There will be a little more retrospective at the end. First though, as followers of my affiliated Facebook page know, I held a contest to decide the topic of this anniversary post. The top vote-getter: "Real-Life Monsters." So, you wanted it, here you go!
As former students will recall, the study of monsters has figured prominently in my academic research. Over the last twenty years, a group of interdisciplinary scholars have developed something called "monster theory," which purports to analyzes myths and stories of monsters from around the globe. In a class once, I asked what people thought the key ingredient was for being a monster. "Scary," was the answer. The academic study of monsters tries to delve down into what accounts for that. Some of the cross-cultural characteristics of monstrosity include deformity, anthropophagy ("eating people") or violence, representing the wilderness, and association with the night. All of these things break fundamental social or psychological categories. Monsters scare us because they represent breaks in what we consider to be the natural order of the community or the world.
What one defines as the "natural order" thus determines what is a monster, so monstrosity can be relative, making it an interesting point of cultural comparison. Examples that I've dealt with in my various courses have included the likes of Greek mythic beasts, Ravana from Hinduism, Bram Stoker's "Dracula," Lovecraft's "Cthulhu," and, the subject of my forthcoming book, the Buddhist god/demon Mara. In the blog, I've written about other kinds of beasts, like the Hodag of Wisconsin and the religious imagery of the Mothman of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. All of these beings are fictional, though. Are there biological organisms that actually fit the "monster paradigm"? What are the most physically impressive/unusual (which sounds better than "deformed"), violent, or wild? What organisms most challenge our current natural or mental categories?
There were clearly such creatures in the planet's past. There was the South American arctotherium, a bear that weighed two tons and stood eleven feet tall, and the shastasaurus, a marine predator sixty-five feet long. This is in addition to the usual speculation about the largest carnivorous dinosaurs. But what about the creatures of today? What animals have the right combination of unsettling abilities or habits to label them "monsters"?
One that comes to mind is the Komodo dragon.
As the article linked above describes, this is the heaviest lizard on earth. They're ten feet long weigh at least three hundred pounds. They dart quickly at their prey and bite with serrated teeth while their venom glands release a potent toxin into the victim's flesh. Rather than wrestle the prey down, the Komodo then steps back and lets the venom do its work. The toxin contains an anti-coagulant and a sedative, so the prey tries to escape, but slowly falls into shock. Komodos have been known to patiently follow their prey, often for miles, ghoulishly waiting until it collapses.
Komodos don't really attack humans, but the same cannot be said for the Botfly.
Moving out into the ocean, researchers have only just recently confirmed the existence of two massive species of squid. There is the giant squid (architeuthis), which is found in every ocean of the world.
This species can be as much as thirty feet in length. In the seas of the Antarctic, though, lurks the mesonychoteuthis, the "colossal squid," which grows to be more than forty feet in length and possesses the largest eyes ever recorded in the animal kingdom at sixteen inches in diameter. (That's about as big as a beach ball.)
While the giant squid has suction cups on its tentacles, the colossal squid has razor-sharp hooks. Don't get into a tickle fight with one of these things!
This is a place where myth and science meet, as the concept of a gigantic cephalopod roaming the oceans first took the form of the monstrous kraken, known from Greek myths and also literary works such as Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. If a mythic monster like the Kraken could be proven real, who knows what else exists out there?
In case you were wondering, I passed up discussion of creatures like the python and the great white shark since they are already fairly well known, and the actual human deaths caused by these creatures are in the single digits annually. Do you know what organism is responsible for the most human deaths each year?
Through transmission of disease, the tiny mosquito reliably kills about three quarters of a million people around the world every year.
The fact that a little insect can wreak that much havoc tells us something about what it means to be a monster. The point of monsters is not their size or their violence, but really their attachment to the unknown. The word "monster" comes from the Latin monstrare, "to reveal." A "monster" is literally a "revelation," a de-monstration of what we do not yet understand. Each of the creatures I picked to talk about somehow represents the unknown, and it is the unknown, more than anything else, that truly frightens us.
And it was being thrust into the unknown that initially inspired me to go on this blogging journey. It's been a great journey this past year. The freedom to write what I want and make the connections my mind wants to make has really reinvigorated my love of writing. Based solely on the number of views, some topics did not resonate much (like World Wars, children's books, and philosophical perspective), which is fine because I still enjoyed writing them. In other cases, I was pleasantly surprised by the popularity of some posts. Ones about John Taylor Gatto and Wendell Berry, the sport of archery and turkeys captured a fair amount of attention. The post opposing the Beaver Lake CAFO garnered a whole other level of attention, but the most viewed post was still Ghosts, about my time working with the Phoenix Team in Drexel Hall.
So, what will year two bring? Zombies, for one, since that was the second highest vote recipient. At times there will be more of the same, with comparisons of myth and popular culture, but all I can really guarantee is unpredictability. As I wrote in my very first post, the title for this blog (the "Forest Dweller") is someone who has left behind old, comfortable trappings to explore what is new. One thing I have learned over the past year is that we are always engaged in that process, whether we know it or not.
Writing these posts has been a fun journey. Thanks for coming with me. Until next time, take care.
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