Birds and snakes. Figuratively speaking, these will be the main characters prequel to The Hunger Games, which opens this Friday, November 17, in cinemas in Spain. It’s time to revisit the trilogy so as not to lose any mention of it, even though it is a story from earlier times. And therefore, it’s time to hear about the bird again: Mockingjay.
This bird is by no means a minor character. In fact, he appears repeatedly in the plot and even gives the title to the final part of the trilogy, both in the books and in the films. However, this is not an animal that we can find in a reference book of ornithology, mainly because does not exist.
It must be remembered that, despite clothing and other confusing devices, The Hunger Games tells a futuristic world in which some scientific instruments such as Genetic Engineering, are the order of the day. And the mockingjay is precisely the result of these techniques. So we might wonder if it’s possible to create a mockingjay in real life. Even if, if necessary, it could be used for such purposes unethical similar to those that originally led to its acquisition in history Suzanne Collins. The answer to this question is somewhat complicated. We could simplify this by saying no, but we need to add a few more details.
Where did the mockingjay come from? The Hunger Games?
It should be noted that mockingjay is a fictional translation of the English term, also made up. Term invented by Suzanne Collins Mockingjaybecause it is the result of the intersection mockingbird And Eurasian jay. The mockingbird is a bird native to North America, known in Spanish as mockingbird. As for the Eurasian jay, it is a bird of the raven family, known in Spanish as Jay. Mockingbird, another jay, mockingjay.
But in fact, in books and films The Hunger Games The mockingjay was not created intentionally. What was obtained through genetic engineering Chatterboxa type of jay that can listen to and reproduce a human conversation in its entirety.
These birds were sent from the Capitol spy on the population. However, the rebels realized this and began to return false information to them. Realizing that they were no longer of any use, members of the Capitol banished the chatterers into the wild, where they began to breed along with the mockingbirds, giving rise to the mockingjays, which have since become symbol of rebellion.
Life breaks through
In fact, although with very different animals, the situation in The Hunger Games is similar to that in Jurassic Park. The creators of the chatterboxes made sure that only males were born, so that They could not reproduce among themselves.
In the Capitol prequel book, they discuss whether they will go extinct after being liberated or breed with other species. Fearing this, they try to track them down, but it is too late. Finding themselves in nature, although there were no females of their species, they saw an alternative in female mockingbirds. This is different from what happens in Jurassic Parkbecause in this case females reproduce without a male through a process known as parthenogenesis, which also exists in reality. But even so, this is a clear example of what life takes its courseAs mathematician Ian Malcolm explains in Steven Spielberg’s first Jurassic film,
This is what is taken into account today when producing animals through genetic editing. Even when obtaining plants, you must also consider what will happen if they reproduce on their own in the wild. Now, coming back to the mockingjay, we already know that in real life it is a genetically modified bird. could breed with another wild. But could chatter exist?
Bird Science The Hunger Games
Neither the movies nor the books detail the science behind receiving chatter. But let’s think about how this can be done.
What is quite realistic is that they chose a jay as the basis for their creation. corvids, In general, they are very intelligent animals, as can be seen in the example of crows. But jays are also spies by nature. Usually they spy on other birds members of the same species to see where they hide food and be able to get it if they are careless.
If you could actually choose the bird you want to turn into a spy, this would be the perfect basis to work with. But here comes the hard part. Thanks to genetic engineering you can change the DNA of a living beingto eliminate unnecessary features or add others of interest.
But these new features of interest must be genetically viable. That is, if we want to get a bird that can reproduce human conversations, there must be a gene that gives this quality. The only animals capable of this are humans themselves, and our mode of communication is not something so simple that it can be encapsulated in a gene that could also be inserted into the genome of other species very distant from ours.
That’s why with real science you couldn’t get a chatterbox. And if the chatterbox doesn’t exist, then there can’t be a mockingjay.
Talking birds
Okay, we may have lied a little, there are birds that talk or imitate what they hear. The case about parrots. Although there are other birds that go much further, being able to imitate all kinds of sounds. This is the case superb lyrebirdafter all, a chainsaw imitates the same thing as human laughter.
The problem is that these animals don’t have Memory enough to replay the entire conversation, especially if a long time has passed since they heard it. They will need to be trained and possibly also change genes associated with their memory. With modern science this is impossible.
But what’s good about The Hunger Gameslike its prequel, is that these are fictional stories, so they can afford to provide scientific achievements that she does not have and is unlikely to ever have.
Fortunately, even if this happened, bioethics committee I would never allow a bird to evolve for the purpose of population surveillance. Another reason why the mockingjay could never have been born.
Source: Hiper Textual
