer Smith. Artwork by Virgil Finlay.
3. No Brain, No Pain
Livestock (cows, pigs etc.) and poultry (chickens, turkeys etc.) can breed prodigiously, regardless of whether they are eaten or their eggs are harvested.
So farm animals don’t need to be excessively cute to thrive - and neither do they need intelligence or aggression. As long as they are just barely intelligent enough to live and be passively fed, their long-term survival as a species is in the hands of their owners.
Domesticated animals and livestock may thus “devolve” further into specimens with even lower intelligence, since they don’t need much of it to survive and procreate.
Livestock may even end up in a state of extreme neoteny: Resembling a fetus with undeveloped eyes, limbs and nervous systems. Why need legs, when the industral farm takes care of all your needs?
That’s not “cute.” That’s body horror. (Also because in the fetal state, mammals and humans tend to look similar.)
The fetal development states of various animals, including humans. (Compare this chart to Disney’s guide to “Cute Characters” shown above.) The constant drive towards increased “efficiency” and “cost-cutting” may - quite logically - lead to future industrial livestock that resembles undeveloped fetuses.
4. The Majestic Møøse
What about the intelligence of wildlife, then? It’s a bit more complicated. As long as they are not completely domesticated and actively protected by humans, they have to survive despite our attempts to kill them in various ways.
There are many ways in which human dominance threatens wildlife, such as spreading disease, or altering the climate - but the biggest threat by far is how we keep taking over their habitats, their “turf.” Some of our most basic global landmarks pose a major intrusion on wildlife habitats.
Example: asphalt roads. Lots of wild animals are killed by cars while trying to cross these roads all over the world. Badgers, foxes, deer, birds… and moose. In my country Sweden, I have seen moose cross the road several times while I was sitting in a moving car. (They indeed look very stupid doing so.)
“Bull moose in a yard in Anchorage, Alaska, growing new antlers and shedding its winter coat.” Confident in its size and strength, the moose has only one major enemy left: Humans.
(CC photo: Zaereth, 2010. Source: Wikipedia.)
What are the survival options for a moose - a large, plant-eating mammal with low intelligence - who needs to cross a road with high-speed traffic?
a) Wait until traffic stops
b) Give up
c) Just disregard the danger, run across and hope to make it
d) Figure out the safest moment to cross
e) Actively attack passing cars in the hope of capturing road “turf”
f) Find an alternate path around, above or underneath the road
g) Befriend humans to make them actively help the animal cross the road
h) Evolve into massive, dangerous armored beasts who can fight cars
i) Evolve into smaller animals in large packs, who can overwhelm traffic by sheer numbers
j) Other
We should safely assume that the moose that chooses Option e) won’t have an offspring.
Option c) implies risk-taking, a trait which is associated with a greater chance for a male of fathering more offspring. (Scientists have reported that this applies also to human males.) So this trait is unlikely to disappear in males (unless they become domesticated).
Option h) seems unrealistic, and an Armored Beast Moose would obviously get shot anyway.
Option i) might actually work. A herd of sheep can block large traffic easily, so a “moose herd” consisting of smaller moose is conceivable.
Option c) is what mostly happens in real life, as far as I know. But this also weeds out the animals who are too slow, or slow-witted - they become roadkill or are injured.
So over time, the cruel road acts as a Darwinian selection mechanism. Some animals will have a better chance of surviving - those who carry these inherited traits (assuming that they must cross the road or die):
1. Ability to run faster and have faster reflexes
2. Ability to figure out the safest moment to cross
3. Find or create an alternate path around, above or underneath the road
4. Befriend humans to make them actively help the animal cross the road
The evolutionary pressure on road-crossing animals is to either become very fast and alert in that specific situation (traffic), or to evolve higher intelligence… or to befriend humans.
To evolve bigger brains and the ability to think is not that easy for moose, whose skulls are narrow. Their diet is low in protein and fat, both vital parts of a diet for higher primates like humans.
But minor changes to appearance and behavior should be much easier to evolve, and come at a low “cost” to the moose. In an environment shaped and dominated by humans, the moose has to worry less about natural predators (wolves in the wild are close to extinct in Scandinavia) and more about human hunters and cars.
Off the top of my head, I figure the moose can use these strategies to live comfortably among humans:
1. Short-term: Make adorable display and sounds that cause humans to pet and feed them.
2. Long-term: Become more adorable in their general appearance and behavior, so that humans make a greater effort to create safe passages, forest preserves, or other protections - and are less likely to kill the moose.
3. Adapt to life in human-made environments (cities, suburbs, etc.).
As they are now, moose are not cute and they do not behave in a way that appeals to humans. (I’m speaking from personal experience.) They can afford to be dumb and obnoxious, but eventually human civilization will exert too much pressure on them.
The former natural predator of the moose, the wolf, is thriving among humans today - in the form of its descendant, the dog. Humans made this happen.
It is not inconceivable that in the future, the moose will be more like a dog and live among us - in a “Disneyfied” neotenic form.
The future descendant of the moose in its evolved, “Disneyfied” state. It’s about the size of a very large dog or a sheep. You can pet it. It will beg for food. (Dogs might dimly remember their deep-buried hunting instinct and react to this cute, docile moose with hostility.)
5. Human, But Less Cute
The distinct appearance of the Japanese Heike Crab (Heikegani) has been the subject of debate. Is the “samurai face” on its shell the result of human artifical selection (fishermen will throw back crabs that look more “human” into the sea), or coincidence?
I’m not sure in this case. But I wouldn’t reject the artificial selection hypothesis as a possible example of Anthropocenic Evolution that favors “humanized” animals. The interesting detail is that the face pattern comes at a low cost to the crab - an easy “investment” with a potentially large survival “payoff.”
Heike Crab, circa 2015. (CC image source: RD 77.) Julian Huxley and Carl Sagan proposed that artificial selection favors crabs with a more “humanoid” pattern on their shells. But if that’s the case, wouldn’t marine life in general evolve to defend itself from fishermen in similar ways? Where are the fish with “humanoid” heads and/or patterns…?
6. The Last Boy on Earth
Here’s a nasty ironic twist: Anthropocenic evolution works on humans too.
I had all my wisdom teeth removed long ago, since there wasn’t room for them - my jaws are too small. Lots of people do the same. That’s neoteny in practice. We are inching closer to the cartoon “ideal”, generation by generation.
Scientists have claimed that human brains have become smaller since Neolithic times. Smaller jaws, smaller brains. Are we becoming more childlike - and dumber?
FOOTNOTE (March 31, 2024): A very recent study seems to contradict earlier claims that human brains have shrunk, at least during the 20th century:
”SCIENTISTS FIND HUMAN BRAINS ARE GETTING LARGER AND LARGER.”
Is it possible that our descendants continue the neotenic spiral… until humanity is divided into helpless, adorable Eloi and ugly brutish Morlocks, as in THE TIME MACHINE?
A panel from the Classics Illustrated adaptation of H.G.Wells’ THE TIME MACHINE. Fed and coddled by their own machines for thousands of years, humans of the far future have devolved into childlike, feeble Eloi. They are easy prey for the “other half” of humanity - who have devolved into cannibalistic subterraneans.
But there’s another possible twist. There is, in fact, a counter-trend in nature happening right now. You might call it Revolutionary evolution. (Re-volution?) Some wild animals are taking the path of aggression against humans. They’re sticking it to The Man.
Packs of feral dogs are now reverting to the behavior of their wolf ancestors.
Flocks of pigs in the wild have reverted back to their natural feral state, and are becoming a serious problem for humans.
Killer whales are actively attacking boats.
And monkeys seem to have realized that there is strength in numbers. New York Post headline, 2023: “Gang of violent monkeys kill 10-year-old boy in India.”
So-called “feral” pigs are really animals that have - almost effortlessly - returned to their original, pre-domesticated state. In the case of pigs, domestication apparently doesn’t run all that deep. (CC image source: Wikipedia.)
Perhaps some animals are not only evolving higher intelligence to survive among humans… but are also figuring out that we are their competitors - who will have to be dealt with.
If future humans become childlike and docile enough… if civilization reaches an advanced state of neoteny and then collapses, because childlike “Eloi” humans have become incapable of maintaining their own advanced technology… then the other animals have a chance to reclaim what they have lost.
(That is, if they haven’t lost their claws, teeth and instincts completely.)
Perhaps the future “Morlocks” won’t descend from humans… but from other mammals who, thanks to human reshaping of the biosphere, have developed higher intelligence. A combination of animal instinct and cunning intelligence could become quite dangerous to humans. (Keep a watch on those monkeys.)
And if thinking animal masters won’t kill all the Eloi, they might spare our enfeebled descendants as slaves - or pets. Imagine something along the lines of Jack Kirby’s 1970s comic book KAMANDI.
KAMANDI, created by Jack Kirby. I suggest you read the original comics, available in reprint on Amazon.
And after that…? Evolution continues, I suppose. Once human influence wanes, animals may evolve into forms that are both highly intelligent and self-sufficient. In my short story “Lonely Planets”, talking dogs roam the cosmos in their own spaceship…
FOOTNOTE: But what about Furries, who try to imagine themselves as cartoonish animals? How do they enter into all this? Well… Furries are culture, not evolution - so that’s a subject for another essay. Hakuna matata!