The Monstrefact: Cave Mimicry in Dungeons and Dragons

kingdoms of the under dark. Either way, there's no shortage of exotic monsters to populate these environments, and at least two of them stand out for their mimicry of stalactites and stalagmites. First, let's refresh on the nature of stalactites and stalactites. Stalactites derived from the Greek to drip is a mineral formation caused by dripping that forms on the ceiling. The corresponding formation on the floor of the cavern is

a stalagmite. Some folks might keep the straight in their own heads by reminding themselves that stalactite has a C in it for ceiling and stalagmite has a G in it for ground. At any rate, let's start on the floor amid the stalagmites of D and D you'll find the occasional roper, a large, one eyed monster that mimics a silent cone of stone until an adventurer strays too close. Then its tentacles lash out and pull the victim in towards its deadly maw. Amid the stalactites, you'll find an

even more fascinating creature, the Piercer. This predatory mollusk has a sharp stalactite shaped shell, enabling it to blend in on a cavern ceiling until guess what, along comes another hapless adventure and the piercer drops like the sword of Damn Maclice and hopefully skewers the poor sap to the floor. If this is a success, the piercer, or piercers, because

sometimes they apparently live in groups, begin the feast. A fail, however, means the creature has to slowly crawl back up the wall to the ceiling in order to try its gravity assisted attack once more. The piercer is a fantastic monster concept, and both of these cave dwellers have been lashing out against adventurers since the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons. However, when we turn to the cave environments of the natural world,

we don't find creatures that employ such tactics. While there are many amazing subterranean organisms with unique adaptations, you might well ponder over the seeming absence of stalactite and stalagmite mimics as evolutionary Developmental biologist William R. Jeffrey points out in his two thousand and nine paper Regressive Evolution in

Astyanax cave fish quote. In surface dwelling animals, pig intation is used for protection from sunlight, camouflage, mimicry, and species and sex recognition, all of which are irrevalent in the dark cave environment. Jeffrey is dealing chiefly with cave fish here in this paper, but I think we can safely apply this concept to other cave dwellers as well. Again, we have to remember that these are lightless worlds, where site in the organs of sight lose their importance. Other

sense has become the coin of the realm indungens and dragons. However, we have to remember that these holy fictional cave environments revolve entirely around the inevitable arrival of generally cited characters, and they're often aided by magical vision lamps and or a plethora of bioluminescent fungi. And we have to remind ourselves that mimicry in the real world doesn't have to be visual. It can certainly be auditory. For instance, the greater mouse ear bat has been observed to mimic the

sounds of buzzing hornets to gear away predatory owl species. Meanwhile, Chinese cicadas are also known to use intra specific sexual mimicry that means males using female sounds in this case,

which amounts to a similar sort of auditory deception. And hey, D and D has us covered there as well, with the Lucrata monstrous beasts said to lure in their victims by mimicking the voices of humans and other intelligent species, inspired by the half hyena half lion creatures described by Plenty of the Elder said to reside in Ethiopia, yet quote mimics the voices of men and cattle. Tune in

for additional episodes of the Monster Fact each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.