On Prompto’s fear of bugs.
The idiocy of Dr. Besithia and the Little Albert Experiment
According to Episode Prompto, Starscourge is a plasmodium. One (of the unbelievably many) questions this raises is “how the fuck did Besithia whatever his name is become a scientist because FOR THE LOVE OF GOD MAN PLASMODIA NEED TWO HOSTS”
Read More for length. I’m back with more science meta!
I don’t think Besithia’s a biologist. It seems more likely that he’s an engineer that mass produces the MT robot suits, considering the projects we see he has a hand in is actually mechanical in nature. The main worm-machine thing at the end of episode prompto is not a biological feat. It’s an engineering one.
Seriously. This man is seemingly uneducated about his life’s work. For starters, Plasmodium is a genus, not an species. Genera are the step above the classification of species in the taxonomic rank. All plasmodia are parasitic, and therefore has to have a host in order to survive. Besithia’s biggest and most obvious downfall is the lack of a the definitive host for the plasmodium.
In layman’s terms, Starscouge needs two type of hosts to survive. One, a vertebrate which is seen in the MT hosts (think Prompto) or the mammal creatures that roam around Eos. The second is an insect, usually a mosquito. This insect host is called the definitive host because this is where the sexual reproduction takes place. The short version: Starscourge parasites mate in the mosquito, mosquito gives parasite to human, parasite splits into many baby parasites in the human’s body, mosquito takes up the parasite and begins again.
No insect? No complete life cycle on the parasite. A major oversight in the development.
So lets assume there are mosquitos off screen somewhere. Maybe some smart little scientist lady comes in and tells Besithia he’s an idiot and sends him capturing mosquitoes with a bug net. Idk. Either way. Lets imagine there are bugs in the lab where the incubating clones are being kept. Do you see where I’m going with this? The clones are hearing these bugs buzz and hum as they are being transformed into daemons. (another question. Why use incubation tubes? Why not biobags? It’s actually science…Judging you Besithia)
Even if you want to argue that these clones are more akin to fetuses rather than fully grown humans, fetuses are thought to be able to hear at 24 weeks gestation. A paper from cognitive neuroscientist Eino Partanen of the University of Helsinki reports that newborns react to words and sounds that had been heard inside the womb. Made Up words, rhythms and pitches are identifiable, to that point that some researches find that babies recognize, and cry in, their parent’s most spoken language. ACcording to the journal Current Biology, French newborns in the study ended their cries with a lilt at the end typically heard in French. German babies, however, started their cries intensely and dropped off at the end – much like the emphasis their German parents put in a sentence. So either way, these clones heard the mosquitoes kept in the laboratory.
Humans – even spliced weird pig-virus ones like Prompto – are nothing if not adaptive. Is how a bunch of apes with sticks managed to become the dominate mammals despite our low birth rate and general squish. Enter the famous Little Albert experiment. Scientists Watson and Rayner set out to condition a phobia in a health nine month old infant child, known as Albert. Going into the experiment, Albert showed no fear towards a variety of stimuli. Rats, rabbits, dogs, monkeys, and various findings like newspapers.
During the actual experiment, they let the baby play with and touch the rat. After the baby and the rat became acquainted, one of the men stood behind the baby and hit a steel rod with a hammer. The baby began to cry. This happened enough soon Little Albert related the loud sound with the white rat.
Like all old psychology, the experiment wasn’t complete until someone was traumatized. Little Albert was crying and crawling away from the rat. This happened for three months, until the baby was roughly a year old. The problem was… they never “fixed” the baby. There was no desensitization done, and the baby left the experiment with a generalized fear of all white fuzzy things. He showed fear towards the rat, a rabbit, a furry dog, and even a fuzzy Santa Beard.
Is Dr. Besithia, who 1) sucks at his job, and 2) considers MTs to be worthless foot soldiers, actually going to take the time to de-sensitize an infant from the sound of mosquitos? Of course not. He probably doesn’t even know that’s a thing that can happen.
Fast forward 20 years later and you have Prompto tramping through the wetlands with the chosen king. “
“Oh right. You hate bugs.”
“Ugh yeah. Can’t stand them”
