Gene Expression

Who are Voltrons?

Posted by: coturnix | August 28, 2006 1:17 PM

My hunch is that our mammalian minds (we're all descended from rat-like critters) are hard-wired to recognize some basic "predator" shapes. One would be like a large stalking feline with eyes and teeth. Another would be a bird of prey sillouettte.

Especially the first seems to pop up all the time in childhood imaginative "monster fears." The second shows up in military symbols all the time.

Fun fact: cheetah originated in North America but were subsequently wiped out in their area of origin.

Posted by: NuSapiens | August 28, 2006 6:12 PM

There is a very good paper adressing the question: why are some animal shapes more popular (in terms of cognitive, mythological, and google fame) than others? It was written by evolutionary psychologist Dan Sperber; you can find it there:
http://www.dan.sperber.com/hybrids.htm
Sperber's conclusion is that two categories of animal species are privileged: the perfect, archetypical ones (such as the lion ot he eagle), and the imaginary, hybrid ones, such as the Unicorn, provided they combine very characteristic featurs of two species (a horse + antler=unicorn ; typical human+typical fish = mermaid, etc.).

Sperber's paper helped found the cognitive anthropology of religion in its time; the basic idea is that succesful representations gain their success from recruiting the right modules in our evolved mind (hence the success of the lion) and from combining these evolved intuitions in counter-intutive ways (hence the unicorn).

Posted by: Olivier | August 29, 2006 7:05 AM

All this mammalian race-memory stuff is just too rich.
1. You could actually SEE how the Lion Voltron fit together.
2. The lions, by themselves, were formiddable.
3. They were color-coded.
4. If your friend had the Lion Voltron toy, you could make the lions into the Voltron.
5. Et Cetera

Posted by: K-dog | May 2, 2007 2:51 PM