What Type of Werewolf Am I?

It's likely the earliest recorded reference to werewolves was in the ancient mesopotamian text, The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2100–1200 BCE), which you may have been forced, or may someday be forced, to read in school (it's actually very good, we promise). In the epic, Gilgamesh refuses the advances of the goddess Ishtar because he knows her to have been cruel to a previous suitor—a shepherd whom she turned into a wolf.

Later, in about 8 AD, Ovid referenced werewolves in his Metamorphoses , when Zeus transformed King Lycaon into a wolf as punishment for attempting to trick him into eating human entrails. King Lycaon's name, as well as the term lycanthropy , which refers to the mythical transformation of a person into a wolf, both share the same etymological root: lykos , which means wolf in Greek.

Believe it or not, the idea that people could be turned into wolves wasn't seen as totally far-fetched throughout much of the last few millennia. It was often viewed as a very real possibility, such as in Saint Augustine's nonfiction theological text, City of God , in which he writes, "It is generally believed that, by certain witches’ spells, men may be turned into wolves." Whoa!

The belief in werewolves proliferated throughout the Middle Ages and was prevalent in folklore of the time; the word werewolf derives from the Old English term werwult , or man-wolf . There are even accounts of people being burned at the stake on suspicion of being werewolves!

Even though the belief in the existence of werewolves has waned (that's a moon joke), the creatures themselves have been popular in fiction ever since, from The Wolf Man and Van Helsing to Harry Potter and Twilight . But you can still find the belief in werewolves (or were-creatures) in various cultures around the world. For instance, as early as the twentieth century, there were reports of a belief in Ghana of "were-hyenas." Can you imagine?