A mimmoth, with scale item
A Mimmoth is a tiny Construct, a wooly mammoth the size of a rat.
Description
Mimmoths compete with mice in much of the Girl Genius ecosystem, which is probably a good thing since they're at least cute and entertaining. They seem to be more apt than mice or rats to gravitate toward laboratories, and to gum up the works. Like all Constructs, they were originally created by a Spark.
It is known that mimmoths are tasty in a light butter sauce.[citation needed] It may or may not be significant that one of the bits of junk food ✣ served by Master Payne's Circus of Adventure is mimmoths on a stick. This name may, however, be figurative, just as a corn dog is not actually a type of dog, and elephant ears are actually fried dough. It may or may not be significant that pierogi can also come stuffed with mimmoth meat in the non-canon work.
Professor Moonsock seems to have trained some of them, and these, it appears, are not supposed to be eaten ✣ , though if necessary, they can be replaced ✣ by a qualified trapper.
Pursuit of flying pink mimmoths ✣ is a hazard of quaffing double-fortified lingonberry snap.
The first known appearance of a mimmoth in the story is here ✣ , in the dormitory's kitchen, but they might have shown up earlier in the chaos of Beetleburg. Mimmoths are like growf dragons in What's New in that they can be found throughout the whole oeuvre of Girl Genius — keep your eyes peeled, you might spot a few!
Origin
It is implied in the second novelization that they were an attempt by a spark to breed full-sized mammoths smaller, so that they could be used as mounts. Maybe they overdid it.
Mimmoth Sightings
- First sighting ✣ , as mentioned above
- Infesting ✣ Gil's flyer
- Looking down on the meeting in Gil's lab ✣
- Inside a glass jar—with a neck much too small to fit a mimmoth through ✣
- On top of Gil's tool rack ✣
- Semi-hidden by bowl/vase ✣
- Several in the background to the right of Dingbot Prime ✣
- On the top shelf ✣
- A white one being chased by a dingbot with a hammer ✣
- Krosp chasing a herd ✣
- Are Mimmoths running Moxana? ✣
- Mostly hidden by the "Whatever!" in the upper right ✣ in Fan Fiction
- In the sewers ✣ of Sturmhalten
- Watching Agatha's morning run ✣ in Personal Trainer
- True mess of them, they're everywhere! ✣
- Fairly close-up view ✣
- On a keg ✣
- Trapped ✣ in the Spiderroach web.
- Peeking out of the wall ✣
- Big one ✣ in young Tarvek's arms
- An over-sized Mimmoth ✣ is tossed at Gil and Tarvek by Castle Heterodyne, though it could be argued that a mimmoth that big might be considered a mammoth
- Peeking through a crack in a wall ✣ in a stairway deep under Castle Heterodyne.
- Peeking out from inside a bone pile. ✣
- On the stairs ✣ in the tower of the Doom Bell.
- lower corner, first panel. ✣
- Mimmoths Wore Armor? ✣ Who knew?
Secret Blueprints
Mimmoths are described in the Glossary of the Secret Blueprints, where it is mentioned they get into machines and cause problems with their tusks.
The Works
Mimmoths are also several cards in "The Works", where they are described as Pests as well as Constructs. The "Instruction" for the cards seems to imply that mimmoths travel or swarm in herds — obtain one mimmoth and you usually get them all.
Possibly Relevant Outside Information
Diminutiveness/mammoths is not necessarily as contradictory an attribute/clade combination as it it might at first glance seem. Pygmy mammoths did in fact exist on the northern Channel Islands of California, and dwarf mammoths existed on Wrangel Island, which lies in the Arctic 120 miles off the coast of Northern Siberia[1] The terms "pygmy" and "dwarf" are only relative to their larger kin however; these miniatures stood about one-and-a-third to two meters tall in the case of the California Channel Islands pygmy mammoths[2] and roughly six feet high in the case of the Arctic dwarf mammoths[3] -- not the height of a rat, as is the case with the mimmoths.
Mimmoths were likely inspired by David Macauley's book The Way Things Work, which features mammoths (tiny and otherwise) living inside and manipulating the workings of various machines.
References
- ↑ Vartanyan, S. L., Garutt, V. E., and Sher, A. V. (1993). "Holocene dwarf mammoths from Wrangel Island in the Siberian Arctic", Nature 362, March 25, 1993, pp. 337-340.
- ↑ van der Geer, Alexandra; Lyras, George; de Vos, John; Dermitzakis, Michael (2010). Evolution of Island Mammals: Adaptation and Extinction of Placental Mammals on Islands. John Wiley & Sons Ltd., West Sussex, UK. pp. 265-266 (Retrieved from Google Books Sept. 16, 2010)
- ↑ Bower, Bruce (1993). "'Dwarf' mammoths outlived last ice age" Science News, March 27, 1993 (retrieved from BNET - The CBS Interactive Business Network on Sept. 16, 2010)