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Muttations, or simply mutts, are genetically modified animals created by the Capitol. Mutts have been created for a variety of purposes, both inside and outside the Hunger Games arena.

Known mutts

Jabberjays

Main article: Jabberjay

The jabberjay is a type of exclusively male bird that was created to eavesdrop on enemies of the Capitol during the First Rebellion. They had the ability to memorize and reproduce whole human conversations and repeat them back to their Capitol handlers. However, once the people in the districts realized how their private conversations were being transmitted, they used the jabberjays to feed endless lies to the Capitol. When they realized they were being played, the Capitol ceased using the jabberjays and abandoned them to die off in the wild. Eventually they did die off, but not before unexpectedly mating with female mockingbirds to produce a whole new species; the mockingjay.[1] That new species became a symbol of the Second Rebellion, maybe because of it being born from the Capitol wanting to eliminate jabberjays and failing to.

By the time of the 75th Hunger Games, the Capitol had replenished the jabberjay population and used them in one of the sectors of the clock arena, where tributes Finnick Odair and Katniss Everdeen were trapped and forced to listen to the birds' mimicry of their loved ones' screams. They were described as black and crested, similar to the mockingjays' appearance.[2]


Mockingjays

Main article: Mockingjay (bird)
A mockingjay as seen in Mockingjay - Part 1

A mockingjay as seen in Mockingjay - Part 1

Mockingjays are accidental muttations that were created when female mockingbirds mated with male jabberjays. They are mainly black like their jabberjay fathers, with white patches under their wings like their mockingbird mothers. They have a crest, also inherited from the jabberjays, which may be similar to that of a blue jay. They pick up songs very quickly by imitating the pitch of a human's voice and can relay them back and forth to people or other mockingjays. Since the Capitol did not mean for these birds to exist, they are viewed as a symbol of rebellion within the districts.[1] However, after victor Katniss Everdeen sported a mockingjay pin in the 74th Hunger Games, mockingjays went into vogue with the people of the Capitol; their likeness often appeared in clothing, jewelry, tattoos, and other accessories.[3]


Tracker jackers

Main article: Tracker jacker
Trackerjackers

Tracker jackers on a Hunger Games promo poster.

Tracker jackers are deadly wasps that were made by the Capitol and placed around the districts during the first rebellion. They are larger than regular wasps and have a gold-colored body. Their stings raise lumps the size of plums on their victims, and their venom (engineered to target fear in a victim's brain and alter their memories) causes hallucinations that can drive people to madness. More than a few stings can kill a person; some people die after just one. These mutts will also hunt down anyone who disturbs their nest and attempt to kill them, hence the name tracker jackers. They live in huge hives high up in trees.[4]


Wolf mutts

Main article: Wolf mutt
Mutts(74th HG)

A wolf mutt in The Hunger Games (film)

In the 74th Hunger Games, the Gamemakers released a pack of wolves to drive the final three tributes— Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark, and Cato— to the Cornucopia. Each one resembled a tribute who had died in that year's Games, wearing a collar marked with the district number, and they had remarkably human eyes. The resemblance was so strong that Peeta wondered if they had been made using the tributes' real eyes.[5]

They mortally wounded Cato, but did not kill him because he was shielded by body armor. Katniss and Peeta listened to him suffer through the night, and Katniss was only able to take a mercy shot once the sun rose at dawn. The wolves left the arena through a hole that opened up in the ground.[5]

The Hunger Games (film)

Thehungergames-8971

A wolf mutt being created in the Gamemakers' Control Room.

In the film, the wolf mutts held no resemblance to the tributes. They were large, bulky dogs with sparse fur, short muzzles, and powerful jaws, and they ran on all fours.[6] They were responsible for killing Thresh as well as mauling Cato. At the end of the scene, the mutts ran off into the woods, and Katniss put Cato out of his misery much sooner.[6]


Monkey mutts

Monkey-mutts

Monkey mutts in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

One section of the 75th Hunger Games arena contained a mutated species of monkey with orange fur, fangs, and claws that came out like switchblades. They used their claws and teeth to make deep punctures in their victims' flesh that looked harmless, but in reality were deep enough to cause internal bleeding. They viciously attacked the tributes, harming them and even killing the female morphling from District 6, who saved Peeta's life.[7] In The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the mutts were made to look like mandrills.


Lizard mutts

Mockingjay-part-2-tigris-is-that-you-doc-connors-is-that-you-528000

A lizard mutt in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2

After President Snow realizes that he did not manage to kill Squad 451 and that they escaped into the Transfer, he sends lizard-like muttations after them. The mutts were four-legged with sharp talons at the end of each finger, had tight pale white skin and were the size of humans. They had long reptilian tails, arched backs and heads that jut jaws which enabled them to decapitate their victims in one bite. The mutts had the ability to walk on their hind legs as well as on all four, which Katniss described as skittering movements. When Katniss got closer to them, she saw that they seemed to be a mixture of humans and reptiles, with faces of conflicting features. They gave off a scent similar to that of President Snow's roses and had Katniss' scent to track her. They spoke through mostly hisses but were also given the ability to say "Katniss", most likely to frighten her. They were able to be killed but only were killed when Katniss detonated her Holo on them (by saying "nightlock" three times), though they managed to kill most of Squad 451— Jackson, Leeg 1, Finnick, Castor, and Homes— before their annihilation.[8]

In The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, the lizard mutts appear to have no eyes or tails. It can be assumed that, because they have no sense of sight, they rely on sound and quite possibly smell.


Snake mutts

Main article: Snake mutt
Snake mutts in tank

The snake mutts in Dr. Gaul's lab

The snakes were of various bright colors, including neon pink, yellow, and blue. Each was no longer than a ruler and not much thicker than a pencil. They could not see too well and could hear even less, but were bred to have a more acute sense of smell than normal snakes.[9] Dr. Volumnia Gaul later explained that the mutts were only snakelets, so they were not yet fully grown. At maturity, she expected that they would be able to "easily outrun a human" and scale difficult or unusual terrain.[10] Their venom was lethal, but one could recover if the antivenom was administered quickly enough;[11] however, even then they would still suffer side effects for as long as a year afterward.[12]

Other snake mutts

The aquatic mutts seen in The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

The aquatic mutts seen in The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.

Following his brief stint as a Peacekeeper in District 12, Coriolanus observed Dr. Gaul dropping mice into a tank of golden snakes.[13] In The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, he instead saw her feeding black aquatic snake mutts in a pool of water.[14]

Venomous snakes were also mentioned as having appeared in an unknown desert arena prior to the 74th Hunger Games. It is unknown, but likely, that these were mutts.[1]


Rabbit mutts

"Hippity, hoppity. How was the zoo? It's like a children's rhyme."
—Dr. Gaul to Coriolanus Snow after teasing one of her rabbit mutts[src]

In addition to her snakes, Dr. Gaul had at least one rabbit muttation. She had modified it to have the jaw strength of a pit bull[15] and stated that it was, in fact, part pit bull. She would tease it with a metal rod, poking at it until it would yank it from her hand and snap it in two. She often brought it with her when visiting the mentors for the 10th Hunger Games and fed it carrots.


Other muttations

  • The arena of the 50th Hunger Games (2nd Quarter Quell) contained a number of dangerous mutts:
    • Golden, fluffy, carnivorous squirrels who attacked in packs[16]
    • Stinging butterflies that caused severe pain and death[16]
    • Candy-pink birds with long, piercing beaks (these birds killed Maysilee Donner, one of the two female tributes from District 12).[16]
  • In the 75th Hunger Games, one of the arena's sections held an unidentified mutt that ripped apart a tribute so badly they could not be identified. Peeta called it "the Beast".[2]
    • Another section contained a large quantity of insects that made continuous clicking noises. The tributes speculated that the mutts likely had pincers and could probably strip them to the bone in seconds.[17]
  • While a prisoner of the Capitol, Peeta was hijacked into believing that Katniss was not human, but in fact one of the Capitol's mutts.[18]
    • Conversely, Johanna Mason suggested that the Capitol's torture replaced Peeta with an "evil-mutt version" of himself.[19] This sentiment was later echoed by Katniss.[20]
  • Muttation gnats[21] and flesh-eating rats[8] were mentioned to be in some of the pods found during the Battle of the Capitol. Unknown mutts, described as black forms crawling in the shadows, also appeared in a pit below a pod near Snow's mansion.[22]
    • In the sewers, Pollux helped steer Squad 451 clear of rats the size of beavers.[23] It is unknown if these were muttations or simply large rats, although the first is more likely due to the nature of the area.

Etymology

The name is a portmanteau of the word "mutt", meaning a mixed breed animal, and "mutation", which refers to heritable changes to genes.

Trivia

  • Mutt sculptures in the Citadel lab in The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes film were created by Twilight Creations, a special effects makeup studio based in Berlin. The team was led by Jörn Seifert,[24] who had previously worked on Mockingjay - Part 1 and Part 2.[25]
  • Fans have speculated that the aquatic mutts seen near the end of the Ballad film were an Easter egg for the 11th Hunger Games, won by Mags Flanagan from District 4,[26] because her district's main industry was fishing.

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 The Hunger Games, Chapter 3
  2. 2.0 2.1 Catching Fire, Chapter 24
  3. Catching Fire, Chapter 6
  4. The Hunger Games, Chapter 14
  5. 5.0 5.1 The Hunger Games, Chapter 25
  6. 6.0 6.1 The Hunger Games (film)
  7. Catching Fire, Chapter 21
  8. 8.0 8.1 Mockingjay, Chapter 22
  9. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Chapter 7
  10. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Chapter 19
  11. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Chapter 8
  12. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Chapter 20
  13. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Chapter 30
  14. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
  15. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Chapter 4
  16. 16.0 16.1 16.2 Catching Fire, Chapter 14
  17. Catching Fire, Chapter 25
  18. Mockingjay, Chapter 13
  19. Mockingjay, Chapter 17
  20. Mockingjay, Chapter 19
  21. Mockingjay, Chapter 18
  22. Mockingjay, Chapter 24
  23. Mockingjay, Chapter 21
  24. https://www.panempropaganda.com/movie-countdown/2023/10/1/the-ballad-of-songbirds-snakes-makeup-designer-sherri-berman.html
  25. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1720604/
  26. MAGS, THE 11TH VICTOR - Capitol Couture
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