They're real, you know... No, seriously, they are, according to one of my facebook friends.

Friend: "My sister was arguing with me about what werewolves are when she refuses to even ACKNOWLEDGE their existence. Newsflash: lycanthropy comes in three types...born, bitten, and therianthropy. The disease of lycanthropy may be transferred via bite, birth, unprotected sex, aura or energy bite/transfer, or blood transfusion. END OF STORY."

Me: "Erm, I'm going to have to call bullshit on this one... I haven't seen any scientific evidence which shows that werewolves exist."

Friend: "lol its mostly a blood or saliva thing...they get into the body and you have an 80% chance of getting the recessive gene. Its an AIDS-like disease/condition...only some will get it after bite or wound."

Me: "Where did you get that information about blood/saliva transferring the "werewolf gene"? Have there been any peer-reviewed papers published on lycanthropy? Even with my very limited knowledge of genetics, I know that coming into contact with another person's genes via saliva or blood will not alter their entire genome, because genes don't duplicate themselves the way that viruses do. You are confusing gene duplication with viral reproduction."

And she never responded.

Ask her if she has read the 'Twilight' series.

I'm sure she has. Twilight is the wolfaboo bible.

Throw a stick & shout "Fetch!" If they chase it, they're a werewolf

Other identification tricks (nod to Terry Pratchett):

Do they shudder every time you say the word "Bath"?
Do they like to curl up in front of the fire?
Do you tend to find flea products in the shower?
Can you get them to cower by saying "BAD!"?
Have you noticed that when you haven't seen them for while, they sniff your ass?

(OK, that last one wasn't from Discworld, it was mine).

1) is she cute
2) how far can you get with her if you claim to be a werewolf

Kalira wrote:lycanthropy comes in three types...born, bitten, and therianthropy.

Therianthropy is the umbrella term for all human-to-animal shapeshifting.
Lycanthropy doesn't emerge from therianthropy, it's simply a form of such.

And tell her Robin Williams is a werewolf in disguise, albeit not a very good one.

Mononoke wrote:1) is she cute
2) how far can you get with her if you claim to be a werewolf

This lady is very impressionable. This might work.

When my Dad was a boy of six or eight years old, he walked the couple miles into the small town of Mellen, Wisconsin, to join his friends for the evening showing of The Wolfman, with Lon Chaney Jr. As it turned out, his buddies had already gone to the afternoon show.

As he didn't walk all that way in to see a movie for nothing, he watched it by himself, with predictable results. That last mile back to his house was on the outskirts of town. They had street lights, but only one on each block, at the corners.

Of course, Dad was sure that bastard was in the brush off the sides of the road, just waiting for him to walk by. So, what he would do to check the way was clear was to crouch down and look down the sidewalk underneath the brush and tall grass to the next street light. If he saw no legs, he figured that block was safe and would run like hell to that streetlight, then check for legs on the next block, etc.

This was working pretty well, but he was getting more scared the farther out of town he got. The real problem was the last stretch to the house. No street light at the far end. He had no choice but to just go like hell and hope that wolfman didn't get him before he made it to the front porch.

Off he went, as fast as a fit kid can run. BAM! Screaming! Snarling! That sonofabitch had jumped out of the brush to get my Dad! Dad had run right into him!

Well, he escaped, obviously. He lived to tell the tale.

I've seen that stretch of road. That would've scared any kid shitless.

It was the neighbor lady, out walking her dog. There she was minding her own business when some kid ran out of the darkness, tackled her, and ran off.

Well this is a rational/skeptical website, and having read up about werewolves in Montague Summers, these are my conclusions:

LIke the vampire legend, the legend of the werewolf could have been inspired by real life cases of humans contracting rabies from wolves. Bats are also vectors of this rather nasty disease.

However a further inspiration of the story could be hungry wolves who during the winter months were often known to kill and devour villagers in medieval Europe. In superstitious times it would have been so easy to blame an evil witch who had the power to turn into a wolf. I mean after all these same witches could also turn into hares and indeed anything else they happened to chose.