CRYPTOZOOLOGY AND THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

My much-read, greatly-treasured original copy of the Paladin 1972 abridged paperback reprint of On the Track of Unknown Animals (© Paladin/Dr Karl Shuker)

Today is my birthday, the first one that I have ever known without any family since the passing away of my dear mother, Mary Shuker, exactly 36 weeks ago on Easter Monday.

Yet on this poignant day of reflection and remembrance for me, I still fondly recall a birthday present bought for me by Mom a very long time ago but which changed my life forever, literally…

As a zoologist, media consultant, and author specialising in cryptozoology, it is supremely ironic that my introduction to this enthralling subject was anything but promising.

It all began one day during the early 1970s when, aged around 13, I walked into the department store Boots in the town of Walsall in the West Midlands, England, and spotted a copy of the Paladin abridged paperback edition (1972 reprint) of Dr Bernard Heuvelmans's classic book On the Track of Unknown Animals. Picking it up, I opened it at random, and my eyes alighted upon the following sentence, on p. 199, concerning a South American subterranean cryptid called the minhocão:

"Senhor Lebino also related that in the same district, a Negro woman, who was going one morning to draw water, found the pool destroyed and saw an animal 'as big as a house' crawling away on the ground."

"An animal as big as a house! How ridiculous!", I thought to myself, and promptly replaced the offending book on the shelf.

That hasty action could well have ended my cryptozoological career before it had even begun, cruelly stifled at birth. Happily, however, Fate decreed otherwise. My mother, who was with me, had seen that I had been reading this particular book, albeit briefly, so she later bought a copy as a surprise birthday present for me in December of that same year. When I opened the parcel and saw which book was inside, I remembered what I had read before, and viewed it with suspicion, but as soon as I began reading it properly, from the beginning, I was of course totally hooked. In no time, I had read it from cover to cover on so many occasions that I could recite great chunks of it.

Eager to learn more about undiscovered animals, I began collecting every newspaper cutting, magazine article, and book that I could find on the subject. And when, while studying zoology at university, I became friends with a fellow student who actually owned the unabridged 1958 hardback edition of On the Track..., containing several short chapters that had been omitted from my abridged paperback version, and who kindly permitted me to take his book to the nearest photocopier, I felt as euphoric as if I had been handed the Holy Grail!

My copy of the original 1958 hardback English edition, a copy of which I finally purchased more than a decade after receiving the paperback edition from Mom as a birthday present (© Rupert Hart-Davis)

How I wished then that I could make a career out of cryptozoology, but, like most zoology students starting university, I anticipated pursuing a traditional professional life as a research scientist.

And indeed, I went on to obtain both a BSC (Honours) degree in pure zoology and also a PhD in zoology and comparative physiology. However, I had always enjoyed writing, and during my spare time I had by now also amassed a formidable private archive of cryptozoological material. So instead of continuing with mainstream zoological research following my PhD, I decided instead to plunge into the uncertain waters of freelance journalism - specialising in cryptozoology and other areas of so-called 'fringe' science.

My copy of the original two-volume French edition of On the Track of Unknown Animals, entitled Sur la Piste des Bêtes Ignorées and published in 1955 (© Librairie Plon)

Some of my early cryptozoological friends and colleagues outside Britain jokingly said that I seemed to spring up from nowhere, and I can appreciate that this may well have been how it looked to them. However, I can assure everyone that, in the time-honoured showbusiness tradition with such matters, it took me quite a long time to become an overnight success!

It began with a number of articles and letters of mine published in various British newspapers, and regular cryptozoological commissions from a British magazine (sadly now defunct) called The Unknown. Following this, I experienced my first success abroad, with a selection of articles accepted for publication in Fate by its then editor, Jerome Clark. My long-running 'Alien Zoo' column in Fortean Times began soon afterwards (and still appears today), as well as regular articles in many other magazines too.

My copy of the four-volume, revised and corrected 1982 edition of Sur la Piste des Bêtes Ignorées (© Famot)

In 1987, I was amazed and ecstatic when my very first book synopsis, proposing an international survey of feline cryptids, was swiftly accepted by a well-respected London publishing firm, Robert Hale. Even before the ink was dry on its contract, I had already begun writing the book, which was published in June 1989 as Mystery Cats of the World - achieving great success, staying in print for several years, and bringing my name to widespread attention at last. Two years later saw the publication of a second book of mine by Robert Hale - Extraordinary Animals Worldwide, reviewing a diverse range of animal anomalies.

I had also been researching and preparing another book for quite a long time (although initially only as a hobby), on a subject that had never been covered in book form before - new and rediscovered animals of the 20th Century. In 1993, however, five years of exhaustive work on this pioneering project climaxed with its publication by HarperCollins, as The Lost Ark - which I successively updated in subsequent years to yield two fully-revised, much-expanded sequels – The New Zoo (2002), and The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals (2012).

My copy of the revised 1995 edition of On the Track of Unknown Animals (© Kegan Paul International)

Twenty years have somehow raced by almost unseen and unrealised by me since the publication of The Lost Ark, and the current tally of books written by me stands at 20, plus another 12 for which I have acted as consultant and/or contributor, as well as countless articles and blog posts, and my continuing editorship of the Journal of Cryptozoology (click here for a complete listing of my books and those for which I have acted as consultant/contributor).

And they all owe their existence to that unassuming birthday present bought for me by Mom all those years ago. Today, it is battered, tattered, stapled, and sellotaped together to within an inch of its life, almost read into oblivion by me over the years. Indeed, I eventually purchased a second, near-pristine copy for my cryptozoological bookshelves in my study. But my original copy remains one of my most treasured possessions, safely housed within a bookcase in my bedroom alongside other much-loved books from my childhood and early teenage years.

Holding two books that influenced me greatly during my formative years, both of them bought for me by Mom (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Thank you, little Mom, for being my rock, the foundation upon which I have built my entire life, and, by giving me this humble little book as a birthday present over 40 years ago, propelling me along a hitherto-unsuspected but inspirational path - opening my eyes to the fascinating world of mystery animals that led to my lifelong career in cryptozoological writing and research, and which in turn has given me so much happiness and engaged my continuing interest for such a very long time.

How I wish that you were here today, to wish me a happy birthday and to give me a birthday card like you've always done every year of my life. You often joked that I'm an incorrigible hoarder, but occasionally it can be of great benefit, and today was one such occasion. I've hoarded quite a few of the birthday and Christmas cards that we've sent to each other over the years, so today I found some birthday cards that you'd written and given to me in earlier years, and I've put a couple of them up on the mantelpiece here, where I always placed yours in previous times.

So even though you can't be here with me today, I still have a birthday card from you – two, in fact – to look at and remind me with great joy and thankfulness of when you were here, of all the many happy birthdays that we spent together down through the years, and how very lucky and truly blessed my life has been with you in it as my mother.

Mom and a giant ground sloth statue at Crystal Palace, 2010 (© Dr Karl Shuker)

BEHOLD - THE GIANT PINK SLUGS OF MOUNT KAPUTAR

A giant pink slug endemic to Mount Kaputar (© NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service)

Sometimes, the most surprising discoveries can be right before our eyes, without even being recognised. Take the remarkable case of the giant pink slugs of remote Mount Kaputar in New South Wales, Australia.

Measuring a very sizeable 8 in long, and boasting an extremely bright, fluorescent pink body colouration that looks more akin to a particularly lurid Photoshop creation than anything designed by Mother Nature, these exceptionally eyecatching, moss-munching molluscs are found nowhere else on Earth.

They have long been known to scientists, but until very recently were simply assumed to be a non-taxonomic variety of the red triangle slug Triboniophorus graeffei. Named after a distinctive triangular marking present upon its mantle, this is a smaller, less vividly-hued but very common species along Australia's east coast that exists in a range of different colours.

Two green specimens of the red triangle slug (public domain)

Following a new study of their morphology and genetic make-up, however, Mount Kaputar's giant pink slugs have been exposed as a distinct, valid species in their own right. This now awaits formal description and naming, although it is already known colloquially as the blood slug on account of its startling colouration.

What makes its belated taxonomic recognition particularly interesting and zoologically significant is that this is now the only species belonging to the family Athoracophoridae that is known from inland Australia – all other species within the afore-mentioned family of land slugs (known as leaf-veined slugs) are of coastal occurrence.

Its separate species status means that this shocking-pink mega-mollusc also becomes Australia's largest native species of land slug. But why is it pink? As it lives in areas of the forest floor richly carpeted with red eucalyptus leaves, its neon-pink hue may actually afford it camouflage.

Giant pink slug – close-up of its head (pic source: http://www.factzoo.com/invertebrates/giant-pink-slug-slimy-fashion.html)

FROM KING CHEETAHS TO KOOLOOKAMBAS - VOLUME 2 OF THE JOURNAL OF CRYPTOZOOLOGY IS NOW AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER

The orang pendek of Sumatra in Indonesia's Greater Sundas island group has attracted considerable cryptozoological attention, but could there also be diminutive yet previously less-publicised man-beasts existing still-undiscovered by science on Indonesia's much smaller Lesser Sundas island of Flores?

Does an ornate 16th-century painting from India's Mughal Empire hold the key to the former existence in Asia of a mystery cat analogous to Africa's king cheetah?

How can the vast diversity of reports appertaining to mysterious freshwater cryptids across the length and breadth of Spain be explained?

What is the taxonomic identity of the koolookamba, a longstanding African mystery ape known not only from reports but also from captive specimens - just an aberrant version of chimpanzee, or a taxonomically discrete form in its own right, or even a bona fide chimpanzee-gorilla hybrid?

These are the fascinating subjects and thought-provoking questions under consideration in the papers contained within Volume 2 of the Journal of Cryptozoology - the world's only peer-reviewed scientific periodical devoted to mystery animals - which is now available to pre-order here. Don't miss it!

Engravings from 1896 of Mafuca, the most famous koolookamba to have been exhibited in captivity

MY NEW DRAGONS BOOK IS NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!

I'm delighted to announce that my latest book, Dragons in Zoology, Cryptozoology, and Culture (Coachwhip Publications: Greenville, 2013), is now available in hardback on both the USA Amazon site (click here) and the UK Amazon site (click here). 

And here is what you'll find in it:

Enough to keep even the most devoted draconophile spellbound for hours!

FAREWELL, LITTLE SNOWFLAKE - TEN YEARS ON, MY TRIBUTE TO A UNIQUE ICON: THE WORLD'S ONLY WHITE GORILLA

Little Snowflake as an adult

He was claimed to be the most photographed animal of all time (even appearing on the front cover of dance music duo Basement Jaxx's album Rooty), and he was indisputably one of the animal kingdom's greatest, most readily recognisable icons. He died 10 years ago this week, so here (first published in Fortean Times shortly after he died, but now expanded and updated in ShukerNature) is my tribute to Little Snowflake - the world's only known white gorilla.

As any cryptozoologist will confirm, Africa has always been replete with legends of bizarre-sounding beasts - some of which, notwithstanding, have ultimately proven to be real animals hitherto undescribed by science, as with the okapi, giant forest hog, and pygmy hippopotamus. Far more unlikely even than these, however, must surely be various ancient native legends of huge ghostly gorillas with pure-white fur worshipped as jungle deities. After all, none of these pallid entities had ever been spied by western explorers, so science scoffed at the mere notion of a white gorilla. Conversely, fiction writers and film makers alike were captivated by this semi-supernatural image, which duly featured in various adventure novels and movies.

A Virgil Finlay illustration from 1949 for The White Gorilla by Elmer B Mason

An early example, published in 1915, was written by Elmer B. Mason and succinctly entitled The White Gorilla.

A USA movie of the same title directed by Harry L. Fraser was released in 1945, and starred stuntman Ray "Crash" Corrigan as an embittered African explorer determined to track down and kill the elusive but ferocious white ape that had previously savaged him.

'The White Gorilla', starring Ray "Crash" Corrigan

Returning to novels: another one, originally published in French in 1957, was entitled Le Gorille Blanc and was penned by famous French science-fiction author Henri Vernes.

In 1966, it was republished in English as The White Gorilla, but by an incredible coincidence this very same year ended with an astonishing, totally unexpected discovery that effortlessly transcended and supplanted romantic fiction with truly remarkable fact.

Le Gorille Blanc by Henri Vernes

On 1 October 1966, amid the dense jungle of the tiny West African country of Rio Muni (a former Spanish colony now part of Equatorial Guinea), an adult female lowland gorilla was shot while devouring bananas within the grove of local farmer Benito Mañé. When warily inspected afterwards, the gorilla was found to be dead, but clinging to her body, its head buried within her deep fur, was a tiny baby gorilla that was still alive. Moreover, as Mañé and the other villagers crowding near to view the corpse and its attached baby could clearly see, this was no ordinary gorilla infant. Mañé's description of it was as accurate as it was concise: 'Nfumu! Ngi! - 'White! Gorilla!'.

And indeed it was, covered entirely in snowy-white fur. It was not a full, complete albino, however, because its eyes were not pink but bright blue - thus corresponding with the condition exhibited by the white tigers of Rewa and the Timbavati white lions. News of this amazing discovery soon reached Dr Paul Zahl of the National Geographic Society's Natural Sciences Division, by way of Spanish naturalist Dr Jorge Sabater Pi, who had meanwhile purchased the little gorilla - a two-year-old male - from Mañé for £50. Sabater subsequently spent some time taming the young ape during its sojourn at the Centro de Adaptacion y Experimentacion de Ikunde, sited in Rio Muni but owned by Barcelona Zoo.

Little Snowflake debuting in National Geographic Magazine, March 1967

Officially christened Nfumu, this white wonder was soon nicknamed Copito de Nieve - Spanish for 'Little Snowflake' - by Barcelona Zoo's director, Dr Antonio Jonch Cuspinera upon its arrival at Barcelona Zoo. And even though this name inevitably became somewhat incongruous when applied to what eventually became a fully-grown gorilla weighing around 400 lb, standing almost 6 ft tall, and sporting an 8-ft armspan, this is how the people of Barcelona - and far beyond - have popularly referred to their zoo's most famous inhabitant ever since. Little Snowflake he began, and Little Snowflake he remained.

Little Snowflake, full-grown (Ettore Balocchi/Flickr/Wikipedia)

Although records exist of gorillas with patches of white pigmentation that eventually disappeared, no other confirmed record of a pure-white gorilla is known, The closest item that I have been able to uncover is a snippet from Lawrence G. Green's Great African Mysteries (1937), in which he states:

"In the Upper Tano district of the Gold Coast Colony [now Ghana] a persistent native rumour of a 'wild man of the trees' was investigated some years ago. The natives dreaded the raids of this creature - described as a white giant. He killed children and sometimes carried off a woman over his shoulder. A white hunter set out to solve the mystery, and nearly lost his life in the attempt. He came face to face with the gorilla - a white-haired specimen - and failed to kill with the first shot. Then the gorilla was on him with a roar, breaking both his arms. Weakened by the wound, the gorilla crept away soon afterwards and the hunter survived."

This account seems highly sensationalised, and even if genuine it may simply be that the gorilla was an old individual whose dark hair had become silvered all over, an extreme example of the typical male silverback condition.

Painting of a belligerent white gorilla in the wild (image source unknown to me)

As for Little Snowflake, his origin was a complete mystery. Although legends of white gorillas have emerged elsewhere in Africa, ironically there are no such myths prevalent in or around Equatorial Guinea, for the local villagers were just as astounded by his discovery as the scientists. Moreover, with no indication of any previous white gorillas in the area from which he could have inherited the two copies of the recessive mutant allele (gene form) needed to produce his pallid colouring, for many years scientists assumed that it may well have arisen via a spontaneous mutation, thus originating with Little Snowflake and lacking any genetic precursor (but see Postscript at the end of this ShukerNature post for new findings relating to the genetics responsible).

Consequently, zoologists at Barcelona Zoo hoped that by breeding Little Snowflake with normal gorillas at the zoo, the exceedingly rare recessive gene responsible for his unique appearance may be perpetuated, and that in the future other white gorillas may be born. As yet, however, this has not happened, but he was nothing if not obliging, having mated with three different female gorillas and sired no less than 22 offspring, all normal-coloured. Whereas in the wild his white fur would have made him dangerously conspicuous, in captivity Little Snowflake's dazzling pelage posed no problems for him - at least, not initially. However, he did suffer from a common complication associated with albinism - photophobia, a marked visual sensitivity to bright light.

The White Gorilla by Henri Vernes

Tragically, by 2001 he had developed another, much more serious condition that again may well have been due to his albinism - skin cancer. Little Snowflake, of course, lacked any melanin in his skin, the dark pigment that acts as a shield against the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays. For a time, he responded to treatment, but by late September 2003 zoo officials were sad to announce that his condition had progressed to a terminal state and that Little Snowflake, by now roughly 40 years old, had only a few months at most to live.

Faced with the shattering news that he was dying, thousands of Barcelona's people visited Little Snowflake each day, paying their respects to one of their city's greatest stars and symbols. And in the early hours of 24 November 2003, Little Snowflake quite literally melted away, euthanised peacefully while asleep by the zoo's vets to spare him any further suffering. Farewell, Little Snowflake. The world will be a duller place without your unique glory, but your essence lives on in each of your many offspring, and one day the great genetic lottery may create more white gorillas in your image, to astonish and enchant all over again (but, hopefully, without resulting in skin cancer).

A 2005 DVD by Nature documenting the life and times of Little Snowflake

POSTCRIPT: In June 2013, after sequencing Little Snowflake's genome during the previous year from a sample of frozen blood taken before he died, a team of Spanish researchers (led by Tomas Marques-Bonet from the University of Pompeu Fabra) announced that their results indicated he was very inbred, because his parents shared 12% of their genome, suggesting that they may well have been uncle and niece. This inbred condition may in turn have caused the mutant allele responsible for his white colouration (now known to be the allele  SLC45A2) to have surfaced.

White gorilla illustration by Herge

And finally: more xenobiology than cryptozoology, and apes in name only, but wonderful all the same - here are the white apes of Barsoom as featured in the excellent 2012 Disney movie 'John Carter', which I thoroughly enjoyed when watching it last Christmas, and which was based upon A Princess of Mars - the first book in the Barsoom series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

John Carter vs the white apes of Barsoom ((c) Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

THE IRAQI AFA - A MIDDLE EASTERN MYSTERY LIZARD

Salvator water monitors - could the afa be an unknown giant relative?

One of the world's most obscure cryptozoological reptiles is the afa - a Middle Eastern mystery lizard briefly reported by explorer Sir Wilfred Thesiger in his book The Marsh Arabs (1964).

Also known as the Madan, the Marsh Arabs inhabited the marshlands of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the south and east of Iraq, and along the Iranian border – formerly a vast area of wetland covering more than 5.8 square miles. According to Thesiger, who had lived among them intermittently for eight years during the 1950s prior to the Iraqi revolution of 1958, the canoe-borne Madan claimed that the marshes at the mouth of the Tigris in Iraq was home to a monstrous lizard, which they termed the afa.

Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq's marshlands - the abode of the afa

Little else appears to have been documented concerning it. As various species of varanid or monitor lizard are native to this region of Asia Minor, however, it is plausible that the afa may be one too, albeit bigger than those formally recognised by science here - and hence either an unknown giant species, or based upon sightings of extra-large specimens of some known species.

Sadly, however, the question of the afa's taxonomic identity may be nothing more than academic nowadays. This is because following the Gulf War in 1991, the Iraqi government initiated a major programme to divert the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers away from the marshes in retaliation for a failed Shia uprising among the Arabs living there. This not only eliminated the Madan's food sources, forcing them to move elsewhere, but also turned the marshes themselves into a desert.

Consequently, the afa may well have been exterminated, especially if it were primarily aquatic, as I am not aware of any post-1991 reports alluding to it. If any ShukerNature reader is aware of any such reports, however, I'd be very interested to receive details.

The desert monitor lizard Varanus griseus, a common Iraqi varanid (Knockout Mouse/Wikipedia)

THE DRAGONS ARE COMING! - FIRST PREVIEW OF MY LATEST, 20TH BOOK

Hot on the heels of Mirabilis comes my latest, 20^th book – Dragons in Zoology, Cryptozoology, and Culture, scheduled for publication next month by Coachwhip Publications (Greenville, Ohio), just in time for Christmas! Above is a sneak preview of its cover, which includes one of several spectacular examples of dragon artwork very kindly prepared specifically for it by extremely talented artist Thomas Finley – thanks, Thomas!

Whereas my first dragons book – Dragons: A Natural History (1995) - concentrated on retelling dragon myths in vibrant lyrical prose, this all-new, second dragons book is a 'facts and figures' non-fiction exploration of every aspect of dragons. So except for both of them being illustrated throughout in colour and b/w, the two books are totally different from one another (as opposed to the second merely being an update of the first, which is what some readers mistakenly assumed when first learning about it), and they collectively cover pretty well everything that I've ever wanted to write about dragons - just as my two books on mysterious and mythological cats (Mystery Cats of the World, 1989; and Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery, 2012) cover pretty well everything that I've ever wanted to write about such cats.

As soon as it is available on Amazon, I'll add a link here (USA) and here (UK) – so keep checking back! Meanwhile, enjoy the additional examples included here of Thomas Finley's beautiful dragon artwork ((c) Thomas Finley), excerpted from my book, which contains more than 170 illustrations in total (some by other celebrated artist friends of mine, such as Anthony Wallis, Richard Svensson, Rebekah Sisk, William Rebsamen, Andy Paciorek, Hodari Nundu, Tim Morris, Pat Burroughs, and Markus Bühler), and including also the following pictures:

Xiuhcoatl, portrayed as a vertical Aztec amphisbaena ((c) Dr Karl Shuker)

 

Hand-coloured photograph of my mother, Mary D. Shuker, wearing a dragon-embroidered kimono during the mid-1940s ((c) Dr Karl Shuker)

And finally...

Posing alongside a reassuringly-subdued dragon! ((c) Dr Karl Shuker)