/vt/ - Virtual Youtubers

I've talked about how the wiggle boys are treated by humans before (generally poorly except for by a loving few), but where did they come from? Why do they look like people?
I don't think they were ever meant to be in the wild. I think they were lab grown, some sort of engineered mix between parasitic slugs and humans; easy enough to grow even for a novice, they were sold in kits to children, the bastard child of sea monkeys and 60s era wildly unsafe science kits. A pre-fertilised jelly-like egg, powdered growth hormone to mix into a paste, a prick of your blood so they can make an amateurish copy of your form, a small glass dish to watch them grow in in front of your eyes. A popular pet of the future that would inevitably quickly fall out of favour - having a strange, wiggly little copy of yourself is only fun for so long. It scarred many children permanently as these little homunculi found horrific ways to kill themselves, having no sense of self preservation.
They were introduced with no regard for any impact they might have on the environment if they got out - surely it wouldn't matter, would it? Even if they escaped the home, an animal as small as a rat could kill them, chewing through their soft bodies. Pliable and easy to hunt (as their wide, wobbling, stump-legged bodies make them incapable of running away) surely they wouldn't be alive long enough to make an impact. Surely families wouldn't ignore the one per household warning and put several together with unrestricted access to eachother. It was dangerously naïve. See, each wiggle possesses both sets of reproductive organs necessary to lay fertilised eggs, but cannot fertilise its own eggs. Individually they're fine, but put two together and they'll mate frantically like insects, laying anywhere from two to five eggs at a time afterwards. Households quickly became overwhelmed with mass amounts of the creatures, but unable to bring themselves to kill defenceless animals that resemble their children (even if the official advice was to cull breeding pairs immediately and destroy any eggs) they'd simply release them into local woodland.
They reproduced in uncontrollable numbers. They died quickly, but they mated faster, their eggs hatching faster than ever in the cool mud of the forests. Each iteration became a little more competent, a little stronger and more resilient, until they developed ways to defend themselves. Some ooze a poisonous slick from their skin when threatened. Some are soft enough to effectively melt their own bodies, slipping between the talons of predatory birds and reforming when it's safe to do so. There's many strains and species now, woefully under-researched. Maybe one day we'll understand how they function after all these decades breeding and improving - I imagine they're a far cry from those original kit pets, even if they still have a pitiful, almost upsetting existence.