The Science of Monsters

Another frightening, actual creature in the sea is the goblin shark. It is thought that these sharks can trace their lineage back 125 million years and are sometimes called “living fossils.” These sharks got their name from a translation of its old Japanese name tenguzame. A tengu is a Japanese mythical creature often depicted with a long nose and red face. They may not be pretty but since they live so deep in the ocean, it’s very uncommon for humans to have interactions with them.

The black swallower sounds like it was created for a horror movie but is indeed real. It grows to be about ten inches long, but don’t let its small size fool you. This fish is known for its ability to swallow fish larger than itself. Black swallowers have been found to have eaten fish so big that they can’t be digested faster than they’re decomposing.

When imagining a creature called the “vampire squid” it seems natural that it would be a blood sucker. Thankfully, it’s not. The squid got its name from its cloak-like webbing, dark color, and red eyes. Like vampires, they prefer the dark. They live in the deep sea and when disturbed are able to release a bioluminescent mucus to stun predators.

Giant oarfish may be responsible for many sea serpent legends. These large fish are shaped like ribbons and considered to be the world’s longest bony fish. Sightings have been reported measuring them as long as fifty-six feet and a confirmed weight of six hundred pounds. Even though giant oarfish have been around for centuries, the first reliable footage of one in its natural habitat wasn’t captured until 2010. No need to worry about this fish taking a bite out of you because it has no teeth.

Japanese spider crabs have the longest leg span of any arthropod. Arthropods are characterized by their jointed limbs and these crabs can reach eighteen feet from claw to claw. They can weigh up to forty-two pounds and are considered a delicacy to eat. They can live up to one hundred years and even though no human attacks have been reported, they have definitely haunted some dreams.

Whether it be through classic horror movies like Jaws or new ones like 47 Meters Down (2017) the public remains enthralled with sharks and shark attacks. The threat may be unlikely to happen to us but it is real and that makes it all the more terrifying.

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

ALIEN

Year of Release: 1979

Director: Ridley Scott

Writer: Dan O’Bannon

Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt

Budget: $9 million

Box Office: $104.9 million

Alien is set in the year 2122. The writer, Dan O’Bannon, found inspiration from many other classic horror and science-fiction movies including The Thing from Another World (1951) and Planet of the Vampires (1965) while writing the script. The film was pitched as “Jaws in space” and was also described as “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre of science fiction.” That was a lot to live up to! Did they deliver on those promises? Audiences would say yes. The movie was a box-office success and inspired numerous sequels, books, games, and toys. The movie was also critically acclaimed, receiving many positive reviews. Roger Ebert noted an interesting point about the cast of the movie in his review:

None of them were particularly young. Tom Skerritt, the captain, was forty-six, Hurt was thirty-nine but looked older, Holm was forty-eight, Harry Dean Stanton was fifty-three, Yaphet Kotto was forty-two, and only Veronica Cartwright at thirty and Weaver at twenty-nine were in the age range of the usual thriller cast. Many recent action pictures have improbably young actors cast as key roles or sidekicks, but by skewing older, Alien achieves a certain texture without even making a point of it: These are not adventurers but workers, hired by a company to return twenty million tons of ore to Earth.¹

The tagline of the movie Alien is “in space no one can hear you scream.” Is it true? Sound travels in waves like light or heat does, but unlike light or heat, sound travels by making molecules vibrate. In order for sound to travel, there has to be something with molecules for it to travel through. On Earth, sound travels to your ears by vibrating air molecules. In space there are no molecules to vibrate so there is no sound there—so no one would hear you scream!