What is a chao

A Chao (pronounced: chow), is an artificially intelligent, virtually generated life-form that is raised by the player in mini-games, similar to Tamagotchi. First appearing in, and made popular by, Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast (both in the plot and in a Chao-raising aspect of the game), later in Sonic Adventure 2, and further enhanced in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle and Sonic Advance, Chao have recently come to be a large part of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Chao start life in an egg state. There are many different colors of eggs, reflecting the type of Chao that will hatch from them. As they grow up, they may be trained with different attributes, abilities, and personalities. By giving a Chao a "small animal" or a "power drive", it will acquire certain characteristics. Besides a physical change to the Chao, this will also modify the Chao's stats based on the type of animal or power drive given. A Chao gains an alignment depending on how it is raised. This may be a "hero", "dark" or "neutral" alignment. Every Chao lives in a Chao Garden. Each garden is unique, though they all have these things in common: areas for Chao to swim, trees that grow fruit to feed the Chao, and a VMU/GBA Transporter. Chao can compete with each other in competitions such as races and karate, with outcomes largely determined by a Chao's stats.They will eventually gain the ability to reproduce.[22] They are genderless,[23] and therefore can breed with any other adult Chao.[22] Eventually the Chao will enter a cocoon and be reborn as a new egg, or it will die. This depends on whether the player has taken adequate care of it during its lifetime.[22] Players can also evolve the Chao into a special Chaos Chao, which cannot mate, but will not die.

A little blue creature originally found in Sonic The Hedgehog games