? ? … Reddit has asked itself this question, with a lot of sense.
We let Reddit provide us with the weirdest, most obscene, depressing, and mind-blowing theories. Now, one Redditor has decided to top everyone else in the depressing category with a new ‘Endgame’ theory.
Most poignant theories about our favorite Marvel heroes tend to strike heartstrings when they relate to the characters themselves. However, this one has nothing to do with our Avengers.
It’s worth noting that the author is taking a lot of cognitive leaps here and we don’t even really know if the MCU events take place in ‘our world’ anyway. But with that said, they have proposed that thanks to the snap, currently in the MCU, the giant pandas have become completely extinct.
Yes, we told you it was depressing. The theorist bases this on a number of factors, but first, there is a basic assumption that while snapping works indiscriminately in half of all life on Earth, it distributes destruction evenly and takes each species into account. individually.
So, for example, the snap wouldn’t kill all the goldfish as part of the overall 50% kill. Instead, it would wipe out half the goldfish on Earth. Half of the amoebas. Half the naked mole rats.
Now, let’s get back to pandas. Getting the first hurdle out of the way, we know that pandas exist in the MCU because Peter Quill calls Rocket that.
According to the Redditor, there are currently around 2,000 wild pandas with another 600 in captivity. This is probably the correct number, as the World Wildlife Foundation reported in 2014 that there were 1,864 pandas in the wild and the Smithsonian reports that there are 600 in captivity.
While there have been great strides in captive panda breeding, it is still a difficult task. Female pandas can only conceive for about two to three days around ovulation, which means that she has to mate with a male during that period.
Also, pandas are not the most intuitive with … ahem, how to do the thing, and therefore that short period of time is often wasted in mating. Recently, scientists have turned to artificial insemination to increase panda numbers.
Even once a puppy is born, they are extremely needy and vulnerable. The Smithsonian reports that: “At three to five ounces, the blind, hairless newborn panda is 1/900 the size of its mother. Unable to move, the baby depends on the mother’s warmth, milk, and protection. to survive”.
So we have super vulnerable cubs, half the panda population we had in the beginning, and (probably) half the scientists and animal keepers needed to make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible.
Even once the snap was reversed, we would go back to the decreasing numbers we had before, with either totally extinct or near extinct pandas. Hopefully the snap wasn’t so cruel as to take down the amazing, adorable, and beautiful Panda.
And even if it did, we can always hope for the best. After all, we were able to remove pandas from the endangered list in 2016 and put them on the ‘vulnerable’ list. So if the snap wiped out half the pandas, there is always a slim chance that humanity would band together to bring the pandas off the brink.
That said, the number of pandas is still dangerously low. Let’s not forget that while it would be great if superheroes could miraculously return pandas to flourishing numbers, it’s up to all of us to make sure our planet and all of its creatures are protected.
