Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb. And this is the
Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind, focusing in no mythical creatures, ideas and monsters
Speaker 2: in time. Batman's rogues gallery boasts an unbelievable variety of supervillains,
Speaker 2: from chaotic clown criminals and calendar officionados to amorphous clay
Speaker 2: monsters and cryogenically frozen mad scientists. But in terms of
Speaker 2: more monstrous foes, a few names rise to the top. There's,
Speaker 2: of course the Man Bat hybrid man Bat. But I
Speaker 2: thought we might discuss another famous foe of the caped crusader,
Speaker 2: Waylon Jones aka Killer Croc. Now, if you grew up
Speaker 2: on the nineties bat Man animated series like I did,
Speaker 2: you'll probably remember this guy as a pale, gray, scaly
Speaker 2: humanoid with big shoulders, sharp teeth, and a skeletal face.
Speaker 2: He's at home in the waters, especially river and sewer waters,
Speaker 2: and he possesses great strength for grappling Batman. This character
Speaker 2: was created back in nineteen eighty three for the Batman
Speaker 2: comic by Jerry Conway, Don Newton and gene colan. His
Speaker 2: original appearance was greener and scalier, and over the years,
Speaker 2: designs for Killer Crock have only grown more monstrous. In
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty three comic debut, he's roughly the size
Speaker 2: of a large man, but in the two thousand and
Speaker 2: nine video game Arkham Asylum, he's an absolute ogre that
Speaker 2: basically fills an entire prison cell by himself. The original
Speaker 2: explanation given for Killer Croc's appearance is a skin condition,
Speaker 2: probably meant to be something from the ichthiosis family of
Speaker 2: genetic skin conditions that can produce a scale like quality
Speaker 2: of the skin. Now, I'm not sure how tasteful this
Speaker 2: ultimately is, and besides, it's hardly an excuse for other
Speaker 2: aspects of Killer Croc's appearance and character. Plus, to be clear,
Speaker 2: killer Croc has dinosaur feet and other dinosaur like qualities
Speaker 2: in his later appearances. As such, these later incarnations of
Speaker 2: Killer Croc are often explained as a severe form of atavism,
Speaker 2: a real life recurrence of a genetic trait typical of
Speaker 2: an ancestral form. The topic is explored in the excellent
Speaker 2: book DC Anatomy of a Metahuman by SD Perry and
Speaker 2: Matthew K. Manning with illustrations by Mean Dole. As the
Speaker 2: authors point out, a vestigial tail or an extra nipple
Speaker 2: in human beings is not too uncommon an example of this,
Speaker 2: but if the affected gene is old enough, a pre
Speaker 2: mammalian trait may be expressed in a human being. Some
Speaker 2: of our genetic pre mammalian traits can be seen in
Speaker 2: our embryotic development. We see temporary examples of this in
Speaker 2: the dental playcodes of developing human fetuses, which, according to
Speaker 2: Petrokova at All in the two thousand and six paper
Speaker 2: for the Journal of Experimental Zoology, resemble early tooth primordia
Speaker 2: in reptiles. The human fetus also temporarily develops a tail.
Speaker 2: In a twenty nineteen Howard University study identified ancient reptilian
Speaker 2: limb muscles in human embryos during the early weeks of gestation.
Speaker 2: More startling, however, is a case reported by Walia at
Speaker 2: All in a twenty ten edition of the Texas Hart
Speaker 2: Institute Journal. When a fifty nine year old man sought
Speaker 2: medical attention concerning chest pains, doctors discovered some surprising myocardial architecture.
Speaker 2: Quote Remarkably, the morphology resembled that of the reptilian heart,
Speaker 2: that is, it featured direct communications to the ventricle cavity
Speaker 2: and had the sinusodal characteristics of non compacted myocardium. The
Speaker 2: authors note that this was the second known case of
Speaker 2: such a heart in human beings. While the medical curiosity
Speaker 2: certainly there was certainly nothing monstrous about this, the fictional
Speaker 2: case of Killer Croc would seem to involve a fantastic
Speaker 2: exaggeration of reptilian ativism in a human being, and multiple
Speaker 2: cases of it at bat, impacting various bodily systems and
Speaker 2: features a kind of ridiculous atavism jackpot if you will now. Obviously,
Speaker 2: crocodilian morphology factors into various mythological creatures for various cultures
Speaker 2: and time periods around the world where crocodiles live or
Speaker 2: where stories of crocodiles would drift to. Traditions in Egypt, Zambia,
Speaker 2: and Indonesia involve humans that transform into crocodiles to harm others,
Speaker 2: akin to the werewolfs of western lore. So it's likely
Speaker 2: here that we find the closest thing to Killer Croc
Speaker 2: outside of comic books, rather than in our own human
Speaker 2: medical History. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster
Speaker 2: Fact each week. As always, you can email us at
Speaker 2: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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