Remember...

Thursday's lab day.



But, here's a little something from the Wayback Machine.

"Help me, Doctor! Please!"



Several times, I've taught a class in our Honors Program in which we investigate the influence of Charles Darwin on farflung fields ranging from the sciences to literature to economics. Here's an interesting little tidbit in that arena. Brian Regal, an assistant professor at Kean University in Union, NJ, believes that Charles Darwin has pretty much single-handedly killed off the last remaining werewolves. His idea, presented last summer at meeting in the UK, is that the development of the theory of evolution by natural selection has changed the nature of our boogymen. Throughout human history, the werewolf legend has been a part of our night terrors. Not so much any longer. Regal believes that this is partly due to the evolutionary distance between canines and primates, allowing Darwin to transform the werewolves of our heritage into more evolutionarily suitable analogues like yetis, sasquatches, and skunk apes.

I'm not sure I buy that. I'm not convinced that purveyors of horror spend a lot of time thinking about the genetic similarity of their chimaeras. Remember Jeff Goldblum's 1986 entomological moment? Of course, that was a remake. But what about the recent vampire craze? Most mammalian cladograms wouldn't put the chiropterans any closer to primates than the carnivores.

No, I suspect that Dr. Regal has hit on an interesting idea that doesn't really shed a lot of light on our cultural evolution. I only wish that the general public knew enough about biology to watch a monster movie and say, "Wait a minute.... that doesn't make sense - you know, in an evolutionary context."