Anatomically Correct Huddle

I love the game Inside. Like its predecessor, Limbo, it is a game where you cannot fight; only running and hiding are allowed. The game ends however, with you coming across a large ball of meat strewn with arms, legs, heads, even whole torso's. Below is the description from the game's wikipedia

The Huddle, the amalgam of body parts that the player controls at the end of the game, had been an idea for the game since 2010, when animator Andreas Normand Grøntved had been brought aboard Playdead to do preliminary animations for it based on a drawing by artist Morten Bramsen. Bramsen's drawing of the Huddle served to guide much of the visual nature and art style for the rest of the game. To animate it, Grøntved took inspiration of the motion of Nago the demon form of the boar god from Princess Mononoke, the squishiness of the main character of the game Gish, and human behavior during crowd surfing.

And later;

This model uses a 26-body simulation of the core of the Huddle, driven by a network of impulses based on the direction of the player and the local environment, which allowed the Huddle to reconfigure itself as it needed in certain situations, such as fitting into tight spaces. They then added six arms and six legs with some pre-set animations that would also help to drive the impulse in the main body simulation. The skin of the huddle was a mix of art styles borrowed from the sculptures of John Isaacs, and the art of Jenny Saville and Rembrandt.

Now, it is never explained exactly how this creature came to be, whether it was born or made, but could the option even exist? Is is possible for such an amalgamation of limbs to exist and evolve in nature? If so, what evolutionary pressure would drive it to reach this form?

A list of all of the Anatomically Correct questions can be found here

Anatomically Correct Series

posted almost 7 years ago

Uncle Tres‭

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