Thanks to Asher for this gift art of... if not Victor himself, then someone further back in his family tree?

What could explain the appearance of this feral-looking fellow?

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The Great Encephalization Event was an abrupt "evolutionary leap" in which profound anatomical and behavioral adaptations appeared in mammal species spanning many different genera in a brief geological span.

"GEE-like" adaptations include: increased cranium size, increased neocortical surface area, upright locomotion, opposable digits, tool use, advanced social organization, the acquisition of spoken language, and "cultural" modes such as the making of clothing, weapons, and forms of artistic expression.

Together these changes form a package known as the "modernity ratchet"—as it is commonly held that the appearance of some of these traits "pushed" the others in an evolutionary arms race mediated by predator-prey interactions. Linguistic scholars even attribute the emergence of global language families to the GEE, as it was clearly evolutionarily advantageous for predators to be able to understand the speech of their prey (and vice versa).

21st century scientists tend to agree that the GEE, despite its name, was not a singular discrete "event," but still use the term as it befits the GEE's abruptness, recency and near-simultaneity. The first animals with GEE-like attributes appear in the fossil record approximately 7.1 Ma, but morphological changes were still occurring in some lineages as late as 0.3 Ma, and there is a contentious report of GEE-compatible mutations in a population of caribou 25,000 years ago.

A recent controversial paper asserts that the GEE in fact never "ended" and that some more modern mutations (such as winglessness in bats) may be GEE-like in nature, but these views are not widely accepted among evolutionary biologists.

The GEE is believed to have unfolded through mutations in a core grouping of ancient genes common to clade Theria. The involvement in the neocortex in these changes explains why the GEE was restricted to mammals and why there are no "anthro" birds, reptiles or fish. It does not rule them out, but merely consigns similar traits in those lineages, if any are discovered, to the effects of convergent evolution.