With the signature of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender in 1945, the world fully entered the modern era: The true, terrible strength of science had been unveiled; the once mighty empires of Western Europe had begun to crumble as new powers emerged; and every continent had been explored, and, with the exception of Antarctica, thoroughly inhabited. This, of course, did not mean that the world was entirely man’s domain. Initially, at the turn of the century, newly discovered megafauna like the Komodo dragon or Bonobo were treated as the last stragglers of the wilderness, the remaining few animals to be catalogued. However, the rate of discovery of new creatures has not slowed. Bizarre new creatures constantly swim up from the unknown depths, crawl out of uncharted caves, or emerge from impenetrable jungles.

Their strange and shocking new forms often leads to these animals being termed monsters—take, for instance, the megamouth shark, discovered in 1976. Though able to grow to over three times the length of a man, these sharks are simple filter feeders, and reports of them attempting to swallow whole scantily clad beachgoers are almost certainly in error. We cannot allow our fears to cloud our judgement. These creatures, often faced with extinction, provide valuable clues into the workings of evolutionary biology.