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Monster of the Week: The Krampus

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Disguised 'Nikolaus'es and 'Krampus'es at traditional 'Klaubauf' game im Matrei, Eastern Tyrol, circa 1935 (Imagno/Getty Images) Disguised ‘Nikolaus’es and ‘Krampus’es  in Austria, 1935 (Imagno/Getty Images)

I trust you’re familiar with the krampus: a species of alpine snow demon famous for its peculiar custom of terrifying, beating and kidnapping naughty children each and every December. Kids fear them, holiday-weary adults love them and at one point the Austrian government outlawed their bestial ways.

Krampus Biology
Stories and deceptions of the krampus vary, but we can piece together a fairly consistent physical description: A bipedal, humanoid goat with a long cow’s tail, cloven hoofs and a lengthy prehensile tongue reminiscent of a giraffe’s. The tongue is especially interesting as the krampus is frequently seen to coil the appendage around naughty children.

 (Imagno/Getty Images) (Imagno/Getty Images)

If the krampus is primarily carnivorous, the tongue may have evolved to facilitate the consumption of human children — though such a biological adaptation is unlike anything found in the rest of the animal kingdom. Certainly iguanas, frogs and woodpeckers all use elongated tongues to “grab” prey, but I’ve yet to come across a natural-world organism that constricts its prey with a prehensile tongue.

The closest analog we find in nature is the 18-20 inch (45-50 centimeter) prehensile giraffe tongue, capable of coiling around shoots and leaves and pulling them into the animal’s mouth. This might lead you to believe the krampus feeds primarily on vegetation, as is certainly more befitting of the orders Bovidae (which includes cloven-hoofed goats) and Artiodactyla (which includes even-toed ungulate giraffes).

Krampus Commerce
But perhaps the krampus is something else entirely: a hoofed carnivore descended from the extinct order Mesonychid, predatory land ungulates — or a relative of the long-extinct Artiodactyla Andrewsarchus, which some paleontologists interpret as a cloven-hoofed carnivore.

Andrewsarchus (Dorling Kindersley/Getty) Andrewsarchus (D. Kindersley/Getty)

Either way, it seems the krampus forged a cooperative relationship with Alpine humans: Once a year they descend to scare and even remove unruly children — as well as dispense coal.

This leads me to wonder if the primary exchangehere is a trade of human children for Krampus-mined coal, thus providing both cold humans and meat-hungry krampi with fuel for the winter.

It wouldn't be a 1820 Christmas party without Krampus. (Imagno/Getty Images) It wouldn’t be an 1820 holiday party without Krampus. (Imagno/Getty)

Monster of the Week is a — you guessed it — regular look at the denizens is of our monster-haunted world. Sometimes we’ll focus on the cultural aspects, but mostly we’ll look at the possible science behind a creature of myth, movie or legend. Be sure to explore the Monster Gallery as well as the Monster Science video series.


About the author: Robert Lamb is a senior writer and podcaster at HowStuffWorks, where he co-hosts Stuff to Blow Your Mind with Julie Douglas. He has a love for monsters, an aversion to slugs and a hankering for electronic music.


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