Grrl Power #446 – Confidence shattered
People think wolves howl at the moon, but a quick googling should be enough to dissuade them from the idea. From there it’s a small leap to disassociate werewolves from the moon as well. I’m surely not the first person to consider that… even typing out that sentence sounds like a douchey humblebrag, but I can’t think of anything I’ve seen where werewolves weren’t affected by the moon. There’s probably some prime example everyone is rushing to comment on, but it just struck me one day so I went and googled it. I mean wolves howling at the moon, not non-lunar werewolves. I suppose I could have googled that as well. :P
Of course that begs the question,* what triggers lycanthrope changes? Obviously Gregor can control his, as can any lycan that’s been doing it for a while. There are a host of reasons someone wouldn’t be able to control it though. When someone is first “brought into the were-fold” (not a double entendre in this case) they can change seemingly at random. It’s like adolescent boys and erections**. Well, it probably doesn’t happen nearly that often, but lycanthropy does introduce a whole raft of new hormonal imperatives to a body. Some people aren’t the most stable to begin with. Suddenly turning into a furry whatsit can pile on a degree of stress to one’s life. Some weres can have specific triggers though. The were-cats working at the pet store who just ripped a big bag of catnip all over himself is in for a surprise. Really his co-workers are in for the surprise.
Gregor’s exactly right though, it’s an example of snowballed confirmation bias. I don’t expect this myth to go away very quickly though. Lycanthropy is such a obvious allegory for adolescence it’s good material for fables and stuff like Teen Wolf and Gingersnaps. Myths I would like to see go away are the “you only use 10% of your brain” one. Limitless is a good show so I’ll give it a pass, but I would have enjoyed Lucy more if it didn’t start with Morgan Freeman authoritatively telling me something that’s patently false. It’d be like starting off a movie by telling the audience that the moon is made of cheese or that women have fewer teeth. That’s a real thing people used to believe that I just found googling stupid old misconceptions. Aristotle thought that. I mean… just count their teeth? Maybe he thought a woman opening her mouth wide enough for a man to count her teeth would make her uterus spray poison or something.
*It doesn’t actually beg the question. Begging the question is a logical fallacy involving circular reasoning. I’m just using it as a colloquial phrase to slightly shift topics, which I probably shouldn’t do, especially because too many people doing it too often changes the meaning of phrases and words. For example, “theory” now means both “A scientifically accepted general principle supported by a substantial body of evidence offered to provide an explanation of observed facts and as a basis for future discussion or investigation” and also “a big fat guess” and we’ve all seen how much trouble that has caused. Edit: It’s been pointed out that my original definition of theory wasn’t accurate so I’ve updated it. Laws generally state what and how, but not why. Theories deal with the why. Ranking them first and second in terms of scientific certainty leads people to believe that theories are sitting around waiting for a few more pieces of evidence before they’re promoted to laws.
**I just learned that the female equivalent of ‘morning wood’ is called ‘morning dew,’ which sounds like the Mountain Dew guys trying to obliviously market a breakfast drink.
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Wolves pipe up more often during the night because they’re nocturnal. But why do they point their faces toward the moon and stars when they howl? It’s all about acoustics since projecting their calls upward allows the sound to carry farther.
Taken from a basic science article. Just Google why do wolves howl.
Or maybe that is just what the wolves want us to think.
Another interesting fact is that no two wolves, in a pack, will howl at the same pitch. This makes it sound like there are more present, than if they howled in harmony. Thus putting on a more intimidating display. It also allows separated members to readily identify a particular pack-mate, at a distance.
It also allows them to sing “Soft Kitty” in a round.
Or the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D Minor:
https://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1500/fc01445.htm
Just the normal night sounds for me. Although sometimes we have both wolves and jackals competing. Which usually sets off all the dogs too. The latter mostly only in winter fortunately.
For whatever reason, it made me think of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0CTl_jigsA
Wolves aren’t actually nocturnal. The proper term is “crepuscular”, meaning they’re most active at dawn and dusk, same as their prey. Since rabbits, deer, et cetera, are all crepuscular, so are wolves. It’s very simple.
https://academic.oup.com/jmammal/article/84/1/243/2373253
They’re more likely to howl when the moon is out because there’s more light then. That’s when coyotes time their mating rituals, as well. More light in a dark environment but nocturnal means advantage to activities; they can move further, faster. Animals and humans aren’t so different that they don’t take advantage of changes in their environment that is regular, predictable.
So the moon isn’t completely irrelevant.
Nighttime yes, the moon no.
Wolves are nocturnal animals, the extra light of the moon offers them no advantages that are not offset by disadvantages. If they can see better, so can their prey. Plus wolf howls are the reason why they do not need the light of the moon in order to locate other wolves. As I can testify, from first-paw-experience, you can hear wolves a lot easier than you can see them.
Plus the most important part in their locating arsenal is their nose. Scent will allow wolves to track each other down, no matter how densely forested or broken, the terrain is.
Yeah… no. Saying predators and prey have the same relationship with visual acuity is like saying cows can see like hawks. Prey have the advantage in lower levels of light because their strategies rely on stealth more than detection/evasion. Conversely critters – even nocturnal critters – with precision binocular sight have higher success rates when there is more light available and their similarly nocturnal prey are still active.
That is a reasonable counter-argument. I withdraw that aspect of my reply. But the rest stands, obviously.
*tips hat to Morgenstern*
Actually you have Human Werewolf Disorder in which the victims are born with hair growing on their faces, limbs, and everywhere else on their bodies. In point two brothers in Mexico with that disorder were offered parts on X-Files because they both suffered from it. you also have An actual vampire like disorder in which the victims have extreme pain, and or eventual death if they are exposed to sunlight because it actually poisons them. They try to stay out of all sunlight and even having a hand exposed to sunlight for a minute or less can leave blisters. I actually had college classes with a sufferer of that disease, he wasn’t able to go to regular school when he was growing up and was all home schooled until he began college. Everywhere on campus he wore hooded robes that covered every last bit of his skin. Sun light can even shrivel their ears making them pointed. You also have the Fugate Family of Troublesome Creek. What makes them interesting though is a rare blood disorder which is a genetic malady only suffered by their family. Why do I bring this up? The Fugate malady is blue skin in varying shades. They are literally blue skinned people. In current times, as in the article I read, their children can be born blue, and the color will fade, but if they become cold, or angry their skin will revert to the blue tent they were born with.
Interesting stuff. I had not heard of the Fugate family before.
So, do you think there is any connection to the Mystery Man of the Grand Canyon? Given an explanation for the supernatural disguise, that is.
I can’t speak to wolves but coyotes ABSOLUTELY are more communicative on nights with full- or near-full moons. No, they aren’t yipping -at- the moon. They’re sayin’, “Hey cousin, how’s the huntin’ over your way?” :) They are also -considerably- more bold about approaching human structures with the extra illumination. If wolves act anything like them, I’d say the it’s a lot more than confirmation bias at work… It’s that people don’t actually hear wolves any other time of the month.
I speak to wolves. The last conversation I had with one was “F*#K OFF, out of my garden!”
In programming, errors that are randomly intermittent are sometimes described as “probably caused by the phase of the moon.” Obviously, they aren’t and would be a lot easier to find if they were, sort of like the trigger for lycanthropic transformation.
Well we know, from practical scheduling needs, that there need to be more emergency service staff available on nights of the full moon. So there is a tangible effect. Would that carry over into daytime needs? If it is causing an increase in mental instability, at those times, then even programmers could be subject to deleterious effects, from that. Perhaps programmers who work at home (and therefore potentially at night), may find their work is more buggy, at such times of the month.
I would be interested to see research into how pronounced the anecdotal ER effects are. And what correlations that might have on workplace errors, if any. Might flying on nights of the full moon be more dangerous than at other times of the month?
We know that having an operation on Fridays, or the weekend, is measurably much more dangerous, than on Mondays. So the combined effects of a full moon falling on a Friday/weekend might make it worth rescheduling an operation, if you want to maximise your chances of surviving. Should research corroborate such, anyhow.
Actually incident rates don’t go up on full moons or Friday the 13ths or anything. It’s all confirmation bias making people think that it does.
Mmm, I was basing my comment on past reporting that the UK NHS were increasing staffing levels, at such times. Checking it out, this article provides a reasonable explanation for why that may have been necessary.
More people out and about, making the most of the light of the full moon, would logically equate to a higher incidents of accidents, and muggings, than on less active nights. But it does confirm that studies have debunked that such is caused by mental problems.
So you are right, from that regard. Which, in turn, does resolve my speculation. So thanks for that.
Awwwe! I like the moon thing affecting people! Stupid science making sense of things! Next you’ll be telling us that Sydney is a figment of someone’s imagination!
Noooooo! Never!
Dave is Sydney’s chronicler. She is in an alternate Earth, very close to ours. Look, just through the 4th wall, over there!
that isn’t even how direwolves worked. they weren’t much bigger than timberwolves but were built more like hyenas. initially some dude just found a bigass jawbone and made some assumptions about the other proportions syncing up…which they don’t
If you check out the author’s blog, above, you will see that his claims are probably just made to sound more impressive, and he is actually just a regular werewolf.
I think the reason we associate wolf howling with the moon, and not dog barking with the sun, is that wolves throw their heads back when they howl, which gives an impression they’re howling “at” something. As for why the moon and not the sun…maybe people just hear howling more often at night?
Doggos totally bork at the sun.
Hunters use Sol Lunar tables for a reason. And yeah, they can howl any time, but like all animals that aren’t kept up by artificial light, they are more active at certain times related to sun and moon rise and set.
There was an infamous problem In the early days of computing where on some nights a certain Bank of disks would show more errors then the others at a data center. This went on for quite some time and after swappung out lots of parts they couldn’t track down the cause until somebody decided to just go there and watch. It turned out that it was the cleaners coming in and cleaning the floor.and every time the buffer got too close to that rack the error rate would spike.
I’m working on an urban fantasy novel where werewolves (that the novel call Wildfolk) can change at will and are not moonaffected whatsoever.
The fae, on the other hand (that the novel call Moonchilds) – that is, elves, trolls, dwarves, goblins, faeries, giants etc, canb only be in our world when the moon is up, regardless of day or night.
… and the vampires (Nightwalkers) don’t burn in sunlight. They can even slowly get a tan. But they have a very hard time staying awake between dawn and dusk. And it is very exhausting when they do.
None of the actual myths about vampires have them burning in sunlight. “Dracula” had the inimitable count approach and talk with the hunters during the day. (I mean the romance by Bram Stoker, not any of the later adaptations or retcons.) In the myths they stopped moving once the sun touched them, remaining merely corpses until the sun went down again. Of course, most of the myths have vampires having the same level of sapience when they are animated as when they are just dead meat…
Well, there might be a neurological trigger, when the supraoptic nucleus in the brain (reacts to the amount of light on the retina) is disagreeing with the pineal gland (body’s internal clock). Full moon, lots of light, there’s a basis there. Also the moon’s albedo returns a particular set of wavelengths.