Bullfrogs and Skull Crawlers

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While watching the antics of bullfrogs during mating season, it strangely got me thinking about some elements of the upcoming movie Kong:Skull Island coming out in March. As most people know, a few trailers, at least five clips, and a couple of TV spots are out. While Kong is the hero, the antagonists under the spotlight for this movie appears to be the dreaded Skull Crawlers. 

Untitled by tidalwave21

These squamates are bizarre for a multitude of reasons. They lack two of their legs, they have Skull-like heads, their teeth face inward, and they have grasping tongues. But another feature goes relatively unnoticed when these critters are discussed. 

John C. Reilly's character, Hank Marlow, tells the protagonists that the Skull Crawlers "live below us", and in the second trailer of the movie, one of the humans can be seen staring down what looks like a gigantic burrow. From all this, it is implied that the Skull Crawlers have unearthed themselves from the ground. 

This is similar behavior to another, much smaller creature from Africa, the bullfrogs. 

Untitled by tidalwave21

Since this time is love season for bullfrogs in South Africa, they can currently be seen active in all kinds of small water bodies. Males compete vigorously for mates, and females try to mate quickly and have their eggs fertilized. Before all this action, however, the bullfrogs conceal themselves underground in a cocoon of dead skin. Once the rains come, they awaken and claw their way out of their burrows to reproduce. 

It is clear that rain tempts the African bullfrogs from their underground tombs, but it is a bit harder to determine what has tempted Skull Island's Crawlers to the surface. One clue however, is that the humans dropped explosive charges shortly after their arrival on the island. Judging from the clips and trailers, Bill Randa of Monarch (an organization that keeps track of kaiju) had his team drop explosive charges in order to flush out Kong. This works a little too well, and Kong takes down many of the helicopters in self defense. As a result, the humans get scattered all over the island, some being in zones more dangerous than others.

It appears that in some of these danger zones, the explosions have tempted the Skull Crawlers up from the earth. While African bullfrogs are brought to the surface by rain to instinctively reproduce, the Skull Crawlers have been awakened by explosives with unknown goals. Exactly how the crawlers fit into the Skull Island ecosystem is a mystery for now. It is possible that they emerge seasonally, and the explosives brought them to the surface too early, resulting in a massive disruption of the ecology of the island. 

Remember, most of this is indeed speculation, but seeing how the Skull Crawlers have been portrayed in such an antagonistic way, it is likely they have an invasive presence on the island. Disrupted from their natural cycles by human encroachment, they are poised to wreak havoc. 

But what do you guys think? Are these Skull Crawlers a natural force on the island, or an invasive one? And were they brought from underground by explosives, or something else?
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PCAwesomeness's avatar
Probably an invasive species who secured a life here and got awakened by explosives.