The Monstrefact: Hortus the Rotting Mermaid

In this episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses the mermaid Hortus as described and illustrated in the book “Dr. C. Lillefisk's Sirenology” by Jana Heidersdorf.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the
Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.
As you probably know, I love a good monster manual,
I love a good bestieri, and I recently picked up
an especially imaginative book by German fantasy and horror illustrator

(00:34):
Yanna Heidersdorff, titled Doctor c Lilyfisk's Explorations in Sirenology, A
Guide to Mermaids and other under the Sea phenomena, purported
to have been written by syenologist doctor Cecilia Lilyfisk, who
is described as quote most definitely a real person. The

(00:54):
book guides readers through a fanciful and horrifying imagined world
of mermaids, sirens, o people, and related creatures. One of
the things I love about this book is the way
it fully embraces the weirder and from our vantage point,
horrific details of marine life and folds them into its
treatment of mermaids, mythic and folkloric beings that are based

(01:17):
in a very anthropocentric view that populated the ancient seas
with mere reflections of terrestrial and human life. So the
fantastic beings of the sea in this book are never
mere women of the deep, but bizarre creatures whose human
likenesses are infused with all manner of underwater mimicry, predation,

(01:39):
and camouflage. For just one example, I'd like to discuss
the hortoise, a creature from the latter portions of the
book that deal with denizens of the lightless midnight zone.
The main illustration for this entry depicts a mermaid resting
on the seafloor, her chin on crossed arms, as if
in slumber of some sort. Her back, however, is a

(02:01):
garden of corals and sea and enemies growing out of
her body, thriving with various other deep water organisms. An
accompanying image depicts the hortoise's eye sockets full of sessile
organisms and skin that is seemingly ravaged as well by
the growth of such life forms. As the entry describes,

(02:21):
the hortois is herself a sessile habitat for the various
organisms that inhabit her body, and is whale fall incarnate.
Whale fall, you might remember, occurs when the remnants of
a whale cadaver sync to the ocean floor in deep water,
creating an oasis ecosystem of life in an otherwise desolate

(02:41):
ocean floor environment, becoming not only a destination for scavengers,
but a localized, specialized ecosystem until the resources are completely
consumed later on. Knowledge of whale fall is relatively new
to science, having first been observed in the nineteen seventies,
but has been featured prominently on such nature documentaries as

(03:01):
Blue Planet. There are sulfide rich habitat islands that may
also have served as evolutionary stepping stones for deep sea
vent organisms, and they feature multiple phases of activity before
they pass once more into the night. A mobile scavenger stage,
followed by an enrichment opportunist stage, followed by a sulfophilic stage,

(03:22):
and finally a reef stage is detailed by Smith at
All in twenty fifteen's Whalefall Ecosystems, published in the Annual
Review of Marine Science. There's a morbid beauty in imagining
a mermaid form of whalefall, but Hydrosdorff takes it all
to the next philosophical level by having the horta seemingly
engage in this condition, willingly dreaming away on the seafloor,

(03:47):
undying and continually regenerating like a nightmare aquatic take on
Doctor Seuss's Thidwick, the big Hearted Moose, perhaps composed by
the android David. The inevitable comparison, of course, is that
while whales in death become a home for an entire
ecosystem of organisms, we live in humans, like all animals,

(04:09):
are hosts to a fertile microbiome of microorganisms. In a sense,
we are all the horta and its nightmare visage is
also our reflection. The book is currently in print, part
of the Wool of Bat folklore series, and I highly
recommend it. You can also read about such creatures in
the book as the terrifying jellyfish like Medusa Clara, the

(04:33):
deadly spinosa with its spiked tail, oh and the horrifying Vellum,
a midnight zone siren that quote devours any flesh its
prey offers, then rips out the bones, licks them clean,
and pierces itself with them. Tune in for additional episodes
of The Monster Fact each week. As always, you can

(04:53):
email us at Contact It's Stuff to will your mind dot.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
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