The Truth About Werewolves: The Science Behind Wolf Man, Explained
In fiction, a werewolf bite turns you into a ravenous creature. In the real world, the truth is almost as bizarre.
Werewolves, as depicted in this weekend's Universal Monster reimagining, Wolf Man (get tickets here!), have been a part of humanity’s cultural fabric since before recorded history. They appear in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest surviving written story, and they’ve appeared in the mythologies of cultures from all over the world, throughout time.
They differ from other mythical creatures in one important way. Typically, being a witch or a vampire was a condition thrust upon you by your community, a condition the accused had to fight against if they wanted to survive. Werewolves, by contrast, typically self-identify. It’s a delusion which causes the individual to believe they’ve transformed into a wolf, even while the people around them can’t see it.
The details vary from case to case, but the afflicted usually believes that they’ve temporarily or permanently transformed into a wolf or another animal. The werewolf myth is most common in countries where actual wolves roam the night, but other places have their own regional variants involving bears, hyenas, leopards, tigers, and more.
Today, the werewolf myth lives on mostly in our fiction, inspiring novels, comic books, television, and movies. Universal’s upcoming monster movie Wolf Man reimagines the classic monster in a modern context, courtesy of director Leigh Whannell (The Invisible Man). Christopher Abbot stars as Blake (the titular wolf man), a man who moves his wife and daughter back to his childhood home following the disappearance and presumed death of his reclusive father. When the family is attacked by a mysterious creature (a werewolf), they barricade themselves inside the house for safety. But Blake was scratched and his transformation is about to begin.
Whannell takes a more grounded approach than previous interpretations, by rooting the story in the real human drama of change and loss. Obviously, there aren’t actually any werewolves out there, but that same drama plays out in less fantastical ways in the real world.
The psychological origin of the werewolf myth, as seen in Leigh Whannell's Wolf Man
The belief that oneself has become a werewolf is known as clinical lycanthropy, a delusional misidentification syndrome often associated with some other disorder such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or depression. It’s believed that if a person loses the ability to correctly identify themselves and their relationship with their own body, they might start to misidentify in various ways.
The nature of that misidentification is variable and seems to be at least partly culturally directed. The werewolf myth reinforces the delusion and the delusion then reinforces the myth. In Ancient Greece, it was believed that a person could become a werewolf by eating a mixture of wolf meat and human meat. At other times and in other places, it was believed a person could become a werewolf by drinking water touched by a wolf or being conceived under a new Moon.
In the Middle Ages, bandits sometimes wore the skins of wolves over their armor to scare up some loot on the road. Likewise, warriors wore the coats of wolves, bears, and other animals into combat. There are even reports of warriors taking on the characteristics of those animals in battle.
In more recent times, clinical lycanthropy has been incredibly rare, with only about 50 or so reported cases in the last 150 years. Usually a delusion of adulthood, in 2020 researchers reported a case of clinical lycanthropy in a 12-year-old from France. The patient reported looking in the mirror and seeing his eyes change and his teeth grow. He also reported hearing the voices of other wolves beckoning him to “join the pack.” The patient was treated with 1 milligram of risperidone, an antipsychotic, and symptoms resolved in about two weeks, the full Moon notwithstanding.
Whether dark magic, malicious microbes, or a time-hopping cultural delusion, werewolves have been with us for thousands of years and they’re not going anywhere, anytime soon.
Catch Wolf Man in theaters everywhere January 17, 2025.
