Medusa's Gaze and Vampire's Bite: The Science of Monsters by Matt Kaplan Read Free Book Online

meters) long and weighing in at 800 pounds (360 kilograms). That’s a big boar, but still very close to the upper range of natural wild boars. Hogzilla was thus something of a hoax.
    11 Tabloids… not a modern invention.
    12 And named it something ridiculous like Picnic with Boar.
    13 The physics supporting all of this is a chore, but if we work with the assumption that, like eagles, the Rukh could lift half its own body weight into the air to fly off with a 4,500-kilogram elephant, the bird would be around 9,000 kilograms, and the combined bird plus elephant payload would be 13,500 kilograms. Classic lift theory states that: Lift = 1 / 2 ( þ • v 2 ) • S • Cl , where þ is the air density (1.18 kg/m 3 ), v is the velocity (say, 9 m/s), S is the projected area (m 2 ), and Cl is the dimensionless lift coefficient (say, 1.15, based on measurements for a vulture). This means the bird would need a wing area of 245 m 2 to stay aloft carrying an elephant. In aerodynamics, the aspect ratio of a wing is essentially the ratio of its length to its breadth, a measurement called the chord. A high aspect ratio indicates long, narrow wings, whereas a low aspect ratio indicates short, stubby wings. For most wings, the length of the chord is not a constant but varies along the wing, so the aspect ratio AR is defined as the square of the wingspan b divided by the area S of the wing platform. This is equal to the length-to-breadth ratio for constant breadth:

    Bird aspect ratios can vary from 1.5 to around 18, so let us assume something around 10. Therefore, a 245 m 2 wing area would mean the Rukh would need a wingspan of around 50 meters. Of course, there is a problem here, because this applies only to a Rukh that is already in flight. To behave as legends say it did, with such a “small” wing-span it would need to swoop down at high speed, grab an elephant, and fly off without losing momentum. If the bird were to stop, kill the elephant, and then try to get lift again with the elephant in tow, such wings would not have worked at all. If you want to understand the physics of that sort of behavior, get a degree in aeronautical engineering.
    14 For years, archaeologists assumed that punctures found in the skulls of early human ancestors, like some of the australopithecines living 3.5 million years ago, were made by the fangs of great cats, but in 2006 a team of a researchers published evidence in the Physical Journal of Anthropology revealing that these punctures were nearly identical to punctures that large eagles make with their beaks and talons when they kill monkeys today. This led the team to argue that birds of prey were playing a big part in hunting our forebears. Such finds also raise the question of whether we might have some instinctive fear of large raptors buried deep within our genes.
    15 Seagulls can be downright vicious. Accidentally wandering into their nesting sites will almost always lead to a flurry of feathers, shrieks, mobbing, and pecking. Moreover, a study published in Nature Geoscience in 2011 found a period of bizarre seabird behavior in 1961 when seagulls frequently slammed themselves into beach homes and cars (widely thought to have inspired Hitchcock’s film), which came about as a result of the birds suffering nerve damage after being exposed to neurotoxins released by a toxic algae bloom off the coast of California.
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    Beastly Blends—Chimera, Griffon, Cockatrice, Sphinx
    “These creatures you have seen are animals carven and wrought into new shapes.”
    —Dr. Moreau, The Island of Dr. Moreau
    Not far removed from the realm of the Nemean lion, Calydonian boar, and Rukh are monstrous animals not of unusual size but of unusual form. Seemingly inspired by ancient people dwelling in a drug-induced haze, many of these monsters are bizarre anatomical blends that have been unbelievably stitched together. Multiple heads, duplicated limbs, bodies combining wings and claws, and tails with teeth, these