photo credit: Banana Donuts ~ Half Baked Photography

When you were young, did you ever call someone into your room at night to make sure there were no monsters hiding under the bed or in the closet, only to be told “there’s no such thing as monsters?” Well, I’m here to say phooey to all those non-believers. The following is a compilation of modern and marvelous Museum Monsters! Let’s just jump right in with both feet.

Seemingly mythical creatures have always fascinated mankind, but a special few have remained and live on in legends. One of the most popular is the Loch Ness monster. Fondly known as Nessie, this creature has eluded identification and in-focus photography for years. Yet people from all walks of life claim to see a creature with a long, serpentine neck leaving ripples in its wake as it swims through the Loch Ness. Well…want to see what everyone says she looks like for yourself??? The animal described above most resembles a now extinct marine reptile you can see in the Museum’s hall of Paleontology, a plesiosaur! Plesiosaurs have elongated necks and four flipper-like appendages which helped them swim easily through the ancient seas.

photo credit: Bob Jagendorf

Now let’s play a game. What dwells underground, lying dead but not dead, needing brains to be complete, waiting for its nest victim to unknowingly pass by? You thought zombie, right? Wrong! It’s Clostridium tetani, the bacteria that causes tetanus, which is a must-have specimen for some types of research institutions. This bacteria and a handful of others can produce endospores, which are dormant, environmentally-resistant survival structures. These spores don’t need oxygen (are anaerobic) and germinate when in contact with tissues to produce a potent neurotoxin. This toxin affects the brain and many of its primary functions, and, if left untreated, eventually leads to death in part by causing paralysis of respiratory muscles.

photo credit: gruntzooki

…Speaking of feasting on flesh, did you know that maggots, fly larvae, are necrophagous (meaning they eat dead tissue?) Sounds terrible, right?  The thought of a roiling, squirming mass of wormy things devouring a rotting carcass is more than some people can handle. Actually, they are quite helpful little things, especially in treating wounds that won’t heal like diabetic ulcers. Still grossed out? Just remember, bugs are our friends! In fact, you can come by and check our bugs out at the Cockrell Butterfly Center.

Giants are not something we are accustomed to in this day and age, the closest thing we have is an elephant and, while quite large by our standards, they don’t even hold a candle to Indricotherium, the largest mammal ever to walk the earth. Herbivorous, it stood over 16 feet tall and weighed more than 4 elephants. To put it into perspective, a person around 6 feet tall would just come to its KNEE. Now that’s a giant mammal I’d like to see!

photo credit: Furryscaly

Moving on to the next monster, I want you to consider this phrase: “I vant to suck your blood!” Sound familiar? Vampires are the “in” monster of the moment, but they owe their stardom to the misunderstood, hemoglobin loving vampire bat. In fact, this bat is in part responsible for some of the vampire characteristics we are all familiar with today! Look at the parallels, nocturnal creatures ‘turning into’ a bat and sneaking up on unsuspecting victims, drinking their blood to survive. Vampire bats, however, don’t usually bleed their meals dry. That’s just plain vampire folklore.

Do you remember the classic horror film “The Blob?” Well, blobs actually exist! A mucilage is a gelatinous mass of deadly bacteria and detritus accumulated into huge swaths a jelly-like goo! Sounds appetizing, I know. These have most recently been spotted off the Mediterranean coastline. But beware, this is no benign blob. Mucilages large enough can cause entire beaches to be closed because of their virally and bacterially born lethality.