evolution, now for cryptozoologists
Van Helsing might have been a legendary monster slayer who defeated many a werewolf, but he had nothing on... Darwin?
Should you come face to face with a werewolf and find yourself short on silver bullets, just reach for your copy of Darwin's Origin of the Species. According to Brian Regal, it makes for a very effective werewolf repellant. In a review of cryptozoological stories and reports, he found that stories of werewolves rapidly drop off as some of the basic concepts behind today's theory of evolution were gaining prominence.
Instead of werewolves, the public developed a taste for humanoid ape monsters like sasquatch and the abominable snowman because the idea of a human/canid hybrid sounded absurd from an evolutionary standpoint. So did Darwin manage to put the werewolf legend to sleep or is Regal just reaching for a theory for why the stories suddenly stop?
Think about this. Why would legends born of popular horror writers letting their imaginations go wild on paper and inspiring millions of fans spooked by their novels and short stories to see bizarre creatures when a stray dog or an unusually bid and curious wolf came into their view, follow any sort of scientific rule? There were a few cases of panic when people with hormonal imbalances that left them much hairier than usual spooked a random town or two.
Likewise there were reports of real life vampires inspired by scientific ignorance about the progression of tuberculosis and the early stages of human decomposition, but they were driven first and foremost by mob mentality rather than science. Although, to be completely objective, there are people who do feel the need to drink blood for reasons doctors don't really understand yet.
A much more likely explanation for why werewolf stories dropped off and giant ape men were thrown into the spotlight is that the whole idea of humans turning into giant furry monsters with big teeth was so old, it simply went out of style when the tabloids started reporting a new kind of mysterious creature. There's also no room for hybrids in Bigfoot legends.
They're not humans growing an extra three or four feet, a forest worth of fur and wandering off into the forest, lured by the magic of the full moon. They're supposed to be a different species, an evolutionary cousin that somehow managed to evade us for hundreds of years despite our ability to track down species of frogs that live in one pond in the most remote and wild parts of the Amazon rainforest.
