Idlermag.com

My recreational research of animals and overactive imagination means I often entertain the idea of the possibility of movie monsters being real things.  For me this is my normal thought process and I don’t understand why everyone else isn’t more scared of this shit.  Glow-in-the-dark cat clones are part of our world, what’s so off-the-wall about thinking movie monsters could really happen?  Also, sometimes nature doesn’t need a whole lot of embellishment to be terrifying.   The abominations of the silver screen and their existence in the natural world can be easily linked with a little crazy creativity, and I’ve made a LIST.

Alien & the Giant Isopod

The giant isopod is like an aquatic woodlouse (roly poly) only, you know, bigger.  They can survive for eight weeks without food, but when these carnivorous scavengers scuttle over an abundant food source they’ll consume until they’re immobile

They don’t seem like much of a threat based on their fairly normal crustacean lifestyle, but I wouldn’t fall for that, “If your giant isopod is bigger than your face you have cancer” bullshit and put the crustacean up to your head. That’s what it WANTS you to do so it can gorge on your insides.

Arachnophobia & the Cyclocosmia Spider

Seeing Arachnophobia as a child mainly scared me on account of how hard it was to kill the spider at the end.  That damn thing was the Rasputin of arachnids.  But stomp on something hard enough and it will stop living, right?

Probably not the Cyclocosmia spider.

It looks like it has a boot print on its ass from getting stomped on and NOT DYING. Science explains the weird truncated abdomen is its protection.  The hardened disc serving as a plug for the spiders borrow to keep unwanted visitors out and a means of camouflage.

Shut up, science! Spider voodoo surely keeps it alive!

The Blob & the Sea Pig

Even Steve McQueen ran his bad ass away from The Blob, the gelatinous amorphous creature that fell from the sky.  To find nature’s blob hopeful look not up, but down.

The sea pig lives at great depths on the ominously named abyssal plain in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans.  Kinda cute as members of the sea cucumber family go, but like many kinds of sea cucumber, sea pigs are often found in huge numbers.  A gigantic mass of pink squishy things, you say?  Like. . . a BLOB?

It’s still too early to tell the extent of the damage from the BP oil spill.  It could some-crazy-how cause sea pigs to fuse together to form a carnivorous pink glob.  An angry glob.

Evil Dead 2 & the Chinese Water Deer

Evil Dead 2, while gloriously campy, does genuinely frighten me a bit.  Aside from the stab of panic I feel over the threat of ankle-grabbing cellar dwellers, there’s this possessed deer head. I used to live in far less fear with the knowledge that creepy deer with pointy teeth are not a thing, but then. . .

Instead of antlers Chinese water deer have what are technically classified as tusks, or, in murderous murdering terms, FANGS. Fangs the deer can actually MOVE. They can be drawn back out of the way while eating, or thrust forward to use in combat.  Like you do if you’re an evil deer.

In fact, according to Wikipedia, “Recently, the ‘vampire deer have made headlines in Southern Tennessee because ‘Aimee,’ a small female, had escaped from a Marietta, Mississipp farm and displayed aggressive behavior towards visitors on the Natchez Trace Parkway.”

Wait. Tennessee?  Where Evil Dead was filmed?  Oh, HELL.

Night of the Lepus & the Flemish Giant Rabbits

If you’ve never seen this science fiction (ahem) * thriller * about carnivorous mutated rabbits then you have wasted less of your life than I.  I thought the concept giant rabbits was a load of bullocks. And then I discovered these gigantic bunnies.

My first thought was literally, “OH, SHIT.  GIANT RABBITS.”  For though Night of the Lepus is ridiculous, the idea of a rabbit ripping your throat out is actually terrifying because, let’s face it, bunnies are supposed to be non-threatening.  Monty Python really knew what they were talking about. The Flemish Giant Rabbits were bred large on purpose based on the notion that large rabbits equals lots more rabbit meat.  If Jurassic Park has taught us anything, it’s that if man manipulates nature, nature is bound to rip man’s throat open with it’s adorably oversized teeth.

Pokemon & the Nudibranch Sea Slug

Pokemon are weird bastard animals trained to battle other weird bastard animals with their magic to become more powerful, or whatever. It’s a little scary if you think about it (battles aren’t to the death, because, you know, the children.  But if it weren’t for the children you know these things would be slaughtering the shit out of each other).

I realize a Pokemon Lightning Dragon isn’t a movie monster, but, seriously, look at this sea slug and tell me your first thought wasn’t, “It looks like a Pokemon!”

The Nudibranchs thrive and reach their largest sizes in warm, shallow waters (where most humans like to swim).  If those waters were ever contaminated with whatever nuclear waste cocktail made Godzilla, well, you can see we’d have a problem.

Having shed their shells at the larval stage, Nudibrachs developed other means of defense.  Some types of Nudibranch prey on the Portuguese Man O’ War, which is slightly terrifying on its own.  Nudibranchs don’t kill the Man O’ War, they just eat off its most potent nematocysts (stinging cells) and rather than digest them, the slug passes them from its gut to the surface of its skin to use for protection.  Explain it with as much science as you want, it seems like gaining experience points and leveling up to me.  It’s just a matter of time before a slew of Nudibranchs mutates and start collecting us all.

Zombies! & The Greenland shark

My first thought when I look at this shark?  Zombie.

If there were to be zombie fish, or a fish responsible for a zombie outbreak the Greenland shark would be the cause of it.  It lives in very deep, very cold water and it moves very slowly, much like the undead. Its lifespan is speculated to be 200 years (it’s 200 years old because it’s a damned ZOMBIE).  The perfectly logical explanation for the undead look of the eyes is a parasite called a Copepod that burrows into the shark’s cornea.

I don’t care what’s causing it.  It looks FUCKING. CREEPY.

Also, Greenland shark meat, considered a delicacy in Greenland and Iceland, is straight up toxic.  To prepare it you have to boil the hell out of it or bury it in the ground and let it freeze and thaw several times in order to ferment it.  Without this preparation consuming fresh, untreated Greenland shark meat may cause effects similar to “extreme drunkenness.”

You know what else resembles extreme drunkenness?

THE WALKING DEAD.

I’m not completely convinced that Greenland sharks are NOT Great White zombies.
—

Lindsey Malta writes “Thoughtcicles” for The Idler.