# How do you ruin King Kong for a cognitive psychologist?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-ruin-king-kong-for-a-cognitive-psychologist/649967>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [February 11, 2013, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-ruin-king-kong-for-a-cognitive-psychologist/649967 "2013-02-11T13:49:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\
**Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-ruin-king-kong-for-a-cognitive-psychologist/649967/41 "2013-02-15T19:42:01Z")

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> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> Vampire Gorillas. The mind boggles.

I suppose there’s no reason vampirism couldn’t make the jump to (or from) other primates. So, if a typical gorilla is about six times as strong as a similarly sized human, and human vampires have the strength of ten men, a vampire gorilla would be…:eek:

You know what? I’m going to assume that “strength of ten men” is _additive_, not multiplicative, so our gorillapire has the strength of roughly 2.5 gorillas.

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**Author:** ![Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blue_blistering_barnacle/32/3386_2.png) [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blue_Blistering_Barnacle)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-ruin-king-kong-for-a-cognitive-psychologist/649967/42 "2013-02-19T00:41:19Z")

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> [@ftg](#):
>
> In the movie _Altered States_, after William Hurt comes out of one of his trips, they take an X-ray of his throat and note something unusual. They take it to the radiologist on duty and the following exchange takes place:
> 
> Mason Parrish: It looks to me like the architecture is slightly abnormal.  
> Dr. Wissenschaft: Somewhat? This guy’s a f\*\*king gorilla!
> 
> He noticed! Clearly, yet another thing that Hollywood got wrong.

IANAL. But I am a radiologist who reads a lot of neck exams. I have said the same thing many times before ( I mean the part about Hollywood getting it wrong…). Even someone has spent a lot of time studying gorilla x-rays and comparative anatomy (not impossible in an academic setting) would be far more likely to consider x-ray artifact or some (ANY!) developmental pathology rather than boldly propose that a human-gorilla hybrid was standing before him.

(But, maybe, that his is standard insult for folks who come by wasting his time…)

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