A lot of the information from Pikmin 4 implies that the onions use the DNA from the creatures they consume, leading to rapid evolution in the Pikmin species... Combined with the existence of "Leaflings" and Oatchi's leafified tail, this implies that the Pikmin are somewhat parasitic by nature, all the way down to the microscopic level (this supports the fungus theory, since it implies there are microscopic spores. That's how Oatchi got infected). They're basically a terrifying alien species that rapidly assimilates DNA from the creatures around them. They possess and mind control "captains," brainwashing them to obsess about Dandori (which is necessary for Pikmin to thrive), since they cannot lead themselves... Like if an ant colony had a surrogate queen.
I mean, the bulbmin in pikmin 2 are specifically stated to be parasitic pikmin that were eaten and then take over a bulborb host, so that also lends to that theory.
Gonna bring up how if you don’t get enough ship parts in pikmin 1 and Olimar dies when he tries to leave the pikmin bury him and his corpse sprouts a pikmin stalk
By extension, the Lumiknolls would then be Onion ghosts... I do love the idea, but there's not exactly much established research on the biology of ghosts!
Although Olimar says that they are likely a completely different species replicating Pikmin, it is very heavily implied with a lot of evidence like file names that they are in fact Pikmin ghosts. Thus, they are not physically Pikmin. But rather spirits imitating their living counterparts. It's similar to how the game heavily implies that the Leaflings are the reason the crashes keep happening- the Pikmin are somehow emitting some kind of energy that pulls the ships to the surface in order for them to be converted into leaders. A lot of this subtle lore is lost on people and it's a shame. I see a lot of folks say Pikmin 4 never addresses the crashes when it's quite literally seen throughout the entire thing- it's just not directly stated or entirely explained. But I think we can safely say both of these things are heavily implied as it makes too much sense. Also I have no evidence that the Pikmin or Onions emit energy that causes the crashes, but that's the most likely explanation from what evidence we do seem to have. How else would they scientifically cause crash landings every time?
Whenever they said they were "Half animals half plants" or "Not quite animals, not quite plants" I always assumed fungi because that's kind of what fungi is honestly?
@@victzegopterix2 they're sessile, they absorb nutrients from their surroundings via root-like structures, and they generally disperse the next generation via spores which are functionally similar to seeds. Those are all features they have in common with plants! :)
@@victzegopterix2 I wouldn't go so far as to say fungi are half plant, but they do superficially resemble plants more than animals. The most salient features of most animals people see in their daily lives are their eyes, their vocalizations, their bilateral symmetry, their eating, defecation, breathing, and reproduction, and especially their mobility. These are all things that most animals have in common with humans and majorly distinguish them from everyday plants. In all these regards fungus appears very much to be like a plant, as well as some animals like corals. Coral is of course 100% an animal, but it does superficially resemble a plant in some ways, and people sometimes make that mistake. Honestly we're going by pretty superficial criteria with the pikmin themselves, since we can only see their basic outer appearance and behavior. Having a leaf on your head doesn't make you plant-like in any way except your appearance. So when people see pikmin and interpret them as being half plant, they're essentially doing the same thing people do with fungus, thinking it must be like a plant because it's superficially plantish. IMO that's even more reason to think pikmin are fungi.
My theory is that pikmin, onions, candypop buds, and maybe pellet posies are all one highly polymorphic eusocial species, with pikmin being a sort of larval state that can mature into a reproductive form (onions), a larval conversion form (candypop buds), and possibly a nutrient consolidation form (pellet posies). Classifying this species more specifically than being a eukaryote probably isn't possible, but I think it's an interesting idea, if nothing else. (I'm also not convinced the glow is canon rather than being purely for gameplay purposes in highlighting inactive pikmin, but that's a relatively minor point)
@ I had forgotten about that, and as I said it was a relatively minor point. Moreover, in the ending the pikmin glow in an entirely different way than in gameplay and much brighter (to a degree that would be infeasible for any organism to produce)
Actually, the eyeball isn't evidence of multicellularity. The warnowiids are a clade of single-celled organisms with camera-style eyes (referred to as ocelloids) that actually have the full structure of an eye like our own, with a cornea, lens, pupil, and retina. In fact, there are actually a lot of odd single-celled organisms with this level of specialised structures. So Pikmin having such specialised structures is not evidence of multicellularity.
What's the scientific version of "we can tell they're multicellular because of how they are"? Like, no known unicellular organism is both that big and that mobile. The pikmin also move and maintain their shape (even when thrown) in a way that suggests bone-like and muscle-like structures. They can jump and lift objects and vocalize. I don't see any way that could be accomplished in something we would still regard as a singular cell.
Apparently Purple Pikmin to produce "gravitational waves that can warp space-time" so now we need to find a type of fungus that can do that to make this accurate once more
One wrench to through into your theory, thought it was very well crafted, the onions fly into the air and stay there during the night. This would break the connection to the mycelium. And yes you could say they go back to exposed sections to reattach but with if they land on say an untouched rock or dessert sand or a clean interior of a house they mushroom cap would have to regrow the mycelium all over again
I also thought about this, but it could be explained by how onions have a preferred landing site/sites, maybe because these sites have some special property that lets mycelium thrive and regrow easily or there are dormant or already established mycelium at these spots. There's also the chance that the legs are the mycelium of the onion.
Considering the reproduce by taking corpses back to the onion I always understood them as a parasitic fungus with a level of sentience. Also! If we assume the onion is the adult pikmin, is it also possible its the 'queen' pikmin. Like a queen ant or queen bee whose developed purely to be a pikmin factory for the hive. Pikmin do have a lot of similarities to eusocial insects likes ants and bees.
8:53 Pikmin breathing from their leaves has some in-game basis: when hit by water attacks, the water gathers at their leaves to choke them, same with poison
This seems like a really cool channel idea! I'd love to see something on the plants in BOTW/TOTK since they can be used in so many different practical ways, or even something deep diving into the legitimacy of plants and their uses in RDR2!
I've always assumed, with how artificial the onion looks, that they are synthetic chimeras made by humans which escaped cultivation when we went extinct/left.
This is FASCINATING! My previous favorite interpretation of Pikmin was by Tumlr artist the-knife-consumer, where they were basically a symbiotic (ish) combo of an animal with a plant taking root in their brains. (For those curious, red Pikmin worked via a waxy secretion, but I strongly reccomend checking out their own stuff instead of just reading of it in a YT comment). However, it has now been dethroned by this delightfully thorough fungus interpretation. My only potential issue is the fact that onions fly, but that can be explained by their round shape: They can store some nutrients to sustain short periods of autonomous flight, and the markings on the ground we see in-game are structures made by the mycelium growth to mark viable spots to, so to speak, "plug in". Itd be a nice way for separate mycelium networks to exchange genetic information in order to keep the genepool varied.
I loved the video as an og fan since Pikmin 1... And I was going to keep watching videos from your channel and oh, this is just the first! Totally amazing video, congratulations. You got a new subscriber and I'll watch your career with great expectations!
As a big fan of pikmin and a student doing a master degree in plant biology, I have always wanted to make a video about that specific question, guess it's useless now ! Great job friend !
Oh wow! I love the attention to detail! I’m a really huge fan of using video games as a tangential learning tool, so your approach seems to be a great fit for my viewing preferences. I’m definitely subscribing in a heartbeat 😁
Really good video! I was quite surprised to see its your first vid, as the production of this one seemed very good. Keep it going, it was entertaining and actually educative. Good luck and I will be looking forward for more of your vids
This is something I always ask myself randomly when thinking about Pikmin. The biology of Pikmin and all the other creatures in the games always amaze me. This was a good deep dive into it!
It's debatable, I am aware the video says pikmin are fungus, but I do believe that pikmin are just an evolved form of plants we have today. (What I'm saying is I assume the games take place at some point in the future)
Fantastic video! I love the idea behind this channel. And as a game suggestion for a future video, the flora and fauna of the Subnautica games might make for an interesting topic. :)
This was fascinating to listen to, as a huge Piknerd and a lover of biology, I love how in depth you went into this, the fungi conclusion is one many people already are drawn toward since 'half animal half plant' is essentially a mushroom, but you went the extra mile in proving each given point
The level of detail and quality in this video is insane. I looked at your channel expecting you to have done this kind of content for a while, only to be shocked that this is your first video. Great work!
The Pikmin 4 Piklopedia specifically states that Pikmin are a type of plant than has evolved to mimic animals. The stem with the leaf or flower on their head is the shoot, while the body itself is a highly specialized bulb
Love this so much! I am a botanist myself and love exploring the botany side of games too, especially in trying to fit them into a sort of taxonomy. Open-world games like Minecraft and Breath of the Wild lend themselves really well to being explored 'botanically'! Ori and the Blind Forest has some amazing flora, where you can really see species change per biome. A game that specifically features botany is Strange Horticulture, although it is not well-known. I'm sure you have plenty of ideas already, so I'm excited to see what you'll bring next!
@videogamebotany awesome! You might be interested in the game Grounded, if you're not already familiar. I haven't played it yet but it features lots of bugs and plants
At first glance seeing your channel, I can already support your content for educational and yet fun materials! (especially with stuff like flora since I'm investing in this quite recently) Love your work man!
Im not a biologist, but I have some related studies (agricultural engineer), and I often think about making a video about which plants are in a certain videogame, or if a fantasy creature makes sense... Specially I think about it every time I play pikmin... But I never make those videos because I want to see them, not edit them (I'm lazy XD). Your channel looks like exactly made to suit me, and I'm not going to complain. P.D.: in pikmin 3, the first strawberry you find is next a strawberry plant, and I love the detail. Let's share our love for the plants in videogames!
Dude this video is awesome When I was little I was super into biology and botany (in part cuz of Pikmin) and I always wondered if they were plants or animals and had actually thought they maybe could be fungi as well!!! This was such a fun video to watch I loved every second of it
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH!!! Great job on the video. I think a cool game to look at would be Sline Rancher 1 & 2, the slimes and plants are personally very interesting and i’m working on a video summarizing the lore right now. :)
I’m so happy this video showed up on my feed I subbed immediately and can’t wait for more content Subnautica botany may be interesting since there is a lot of journal entries and comparing to real flora could be cool
You should turn this into a series where you find the most likely species the pikmin is (the next episode would be phylum one after that would be class, etc)
I am big biology lover and also a huge nerd and It is so amazing to finally see someone making the bridge between my biggest interests, amazing video i really Hope you continue with the Channel (Sorry for bad english btw, It is not my First language)
As a up and coming biology student at uni (hope to be a researcher one day) I truly LOVE this video, its just amazing to see other people talk and connect 2 of my fav things, pikmin and biology, I think pikmin and the piklopidia of pikmin 2 was prob one of the things to drive me to love biology from a young age, great video, great games :D
Do you know what Candy Pop Buds are? In-game, they essentialy change the type of Pikmin to the color of the Candy Pop Bud, and then wilt away after enough Pikmin enter it. I believe that Candy Pop Buds are Pikmin that have been in the ground for long enough, reaching a level of maturity not possible from consuming nectar. At this stage, they wait for Pikmin to fall inside them, as a form of polination, and then afterwards, eventually grow into a mature Onion, which are often found buried.
they might be the beginning stages of an onion considering that canonically not just pikmin can be formed into the color that they are, it's anything that is small enough to fit into them.
This is wonderful and I loved every second of it. In terms of current real world biology, them being fungi certainly makes a lot of sense! Plus I think it's just funny. Oh, see that plant animal thing? Well it's neither. It's a fungus, actually. But as a huge pikmin nerd, I do want to bring up what Nintendo's canon answer to the question is, which they provide in Pikmin 4. In his notes on multiple of the pikmin species, Olimar states that they evolved from plants - spesifically plant roots - and thus are plants as well. They even come up with a fictional class to put the pikmin into: Ambuloradicis, plants which have animal traits. The canon answer is probably less scientifically sound, but still worth bringing up :>
Oh hey, this is a pretty interesting vid- *notices the constant low bass that persists throughout the entire video* 18:07 The bass is gone!! It feels like taking a deep breath after holding it for like 18 minutes straight
From what I remember, the Piklopedia in Pikmin 4 states that Rock and Ice Pikmin are a species of parasitic Pikmin almost identical to the Bulbmin. The only difference being their choice of host. Definitely supports your theory about them being fungus. As an aside, the Spotted Salamander is a vertebrate with algae symbionts inside their cells. Not sure if algae are considered plants in the strict sense, but its the closest thing to a plant/animal hybrid on earth.
Fungi! :D I think that anything that has plantlike characteristics but isn't a plant is automatically a fungi, unless it's like that seaslug that eats algae and steals the chlorophyll for itself.
I have always had zero doubt the Pikmin and Onions were created by humans to be little helpers around the house. Them being fungi along with everything shown in Pikmin 4 makes it even more likely, its possible the Puffstool and its family are the base "natural" fungus while the spiders that cause them to ignore whistles was used to command them, linking back to those possibly being machines. It would also explain the odd shape of the onion, its long stalks and round body giving a similar appearance to the spiders.
you certainly earned my subscription for this video, but I wonder how many games you can make videos for with this theme because most games seem to put plants on the backside. Maybe something on the subnautica series would be fun, since most people like to speculate on the animals in them
My theory is that Pikmin are highly derived lichen that symbiose with way more taxa than modern lichen (mainly vascular plants and animals). The Pikmin (the fungal part), the plant parts, and the host are all separate species working as a single organism. This makes their taxonomy... confusing, but we have the Puffstool and Startle Spore, there's ABSOLUTELY a fungal component. The pikmin bodies are distant descendants of humans that became eusocial. Each host body is of the same species, but each color has a different fungal species. Pikmin do not necessarily *need* to mature, but they can go into the ground and become pellet posies, reproducing with the onion. I'm not sure which one is male or female, or if they're even oogamous, but it's a start.
My theory is that pikmin are animals that have undergone a lot of horizontal gene transfer with plants, the process where organisms that evolve in close proximity exchange genetic information. It's one of the theories as to why the sea slugs that steal chloroplasts are able to keep them alive in their bodies. This would explain a lot of the more plant-like qualities of the pikmin. For red pikmin, there are many organisms that survive in the extreme temperatures near hydrothermal vents, or the pikmin have evolved a natural super powerful insulator (like aerogel) that means the heat from the flames doesn't bother them. They could have also just evolved an efficient cooling system in their bodies to allow them to mitigate the heat. They also might have evolved some kind of way to ignore or otherwise filter out the nasty chemicals in smoke. With ice pikmin, perhaps instead of generating the ice themselves, they have some sort of system in their bodies which allows them to passively cool themselves in the extreme. For example, evolving an incredibly high surface area on their skin to rapidly shed heat as well as create plenty of sites for ice crystals to form. Perhaps they also have some form of insulator under their skin which keeps their internal temperatures nice and liveable, but prevents their body heat from interfering or being interfered with by the ice on their bodies. My interpretation of the onion is more like a bee queen, with it being the only sexually reproducing organism of a colony and the pikmin being non-breeding workers and drones that bring food to the onion.
Yeah, I do like Pikmin. I think it's pretty cool to think they are more fungi than animal or plant, after all, fungi are awesome, even if I don't understand them very well, I know technically they are not plants but it would be cool to see you cover fungi in the future. Though, that's assuming botany doesn't cover fungi, which does makes sense to me since they are very different from plants from what I understand but I can't be sure hahhah
@@emilianoaventura5295 Yeah, mycology is the study of fungi, and botany is the study of plants. Though they may look similar on the outside, the fungi are actually closer related to animals than plants! If possible, I would like to find an excuse to explain the differences in greater detail in the future.
Idk if it's a series you'd enjoy but I'd love to see you cover the plant life of the Fear and Hunger series. A bunch of the healing items in the games are plants you can find, and in the second game you can play as a Biotinist who can find and use even more kinds of plants that have effects on the player characters and effects in battle when used on the foe. So now I am curious what the real world counterparts are for some of these plants.
Excellent video and well spoken. The two issues with them being fungi (or biological at all) both have to do with the onions. In later games, onions merge together, and it is uncommon for mushrooms to reconnect to old mycelium after flying away at night
I just found the channel via this video. It might be fun diving into the biology of different Pokemon, if you haven't done that already. Given what happened with this video, maybe it could be a good idea to start with Paras and Parasect, very much that parasitizing mushroom deal, along with Toedscool and Toedscruel, which are a different sort of take on fungi than Paras and Parasect.
i feel like when making comparisons to real life animals for examples of traits such as fire resistance, discounts the fact that so many other animals in the pikmin universe have fire abilities. if fire breathing dragons were real then more things would develop an immunity for fire i feel. same with electricity.
everytime a the "are pikmin animals or plants?" question pops up, I always answered "fungi" as a joke. Little did I know
Now you have the proof you need
They've always been fun guys :D
No that is just puffmin
A lot of the information from Pikmin 4 implies that the onions use the DNA from the creatures they consume, leading to rapid evolution in the Pikmin species... Combined with the existence of "Leaflings" and Oatchi's leafified tail, this implies that the Pikmin are somewhat parasitic by nature, all the way down to the microscopic level (this supports the fungus theory, since it implies there are microscopic spores. That's how Oatchi got infected).
They're basically a terrifying alien species that rapidly assimilates DNA from the creatures around them. They possess and mind control "captains," brainwashing them to obsess about Dandori (which is necessary for Pikmin to thrive), since they cannot lead themselves... Like if an ant colony had a surrogate queen.
I mean, the bulbmin in pikmin 2 are specifically stated to be parasitic pikmin that were eaten and then take over a bulborb host, so that also lends to that theory.
kind of makes pikmin 1 more terrfying as olimar helps a weak parasitic hive mind grow in power to evenchly become a dominate force
Gonna bring up how if you don’t get enough ship parts in pikmin 1 and Olimar dies when he tries to leave the pikmin bury him and his corpse sprouts a pikmin stalk
They sound scary on paper but they are basically the bottom of the food chain though together can take down the apexs of their environment
Pikmin 4 suggests glow Pikmin probably aren't actually Pikmin. The community's best guess is that they're actually Pikmin ghosts.
By extension, the Lumiknolls would then be Onion ghosts... I do love the idea, but there's not exactly much established research on the biology of ghosts!
My best guess is that they're a Pikmin mimicking communal species of whatever the wraiths are.
Although Olimar says that they are likely a completely different species replicating Pikmin, it is very heavily implied with a lot of evidence like file names that they are in fact Pikmin ghosts. Thus, they are not physically Pikmin. But rather spirits imitating their living counterparts. It's similar to how the game heavily implies that the Leaflings are the reason the crashes keep happening- the Pikmin are somehow emitting some kind of energy that pulls the ships to the surface in order for them to be converted into leaders. A lot of this subtle lore is lost on people and it's a shame. I see a lot of folks say Pikmin 4 never addresses the crashes when it's quite literally seen throughout the entire thing- it's just not directly stated or entirely explained. But I think we can safely say both of these things are heavily implied as it makes too much sense. Also I have no evidence that the Pikmin or Onions emit energy that causes the crashes, but that's the most likely explanation from what evidence we do seem to have. How else would they scientifically cause crash landings every time?
Whenever they said they were "Half animals half plants" or "Not quite animals, not quite plants" I always assumed fungi because that's kind of what fungi is honestly?
This is not at all what fungi are.
What even is supposed to be plant-like about them?
@@victzegopterix2 they're sessile, they absorb nutrients from their surroundings via root-like structures, and they generally disperse the next generation via spores which are functionally similar to seeds. Those are all features they have in common with plants! :)
@@victzegopterix2 I wouldn't go so far as to say fungi are half plant, but they do superficially resemble plants more than animals. The most salient features of most animals people see in their daily lives are their eyes, their vocalizations, their bilateral symmetry, their eating, defecation, breathing, and reproduction, and especially their mobility. These are all things that most animals have in common with humans and majorly distinguish them from everyday plants. In all these regards fungus appears very much to be like a plant, as well as some animals like corals. Coral is of course 100% an animal, but it does superficially resemble a plant in some ways, and people sometimes make that mistake.
Honestly we're going by pretty superficial criteria with the pikmin themselves, since we can only see their basic outer appearance and behavior. Having a leaf on your head doesn't make you plant-like in any way except your appearance. So when people see pikmin and interpret them as being half plant, they're essentially doing the same thing people do with fungus, thinking it must be like a plant because it's superficially plantish. IMO that's even more reason to think pikmin are fungi.
My theory is that pikmin, onions, candypop buds, and maybe pellet posies are all one highly polymorphic eusocial species, with pikmin being a sort of larval state that can mature into a reproductive form (onions), a larval conversion form (candypop buds), and possibly a nutrient consolidation form (pellet posies). Classifying this species more specifically than being a eukaryote probably isn't possible, but I think it's an interesting idea, if nothing else.
(I'm also not convinced the glow is canon rather than being purely for gameplay purposes in highlighting inactive pikmin, but that's a relatively minor point)
That’s cool
And what about the end of Pikmin 2 where the pikmin start to glow? They do Glow.
@ I had forgotten about that, and as I said it was a relatively minor point. Moreover, in the ending the pikmin glow in an entirely different way than in gameplay and much brighter (to a degree that would be infeasible for any organism to produce)
Actually, the eyeball isn't evidence of multicellularity. The warnowiids are a clade of single-celled organisms with camera-style eyes (referred to as ocelloids) that actually have the full structure of an eye like our own, with a cornea, lens, pupil, and retina. In fact, there are actually a lot of odd single-celled organisms with this level of specialised structures. So Pikmin having such specialised structures is not evidence of multicellularity.
What's the scientific version of "we can tell they're multicellular because of how they are"? Like, no known unicellular organism is both that big and that mobile. The pikmin also move and maintain their shape (even when thrown) in a way that suggests bone-like and muscle-like structures. They can jump and lift objects and vocalize. I don't see any way that could be accomplished in something we would still regard as a singular cell.
Apparently Purple Pikmin to produce "gravitational waves that can warp space-time" so now we need to find a type of fungus that can do that to make this accurate once more
1:32 I used to use King Phillip. But someone came up with the sillier "Dumb Kids Playing Catch On Freeways Get Squished" and always think of that now.
Plus that includes domain!
Dumb King Phillip Came Over For Great Soup
Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species
One wrench to through into your theory, thought it was very well crafted, the onions fly into the air and stay there during the night. This would break the connection to the mycelium. And yes you could say they go back to exposed sections to reattach but with if they land on say an untouched rock or dessert sand or a clean interior of a house they mushroom cap would have to regrow the mycelium all over again
The mycelium is the legs on an onion
It's throw. You go through a tunnel, but you throw a wrench.
I also thought about this, but it could be explained by how onions have a preferred landing site/sites, maybe because these sites have some special property that lets mycelium thrive and regrow easily or there are dormant or already established mycelium at these spots. There's also the chance that the legs are the mycelium of the onion.
@@GlockensphealThat could explain the shiny rings in pikmin 4, maybe the pikmin put that there so the onion could easily find the mycelium
Considering the reproduce by taking corpses back to the onion I always understood them as a parasitic fungus with a level of sentience.
Also! If we assume the onion is the adult pikmin, is it also possible its the 'queen' pikmin. Like a queen ant or queen bee whose developed purely to be a pikmin factory for the hive. Pikmin do have a lot of similarities to eusocial insects likes ants and bees.
In the newer games, the Onion's "legs" are flexible and tentacley, and I always thought they looked more like mycelium hyphae than roots.
8:53 Pikmin breathing from their leaves has some in-game basis: when hit by water attacks, the water gathers at their leaves to choke them, same with poison
Olimar would have a field day with this video lol and likely be incredibly excited! I could see him being fascinated with your research.
This seems like a really cool channel idea! I'd love to see something on the plants in BOTW/TOTK since they can be used in so many different practical ways, or even something deep diving into the legitimacy of plants and their uses in RDR2!
Love it!
I've always assumed, with how artificial the onion looks, that they are synthetic chimeras made by humans which escaped cultivation when we went extinct/left.
This is FASCINATING! My previous favorite interpretation of Pikmin was by Tumlr artist the-knife-consumer, where they were basically a symbiotic (ish) combo of an animal with a plant taking root in their brains. (For those curious, red Pikmin worked via a waxy secretion, but I strongly reccomend checking out their own stuff instead of just reading of it in a YT comment). However, it has now been dethroned by this delightfully thorough fungus interpretation. My only potential issue is the fact that onions fly, but that can be explained by their round shape: They can store some nutrients to sustain short periods of autonomous flight, and the markings on the ground we see in-game are structures made by the mycelium growth to mark viable spots to, so to speak, "plug in". Itd be a nice way for separate mycelium networks to exchange genetic information in order to keep the genepool varied.
I loved the video as an og fan since Pikmin 1... And I was going to keep watching videos from your channel and oh, this is just the first! Totally amazing video, congratulations. You got a new subscriber and I'll watch your career with great expectations!
As a big fan of pikmin and a student doing a master degree in plant biology, I have always wanted to make a video about that specific question, guess it's useless now !
Great job friend !
Oh wow! I love the attention to detail! I’m a really huge fan of using video games as a tangential learning tool, so your approach seems to be a great fit for my viewing preferences. I’m definitely subscribing in a heartbeat 😁
Really good video! I was quite surprised to see its your first vid, as the production of this one seemed very good. Keep it going, it was entertaining and actually educative. Good luck and I will be looking forward for more of your vids
This is something I always ask myself randomly when thinking about Pikmin. The biology of Pikmin and all the other creatures in the games always amaze me.
This was a good deep dive into it!
I always thought I was a plant. I'm a fungus?
Actually, a parasite
It's debatable, I am aware the video says pikmin are fungus, but I do believe that pikmin are just an evolved form of plants we have today. (What I'm saying is I assume the games take place at some point in the future)
Fantastic video! I love the idea behind this channel. And as a game suggestion for a future video, the flora and fauna of the Subnautica games might make for an interesting topic. :)
Oooo good pick, I will for sure be doing that one!!!
This was fascinating to listen to, as a huge Piknerd and a lover of biology, I love how in depth you went into this, the fungi conclusion is one many people already are drawn toward since 'half animal half plant' is essentially a mushroom, but you went the extra mile in proving each given point
As a Biology student who loves nature and video games, this was exactly what I needed. Amazing video!!
Found me a new channel to subscribe to!
This level of content is right up there with Tier Zoo and the like, if you ask me. Excellent work!
The level of detail and quality in this video is insane. I looked at your channel expecting you to have done this kind of content for a while, only to be shocked that this is your first video. Great work!
Great first video! looking forward to more!
Yay, I found an awesome YT channel in its beginning stage! I can't wait to watch it develop!
Excuse me what do you mean this is the first video of a small channel? Holy crap this video is awesome! Im staying tuned!
just wanted to say you should keep making videos this was great to watch and you’re really entertaining :)
The Pikmin 4 Piklopedia specifically states that Pikmin are a type of plant than has evolved to mimic animals. The stem with the leaf or flower on their head is the shoot, while the body itself is a highly specialized bulb
Love this so much! I am a botanist myself and love exploring the botany side of games too, especially in trying to fit them into a sort of taxonomy. Open-world games like Minecraft and Breath of the Wild lend themselves really well to being explored 'botanically'! Ori and the Blind Forest has some amazing flora, where you can really see species change per biome. A game that specifically features botany is Strange Horticulture, although it is not well-known. I'm sure you have plenty of ideas already, so I'm excited to see what you'll bring next!
@Straeynge thank you so much! I am in love with all things botany, so thank you for the suggestions!
@videogamebotany awesome! You might be interested in the game Grounded, if you're not already familiar. I haven't played it yet but it features lots of bugs and plants
@Straeynge I adore that game! I definitely would love to try to do a video about it someday.
I really enjoyed the video! Very informative and fun! (I love Pikmin too!) Subscribed! You should talk about Grass type pokemon!
as a blue pikmin i'm happy to see someone talking about us. blue pikmin are the best !
Great video! Such a great idea for a channel, I'm definitely looking forward to more!
At first glance seeing your channel, I can already support your content for educational and yet fun materials! (especially with stuff like flora since I'm investing in this quite recently) Love your work man!
Im not a biologist, but I have some related studies (agricultural engineer), and I often think about making a video about which plants are in a certain videogame, or if a fantasy creature makes sense... Specially I think about it every time I play pikmin... But I never make those videos because I want to see them, not edit them (I'm lazy XD).
Your channel looks like exactly made to suit me, and I'm not going to complain.
P.D.: in pikmin 3, the first strawberry you find is next a strawberry plant, and I love the detail. Let's share our love for the plants in videogames!
Dude this video is awesome
When I was little I was super into biology and botany (in part cuz of Pikmin) and I always wondered if they were plants or animals and had actually thought they maybe could be fungi as well!!! This was such a fun video to watch I loved every second of it
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH!!! Great job on the video. I think a cool game to look at would be Sline Rancher 1 & 2, the slimes and plants are personally very interesting and i’m working on a video summarizing the lore right now. :)
I adore the slime rancher video games, so I do plan on adding them onto my list
I’m so happy this video showed up on my feed I subbed immediately and can’t wait for more content
Subnautica botany may be interesting since there is a lot of journal entries and comparing to real flora could be cool
You should turn this into a series where you find the most likely species the pikmin is (the next episode would be phylum one after that would be class, etc)
I was just researching this topic for a video when suddenly your video appears in my feed. Thanks for making this great resource.
SOBBING THAT THIS IS THE ONLY VID ON THIS CHANNEL I tell you I need MORE
I am big biology lover and also a huge nerd and It is so amazing to finally see someone making the bridge between my biggest interests, amazing video i really Hope you continue with the Channel (Sorry for bad english btw, It is not my First language)
As a up and coming biology student at uni (hope to be a researcher one day) I truly LOVE this video, its just amazing to see other people talk and connect 2 of my fav things, pikmin and biology, I think pikmin and the piklopidia of pikmin 2 was prob one of the things to drive me to love biology from a young age, great video, great games :D
I love the concept of this channel, keep it up 💖
kind of funny how much pikmin turns into a horror game when you look deeper into things
Your channel is WAY too underrated, absolutely loved this video. Anyways i think a video about plants vs zombies would be cool!
This video was awesome. Pikmin are highly evolved mushroom/fungi is a new idea I have never seen before. Can't wait till pikmin 5!
Do you know what Candy Pop Buds are? In-game, they essentialy change the type of Pikmin to the color of the Candy Pop Bud, and then wilt away after enough Pikmin enter it. I believe that Candy Pop Buds are Pikmin that have been in the ground for long enough, reaching a level of maturity not possible from consuming nectar. At this stage, they wait for Pikmin to fall inside them, as a form of polination, and then afterwards, eventually grow into a mature Onion, which are often found buried.
they might be the beginning stages of an onion considering that canonically not just pikmin can be formed into the color that they are, it's anything that is small enough to fit into them.
This is wonderful and I loved every second of it. In terms of current real world biology, them being fungi certainly makes a lot of sense! Plus I think it's just funny. Oh, see that plant animal thing? Well it's neither. It's a fungus, actually.
But as a huge pikmin nerd, I do want to bring up what Nintendo's canon answer to the question is, which they provide in Pikmin 4. In his notes on multiple of the pikmin species, Olimar states that they evolved from plants - spesifically plant roots - and thus are plants as well. They even come up with a fictional class to put the pikmin into: Ambuloradicis, plants which have animal traits.
The canon answer is probably less scientifically sound, but still worth bringing up :>
Oh hey, this is a pretty interesting vid-
*notices the constant low bass that persists throughout the entire video*
18:07 The bass is gone!! It feels like taking a deep breath after holding it for like 18 minutes straight
I literally was in a mini binge watch and found your work was recommended to me (into the playlist it goes)
This is some early Game Theory type of nerd. Absolutely loved the video !
This is so cool and i think its a really fun direction to take them >:D
Love it!!!
Damn, you came out the gate swinging. Good video, I hope you keep it up!
Thank you so much I'm a bio major and I love Pikmin. This is a great video :)
What if Olimar said “Curse this piece of shiitake planet”?
I love this so much! You could do something with Pokemon, idk what but there is a whole grass type. :o)
Subbed! Excited for what is next!
I can think so many things, but what about the mutant plants in Resident Evil?
From what I remember, the Piklopedia in Pikmin 4 states that Rock and Ice Pikmin are a species of parasitic Pikmin almost identical to the Bulbmin. The only difference being their choice of host. Definitely supports your theory about them being fungus.
As an aside, the Spotted Salamander is a vertebrate with algae symbionts inside their cells. Not sure if algae are considered plants in the strict sense, but its the closest thing to a plant/animal hybrid on earth.
So cool! can't wait to see where else this goes!
i know this channel will grow and i will be here for every video!!
We learnt it as ‘king Phillip caught orange fish gangster style.’
Fungi! :D I think that anything that has plantlike characteristics but isn't a plant is automatically a fungi, unless it's like that seaslug that eats algae and steals the chlorophyll for itself.
Fungi don't even have plant-like characteristics.
What a massively underrated video I've just stumbled upon! I wonder if future releases from this franchise will still support this theory 🤔
This video is sooo majestic, it def need more views because omg
I have always had zero doubt the Pikmin and Onions were created by humans to be little helpers around the house. Them being fungi along with everything shown in Pikmin 4 makes it even more likely, its possible the Puffstool and its family are the base "natural" fungus while the spiders that cause them to ignore whistles was used to command them, linking back to those possibly being machines. It would also explain the odd shape of the onion, its long stalks and round body giving a similar appearance to the spiders.
what an awesome first video! subscribed =}
Oh we're already starting with the heavy-hitter question huh? This is gonna be a ride of a channel
Super fun video! Maybe you could look at creatures like the mooshroom or the unique properties of the star fruit in stardew valley
I would absolutely love to do a stardew valley episode!
@ yay! I love Stardew + also Qi fruit is funky looking
i would love more content on pikmin like this, I'd love to see more speculative evolution with them
I plan on doing more about pikmin, but I won't say too much yet. I want to keep you guys in suspense
you certainly earned my subscription for this video, but I wonder how many games you can make videos for with this theme because most games seem to put plants on the backside. Maybe something on the subnautica series would be fun, since most people like to speculate on the animals in them
You would actually be surprised how much plants can make or break the style of the game! while in the background, they can still be pretty important.
Careful not to spend too long in that cave of yours, you might spawn the Waterwraith...
I wish this video came out when i was a kid. This always geniunely nagged at my mind as a child
This has such classic MatPat vibes. I love it!
@@AidzWithAZ this is the greatest compliment I have ever received. Call me PlantPat
@ Aw, that’s nice. You’re gonna have a lot of success in your future, I’m calling it now!
I know comments get a video and channel traction. Love the ideas here, can't wait to see what other games you explore. You can do it!
What a fun and informative video! Great job
What a great first video!
I learned a lot more about plants than I thought I would from a video I played in the background this was kind of peak
My theory is that Pikmin are highly derived lichen that symbiose with way more taxa than modern lichen (mainly vascular plants and animals). The Pikmin (the fungal part), the plant parts, and the host are all separate species working as a single organism. This makes their taxonomy... confusing, but we have the Puffstool and Startle Spore, there's ABSOLUTELY a fungal component. The pikmin bodies are distant descendants of humans that became eusocial. Each host body is of the same species, but each color has a different fungal species. Pikmin do not necessarily *need* to mature, but they can go into the ground and become pellet posies, reproducing with the onion. I'm not sure which one is male or female, or if they're even oogamous, but it's a start.
My theory is that pikmin are animals that have undergone a lot of horizontal gene transfer with plants, the process where organisms that evolve in close proximity exchange genetic information. It's one of the theories as to why the sea slugs that steal chloroplasts are able to keep them alive in their bodies. This would explain a lot of the more plant-like qualities of the pikmin.
For red pikmin, there are many organisms that survive in the extreme temperatures near hydrothermal vents, or the pikmin have evolved a natural super powerful insulator (like aerogel) that means the heat from the flames doesn't bother them. They could have also just evolved an efficient cooling system in their bodies to allow them to mitigate the heat. They also might have evolved some kind of way to ignore or otherwise filter out the nasty chemicals in smoke.
With ice pikmin, perhaps instead of generating the ice themselves, they have some sort of system in their bodies which allows them to passively cool themselves in the extreme. For example, evolving an incredibly high surface area on their skin to rapidly shed heat as well as create plenty of sites for ice crystals to form. Perhaps they also have some form of insulator under their skin which keeps their internal temperatures nice and liveable, but prevents their body heat from interfering or being interfered with by the ice on their bodies.
My interpretation of the onion is more like a bee queen, with it being the only sexually reproducing organism of a colony and the pikmin being non-breeding workers and drones that bring food to the onion.
Yeah, I do like Pikmin.
I think it's pretty cool to think they are more fungi than animal or plant, after all, fungi are awesome, even if I don't understand them very well, I know technically they are not plants but it would be cool to see you cover fungi in the future.
Though, that's assuming botany doesn't cover fungi, which does makes sense to me since they are very different from plants from what I understand but I can't be sure hahhah
@@emilianoaventura5295 Yeah, mycology is the study of fungi, and botany is the study of plants. Though they may look similar on the outside, the fungi are actually closer related to animals than plants! If possible, I would like to find an excuse to explain the differences in greater detail in the future.
Idk if it's a series you'd enjoy but I'd love to see you cover the plant life of the Fear and Hunger series.
A bunch of the healing items in the games are plants you can find, and in the second game you can play as a Biotinist who can find and use even more kinds of plants that have effects on the player characters and effects in battle when used on the foe.
So now I am curious what the real world counterparts are for some of these plants.
It's like watching The Octopus Woman if she was a botanist, good job.
famous world building hack. when in doubt, it’s mold.
thanks for this video, i love fungus they're so special
I dig this. I hope you do more like it.
Also works if you count candypop buds could be a pre onion stage that uses its energy if pikmin need it to change types to survive.
I can smell a good youtuber beginning to rise
I heard a pair plus a pair of vague words, so I back and drag the capsule down.
Excellent video and well spoken. The two issues with them being fungi (or biological at all) both have to do with the onions. In later games, onions merge together, and it is uncommon for mushrooms to reconnect to old mycelium after flying away at night
I did have to take a few liberties with the mechanics of the game lol
Great video, needs more views
I just found the channel via this video. It might be fun diving into the biology of different Pokemon, if you haven't done that already. Given what happened with this video, maybe it could be a good idea to start with Paras and Parasect, very much that parasitizing mushroom deal, along with Toedscool and Toedscruel, which are a different sort of take on fungi than Paras and Parasect.
i feel like when making comparisons to real life animals for examples of traits such as fire resistance, discounts the fact that so many other animals in the pikmin universe have fire abilities. if fire breathing dragons were real then more things would develop an immunity for fire i feel. same with electricity.
I love pikmin so so much this is the perfect video for me
This is an amazing video. I dropped a like and a subscription. I hope I can see more videos of yours soon!
You see, Puffstool didn't just make the puffmin, he made you.
Okay I'm subbed, this kind of thing is my jam.