The Big One & Subordinates (S/F)

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Two out of the three raptors (1993)

The Big One was a Velociraptor antirrhopus bred by International Genetic Technologies for the Jurassic Park theme park in the early 1990s. She was known for her intelligence and unpredictable behaviors, including numerous attacks on InGen personnel. When introduced to the raptor paddock, she assumed authority and subsequently killed five of her packmates, leaving only two survivors. She and her two subordinates were involved in the incident in June that year which caused Jurassic Park’s construction and development to be halted indefinitely.

Her sex, and that of her subordinates, cannot actually be determined. While InGen staff assumed all Park animals to be female, Velociraptor and some of the other later species were capable of protogyny due to genetic modification. It is unknown whether any of these three raptors had made the transition into terminal-phase males, but at least one of the original eight animals had done so and bred with one of the females. All three of these raptors died during the 1993 incident; The Big One was preyed upon by a Tyrannosaurus, and one of her subordinates was killed by the same animal a few moments later. The third was locked in a walk-in freezer before the island was abandoned, and died from either starvation and dehydration or the cold temperatures after the Park’s power was turned on.

Name

The Big One was nicknamed by Jurassic Park’s game warden Robert Muldoon, not because of her size but because of her authority. She was actually the same size as her packmates due to being one of a series of identical clones.

No confirmed names are known for any of the other raptors, but the two subordinates are non-canonically named Randy and Kim by fans. These names come from the names of the raptors’ respective animators, Randal Dutra and Kimberly Blanchette. Jurassic-Pedia uses these unofficial names for convenience’s sake.

Biography
Creation

InGen’s Dr. Henry Wu succeeded in reconstructing the Velociraptor genome in the early 1990s, with the first specimens being cloned from ancient DNA in late 1991. To replace degraded segments of the genome, he utilized genes from the yellow-banded poison dart frog (Dendrobates leucomelas), but these were found to be incompatible with Velociraptor. To amend this, Dr. Wu turned to the common reed frog (Hyperolius viridiflavus) instead. These successfully integrated into the raptor genome, and a viable specimen was hatched.

The exact date at which The Big One, or the raptors who became her subordinates, hatched is unknown. It would have been sometime between late September 1991 and mid-1992, since all three were fully-grown adults before June 1993. They hatched at the Site B laboratory facility on Isla Sorna as part of a larger group of Velociraptors, many of which were intended for Jurassic Park on Isla Nublar. On February 13, 1992, the first batch of raptors was observed by Dr. Wu and the Park’s game warden Robert Muldoon, who observed very high levels of collective intelligence among the animals. Whether any of the three raptors discussed here had hatched yet is unknown.

Establishing authority on Isla Nublar

At some point earlier in 1993, The Big One was deemed healthy enough for introduction to the raptor paddock at Jurassic Park and was shipped across the Gulf of Fernandez to the island. At the time she was introduced, there were seven other raptors living in the paddock already, and she made eight. The Big One quickly assumed a position of authority over the others, using her high intelligence and physical strength to dominate the rest. Not all of her fellows took kindly to her usurping their existing power structure, and several challenged her. Each challenge ended in bloody defeat, leaving only two other raptors left alive. The survivors have been unofficially termed Randy and Kim for the purposes of identifying them in this article.

With the new power structure in place, The Big One was the alpha raptor, with Randy dominant over Kim. Their leader took issue with her confinement: whenever feeders came to the paddock to deliver food, The Big One led her subordinates in attempts to breach the paddock’s electric fences. Each time, the attack ended in failure, the fences delivering painful electric shocks to the raptors and the feeders getting away unharmed. But these failed efforts were not random; they were methodical, systematic, probing the fences to see if there was any spot that did not shock them upon physical contact, or a spot where the pain was tolerable. The raptors were looking for a crack in the armor, a weak point they could exploit.

Muldoon grew wise to their efforts. He already suspected that these animals were too intelligent to keep in a paddock, that they would always understand their status as captive creatures and seek freedom. Plans were made to relocate the raptors, and halfway across the island a small holding pen was built to keep them under much closer watch until a solution could be created. Muldoon suggested the euthanasia of all the raptors, but the Park’s owner John Hammond would not accept this as the solution and sought alternatives.

In the meantime, eggs were laid in the paddock sometime during the wet season, in a sheltered nest beneath a huge Moreton Bay fig. The eggs would be hatching soon; they probably belonged to The Big One, though her mate’s identity is unknown. One of the other raptors had undergone a dramatic anatomical change: her reproductive organs deteriorated, growing back in a new form. This raptor was now a male, and he had undergone a process called protogyny. It is not known whether Randy or Kim was this terminal-phase male or whether he was one of the raptors The Big One killed during the earlier bloodbath. If the eggs did not belong to The Big One, the social dynamic change brought about by mating and reproduction may have been a possible contributing factor to The Big One’s slaughtering of her packmates. Whatever the cause and whichever of the raptors had bred, the eggs were spared from her violence and were nearing old enough to hatch by June 1993.

But that was the point at which the raptors were scheduled to be relocated, which occurred at the beginning of the month. The raptors were tranquilized by Muldoon and the Park Rangers, placed in a transport cage, and moved via forklift to the small holding pen. Upon waking up, the raptors found that they were about to be forced into a much smaller habitat than before by their handlers, and this angered them. They quickly formulated a plan to retaliate and possibly escape. Firstly, their cage was on a track, having been rolled into place by the workers. The cage was moved such as that its loading end was flush with the pen’s gate walls, making it impossible to go anywhere but inside. InGen Security workers surrounded the cage, and atop it, the pen’s gatekeeper (a man named Jophery Brown) was positioned to open the cage’s gate and allow the raptors into their new unit. When he raised the cage’s gate, the raptors surprised their captors by turning around and ramming the rear of the cage instead of running into the pen. This caused the cage to roll on the track away from the gate, opening a gap between the pen walls and the cage. Brown fell from his position as the cage rolled out from under him and he landed hard on the concrete below. Before he could recover, one of the raptors grabbed him by the foot and attempted to haul him into the cage. Muldoon rushed to help his coworker, instructing the Security staff to shoot the raptors dead, but the men did not comply, using non-lethal methods to push the raptors back.

The escape attempt failed, but they had their revenge. Brown was mauled to death despite Muldoon’s best efforts at saving him. From here, the enmity between Muldoon and The Big One only grew bitterer; she had killed one of his subordinates, making a direct threat to him in the best way she knew. For the time being, the raptors were protected by their value to Hammond, who still opposed Muldoon’s suggestion of euthanasia. The raptors lived discontentedly in their pen, being fed live cattle via crane instead of the regimen they were used to. Their interactions with InGen staff was kept extremely limited, with observation from the other side of a reinforced glass panel and a guard tower being their main forms of contact.

1993 incident, deaths, and legacy

Far away from Isla Nublar, the death of Jophery Brown was the latest in a series of incidents that caused InGen’s Board of Directors to lose faith in Hammond’s ability to create a viable Park. The Board reviewed the island facility, determining that major construction should halt until a panel of outside experts could tour the Park and give it their endorsement. These experts arrived to the island on June 11, 1993; they included InGen’s legal expert Donald Gennaro, paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant, mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm, and paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler. During the day, the tour group visited the raptor pen at feeding time along with Hammond and Muldoon, learning about the raptors’ intelligence and Muldoon’s opinions on them. The staff members did not mention Brown’s death, so the endorsement group did not learn that these raptors were the indirect reason for their visit.

That evening, a tropical storm rolled over the island, causing minor structural damage but leaving the raptors’ pen more or less unharmed. It was one of only a few systems that did not lose power due to sabotage that occurred in the Park; the facility’s chief programmer Dennis Nedry had been bribed to steal trade secrets from InGen by one of its rivals and shut down the Park’s security systems. The raptor pen was still online, Nedry having known better than to turn off the only thing keeping the raptors contained, and the animals themselves had no knowledge of the havoc unfolding outside their pen’s walls. During that time, most InGen staff had left for weekend shore leave, and the raptors had no one observing them.

But on the following day, June 12, the raptors got their chance. Power to the entire Park was shut down during an effort to restore the sabotaged systems. At some point not long after this, the raptors realized that the technology holding them in place had fallen silent. The electric fences no longer shocked them upon contact. This was the moment they had been waiting for: a weakness in the systems keeping them imprisoned. Clawing and gnawing their way through the cables around the pen’s wall, they broke free, and moved into the nearby forest.

The Big One took the initiative in hunting down the first human they encountered. This was the Park’s chief engineer Ray Arnold, who was on his way into the maintenance shed to flip the circuit breakers. She followed him inside, and when he neared the circuit breakers, she killed him and tore his body limb from limb. Randy and Kim waited in the nearby woods for their leader to reemerge, but she did not; the door having shut behind her when she entered the building, she was now trapped inside. The Park’s maintenance tunnels had not yet been excavated this far south, so there was no other way out.

A short while later, two more humans approached the pen area. These were Muldoon and Dr. Sattler, following in Arnold’s footsteps after he failed to return. It did not take long before Muldoon located one of the raptors, lurking in the foliage directly ahead. He instructed Sattler to make a run for the maintenance shed, and she escaped Randy and Kim, but Muldoon had unwittingly sent her directly into The Big One’s waiting jaws. While Sattler descended further into the building, Randy and Kim set up an ambush for Muldoon. At the moment it is unknown which raptor performed which role. The one which Muldoon had spotted was bait, remaining intentionally visible as to draw his attention. Muldoon set up his gun and took aim, while the second raptor quietly maneuvered around to his left. She revealed herself once she was close enough that Muldoon would be unable to defend himself, allowing him to realize that she had gotten the better of him. Muldoon, once he saw he had been had, could not help but admire the raptors’ skill as hunters. Although he was not nearly fast enough to turn his gun on the ambushing raptor, he would not go down without a fight; as soon as he made his move, she made hers. The raptor, naturally, was faster. Muldoon was mauled to death by the raptor’s sharp claws and teeth while the other watched with pleasure at their warden’s demise.

Within the maintenance shed, The Big One realized she was no longer alone in the building and ambushed Sattler from behind the circuit breaker board. This was moments after the power was successfully reactivated, and Sattler nearly lost her life while celebrating the Park’s apparent restoration. She fled, using the shed’s gates and stairwells to slow The Big One’s pursuit. The shed had been built for humans to navigate, not dinosaurs, and here Sattler had the advantage. She made it out of the surface-level door, shutting it before The Big One could reach it. Having now lost a potential victim, the alpha raptor remained trapped within the shed.

In the meantime, Randy and Kim followed a new scent westward to the Visitors’ Centre. This led them down the path leading to Dr. Alan Grant and Hammond’s grandchildren, Lex and Tim Murphy. While Grant had departed the Centre by the time the raptors arrived, the vulnerable children were still there, Grant having believed the Centre to be safe. The children hid in the Centre’s kitchen, and the raptors followed. Randy was the first to reach the door, manipulating the handle until she figured out how to get it to open. Having figured out this puzzle, she called Kim over and entered. Randy briefly snapped at Kim to reinforce her dominant status when Kim showed too much initiative in this hunt. The raptors searched through the kitchen for the children, honing in on any noises that might reveal their prey’s location. A tapping sound caught Kim’s attention and she spotted one of the children inside a cabinet, charging in for the kill, but struck a solid surface instead: she had mistakenly attacked Lex’s reflection. Tim, meanwhile, faced off against Randy; he managed to lure her into a walk-in freezer, and with Lex’s help, locked her inside. With the door bolted shut, Randy was unable to escape. Kim, recovering from having stunned herself, saw the children escaping the kitchen and began to follow.

Kim tracked them to the Visitors’ Centre control room, where Grant and Sattler were now protecting them. The door was shut, but Kim had learned from Randy how the door handles worked, and now replicated Randy’s solution to the puzzle. Grant and Sattler fought back, holding the door shut until it locked. Kim had nearly made it inside, the humans having shut the door on her fingers, and was now frustrated. She could no longer open the door to get at her enemies, so she needed another way in. The answer ended up being quite obvious: the huge windows into the control room. She backed up, preparing to impact the glass. Grant shot at her but missed, and as the gun jammed, he discarded it. The humans clambered into the ventilation ducts. The glass had been weakened when Grant shot through it, and Kim was able to shatter the window without difficulty. She began tracking the humans, and eventually discovered a weak point in the vents. Pushing her head through, she was almost immediately kicked in the face by Grant, falling to the floor; Lex nearly tumbled out after her, but was helped back in by Grant before Kim could take a bite out of the child’s legs.

The humans reached the main rotunda with Kim still in pursuit, and Kim followed them as they used fossil displays to head for the ground floor. Before the humans could make it out through an unfinished wall, The Big One finally joined the hunt. She had managed to escape the maintenance shed, having witnessed Arnold and Sattler both use the door handle to enter or exit the building and replicating their technique. Together with Kim, she corralled the humans into a kill zone, preparing to pounce. As she made her fatal leap, The Big One was ambushed: she had been followed into the Centre by a huge tyrannosaur, which caught her in mid-air. She was thrashed about and killed by its immense crushing jaws.

Kim had never seen such a creature before, but was not intimidated. Instead, she was enraged by the death of her leader. As the tyrannosaur settled in to dine on The Big One’s carcass, Kim leapt onto the larger theropod’s side and attacked, slashing and biting into the predator’s flanks. Meanwhile, the humans escaped for good. Kim continued her attack, clawing up the tyrannosaur’s neck and shoulders, but was shaken from her perch into biting range. The tyrannosaur managed to grab her, crunching bones and organs alike with her powerful jaws. Kim died from these multiple devastating internal wounds, and her corpse was thrown into the fossil displays by the tyrannosaur in an act of savage enjoyment. With both raptors dead, the tyrannosaur was free to feed at her leisure.

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Lower left leg and foot of either Kim or The Big One, the only confirmed remains of these two raptors seen after their deaths.

The last raptor to die was Randy, who would have become subject to the freezer’s cold temperatures after the door was shut and held the frigid air inside. If the temperature was not enough to kill her, or the power failed and the freezer turned off again before frostbite or exposure became fatal, Randy would have faced a slow, agonizing death from starvation or dehydration. There was some food and water ice in the freezer, but with no way out, she would eventually have run out of things to eat and drink.

With The Big One and Kim being eaten by the tyrannosaur, their remains were scarce. One of the raptors’ legs was found in the Visitors’ Centre later that day, but no other body parts were left. Tyrannosaur jaws can crush bone, but their stomachs cannot digest it, so any fragmentary skeletal remains were likely scattered about the island in the tyrannosaur’s droppings. Meanwhile, efforts to revitalize Jurassic Park nine years later did not end up including the Visitors’ Centre, so the walk-in freezer was never opened again. It remained Randy’s final resting place. The eruption of Mount Sibo in 2018 may have destroyed the Centre, and Randy’s skeleton with it.

At the moment, no living descendants of any of these three raptors are confirmed. While the eggs did hatch on June 12, a cleanup operation one year after the incident discovered the carcasses of baby raptors on the island, suggesting that none of the juveniles could survive without parental care. InGen continued to work with Velociraptor for decades to come after this dismal failure, but the newer raptors are of different genetic stock; members of the lineage that included The Big One have not been seen since 2004. Her line, and those of her relatives from Isla Sorna, may be extinct.

Skills
Hunting and tracking

Using their superior senses of smell, vision, and hearing, the raptors were highly capable of tracking down and killing prey items, rivals, and enemies. This helped them in unfamiliar places, which included most of Isla Nublar after their escape from captivity on June 12, 1993. Retaliating against the humans that had contained them brought the raptors through the visitor compound area, including the maintenance shed and Visitors’ Centre. These were complex, artificial environments not built for raptors to navigate, but they were still able to pursue the humans throughout by using their senses to track them. Coordination was also key to their hunting abilities; Randy and Kim worked well together and were able to perform a skilled ambush attack on Jurassic Park’s game warden Robert Muldoon, who was himself a highly capable hunter who had bested many predatory animals in his career.

Athletic ability

According to Robert Muldoon, the raptors were capable of speeds reaching fifty to sixty miles per hour when in the open, comparable to a cheetah. Along with this, they were “astonishing jumpers,” noticeably capable of clearing heights several times their own using their muscular legs to propel themselves. During their time in captivity they used their strength and resilience to fight back against the technologies that kept them restrained, withstanding shocks from highly electrified fences and other security systems. Once they breached containment and made it into the open, they continued to fight through the obstacles humans placed in their way. The only foe they could not overcome was a Tyrannosaurus rex, which preyed upon them. While the raptors were faster and more maneuverable, the tyrannosaur outmatched them with sheer bone-crushing power.

Problem-solving

While the raptors’ senses and strength were invaluable assets, it was their intelligence that really set them apart from other animals as hunters. They were ancestrally an intelligent species, comparable to modern felines, but genetic modification resulted in extremely high levels of intelligence on par with great apes. Raptor intelligence is enhanced through social behavior, and collectively they can be smarter than the sum of their parts. While in captivity, the raptors formulated sophisticated escape plans, some of which nearly succeeded. Park warden Robert Muldoon observed them probing the electric fences for weaknesses, and was so concerned with their ability to free themselves that he eventually recommended that they all be euthanized. After they finally succeeded at escaping during the incident in 1993, all three of them learned how to manipulate door handles. The Big One appears to have learned this by watching humans, while Randy figured it out through trial and error. Kim was instructed on how to solve this puzzle by Randy.

Social skills

The Velociraptor species is innately social, but The Big One appears to have had noticeably underdeveloped social skills and came into fatal conflict with all but two of her packmates. According to Robert Muldoon, these fights came after she was introduced to the paddock and took over the pride. Raptors establish authority through a variety of leadership criteria, including strength as a hunter, intelligence, and empathy; it appears The Big One only met two out of the three of these. The exact circumstances of her slaughtering five of her fellows is unknown, but most likely had to do with challenges to her authority. Randy and Kim were much better adjusted, having only one minor squabble over who should take point during a hunt and following their alpha’s orders without fail. It does not appear that they were kept in line through fear alone; when The Big One was killed, Kim flew into a rage and initiated a suicidal attack on a far larger and stronger predator. This suggests she had a genuine emotional connection to her alpha.

At some point, two of the eight raptors bred, one of them having become a male. It is unknown at this time whether the eggs belonged to any one or two of the three survivors. If this is the case, then at least one of the surviving raptors may have been male, and their aggressive behavior toward humans could be explained as protecting their offspring. Their capabilities as parents were never tested because they were never reunited with their young, dying while the hatchlings made their way into the unforgiving jungle without them.

Views
On captivity

These raptors’ cognition was poorly studied in comparison to later specimens, but some information about how they perceived their world can be surmised from their behavior. What is known is that they absolutely loathed captivity; they were fully aware that their movement was being limited by restraining technologies and would do anything in their power to change that. While in captivity, they regularly tested the strength of the electric fences, searching for weak points that they could break through. It appears that they mainly did this when handlers were present, making their attacks on the fences look as though they were simply futile attempts to get at InGen employees. Muldoon did realize what the raptors were really doing and had them relocated to a much smaller holding pen where they could be monitored closely. The raptors’ escape attempts did not stop, and within minutes of the power to their pen being cut during the 1993 incident, they broke free. This suggests they were constantly watching for any change in the activity of the technological systems keeping them confined.

Perception of humans

These raptors had fairly few interspecies relationships, knowing mostly one another and their human captors. They had no love for the humans, even though they were provided food and safe habitats. Being contained was an affront to their nature and they strove to escape at any chance they got. The raptors recognized the intelligence of humans, strategizing in ways that would take advantage of the humans’ common psychological weaknesses. One good example is their probing of the electric fences. These were framed as aggressive attacks toward the employees who brought their food, as they only tested the fences when feeders were present. This way, they made it look as though they were merely trying to kill their handlers, rather than testing the fences. The raptors knew that humans would underestimate their intelligence and used this to their advantage. It was only their pattern of never striking the same part of the fence twice that gave away their true intentions.

Once in the wild, the raptors did not vacate the area and return to their original territory, but instead remained in the visitor compound and hunted down the humans that remained there. By this point they viewed all humans as threats, not wanting to be locked up again. Their behavior was likely also an effort to kill off what they perceived as a competing intelligent social animal. With a nest in the forest some miles away from the compound, they also had young to protect. They adapted their strategy for the specific humans they were hunting, using an impressive bait-and-ambush strategy to best the experienced hunter Robert Muldoon but opting to simply stalk and chase the Murphy children. This suggests they could not only predict human behavior in general, but predict the threat levels of specific humans they were facing. They were certainly capable of remembering individual human faces; the raptor which killed Muldoon took evident pleasure in his realization that he had met his match, giving him a moment to contemplate his imminent demise. The raptors made no such accommodations for the other humans they attacked, suggesting that while they viewed all of the humans as enemies or rivals, they held special hatred for Muldoon and relished in his defeat.

Relationships
One another

These three raptors’ social lives are poorly understood and consisted mostly of efforts to escape captivity. The Big One was dominant over the other two, using her superior strength and intelligence to establish herself as a worthy leader. Other raptor alphas have shown signs of empathy (though the degree of advancement varies greatly), but this was not documented in The Big One. Nonetheless, her subordinates showed behaviors that suggest they did have a strong emotional attachment to their leader. Randy held more authority than Kim, and would remind Kim of this by snapping and hissing at her when she took more initiative than she was permitted.

It is possible that one or two of these raptors may have been terminal-phase males, and that they had bred with each other. Since raptors are usually matriarchal, The Big One was most likely a female, while either Randy, Kim, or both of them could have been her mates. What aspect this would have played on their relationships with each other, if it was the case at all, is unknown.

Randy and Kim followed The Big One’s orders without apparent question, even when this resulted in them taking repeated electric shocks from the Park’s security systems. Their efforts eventually paid off, allowing them to escape during the 1993 incident. Together they attempted to rid their territory of humans, cooperating to ambush Muldoon and hunt down many of the other people in the visitor compound. The hunt ended with Randy being locked in a walk-in freezer and the other two being killed by a tyrannosaur; The Big One was actually the first to die, the tyrannosaur hunting her down in the mid-morning of June 12. Kim flew into a rage, attacking the larger predator in a futile effort to avenge her fallen alpha; she was killed after a brief but furious fight.

Other Velociraptors

The other raptors in the paddock were older than The Big One, with Randy and Kim among them, but were usurped by this newcomer sometime in late 1992 or early 1993. Many of the older raptors were killed by The Big One, with a total of five dying by her claws and teeth. They had probably challenged her for the alpha position, as fights for leadership are the usual cause of intraspecific violence among Velociraptor. After the bloodbath ended, only Randy and Kim remained of the original raptor population.

At some point before their relocation in early June, probably three to six months prior, two of the raptors had bred and produced eight eggs. It is unknown which of the raptors became a male, and which female laid the eggs. Randy or Kim may have been the father, if one or both of them were terminal-phase males, with The Big One most likely the mother. Alternately, The Big One may have bred with another raptor before killing him, or the mother of the eggs could have been one of her victims and thus the offspring were not her own. In any case the eggs were unharmed until they hatched, but without any adult raptors to imprint on, the young wandered into the jungle after hatching on June 12, 1993 and were never seen alive again. A survey of the island in 1994 discovered the carcasses of multiple juvenile raptors, so most or all of them did not survive.

Dr. Henry Wu

These raptors were created by the geneticist Dr. Henry Wu, one of InGen’s most prized assets and the mind behind using gene splicing to repair ancient DNA. Because of his practices, the raptors’ genomes included genes from Hyperolius viridiflavus, which caused them to unexpectedly exhibit protogyny. In effect, it was because of Dr. Wu that the raptors were able to breed. He did not encounter them much after they were introduced to their paddock, though in February 1992 when the earliest raptors were just a few months old he and Robert Muldoon were the first people to document the raptors’ collective intelligence.

The raptors did not repay Dr. Wu for creating them and giving them the means to reproduce. In fact, they caused considerable damage to his career by killing a worker and leading to the closure of Jurassic Park. However, he did find a silver lining to the problems caused by the raptors; when he learned that they had bred, his research into the cause led to him discovering the unintended side effects of gene splicing in late 1994. This confirmed his hypothesis that functional genes from one species could be applied to alter the biology of another, which he described in a 1995 book. Two years after this, he created the first artificial hybrid species recognized by the scientific community, Karacosis wutansis.

Dr. John Parker Alfred Hammond

InGen’s founder and the owner of Jurassic Park, Dr. John Hammond, was responsible for the raptors’ creation in the first place. According to Hammond, he was present at the hatching of every creature on Isla Nublar, though it is unclear if he was also present for every hatching on Isla Sorna. All of the raptors in Jurassic Park, save for the most recent ones bred in the Visitors’ Centre laboratory, were hatched at the Site B facilities. If Hammond was present for them, he would have been the first thing they saw, and thus the figure they imprinted on.

Hammond understood that the raptors were a problem for Jurassic Park, but did not agree that this merited their destruction and prevented Muldoon from having them euthanized. Instead, he had new raptors shipped in to replace those killed by The Big One and made plans to replace the raptor exhibit with a less intelligent species. The raptors remained contained in the holding pen at his orders until a suitable solution could be found for them.

During the 1993 incident, the raptors breached containment and threatened Hammond’s grandchildren, though the raptors had no real way of knowing that the Murphy children were relatives of his. In fact, they did not encounter Hammond at all during the incident, although they caused irreparable damage to Jurassic Park and by extent InGen. These three raptors had previously killed a worker whose family sued InGen, leading to the 1993 incident. Even after all these events, Hammond held no particular malice toward Velociraptor or any other dinosaur, accepting that the problems had been his own fault.

Robert Muldoon

Jurassic Park’s game warden Robert Muldoon had already hunted many carnivorous animals and come out on top, but he was unnerved by the heightened intelligence of InGen’s Velociraptors and the effects their brainpower had on their ability to hunt in packs. He first observed this behavior in February 1992 and was astonished at the degree of coordination the raptors could accomplish at such a young age. When they were introduced to Jurassic Park, the raptors settled into their habitat, but when The Big One entered the paddock she assumed an alpha position and killed five of her challengers. This shocked Muldoon, who began to consider the raptors too unpredictable for Park exhibition.

The Big One and her two subordinates began a series of escape attempts disguised as random aggression. Muldoon understood the raptors’ true intent when he realized they never struck the same place on the fence twice, meaning they were systematically testing the fences for weaknesses. He oversaw the raptors’ relocation to a small holding pen, and during the transfer, the raptors attempted escape and killed an InGen Security employee. From here, Muldoon and The Big One grew to hate one another more and more. Muldoon advocated for all of the raptors to be euthanized, and had she the chance to do so, The Big One would have done no better to Muldoon.

When the raptors breached containment on June 12, 1993 due to a power outage, both Muldoon and his adversaries got the chance to finally do each other in. The Big One was not present for Muldoon’s death, but Randy and Kim arranged a setup to ambush him. One raptor waited in an exposed position, acting as bait, while the other sneaked around to attack from the side while Muldoon was distracted. This outwitted Muldoon, and in his final moments, he could not help but admire his enemy’s tactical skill. Likewise, the raptor took a moment to relish Muldoon’s imminent death, knowing she could kill him at any moment before he could turn his gun on her. She waited until he made a move first, then fell upon him. The other watched, satisfied, as their former captor was dismembered.

Dr. Gerry Harding

Jurassic Park’s chief veterinarian Dr. Gerry Harding was tasked with looking after the raptors’ health, along with all the other dinosaurs on the island. While his relationship to them was mostly unknown, they were probably among his most difficult patients. He would have required extra help from Muldoon during veterinary operations involving the raptors.

While he did discover the aftermath of the tyrannosaur attack in the Visitors’ Centre during the 1993 incident, he did not encounter any of these three raptors alive. The raptors he encountered during the incident were a group that Hammond had brought from Isla Sorna to replace The Big One’s victims.

John Raymond “Ray” Arnold

The Park’s infrastructure was the work of Ray Arnold, the facility’s chief engineer, and so he was probably the mind behind both their original paddock and the small holding pen that held them after their escape efforts. Arnold did not regularly encounter any of the Park animals in person, but had a fatal run-in with The Big One while trying to restart the power to Jurassic Park. Incidentally, it was he who cut the Park’s power and freed the raptors, which was an unintended effect of his effort to restart the Park to get the security systems working again. The Big One followed him into the maintenance shed and dismembered him before he could activate the circuit breakers. She was trapped in the shed for a time, but eventually learned how to operate the door handle, possibly having watched Arnold enter the shed and recalling how he did it.

Other InGen staff

Between the geneticists, animal handlers, and Park workers, the raptors had a variety of relationships with the InGen staff who maintained them. It is likely that this exciting species would have been witnessed by some of InGen’s higher-ups, including co-founder Sir Benjamin Lockwood and members of the Board of Directors such as Chairman Peter Ludlow. Their species was studied by Dr. Laura Sorkin, but it is not known if she (or any of the above people) specifically encountered The Big One and her subordinates.

After The Big One took over the Isla Nublar pride, she led her subordinates in a series of attacks, apparently against the employees who came to give the raptors their food. They would launch themselves at the electric fences whenever the feeders came, being repelled each time. Eventually, Robert Muldoon realized that they never attacked the same place twice, and came to the conclusion that the raptors were probing the fences for weaknesses. This led to the raptors being sedated and relocated to a holding pen. During transport, the raptors organized an escape plan; it was unsuccessful, but resulted in the death of InGen worker Jophery Brown. Despite Muldoon’s orders for the other handlers to shoot the raptors, his orders were not followed and the workers tried to use non-lethal weapons to save Brown. This failed; the raptors were successfully installed into the pen, though, and were maintained for about a week.

During the endorsement tour, the raptors were fed once by staff before most employees took shore leave for the weekend. No staff were present when the raptors escaped, which was largely due to the sabotage perpetrated by the Park’s chief programmer Dennis Nedry. Notably, Nedry did not include the raptor pen among the security systems he shut down as part of his plan to steal trade secrets; Muldoon’s commentary implies that Nedry was well aware of the raptors’ aggressive behavior and intentionally did not give them a chance to escape. When Nedry failed to return and restore the systems, though, other Park staff were forced to do it themselves by restarting all of the Park’s power, which freed the raptors.

Park guests

Few guests visited Isla Nublar during the Jurassic Park era, since the Park was constructed largely in secret and never succeeded in opening. The only visitors included Charlotte Lockwood, daughter of InGen co-founder Benjamin Lockwood; she lived on Isla Sorna from 1986 to 1995 and visited Isla Nublar. It is unknown if she witnessed the raptors as adults. They did not get any more guests until 1993, when InGen’s Board of Directors demanded a panel of outside experts tour the Park and give it their endorsement. These included Drs. Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler, who were skeptical of the raptors in particular. Grant specialized in deinonychosaurian evolution and learned about the raptors’ advanced hunting abilities from Muldoon, becoming highly critical of the Park after this. Other members of the tour included mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm, who was also skeptical about the raptors, and legal consultant Donald Gennaro, who was fairly positive about everything to do with the Park despite witnessing the raptors at feeding time like the other tour group members.

Later in the day, the tour group was joined by Hammond’s grandchildren Lex and Tim Murphy. The children did not encounter the raptors until the next day; among the tour group, Sattler was the first to meet them again. She personally faced The Big One after completing Ray Arnold’s restart of the Park’s power, escaping and shutting the alpha raptor in the maintenance shed. She rejoined Grant to find and protect the children, who were hunted by Randy and Kim. Lex saved her brother by distracting the raptors from him, and during the attack Kim accidentally rammed into a cabinet while attacking Lex’s reflection. Tim tricked Randy into becoming trapped in a walk-in freezer. With Lex’s help, he shut the raptor inside and locked the door; they had previously witnessed Randy figure out how to operate a door handle and ensured that she could not get out this time. Kim pursued the children, who were then protected by Drs. Grant and Sattler as they restored the Park’s security systems and fled the Visitors’ Centre. Kim and The Big One cornered the four humans, but were unable to make the kill as the Park’s tyrannosaur was hunting The Big One as well. As the raptors were attacked, their prey made one final escape and got off the island alive.

Other animals

For the most part, the raptors had few interactions with other species. Their conspecifics, the other Velociraptors, were mostly slaughtered by The Big One during what are believed to have been fights for the alpha position. After being relocated to the holding pen, their only real interactions were with the livestock, such as cattle, that they were fed.

Had they moved back into the jungle upon obtaining their long-sought-after freedom, the three raptors would have encountered several other de-extinct species along with Isla Nublar’s indigenous wildlife, but they never got this chance. Of paramount importance to them was exterminating the humans of the island. During their hunt, they themselves were hunted. The Big One was tracked down by the Park’s only Tyrannosaurus rex, which ambushed and killed The Big One before being attacked by an enraged Kim. This led to Kim’s death, and the tyrannosaur consumed both carcasses. Only a piece of one of the raptors’ left legs, and copious amounts of blood, was found afterward. The leg was probably eaten by scavengers such as Compsognathus later.

Portrayal

The Big One and her subordinates are portrayed through a combination of animatronics, puppetry, and computer-generated imagery. They are not based on specific raptors in Michael Crichton‘s 1990 novel, but are more or less based on his portrayal of Velociraptor in the book in general.

Due to the appearances of the three raptors being identical, it was long impossible to tell which was which, and which was the individual Muldoon refers to as “The Big One.” In more recent years, Rick Carter’s collection of documents from the first Jurassic Park regarding the continuity breakdown revealed that the female in the Shed that attacks Ellie is The Big One. However, there is still some disagreement among fans as to whether these documents represent the final version of the film. The names of the other two raptors, Randy and Kim, were once thought to be the names of the raptors given by the film producers, but it was soon afterward learned that the animators for the raptors during the kitchen sequence were Randal Dutra and Kimberly Blanchette, and that the names on production notes refer to the animators and not the raptors themselves. Nonetheless, calling the raptors Randy and Kim is still a decent way to identify them from one another, and now honors the animators who brought them to life on the big screen.