Turbo Pudding

JungalooThe real story

The real animals hiding in Tavo’s jungle

· The Turbo Pudding team · 5 min read

In the bamboo forest of Windharp Heights, an orchid mantis, a small pink creature shaped like an orchid with petal-like legs, a pointed head and narrowed eyes, shoots one long pink arm out toward Tavo, a boy with a topknot and a woven fruit basket on his back, who stands on the grassy ledge and looks at it with wide eyes, a teal gem floating above his head and tall pale green and blue bamboo stalks rising behind them

The Thousandleaf Isles aren’t on any map. But a lot of the animals that get in Tavo’s way are very real, and some of their best tricks in the game come straight from nature.

Every creature in Jungaloo is under the Baron’s Dazzle, a pink and violet glitter. Knock it off with a fruit or a jump, and the creature sneezes and runs off about its own business. Nobody dies. Each one also shows a tell before it attacks. It’s Thursday, so here are five of them and the true stories behind their tells.

The potoo that plays a branch

In the Glowwood, the night level, some tree stumps aren’t quite stumps. The top of a broken snag turns out to be a potoo, a gray-brown bird that sits so still you could walk right past it. When Tavo gets close, it gapes, pink mouth wide open. That’s the tell. Less than half a second later, it lunges.

Real potoos live in the forests of Central and South America. A potoo spends the day perched on the end of a broken branch, in feathers that look like bark. When it senses danger, it slowly stretches up, points its bill at the sky and freezes into one more broken stub. Small slits in its upper lids let it see movement even while it looks fast asleep. Its mouth is huge, made for catching insects in flight after dusk. And if a predator comes too close anyway, a potoo may drop the act and open its eyes and mouth as wide as they go.

At night in the Glowwood, a potoo, a small gray-brown bird with a mottled body and one big yellow eye, sits on top of a dark tree stump with its triangular pink mouth gaping open, while Tavo, a boy with a topknot and a woven fruit basket on his back, stands a few steps away on the mossy ledge and looks at it, next to three small glowing blue mushrooms, with a teal gem glowing on the left, flat gray shelf fungi on the dark trees and green specks of light in the air
Searched “bird that looks like a branch”. The branch gaped back.

The flower with arms

High up in Windharp Heights, the bamboo level, a pink orchid grows by the path. Look closer, and the petals are legs. It’s an orchid mantis. When Tavo comes near, the flower rises and opens two folded arms, swaying. Then it strikes.

The real orchid mantis lives in Southeast Asia, and it really does look like a flower, pink and white, with legs shaped like petals. People long thought it simply hid among flowers. In 2014, researchers at Macquarie University in Australia tested it. To bees and other pollinators, the mantis’s colors looked just like real flowers. And a mantis sitting alone, with no flowers around, drew pollinators at a higher rate than a real flower, and caught them. It doesn’t hide among the flowers. It is the flower.

The rock that puffs up

On Ember Peak, the volcano, some cracks in the gray rock have an eye in them. That’s a chuckwalla, a big lizard wedged into a cleft. When Tavo comes near, it puffs itself up in the crack, then lunges, its rust-red tail flicking. We picked that tell on purpose, because it’s the chuckwalla’s real trick.

Chuckwallas live in the rocky deserts of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. When a predator shows up, a chuckwalla dives into a crack and fills its lungs with air until it’s wedged in tight. Pull all you like, it won’t budge. When the danger is gone, it lets the air out and squeezes back out.

On a gray stone ledge on Ember Peak at dusk, a chuckwalla, a dark gray lizard with purple sparkles on it, sits puffed up and round in a crack in the rock with its rust-red tail sticking out behind, while Tavo stands on the left with his fruit basket and watches it, with two teal gems glowing above it, a green plant, a small pink flower, tall basalt columns, a purple volcano behind and a thin glowing orange crack in the rock below
Search: “lizard stuck in a rock”. Not stuck. Very much on purpose.

The frog you can see through

Back in the Glowwood, little green frogs hop between the glowing mushrooms. Their skin is see-through, and inside each one a small pink heart is beating. Watch the heart: when the frog crouches to jump, it beats faster, about a third of a second before the hop.

Glass frogs live in the rainforests of Central and South America, and many have see-through skin on their bellies. In 2022, scientists from Duke University and the American Museum of Natural History found an even better trick. A resting glass frog becomes two to three times more transparent by moving about 89 percent of its red blood cells out of circulation and into its liver. When the frog gets moving, the blood comes back, and so does its color.

In the dark Glowwood at night, a glass frog, a round see-through green frog with big yellow eyes and a small pink heart showing inside its body, jumps through the air toward Tavo, who stands on the mossy ground with his fruit basket next to a wooden sign, among small glowing blue mushrooms, ferns, gray shelf fungi and floating golden specks of light
Typed “see-through frog game”. Yes, that’s its heart. It’s fine.

The bird with the bottle cap

Remember the bottle cap on Captain Bellows’s chest? Above Plumehall, the Baron’s palace in the sky, glossy blue birds hover in the moonlight. They’re satin bowerbirds, and they collect blue things for the Baron’s bower. Before one dives at Tavo, it hangs in the air, flaps hard and shows off its best find: a blue bottle cap.

The real satin bowerbird lives in eastern Australia. To impress a female, the male builds a bower, a little avenue of sticks on the ground, and decorates the ground around it. He loves blue: feathers, flowers, berries and, from people, bottle tops, drinking straws and clothes pegs. Researchers have found that males strongly prefer blue over other colors. So a bowerbird with a bottle cap isn’t a joke we made up.

Nearby, on the Star Balcony, Old Lento the sloth sips tea by his campfire: “I’ve been… climbing… since Tuesday. Worth it… for the view.”

Under a starry purple night sky above Plumehall, a glossy royal-blue satin bowerbird with a violet eye hovers high up with a round blue bottle cap in its bill, while below, Tavo lands on a golden walkway set with blue stones in a little puff of dust, a pink heart floats nearby, a carved wooden post stands in the middle, and on the right Old Lento, a gray sloth with a green leaf on his head and half-glasses, sits by a small campfire sipping a steaming cup of tea beside a teal teapot, in front of two brown domes topped with pink plumes
People also ask: “do birds collect bottle caps?” This one shows off.

Meet them in the jungle

Levels 1–3 and the first boss are free to play in your browser at jungaloo.com, and the full game is $4.99, paid once. More about the game is on the Jungaloo page.

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