Fiction & Mordern Day Monsters

   A monster is any creature, usually found in horror fiction, that is portrayed as hideous and may produce fear or physical harm by its appearance and/or its actions. The word "monster" comes from Latin monstrum, an aberrant occurrence, usually biological, that was taken as a sign that something was wrong with the natural order. The word usually indicates something wrong or evil; a monster is generally morally objectionable, physically or psychologically hideous, and/or a freak of nature. It can also be applied to a person with similar characteristics like a greedy person or a person who does horrible things. The root of "monstrum" is "monere"—which does not only mean to warn, but also to instruct. Therefore, the monster is also a sign or instruction. This kind interpretation was proposed by Saint Augustine, who did not see the monster as inherently evil, but as part of the natural design of the world, a kind-of deliberate category error.

   Among newborn young and embryos of humans and most species of animals are found occasional individuals who are malformed in whole or in part. The most grossly abnormal of these have been referred to from ancient times as monsters, probably because the birth of one was thought to signify something monstrous or portentous; while the less severe are known as abnormalities or even birth defects. No sharp line separates these grades of malformation, all being due to various kinds and degrees of modification of the normal course of development of the embryo. The study of these deviations forms the subject of teratology, a branch of morphology or embryology.

   A knowledge of the kinds of abnormalities and their causes may, like deliberate experiments, increase understanding of normal development. Convention recognises two major classes of monsters: those that represent defective or excessive growth in a single body, and those that have partial or complete doubling of the body or one of its axes.

Classic monsters

   Classic monsters spawn from legends and fictional stories. Well known monsters include Dracula, Frankenstein's creation, Wolf-man, The Mummy, The Invisible Man and zombies, to name a few.

Single monsters

   Giants and dwarfs are often classed as monsters, probably because of the prominent places they occupy in mythology. Since in humans they generally result from abnormal growth, they cannot usually be recognised as abnormal at birth. An exception is the disproportionate dwarfism known as achondroplasia or chondrodystrophia, in which the limbs and especially the legs are short, thick and bent, with head and trunk disproportionately large. This congenital abnormality occurs in many animals, including:

• Humans
• Cattle, particularly in the Dexter-Kerry breed in which the monstrous bulldog calves with chondrodystrophic dwarfism are often aborted before term 
• Domestic fowl

   A similar abnormality has become a breed characteristic in Bulldogs. In all these cases, abnormal characteristics are inherited together. Cases where this type of dwarfism in a human family behaves as a simple hereditary characteristic have been reported.

Repetition or deficiency

   Repetition or deficiency of single parts such as fingers or toes are frequent anomalies in humans and other mammals. Absence or abnormality of whole limbs is less common and includes besides club-foot, the so-called congenital amputations. Cases are recorded of human identical twins in which both members have the same type of limb abnormality, suggesting an hereditary predisposition to this type of malformation.

   In addition to monsters with primary limbs, others are known with incomplete or underdeveloped extremities. A rare type of monster that has always attracted interest has the lower extremities more or less united, as in mammals of the mythical figures of sirens or mermaids. Such sirenoid monsters may have a single foot or limbs fused throughout their length with no separate feet.

Origin of single monsters

   Much has been learned from study of abnormalities that occur in graded series. So, geneticists Sewall Wright and K. Wagner showed that an extensive series of monsters in one inbred family of guinea pigs could be arranged in a series in which those with least defect are normal, except for a single median lower incisor while with increasing grade of defect the lower jaw is reduced and lost, the ears approach each other on the ventral side and fuse leaving a single ear aperture in the throat; then the mouth and upper teeth are reduced, the nostrils formed into a proboscis, the eyes are reduced and fused in the centre of the forehead and finally all head structures are lost except a small median ear. Otocephaly, cyclopia, and related defects have been produced in experimental animals (fish and amphibian embryos) by chemical treatments that inhibit in ways the head is especially sensitive to. Monsters falling in similar series are found in humans and other vertebrates. They probably arise as a result of interaction between a specific heredity and abnormalities in the environment of the embryo sometimes due to disease or injury.

Double monsters

   Individuals partially, but joined together, are represented by the rare occurrence in humans of Siamese twins, which also reveal the mode of origin of this type of monster. Siamese twins, so-called from a famous pair exhibited for many years in the 19th century, are identical twins joined by a bridge of tissue that joins the circulatory systems. They probably arise by the nearly complete separation of a single fertilised egg into two parts.

   In humans, partially double symmetrical monsters occur. These vary from those with a single head, but neck, trunk and limbs doubled, through those with two heads and a single trunk, to others with head, shoulders and arms doubled but with one trunk and one pair of legs. Such double monsters probably arise following the less complete separation of the halves of the early embryo or partial separation at later stages. A rare type is one in which there is a Janus head, two faces on a single head and body.

Origin of double monsters

   The origin of double monsters has been traced to a variety of causes including disease of mother or embryo, faulty placentation in humans and other mammals, and other factors which reduce the oxygen supply or nutrition of the embryo.

   Monsters have been regarded by the first of people as of supernatural origin. Human monsters have been attributed to intercourse between women and the devil or between men and animals. Many mythical beings such as races of dwarfs and giants, cyclops with a single eye, sirens, mermaids, races of men with a single median leg — were probably suggested by actual observations of human monsters.