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sympathy.
    At first glance, Kong’s story seems the same as that of other monstrous animals. Like the Nemean lion, he is a monstrous animal from unexplored wilderness wreaking havoc on civilization. But Kong is different from these monsters of Greece. Ancient monstrous animals are not natural. They are the products of the gods and are sent to Earth to create pain and suffering. The Rukh, on the other hand, is not brought to the world by gods but discovered by humans; it just attacks those who tamper with its eggs. The spiders in Arachnophobia are dangerous animals from the deep jungle that are accidentally brought by humans back to civilization. Kong also is a dangerous natural animal brought from the wilderness to civilization but he is intentionally brought back for profit. Really, Kong’s story is a morality tale about the consequences of exploiting the natural world, raising the question of whether it would have been better to have just left Kong alone.
    Most intriguingly, Kong is distinctly a “he,” and that cannot just be dismissed. It indicates a key difference in the way audiences identify with the monster. None of the other giant animal monsters are ever described by gender. By being given gender, Kong is, in a way, brought one step closer to humanity and made less of a monster. In our quest to understand what monsters say about human fears through the ages, such a dramatic difference between the most famous modern giant animal monster and ancient monsters of the same type is intriguing. Why the decision to make the men in the story so insensitive and cruel? Is there something in society that we now fear more than the jungle?
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    4 Until the lunatic owner of an exotic-animal farm in Ohio housing eighteen Bengal tigers, seventeen lions, and numerous other carnivores opens up all of his enclosures to the outside world and then shoots himself in the head.
    5 When you are the goddess of the hunt, I guess you end up with some pretty exotic pets.
    6 In 2011, a wonderful little article in the academic journal Biotropica suggested that a solution to Greece’s financial problems might involve reforesting large swaths of land and reintroducing lions to the landscape to encourage ecotourism. While no action on this matter has yet been taken by the Greek government, they might be wise to look beyond ecotourism and consider connecting such conservation actions toward their long and well-known mythical traditions. “Come to Nemea and see the legendary lion that battled Hercules!”
    7 Not to mention unbelievably fierce, since stabbing, but not killing, many large predators can just send them into a furious rage.
    8 The skull of an elephant has a large space in the center where the muscles for the trunk attach. However, trunks are made up of soft tissues that rot away after death. To those without a background in paleontology (a description that pretty much applied to all of the ancient Greeks), such skulls look like they have one giant eye in the center. Moreover, the presence of tusks adds the impression that the Cyclops has fangs.
    9 It is also possible that hunters went out to kill a lion, failed, nearly got eaten in the process, and just made up the story of the lion being invulnerable to save face. Adrenaline makes men do and say the stupidest things.
    10 In 2004, a boar was shot and killed in Alabama that was initially claimed by the hunter to be 12 feet (3.6 meters) long and to weigh more than 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms). This was more than twice the length and weight of the wild boars known to be roaming the U.S. wilderness, so a team of researchers funded by the National Geographic Society went to check out the grave of this creature that locals were calling “Hogzilla.” As mentioned earlier, the adrenaline of the hunt leads to mistaken perceptions, and the hunter was—no surprise—proved to have exaggerated the animal’s size. When the researchers dug up the animal, they found the boar to be only 7 feet (2