The Fluffiest Cats In The World.
This is exactly the kind of floof therapy I need after tonight
Requested by @catsupy
Here at the Scientific Pokedex, we like dealing with scientifically-proven facts. Here is one such fact for you: Cutiefly is flippin’ adorable.
This is one of those rare pokémon that’s straight-up ripped off from our world. Cutiefly is the “Bee Fly” pokémon, and Bee Flies are the Bombyliidae family in our world:
Bee Flies are in fact flies, not bees. They are also fuzzy and adorable. Like bees, they feed on nectar and pollen. Looking like a bee works to their advantage: bee flies will infiltrate bee nests, eating the bee’s hard-earned storage of nectar and honey. They also eat the bee’s eggs, replacing them with their own bee fly eggs for the bee mom to raise unsuspectingly.
The pokédex states that Cutiefly can “sense auras” of flowers, and because of that can they tell which flowers are about to bloom. Usually when a pokédex entry mentions the word “aura”, things start to slip scientifically. In Cutiefly’s instance, this is not the case at all: real bees (and bee flies) have special eyes that show them a lot more about flowers than we can see.
Human eyes, as you might know, can only detect a small wavelength range of light. All other kinds of light–infrared, radio, microwave, x-ray etc. – are invisible to us. This is not the case for bees (and bee flies): A bee’s eye can see a different wavelength range than us, and therefore they can see more “colors”. Specifically, they can see farther into the ultraviolet:
Flowers are colorful enough as they are to us, but it turns out flowers are even more colorful in the ultraviolet. Specifically, flowers “light up” close to the center: basically a big neon sign saying “the nectar is right here!” for creatures that can see it. Here’s a few examples of what flowers might look like to Cutiefly:
Beyond this, bees can also sense electric fields. Pollen has a slight negative charge to it which creates an electric field, so when a flower has a lot of pollen it will light up even more on a bee’s radar. A flower has a lot of pollen when it is in full bloom and hasn’t been visited by a bee yet. With this, bees can “sense” when a flower is in its prime, just as Cutiefly’s pokédex entry suggests.
deepintheshadyglen