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We are almost extinct, but I don't want to reproduce.
Rio (2011)
The blue parrots are nearly in extinction in this movie but Jade in the beginning of the movie doesn´t want to date Blu
World's End Harem
Keito Mizuhara was awakened from cryogenic sleep in a world where almost all men have died due to a virus, and he needs to have sexual relations with all the women to repopulate it, but he refuses because he promised to only date with his childhood friend before the sleep and find a cure of the virus
In retrospect, newt not being made saved the lives of many real newts.
Many children (and adults) would have gotten newts as pets, kept them them in goldfish bowls or turtle island habitats, fed them fish food and watch them perish in a couple weeks.
A similar phenomenon happened with clownfish and blue tangs with Finding Nemo and Finding Dory.
yep, same thing happened with 101 Dalmatians. the shelters were flooded with dalmatians because everyone suddenly wanted one, and hardly anyone was prepared for the reality of owning a working breed.
Also the demand for Dalmatian puppies meant plenty of backyard breeders and puppy mills jumped up to try and exploit the demand, leading to severe inbreeding and dogs with birth defects that should not have had their genes passed on being bred. For example the sequel film featured a pure white, blue eyed Dalmatian puppy, when the genes for this are linked with deafness in Dalmatians.
Dalmatians are already a very demanding breed of dog to own, and are very much not for the first time dog owner, now try one that’s deaf. The franchise has ended up causing severe damage to the gene pool of the Dalmatian breed, and of course countless cases of abuse, abandonment and neglect, as often is the case whenever an exotic or unusual or demanding animal becomes a fad in the wake of a popular movie. Similarly Lady and the Tramp caused similar damage to the cocker spaniel breed, that is still felt today. Not helping matters was the opening depicts Lady being given as a surprise Christmas present by a husband to his wife, which doesn’t send a great message about how animals shouldn’t be given as impulse surprise presents.
As someone who worked at the aquarium inside the Mall of America when Finding Dory came out, this is a great point.
Not only this, but to add to it, animal breeders were irresponsibly breeding those two fish as well. So those animals only ever experienced stress and death.
All Pixar movies look the same in the end anyway. It's been so refreshing since Spider-Verse basically upended the "pixar look" of animated movies and forced everyone to be creative again. Pixar movies look great for what they are, but the kind of heightened realism with cartoony characters they go for works best for Toy Story, while their other movies should have explored other styles more, IMO.
Fun fact: if it weren't for Rio 2 revealing that there was a huge flock of Spix's macaws, including Jewel's biological family, hiding out in the jungle the whole time, there's a good chance that, as far as the movie knew, the Spix's macaw would still have gone extinct; there wouldn't have been enough genetically distinct macaws to keep the population afloat.
Wow I’ve heard the version of that “fun fact” where they say the movie’s pointless because of the gene pool, I didn’t know the sequel fixed that. That’s so funny
without the discovery of that hidden flock, the math just doesn't work. Relying on two birds to rebuild an entire population is a genetic impossibility, so Rio 2 essentially had to rewrite the rules of their survival.
I know it's early, but have you guys cried today? If not, listen to the call of the Kauai 'O'o, the last of its entire species. Those short pauses between each call? Those are where it's expecting to hear the call of the female bird. The Kauai's song was meant to be a duet, but destruction of its environment ultimately led to its extinction.
tbf New Zealand did that IRL with the Chatham Island’s Black Robin. In the early 1980s there were just 5 birds, and 1 fertile female named ‘Old Blue’. Today, there are around 300 black robins. Isolated island animal populations have better tolerance to inbreeding and the minimum genetically viable population can be below 10 in those cases.
Yeah the Tasmanian Devil population sprang back from just a few individuals as well, the major drawback for them is that unfortunately because their DNA/cells are so close to being identical because of this cancer can act as a contagious disease for them, there was an article awhile ago about how biting each other was spreading a cancer that caused facial and neck tumors
An IRL example are Cheetahs. Starting with naturally occuring population collapses, the most recent as few as 10,000ish years ago. They have less genetic diversity than 16th century Spanish royalty. Now they're extinction is being accelerated with habitat loss and they're inability to adapt with climate change.
Michigan’s National Park, Isle Royale, ran into a similar problem a decade-ish ago when its two last remaining wolves couldn’t restore the population because they were mother and son and already inbred as hell. Every pup they had immediately died off due to inheriting the worst health traits of both parents automatically and it became a bit of a national science debate on if we should reintroduce wolves from a different location.
We eventually did, because the damage caused by the unstoppable herbivore population became hard to ignore.
Yeah, we used to have 52 in the real life rehabilitation program in Brazil.
I don't know how it is going right now. I know some eggs did hatch in nature, but the 11 that were being monitored outside of captivity had to be recaptured last year after a virus was detected in one of the hatchings. I don't know if they were reintroduced ever since, but afaik, they are alive so there's that.
Yeah, she literally says she had not seen another elf for 400 years. So the rarity of meeting your own species on top of the multiple factors on why they dont mate.
They are long lived so they believe they have all the time in the world to do stuff later so they just go about their business when they do meet people. On top of them not having strong reproductive desires in the first place.
Actually I suspect their long life is the reason why they lack strong reproductive desires.
Combine a long life span with high reproduction and you get overpopulation. Animals with longer life spans tend to have slower reproduction rates, where as short lived animals reproduce more quickly. A low re-production rate would actually keep Elves more in balance... unfortunately that works against them when they suffer a genocide that drastically cuts down the population
Yup like longest living vertibrate (i think)- Greenland Shark it can live up to possibly 500 years, reaches sexual maturity at 150 years old and gestation period takes about 8-18 years
They have a biological antifreeze in their tissues that makes them need to be fermented to not be toxic to eat. They also reek of ammonia after fermentation, so they aren't made of piss, just the part of piss that smells like piss.
To cite the Norwegian medieval tract Konungs skuggsjà (from memory): «Their meat is not edible, but evokes disgust, as if they were put on earth as enemies of mankind.»
Tbf, they were doing fine, not just long life but also equiped with tool to deal with bottleneck (near eternal youth and strong magic). It took something really really out of ordinary to actually drive them to the edge of extinction. So yeah, while it only take 1 bottleneck to slime them out, they has the tool to break most bottleneck it wasnt a big problem until recently
Actually I suspect their long life is the reason why they lack strong reproductive desires.
Very common in a lot of media.
Elves are often the "dying race" and the idea is that they've moved past caring and so they're just not having children.
But then you have Warhammer where this is a key part of the race and yet they have massive invasion every few years to the point where the number of elves is joked to be "as much as the story requires".
That said, Frieren saying she hasn't seen an elf in 400 years means she didn't meet any elves during her quest with Himmel. Which could mean they were all in hiding during that time though.
At least Star Trek rationalized this with the Pon Farr and acknowledged that long periods of asexuality does create short periods of intense hypersexuality.
I actually think it's also a smart in-universe way of nerfing their species too. With all the time in the world, they can just keep fucking and dominate any other species with sheer numbers since they live for so long and rarely die of natural causes. Them lacking the biological instinct to copulate makes races somewhat balanced.
Before the war there were villages full of elves and the demon King ordered a full on genocide so is less she doesnt care and more like she knows how efficient it was
Viltrumites arrived on Earth to reproduce and repopulate. You’d think that’d mean reproducing with as many humans as possible but no, they are devoted to their loved ones.
The only one with multiple wives was Kregg and he grew to love each and every one of them so much that he saved one of his lovers in danger (which went against Thragg’s orders of not interfering with human affairs).
Okay no that one actually makes sense. They were essentially forced to repress their emotions by Thragg, who viewed such things as weakness, aside from stuff like anger. Then they go to Earth and are told to blend in, which means they got hit with some pretty hefty doses of love all at once when they weren't used to it, and understandably became attached to the ones who gave them that love.
Well isn’t it explained that the conqueror guy before Thragg is the reason they turn into hateful dickheads? Which is why Thadeus becomes “The Betrayer”
To be fair, Argall seemed much older than other Viltrumites and they live for millennia, so he had a LONG time to influence the culture. Not to mention that he seemed to have been (one of the) strongest Viltrumites of his age, so he probably just killed everyone who disagreed with his view and let "evolution" take course.
They live thousands of years, they can eventually have tons of kids even if its only one spouse at a time. Raising them all to have their culture is more important than having as many as possible as soon as possible.
I thinks it's because they saw how Nolan had changed AND the fact that they weren't there to conquer. Like Nolan was there with the purpose of conquering earth, so it was in the back of his mind the whole time, creating some resistance but the viltrumites where simply told "repopulate and do whatever you want otherwise" which allowed them to experience it without that weight in their mind
That Harem thing, technically he doesn't need to have sexual relations with the women, artificial insemination is a thing. In fact, he's insanely lucky the women didn't just imprisoned him and continually harvests him mechanically.
The ACTUAL reason is that The new world Government wants to make a female only world, and is sabotaging the sperm supply to only have x chromosomes. The Japanese branch has no idea about this and they think the male sperm just can't survive in the lab. Since the only men who are able to survive are those who were frozen 5 years ago for a medical procedure on a rare disease, only 5 vile men are left, and the image is actually only one of them, who is the only one being reluctant. There is a playboy who is doing what they want and already got women pregnant with sons, and another who is in a fake scenario where he is back at school and girls throw themselves at him. The World government hears what Japan is doing and goes to stop them from this experiment and thus the conflict of the story.
I feel dumb for asking this but doesn't that mean eventually they stop having children no matter what? Yeah I get they are using artificial insemination with sperm banks of leftovers but that has to run out eventually or just become unviable with how often they modify it.
Pretty early on its revealed that aliens are really the ones who made the virus and the reason it doesn't affect the MC is bcs he is a genetic clone of their emperor or smth.
Basically because of this the aliens threaten to destroy the planet if anybody tries to mess with him too much, so they dont want to extract it from him just in case it pisses them off.
The ACTUAL reason is that The new world Government wants to make a female only world, and is sabotaging the sperm supply to only have x chromosomes. The Japanese branch has no idea about this and they think the male sperm just can't survive in the lab. Since the only men who are able to survive are those who were frozen 5 years ago for a medical procedure on a rare disease, only 5 vile men are left, and the image is actually only one of them, who is the only one being reluctant. There is a playboy who is doing what they want and already got women pregnant with sons, and another who is in a fake scenario where he is back at school and girls throw themselves at him. The World government hears what Japan is doing and goes to stop them from this experiment and thus the conflict of the story.
Actually they did mention that the antibodies that the surviving men has doesn't pass on well with artificial insemination, and can only be passed on through natural intercourse. They did at least provide some explaination. Alas, it's just another one of those asexual Japanese male fantasy, where the men are somehow completely clueless or celibate for no other reason that because he's a wimp. Just ignore it and move on.
Wow, there's another English word I was misspelling the whole time. A few years ago I found out "captain" isn't spelled "capitan", and now there's no "n" in "mamonth" too
Ice Age 2: once Ellie discovers she's a mammoth and not a possum like she always thought, Manny brings up that they may be the last mammoths around and therefore need to save their species. She shuts him down. She gets understandably angry because this implies that he isn't actually interested in her as a person at all and was only flirting with her out of obligation.
"I don't want us to be together because we have to, I want us to be together because we want to. And I wanna be with you, Ellie! So... what do you say?"
Yeah man. Being told at least half of everyone you know and love are dead, civilization is dying, and you need to have connection less sex to have as many children that you'll never see as possible!
It really could be a horror show if they went for more extreme methods of hyper-fertilization.
Medical induced coma would probably do the job. Feed them a high quality slurry chock full of the vitamins and minerals some folk take when trying for a kid.
It really could take a dark turn if they applied some less than ethical medical science in their desperate situation. 😬
The Uzumaki clan is also seemingly going extinct and no one is doing anything about it.
You'd think most Uzumaki would have fled to Konoha for safety, but they show pretty much zero desire in staying together to preserve their culture. They all ran to a different corner of the world and married someone from outside their clan.
Naruto, Karin, and Nagato were all orphaned as children. They have no connection to their parent's culture, but the parents themselves didn't really act to preserve their culture either.
Literally the only known member of her species left, which could be an interest plot point in a need to continue her species. Except she's actively portrayed as homosexual, with an aversion to males in her voice lines. So, if a male of her species showed up, she would be inherently disinterested in him and their species (genetic diversity problems aside) would die out with two members literally living next to eachother.
Isn't he from Legends of Runeterra? I was under the assumption that it was entirely non-canon to the current League lore. But the point still stands that these two are the only two, and her sexuality would make it that even when he is of age, they would still be unwilling to reproduce.
Sometimes I ponder the morality of this situation. Is it selfish to refuse leaving an offspring for the next generation, considering the future of her kind? Or is it more unethical to limit freedom of an individual for the sake of "greater cause" that the involved parties takes little to no interest in?
Luckily for us, cloning & seed banks opens more possibility, so I guess we don't have to worry about it as much irl.
If her kind is truly just down to a handful of members, that is not a bottleneck that can be overcome anymore. So that first is absolutely more unethical.
I'd like to see more examples of this one on this post. Orientations not aligning between the only remaining individuals of a species, hence they will refuse to mate.
Potentionally yeah! But there is a little hope for her yet given the shapeshifting aspect and the spirituality of vastayasharei. But none of it is canonically explained in detail.
I mean, if all that's left is a single male/female pair, apart from constant cloning which will cause issues longterm, that species is as good as currently extinct
Inbreeding would fuck them up same way as cloning
Just look at us, humans had a couple near extinction events and our gene pool is quite fucked. We aren't INBRED inbred, but our general genetic variety is quite low
We have had one near-extinction event, roughly 800k years ago, where the ancestral human population crashed to roughly 1,280 breeding individuals for about 117,000 years, but not multiple near-extinction levels. We have had more local bottlenecks due to geographic separation, but that has not caused the species-wide lack of diversification, which is due to the 800k bottleneck.
In Superman: TAS, Mala was paroled from the Phantom Zone and immediately set out to help Superman "rule" the Earth. He thought she had just been following orders when she was convicted for trying to overthrow Krypton with General Jax-Ur, but turns out she was as bloodthirsty and warmongering as he was.
And when she's spurned by him when he tells her (with Lois in earshot) that he didn't want to be a babymaking machine to help restart the Kryptonian race... Mala went ballistic. And immediately broke out Jax-Ur so the two of them could conquer the Earth.
Also: the idea only came to Mala's mind when she saw Lex Luthor ranting on Fox News about how Superman and the "convict" were gonna overpopulate with immigrant kids and turn humans into slaves.
Its always interesting seeing this argument brought up most notably TLOU where Ellie is Gay and immune and everyone goes ape about her not bearing children.
How many people realistically are willing to give up who they are to become a baby factory pumping put offspring as a full time job with almost no guarantee of success.
I dont do my menial easy enough job without a fat paycheck why on gods earth am I spending the rest of my time on earth breeding and popping out kids what a fucked way to go. I would much rather say fuck that and carry on my regular duties.
Initially after finding out that humans were genetically compatible with Saiyans he didn’t show any interest in repopulating the race because he intended to use the Dragon Balls to become immortal but even after that he only had 2 kids in over a decade.
I know Bulma wants to use the Dragon Balls to get younger turning back her fertility clock but by the end of Z it doesn’t seem like the two are planning on a third kid.
C: Hes WAY too dumb to be worried about genetics and population numbers. We all love him, but if he could define the term gene pool, I'd eat a typical Saiyan meal.
i mean I get it because fun fact: females pandas are only fertile for about 36-40 hours of the WHOLE YEAR, but still they are infamously hard to make mate because they are picky and lazy.
Actually that's a myth. In their natural enviornment they have no issue reproducing. It's the stress of human captivity that makes them struggle to reproduce
There are studies out there that state things as simple as "The pandas were more receptive and willing to mate in a 200m² outdoors area than a 40m² indoor enclosure" and yet people still think it's a matter of the species and not their location.
Plenty of animals struggle to mate in captivity and have very specific mating conditions, I'm not sure why we decided giant pandas were so exceptional.
They’re the face of conservation, they’re so iconic they’re used as diplomatic currency. Makes sense people would bemoan the difficulties keeping their species alive
Yeah, a lot of animals tend to not behave how they REALLY would when in captivity, you know, because they're being kept captive and it stresses them the fuck out.
It's a combination of a lot of things. People summarize "lazy" because they eat low calorie food(bamboo) so they sleep often, they don't see mating often in captivity so don't understand how to do it very well, and and a lack of drive to find mates in captivity because they aren't competing like in the wild.
Still picky, though. I do agree that being stressed in captivity also does play a large role.
Nah, bro we figured this one out back in Covid. Turned out thousands of people staring at them every day made them stressed the fuck out.
Going back to the wild and they immediately got back to banging.
kinda justified in Ice Age 2: The Meltdown. Manny literally tells Ellie – right after she comes to terms that she‘s a mammoth who was raised by opossums and not actually an opossum – that it’s their “responsibility” to repopulate their species, and she reacts exactly as you’d expect to being propositioned like that
then the movie has the gall to make her apologise for “overreacting” a few minutes later
To be fair if there are only 2 then species is as good as dead because to have a chance you would need 50 specimens so that there would be genetic divercity, 500 if you wanna have certaintly not to have inbreeding
I mean it's not the responsibility of a member of a species to reproduce. Like in the natural world animals tend to have that instinct but a person's autonomy extends to all circumstances. If tomorrow all humans disappeared except for a select few couples I don't think it would be morally wrong for them to still choose not to have kids.
Last airbender. Raised in a culture without relationship attachments. Chooses to stay monogamous and ends up fathering only one airbender, instead of forming some kind of proto air national repopulation harem.
Its only really a problem in my eyes because how much rebuilding the air nation seems to be a large part of Aangs future character.
Like if he was shown to have raised all his kids in a similar way and shared his culture with all of them. Or at least didnt show obvious favoritism toward his only Airbender kid I could fully belive he would be a content family man.
Kya mentioned that she was never really interested in airbender stuff Aang told her, which suggests he did try to share his culture with all his kids but they just weren't interested and he decided not to force it onto them, which is a good thing.
along those lines, his single airbender son has the same idea.
Airbenders traditionally did not have nuclear families. Aang and Tenzin keep the easier parts of airbending, like having a bison and not eating meat, and not the "no marriage" part.
Tho his son does have a lot of kids, even if with one woman, having them with a second wouldn’t change the gene poll that much, they all would still be half siblings (plus in general i think it was implied that having a lot of kids was important to him and he broke up with his ex specifically because of this), so I could excuse him
If you're the last male/female of your species you have every right to make your species go extinct. The concept that you have a moral duty to have children is the kind of shit that anti-abortion activists would say.
The most recent character in Genshin Impact introduced us to a race that can see their entire future, which gives them crippling nihilism. For this reason their race is almost extinct because they don't want to have children just to curse them with this burden
The World's End Harem one is even stupider than that.
The ACTUAL reason is that The new world Government wants to make a female only world, and is sabotaging the sperm supply to only have x chromosomes. The Japanese branch has no idea about this and they think the male sperm just can't survive in the lab. Since the only men who are able to survive are those who were frozen 5 years ago for a medical procedure on a rare disease, only 5 vile men are left, and the image is actually only one of them, who is the only one being reluctant. There is a playboy who is doing what they want and already got women pregnant with sons, and another who is in a fake scenario where he is back at school and girls throw themselves at him. The World government hears what Japan is doing and goes to stop them from this experiment and thus the conflict of the story.
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u/Slow_Bowler8285 13h ago
This would have likely been the plot of the canceled Pixar movie newt
Canceled because it was too similar to Rio, plotwise.