Monstrous: The Lore, Gore, and Science Behind Your Favorite Monsters
THE SCIENCE OF THE MONSTROUS Millions of years ago your prehistoric ancestors roamed the open plains There were kids just like you They picked berries danced and drew pretty pictures on caves They had a blast hanging out at the local watering hole You might even know some people like that today always smiling and never scared or anxious about anything You know fearless people Yeah those people died Probably eaten by a saber-toothed tiger or bludgeoned to death by rivals while they were peacefully sleeping But that apprehensive cavewoman with her spear at the ready suspicious of every berry and with one eye open as she slept she survived She is your great-great-great-grandmother and probably a few more greats and she has passed down her lessons of survival into the most primitive parts of your brain fear keeps us alive The part of your brain that responds to fear has not changed since your prehistoric grandmother When you are scared an almond-shaped mass called the amygdala A activates a split-second Your ancestor who did survive Your ancestor who didn’t survive 6
normal left ventricle enlarged left ventricle takotsubo A B C amygdala cortex prefrontal dopamine response called fight-or flight The fight-or-flight response causes your eyes to widen and pulse to quicken It sends blood away from your intestines to your muscles so that you can either outrun the monster or stab it in the eye During this process the neurotransmitter dopamine B is released Neurotransmitters are the messengers in your brain that tell you how to feel but they are not always clear on which emotion Have you ever noticed that when someone sneaks up behind you and screams Boo your first reaction is to startle but your second reaction is often to laugh Possibly followed by plots of revenge against whomever scared you That is dopamine messing with your brain Dopamine is released when you feel fear but it is also released when you feel pleasure This is partly why we enjoy fear When we conquer our fear it gives us a huge sense of accomplishment Something has scared us but we have survived Unfortunately there is a downside to fear Some people use fear to control the behavior of others For example I could convince you that a zombie apocalypse is coming and that you must read this book to survive Then I would make tons of money buy a castle in Spain and live alone with my one eyed cat and piles of Spam while you would fear every stranger as a possible zombie contaminate But I am going to do the opposite because I know you are too smart to be manipulated by fear And I already have a one-eyed cat piles of Spam and a castle in Spain Instead I am going to activate your prefrontal cortex C That’s the part of your brain that controls reasoning and it kicks in once your fight-or-flight response has calmed down Your prefrontal cortex says Wait just a minute Spam-hoarding lady with the one-eyed cat I am not buying that vampires are going to suck my blood nonsense because blood contains a very lethal mineral p 34 And Yes the water is dark and scary but the kraken just wants to be left alone to play with his kraken friends p 85 And Sorry know-it-all author but everyone knows zombies can’t survive on a diet of brains because a brain is the least nutritious part of the human body p 50 Why Because of science Science is stronger than fear Why yoU should neVer sTress yoUr mom oUt Your brain is not the only organ altered by fear Under extreme stress your heart’s left ventricle can enlarge at the bottom and narrow at the top like a balloon animal being tied off Known as takotsubo cardiomyopathy or broken heart syndrome the condition is named after a takotsubo a Japanese pot used to trap octopuses Far more women than men experience the condition but fortunately most people who have it recover 7
ELECTRONS NEUTRONS NUCLEUS PROTONS LITHIUM ATOM FRANKENSTEIN'S MONSTER You probably already know a little about Frankenstein a wacky scientist steals body parts from local graves and cobbles them together to create a monster with a gigantic forehead and no eyebrows He then brings the creature to life with a few electric jolts and voilà a monster is born Let’s start with what gave Frankenstein’s creation the first sparks of life Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a new science called an Entertainment for Angels was sweeping across Europe and North America We know it today as electricity but before light bulbs and televisions no one really understood what this strange force of nature actually was Was electricity a vapor a fluid or a supernatural fire What is elecTricity Electricity begins with tiny units of matter too small to see without a microscope called atoms Inside an atom is a nucleus The nucleus contains protons with a positive charge and neutrons with no charge Orbiting around the nucleus are negatively charged electrons Atoms balance the positive charge of their protons with the negative charge of their electrons But sometimes electrons break free and move to another atom When this happens one material ends up with too many electrons and becomes negatively charged while the other ends up with too few electrons and becomes positively charged This imbalance is electricity There are two main types of electricity static electricity and electric current When electricity builds up on a surface it causes static electricity You experience static electricity when you go down a slide The slide transfers a positive charge to your hair and because a positive charge repels another positive charge your strands of hair stand on end to get away from one another When electricity moves from one place to another it is called an electric current Examples of electric currents are light bulbs batteries motors or in this case Dr Frankenstein’s machine 9
