Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: this is the Monster Fact, a short form series from
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing in on mythical creatures,
Speaker 1: ideas and monsters in time. Let us now turn our
Speaker 1: attention to the chief antagonist all of the ThunderCats cartoon franchise,
Speaker 1: mum Raw. Between and nine eighty nine, the original ThunderCats
Speaker 1: show ran for a hundred and thirty episodes, chronicling the
Speaker 1: struggle between the titular ThunderCats and the undying mummified sorcerer
Speaker 1: mum Raw for control of the planet New Thunder Era.
Speaker 1: The ThunderCats are, of course, cat people who display the
Speaker 1: features of various feline species, and our masters of both
Speaker 1: high technology and martial warfare. Mum Raw is a mummified,
Speaker 1: desiccated living corpse who serves the ancient spirits of evil
Speaker 1: from his black pyramid. He must return to his sarcophagus
Speaker 1: to recharge, but may also transform in a full blown
Speaker 1: hinge in sequence into the towering muscular warrior dubbed mum
Speaker 1: Raw the Ever Living, He was quite honestly perfect, a
Speaker 1: villain almost too awesome for the show he emerged from. Yet,
Speaker 1: even as a child, in the back of my mind,
Speaker 1: I always wondered if mum Ra was a cat or not.
Speaker 1: The thunder Cats are, of course cat human hybrids, and
Speaker 1: it's hard to deny that Mumra himself is not essentially
Speaker 1: all of the same species. We see this in his
Speaker 1: feline facial features especially. But while each thundercat is patterned
Speaker 1: after a particular terrestrial feline species, what is mum Ra.
Speaker 1: For starters, His blue gray skin is reminiscent of the
Speaker 1: Russian blue cat breed. However, he is hairless, which instantly
Speaker 1: brings to mind the hairless Sphinx cat breed, which was
Speaker 1: a nineteen sixties product of selective breeding by humans. Both
Speaker 1: of these are domestic. Meanwhile, with the ThunderCats, Jaga is
Speaker 1: part jaguar, Lion Oh is part lion, Pantherro is part panther,
Speaker 1: Tiger is part tiger, Chitara is cheetah, Willie Cat and
Speaker 1: Willie Kit are both wild cats, and so forth. Is
Speaker 1: Mamra alone seemingly linked to domesticated cats To some extent,
Speaker 1: This might seem counterintuitive, because clearly this is Mamra we're
Speaker 1: talking about. He is the most dangerous and powerful of
Speaker 1: them all. Why would he be linked to the common
Speaker 1: house cat. Well, the domesticated cat is a rather powerful species.
Speaker 1: We have to admit that while it has not lived
Speaker 1: alongside humans as long as the loyal dog, they have
Speaker 1: still lurked, hunted, and slept in our domestic shadows for
Speaker 1: thousands upon thousands of years. During that time, these cats
Speaker 1: have spread around the world to every continent except Antarctica,
Speaker 1: though they have visited, and I am told they did
Speaker 1: not like it. Domestic cats have proven themselves rather destructive
Speaker 1: as well. They are voracious predators, driving multiple species to
Speaker 1: extinction and posing a continuing threat to birds, especially In fact,
Speaker 1: according to the University of Texas at Austin Biodiversity Center,
Speaker 1: the numbers are pretty staggering. They write that in the
Speaker 1: u s alone, free arranging domestic cats kill one point
Speaker 1: three to four billion birds every year, and they kill
Speaker 1: six point three to twenty two point three billion mammals annually. Amphibians, reptiles,
Speaker 1: and insects are also impacted. So, yes, our domestic cats
Speaker 1: are cute, they're amusing, but they're also destroyers and in
Speaker 1: this perhaps they fitting likeness for Mum Ra. Now, there
Speaker 1: is some discussion on to what extent cats may have
Speaker 1: domesticated themselves in our shadow, and certainly cats do not
Speaker 1: see to see us as a master's in the same
Speaker 1: way that dogs too. But it brings me back to
Speaker 1: the ancient spirits of evil that Mumra serves on the show.
Speaker 1: They're represented by a bore, a vulture, a crocodile, and
Speaker 1: an ox, and they might well be thought of as
Speaker 1: great old ones and extra dimensional monster gods. But if
Speaker 1: Mumra is a domestic cat, then perhaps we humans are
Speaker 1: the ancient spirits of evil, the true enemy of the
Speaker 1: various animal human hybrids that populate the ThunderCats universe. In closing,
Speaker 1: I should also point out that yes, essentially Mumra is
Speaker 1: a mummified cat, so he is linked to the actual
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian practice of mummifying cats, a practice that in short,
Speaker 1: had connections both to the cat headed god Bastet, as
Speaker 1: well as their fascination with an affection for the animals
Speaker 1: in question. Cats have traveled with us everywhere, so why
Speaker 1: not into the fee old of reads as well. Tune
Speaker 1: in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact each week.
Speaker 1: As always, you can email us at contact at Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind is production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
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