Principles of Supernatural Selection

While our colleagues have been frittering away their energies on the vagaries of this and that contingent development in the visible world, we ourselves have, pursuant to a billion-euro grant from the IMF (Office of Unexplained Anomalies) undertaken to found an entirely new field:  Ekapsychic Adaptationism, or Supernatural Selection.  

To this end, we have assembled a crack team of researchers, including such luminaries of metanormal science as Bill, Chuck, Jim, and Bob, to aid us in p-p-penetrating  this inviting and (patulously) virginal  new frontier.

Thus for instance:  Why is Babar still with us, while Turgor, Twinkles, and Mr Moustache have gone extinct?  Something to do with DNA, perhaps? -- Nope, they don't have DNA, doofus;  they're imaginary.  (Sheesh). -- Some sort of string-theoretic quantum effect, mayhap? -- Wa-all, mebbe;  we're working on it.  But in the meantime, here (pursuant to the terms of the grant) are our preliminary findings.

* It helps to be rotund.

Witness:  Babar;  Dr Dolittle, Pooh-Bear, and (the popular romance of) Teddy Roosevelt.

* It helps to have a sidekick  very different from yourself.

As:  Don Quixote, Sherlock Holmes, the Lone Ranger.

* No matter how many things you have done in your career, you will be remembered, or conceptualized, for just a few.

Indeed,  never having done a dayyum thing  is no bar to iconic status.  (Witness:  Mr Peanut.)

(Just leave the Nobel Prize in the mailbox  K thx bai.)