THE SIRENS OF ST HELENA

Alongside a manatee statue at Sea World in San Diego, California (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Those highly-modified aquatic mammals known as the sirenians or sea-cows, represented today by the manatees and dugongs, are already well known in cryptozoological circles by virtue of the extensively documented (yet incompletely verified) claim that they are responsible for many mermaid or siren sightings reported from around the world (hence the sea-cows' zoological name - 'sirenian').

Other sirenian claims upon the cryptozoologist's attention include: the possibility that the largest of all modern-day species, the supposedly extinct Steller's sea-cow Hydrodamalis gigas, still survives; the unmasking in 1985 of the ri (an aquatic mystery beast from New Guinea) as the dugong Dugong dugon; the one-time disputed existence of the dugong in Chinese waters; and the likelihood that an unidentified creature reported from various West African lakes and another such animal from eastern South America's Lake Titicaca may constitute unknown species of sirenian. In addition, there is the case presented here, one that had not been previously documented by cryptozoologists until my own writings on this subject were published.

There are three known species of present-day manatee. The Amazon manatee Trichechus inunguis inhabits the estuaries of the Orinoco and the Amazon; the Caribbean manatee T. manatus is distributed from the coasts of Virginia in the southeastern United States to the West Indies and the northern coasts of Brazil; and the African manatee T. senegalensis frequents the coasts and rivers of West Africa from Senegal to Angola. At one time, moreover, there were also persistent reports of putative manatees around the coasts of St Helena, a small south Atlantic island, almost equidistant from South America and Africa.

In view of the fact that there is a region on the southwestern coast of St Helena that is actually named Manatee Bay (sometimes spelt 'Manati'), one could be forgiven for assuming that there was never any uncertainty about these creatures' identity. In reality, however, this entire matter has never been unequivocally resolved, as evinced by the following selection of reports and the highly contradictory opinions that they have elicited.

A melange of manatees exhibiting their varied poses and movements in a vintage engraving (public domain)

As documented in a Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London article from 1935, Cornish traveller Peter Mundy journeyed in 1655 to India on the Aleppo Merchant, and during his return voyage the following year on the same vessel he paid a brief visit to St Helena. While walking along the beach near Chappell Valley, he saw a strange creature lying ashore and apparently severely injured. Mundy went nearer to examine it:

However, when I touched it, [it] raised his forepart, gaping on mee with his wide and terrible jawes. It had the coullor (yellowish) and terrible countenance of a lion, with four greatt teeth, besides smalle, long, bigge smelling hairs or mustaches.

The creature attempted to make its way back to the sea, but Mundy dispatched it with stones. It was evidently very large:

...in length aboutt ten foote and five foote aboutt the middle. Some say it was a seale, others notte. I terme itt a sealionesse, beeing a femall.

In his journal, Mundy included a sketch of this animal (reproduced in Fraser's account), which leaves no doubt that it was indeed a species of pinniped (seals, sea-lions, walruses).

Peter Mundy: Merchant Adventurer – a modern-day history of Mundy, edited by R.E. Pritchard (© Bodleian Library/R.E. Pritchard, reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

As uncovered by St Helena resident G.C. Kitching, the Public Records of Jamestown (this island's capital) contain many allusions to alleged manatees or sea-cows (including what appears to be the first usage of the name 'Manatee Bay', which occurred on 27 January 1679). For example, one such record, for 28 August 1682, listed the capture of "several sea-cows"; and on 20 March 1690, another record noted the following incident:

Tuesday, Goodwin and Coales brought up for killing a Sea-Cow, and not paying the Company's Royalty. They desire pardon, and say the Sea-Cow was very small; the oyle would not amount to above four or five gallons.

On 11 May 1691, a record mentioned that a sea-cow had appeared on shore at Windward, just a month before traveller William Dampier visited St Helena. Dampier became most intrigued by the alleged existence of manatees around the island's coasts:

I was also informed that they get Manatee or Sea Cows here, which seemed very strange to me. Therefore inquiring more strictly into the matter, I found the Santa Hellena Manatee to be, by their shapes, and manner of lying ashore on the Rocks, those Creatures called Sea-lyons: for the Manatee never come ashore, neither are they found near any rocky Shores, as this Island is, there being no feeding for them in such places. Besides, in this Island there is no River for them to drink at, tho' there is a small Brook runs into the Sea, out of the Valley by the Fort.

Returning to the records, on 29 August 1716 they reported that 400 lb of ambergris was found in Manatee Bay, and on 11 September 1739 "A Sea-Cow [was] killed upon Old Woman's Valley beach, as it was lying asleep, by Warrall and Greentree".

Steller's sea-lion bull, exhibiting its characteristically leonine mane (© Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 2.0 licence)

John Barnes's A Tour Through the Island of St. Helena (1817) contains a detailed account of these supposed sirenians as described by reliable observer and St Helena resident Lieutenant Thomas Leech, who identified them as sea-lions. Yet in complete contrast, another equally proficient observer, Dr Walter Henry, just as confidently identified them as manatees, stating in the second volume of his Events of a Military Life (1843):

We had sea-cows at St. Helena, the Trichechus Dugong, but they were not common. When shooting near Buttermilk Point with another officer one calm evening, we stumbled on one lying on a low rock close to the water's edge, and a hideous ugly brute it was, shaped like a large calf, with bright green eyes as big as saucers. We only caught a glimpse of it for a few seconds, for as soon as it noticed us, it jumped into the sea, in the most awkward and sprawling manner.

Note that Henry couched his references to these creatures' existence around St Helena in the past tense. This is because the last recorded appearance of such animals here took place in 1810, when one came ashore at Stone Top Valley beach, and was duly shot by a Mr Burnham. It measured 7 ft long, and 10 gallons of oil were obtained from it. Another of these creatures was also reported in 1810, this time from Manatee Bay.

Since then, St Helena's purported manatee appears to have been extinct, and as is so often the case it was only then that science began to take an interest in it. After reading an account of this creature in J.C. Melliss's St. Helena: A Physical, Historical, and Topographical Description of the Island (1875), in which Melliss claimed that it belonged either to the African or to the Caribbean species of manatee, on 20 June 1899 English zoologist Dr Richard Lydekker published a short review of the subject in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, which contained a number of the accounts given above in this present ShukerNature article. Although stating categorically that he did not wish to express a definite opinion concerning whether or not the animal could truly be some form of sirenian, Lydekker nonetheless ventured to speculate that if this were indeed its identity, it probably constituted a distinct species (perhaps even requiring a separate genus), as he felt unable to believe that it belonged to either of the manatee species nominated by Melliss.

Cape (brown) fur seal (© Karelj/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

In 1933, the entire matter was the subject of an extensive examination by Dr Theodor Mortensen of Copenhagen's Zoological Museum, as published in the journal Videnskabelige Meddelelser fra Dansk Naturhistorisk Forening. After careful consideration of the varied and often conflicting reports that he had succeeded in gathering, Mortensen came out in support of the views of Mundy and Leech - that the St Helena manatee was in reality a sea-lion.

Moreover, Mortensen even boldly identified its species - the Cape (brown) fur seal Arctocephalus pusillus (=antarcticus) - and believed the matter to be closed, reviving it briefly on 17 March 1934 in Nature merely to include mention of Dampier's account, which he had not seen when preparing his detailed paper. Certain other records, given in this present article of mine but again not seen by Mortensen, were presented as a response to his Nature note in Kitching's own Nature report, published on 4 July 1936, but Kitching did not express any opinion regarding the creature's identity.

By way of contrast, as outlined within his report of Mundy's sighting, in 1935 F.C. Fraser had leaned very heavily in favour of one specific identity - once again involving a pinniped, but not a sea-lion this time. Instead, Fraser nominated a true (i.e. earless) seal - namely, a young male specimen of the southern elephant seal Mirounga leonina. As its scientific name suggests, this creature does bear a fancied resemblance to a lion-like beast, and is therefore more reminiscent of a sea-lion (albeit one of massive proportions) than are most other true seals. Even so, it bears rather less resemblance to the beast depicted in Mundy's illustration. Moreover, as revealed in 2005 via a Latin American Journal of Aquatic Mammals paper jointly authored by Juan José Alava and Raúl Carvajal, this species did historically breed on St Helena, but equally they were readily recognised for what they were.

Since the 1930s, the St Helena manatee - or sea-lion, or elephant seal - seems to have been forgotten, like so many other 'inconvenient' animals, but could it really have been a sirenian? Sadly, the reports on file are not sufficient in themselves to provide an unequivocal answer - all that they can do is offer certain important clues.

Male southern elephant seal (© B. Navez/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

For instance, as manatees measure up to 15 ft long the St Helena beasts were evidently large enough, and their description as calf-shaped by Henry also conforms with that identity. Conversely, the saucer-shaped eyes of Henry's beast conflict markedly with the small, relatively insignificant versions sported by the generally myopic manatees. Large eyes are characteristic of pinnipeds, as are the fearsome jaws and teeth of Mundy's animal. The same can also be said of the latter's moustaches - but as manatees have a bristly upper lip too, this feature is less discriminatory.

If the St Helena beasts were sirenians, their presence around this island indicates that they may truly have constituted a species in their own right. After all, as Lydekker pointed out in defence of his belief that they belonged neither to the African nor to the Caribbean species of manatee, although it is conceivable that a specimen or two may occasionally be carried from Africa or America to St Helena this surely could not occur regularly.

As it happens, there is one notable feature mentioned in a number of the reports cited in this chapter and elsewhere that on first sight greatly decreases the likelihood that these animals belonged to any species of manatee - known or unknown. Although they will rest on the surface of the water in shallow stretches when not feeding, manatees do not generally come ashore. Yet according to several independent accounts, the St Helena beasts have frequently been seen resting (even sleeping) on the sands or on rocks, completely out of the water, after the fashion of pinnipeds. Also, the large amount of oil obtained from their carcases is more suggestive of seals than of sirenians.

So are we to conclude that they were not sirenians after all, instead merely large seals or sea-lions? Yet if this is indeed all that they were, why did the islanders refer to them so deliberately as manatees or sea-cows? It is extremely rare for pinnipeds to be referred to anywhere by such names. In addition, as Lydekker judiciously pointed out, just because known sirenians do not normally come ashore voluntarily, this does not mean that there could not be an unknown distinctive species of sirenian that does (or did) come ashore under certain circumstances.

An early and very charming but thoroughly inaccurate, seal-like portrayal of manatees, from De Nieuwe en onbekende weereld - of Beschryving van America en 't zuid-land, by Arnoldus Montanus, 1671, clearly showing a definite confusion back then between sirenians and pinnipeds (public domain)

And this is where we must leave the mystery of St Helena's sirenians-that-might-be-seals - still unsolved, and quite likely to remain that way indefinitely, due to the tragic probability that its subject is extinct, lost to science before its identity had even been established.

Finally, there is at least one case on record that constitutes the exact reverse of this one, because it involves some supposed seals that were ultimately revealed to be sirenians. Sea mammals assumed to be seals had been reported from the Red Sea island of Shadwan - but as recorded in 1939 by Paul Budker, when the animals featured in these reports were finally investigated they proved to be dugongs, which are indeed native to the Red Sea.

This ShukerNature article is excerpted and updated from my book The Beasts That Hide From Man.

KIPLING AND KARAIT - AN OPHIDIAN BUNGLE IN THE JUNGLE BOOK?

Exquisite illustration of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi the mongoose and an unspecified Indian snake, from a 1924 French edition of The Jungle Book (public domain)

…when Teddy came running down the path, Rikki-tikki was ready to be petted.

But just as Teddy was stooping, something flinched a little in the dust, and a tiny voice said: 'Be careful. I am death!' It was Karait, the dusty brown snakeling that lies for choice on the dusty earth; and his bite is as dangerous as the cobra's. But he is so small that nobody thinks of him, and so he does the more harm to people.

…Karait struck out. Rikki jumped sideways and tried to run in, but the wicked little dusty grey head lashed within a fraction of his shoulder, and he had to jump over the body, and the head followed his heels close…[but] Karait had lunged out once too far, and Rikki-tikki had sprung, jumped on the snake's back, dropped his head far between his fore-legs, bitten as high up the back as he could get hold, and rolled away. That bite paralysed Karait [killing him].

        Rudyard Kipling – 'Rikki-Tikki-Tavi', in The Jungle Book

Two of my best-loved books as a child (and still today, for that matter) were The Jungle Book (1894) and The Second Jungle Book (1895), both authored by Rudyard Kipling, which I first read at much the same time that Disney's classic animated movie version was first screened in cinemas (1967), and which I also adored despite its many liberties taken with Kipling's source material. Although they are most famous for their Mowgli stories, these two books also contained a number of others that did not feature him and were not set in the Indian jungle.

Of these non-Mowgli tales, my own personal favourite was 'Rikki-Tikki-Tavi', which was included in the first of Kipling's two Jungle Books. Its eponymous mongoose star (henceforth referred to here simply as RTT for brevity) successfully and successively saved from a series of potentially lethal attacks by Nag and Nagaina – a malign pair of garden-inhabiting Indian (spectacled) cobras Naja naja – the human family that he had 'adopted' after their young son Teddy had rescued him from almost drowning in a flood.

The front cover and spine (the latter depicting RTT confronting a cobra) from the hardback first edition of The Jungle Book (1894) (public domain)

However, cobras were not the only snakes that RTT dispatched. He also killed a much smaller but seemingly no less deadly serpentine threat to Teddy and family – namely, the "dusty brown snakeling" Karait, whose meagre description provided by Kipling is quoted in full at the beginning of this present ShukerNature blog article. Even as a child (and nascent cryptozoologist), I was fascinated by Karait, for whereas cobras were readily familiar to me, Karait remained mysterious, because no formal identification of his species was provided by Kipling.

So what was Karait – possibly an inaccurately-described known living species (i.e. a veritable bungle in The Jungle Book), or an entirely fictitious one that Kipling had specifically invented for his RTT story, or conceivably even a real species but one that was either now long-extinct or had still to be formally described and named by science? There was only one way to deal with these and other options on offer. So after watching a cartoon version of it and then re-reading the original story a few months ago, I conducted some investigations into Kipling's minute but highly mystifying Karait, and here is what I found out.

Adult specimen of the common Indian krait Bungarus caeruleus (© Jayendra Chiplunkar/Wikipedia  – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

Naturally, the name 'Karait' instantly calls to mind the very similar name 'krait', applied both colloquially and scientifically to a number of species of venomous elapid snake native to India and elsewhere in Asia, and belonging to the genus Bungarus – which is why as a child I had simply assumed from his name that Karait had indeed merely been a krait. However, my fascination with Kipling's diminutive yet deadly dust serpent increased during subsequent years, in tandem with my burgeoning ophidian knowledge, when I realised that what little morphological and behavioural information concerning Karait had been given by Kipling did not accord with any krait species (either in its adult or in its juvenile form) that was known to exist anywhere within or even beyond the Indian Subcontinent.

The most familiar krait species, and also the most abundant, widely distributed one in India, is the common Indian krait B. caeruleus. When adult, however, it can attain a total length of up to 5.75 ft (3 ft on average, but still very much longer than Kipling's Karait), and its body is handsomely marked with a characteristic banded pattern of light and dark stripes (often black and white, but famously black and gold in the closely-related banded krait B. fasciatus, also native to India and up to 7 ft long). Moreover, when it is a juvenile and therefore much smaller (hence much more comparable in size to Karait than the adult is), its stripes are even more distinct than they are in the adult snake and its background colouration is bluish, not brown.

The banded krait Bungarus fasciatus as depicted in Joseph Ewart's book The Poisonous Snakes of India (1878) (public domain)

Most other krait species also exhibit striping, albeit of different degrees of vividness. Needless to say, however, any mention of such markings in Kipling's description of Karait is conspicuous only by its absence, which would be highly unusual for Kipling if he had indeed intended Karait to be a krait, because his knowledge and descriptions of other Indian fauna was always very skilled. True, a few krait species do not possess stripes, but these still tend to have a very bold background body colour, such as shiny brown, glossy black, or even deep blue with a bright red head in one species (B. flaviceps from southeast Asia), so once again they differ substantially from the nondescript appearance ascribed by Kipling to Karait.

It is odd, therefore, that Wikipedia's entry for the genus Bungarus refers to Kipling's Karait as "a small sand-colored krait", apparently unaware of the fundamental morphological flaws in such an identification that I have enumerated above. Similarly unaware, it would seem, is the Kipling Society, because on its official website its brief entry for Karait states: "karait (or krait) A small highly poisonous snake, known to Kipling and common in India". Common in India it may be (and, indeed, is), but small it certainly is not.

Red-headed krait Bungarus flaviceps (© Touchthestove/Wikipedia – CC BY 4.0 licence)

No less damaging to a krait identity claim for Karait than incompatible morphology is the notable reluctance of these snakes to bite or strike out at a potential aggressor, preferring to coil up and hide their head within their coils, exposing and lifting up their tail tip instead. This behaviour does not correspond at all with the much more active, antagonistic striking behaviour of Karait, plus their predominantly nocturnal lifestyle means that kraits rarely encounter humans during the daytime anyway, which is when Karait encountered Teddy. Consequently, as the only link between the kraits and Karait is a shared colloquial name, it would seem most parsimonious to assume that Kipling simply selected the name Karait for its sound or familiarity, rather than to indicate any taxonomic affinity between his story's snake and the genuine kraits.

The website Litcharts offers a very different ophidian identity from a krait for Karait – nothing less, in fact, than an infant cobra. In its list of minor characters that appear in Kipling's story 'Rikki-Tikki-Tavi', it describes Karait as:

The young cobra hatchling, implied to be a child of Nag and Nagaina, whom Rikki-tikki battles in the garden early in the story. His small size in fact makes him more dangerous than the older snakes, as he is quicker and harder to catch, but Rikki-tikki defeats him nonetheless.

This entry's claim baffles me, because nowhere in Kipling's coverage of Karait and his unsuccessful attack upon RTT can I spot any implication that Karait was a young cobra hatchling, other than perhaps the term 'snakeling', which may imply a young snake. Equally, however, it may imply a small adult snake. In any case, even the smallest Indian cobra hatchlings, which still measure a respectable 10 in long, possess their species' characteristic hood – yet which, just like the stripes of kraits, is again conspicuous only by its absence in Kipling's description of Karait. Furthermore, by specifically stating that Karait's bite "is as dangerous as the cobra's", surely Kipling is actually delineating Karait from the cobra, rather than assimilating it with the latter snake? Certainly, that is how this statement reads to me.

A young Indian cobra Naja naja exhibiting its species' characteristic hood (© Muhammad Sharif Khan/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 2.5 licence)

A third snake identity, and one that I feel has much greater plausibility than either of the previous two discussed here, is a species of saw-scaled viper, belonging to the genus Echis, which includes among its number the Indian saw-scaled viper E. carinatus, the best-known representative. Just like Karait, these snakes are small, predominantly brown with only faint patterning sometimes, extremely venomous, notoriously irascible, and often found in dry, dusty, arid terrain, where they are very inconspicuous, frequently burying themselves in sand or dirt until only their head is visible, thereby enabling them to ambush unsuspecting approaching prey. Is it just a coincidence, therefore, that Kipling specifically states that Karait "lies for choice on the dusty earth"?

Moreover, these snakes readily strike out aggressively if threatened, just as Karait did, and so potent is their venom (as was Karait's) that saw-scaled vipers are one of the most significant snake-bite threats throughout their zoogeographical range, killing many people every year. Yet some such species are no more than 1 ft long even as adults. Clearly, therefore, this type of snake corresponds very closely with Karait across a wide range of different characteristics – morphological, behavioural, and ecological. Also worthy of note here is the hump-nosed viper Hypnale hypnale, which is native to India, greyish-brown in colour with a double row of large black spots, and no more than around 2 ft long (averages 12-15 in). However, it generally frequents dense jungles and hilly coffee plantations, rather than the more arid, dusty terrain favoured by Echis, and spends the day hidden in thick bushes and leaf litter.

Indian saw-scaled viper Echis carinatus (© Saleem Hameed/Wikipedia – CC BY 2.5 licence)

The fourth identity to be considered here is fundamentally different from the others inasmuch as it is based not upon factual similarities but rather upon fallacious ones. Superstitious, non-scientific traditional native lore in many regions of the world often ascribes all manner of fanciful, often highly venomous attributes to various animal species that in reality are entirely harmless. For instance, there is an Indian lizard known locally as the bis-cobra that for untold ages has been deemed by fearful villagers in rural areas to be totally lethal in every way, yet as confirmed by scientific examination of specimens it is in reality completely innocuous (click here to read my ShukerNature blog article concerning this unfairly-maligned saurian). Various geckos and chameleons are viewed with comparable yet wholly unwarranted native dread too. Certain equally inoffensive species of worm-like limbless amphibian known as caecilians, various worm-like limbless reptiles called amphisbaenians, and some reclusive fossorial snakes like sand boas and blind (thread) snakes have also suffered persecution due to similarly erroneous layman beliefs.

While investigating the possible taxonomic identity of Karait, I communicated with Mark O'Shea, the internationally-renowned snake researcher and handler from the West Midlands Safari Park, based not very far from where I live, and Mark echoed my own thoughts regarding this identity option, stating: "People fear what they think are dangerous even if they aren't, i.e. blue-tongued skink or large geckos". Could it be, therefore, that Karait belongs to one such species, i.e. a very small and thoroughly harmless dust-dwelling serpent (or serpentine herp of some other kind) that has been wrongly deemed to be venomous? But why would Kipling continue to perpetrate such a fallacy? Surely as a keen amateur naturalist he would have preferred to expose it in his story as being nonsensical folklore with no foundation in fact?

Brahminy blind snake Indotyphlops braminus (© Jjargoud/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

Also well worth considering is that Karait may have been a total invention on Kipling's part, created perhaps to add an unexpected, additional element of danger into a plot that already contained the ever-present threat posed by the malevolent pair of cobras Nag and Nagaina (whose evil plan was to kill RTT and the humans, and then move into their house). There is, after all, a notable literary precedent for the incorporation of a deadly but zoologically non-existent Indian serpent into a work of fiction – none other than the lethal Indian swamp adder or 'speckled band' that confronted the master detective Sherlock Holmes in a famous short story penned by Holmes's creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 'The Adventure of the Speckled Band' was first published in 1892 (by London's Strand Magazine), i.e. just a couple of years before Kipling's Jungle Books were published (click here to see my comprehensive investigation of Conan Doyle's sinister swamp adder on ShukerNature). Who knows, might it even have directly inspired Kipling to dream up a fictitious death-dealing serpent of his own?

Rather less likely, but by no means impossible, is that Karait represented either a valid species that did exist back in Kipling's time but has since become extinct without ever having been formally named and described, or one that still exists but is so elusive that it has yet to be officially discovered and recognised by science. With no supportive evidence known to me for either of these two options, however, they must remain for now entirely speculative.

Artistic representation of the possible morphology of Conan Doyle's fictitious Indian swamp adder (© Tim Morris)

At this stage in my investigation, therefore, the identity for Karait that I personally deemed to be most tenable was that of a saw-scaled viper, but I always greatly value receiving the thoughts, opinions, and possible additional information offered by other interested parties too. Consequently, on 25 March 2019 I posted the following concise summary of the Karait case on my Facebook timeline and also in various snake-relevant FB groups:

Watching the 1974 Chuck Jones cartoon version of Rudyard Kipling's mongoose-starring story Rikki-Tikki-Tavi recently, I was reminded of a mystery that always puzzled me when reading it as a child. To which species did the extremely venomous but tiny dust-inhabiting, "dusty brown snakeling" Karait belong? As a child, I'd simply assumed that it was a species of krait, on account of the similarity in names and the occurrence of kraits in India. but when I learnt more about such snakes I discovered that young Indian kraits Bungarus caeruleus are actually vividly striped and bluish in colour, not unmarked and dusty brown. And even young kraits seem bigger than Karait was. I've since read various alternative suggestions, e.g. that Karait was actually a saw-scaled viper, or even an infant cobra. Or could he have been a wholly fictional species, as apparently the Indian swamp adder that confronted Conan Doyle's detective Sherlock Holmes was? There may even be the possibility that it is a real yet totally harmless small species, like one of the Gerrhopilidae blind snakes of India, but which is erroneously deemed in local folklore to be very venomous. There are many such cases on record, from caecilians to an Indian lizard dubbed the bis-cobra, which I have previously documented. Do any of my herpetological friends or those of Indian heritage have any ideas as to Karait's likely identity? If so, I'd love to read your thoughts! Here is Kipling's all-too-brief description of Karait's morphology: [I then quoted the first major paragraph of the excerpt from Kipling's book that opens this present ShukerNature article.]

The common Indian krait as depicted in Joseph Ewart's book The Poisonous Snakes of India (1878) (public domain)

I then sat back to await any postings that may be forthcoming. In the event, I received quite a number of comments (including a greatly welcomed, detailed evaluation by American biologist Dr Christopher Mallery that closely echoed my own thought processes regarding the case), which revealed that the overriding opinion concerning Karait's likely identity was the same as mine – a saw-scaled viper.

However, there was one nagging problem with this identity that I could neither resolve nor overlook. If Karait had truly been based upon a saw-scaled viper, why did Kipling, who was so knowledgeable concerning Indian fauna, give to it a name that is applied locally to the krait? This made no sense at all – until, that is, Robert Twombley, a longstanding Facebook friend who is passionately interested in both herpetology and cryptozoology, and is also the creator of the reptile/amphibian-specific cryptozoological group Ethnoherpetology, posted a brief but remarkable revelation there on 29 March 2019 that was entirely new to me, but which in my opinion provides the long sought-after missing piece of the perplexing Karait jigsaw puzzle. Here is what he wrote:

Bungarus caeruleus (Schneider, 1801) and Bungarus fasciatus (Schneider, 1801), were once placed in the same genus Pseudoboa (Schneider, 1801) same with Echis carinatus (Schneider, 1801).

Johann G.T. Schneider (public domain)

In other words, back in 1801 the Indian (as well as the banded) krait and the Indian saw-scaled viper had been taxonomically lumped together by German naturalist Johann G.T. Schneider within the very same genus, Pseudoboa (which he had officially coined in his 1801 treatise Historiae Amphibiorum Naturalis et Literariae Fasciculus Secundus Continens Crocodilos, Scincos, Chamaesauras, Boas, Pseudoboas, Elaps, Angues, Amphisbaenas et Caecilias), and were therefore viewed scientifically as closely-related, similar serpents. (It was only in later years that they were eventually shown to be quite distinct, both anatomically and genetically, so were duly split not only into separate genera but also into separate taxonomic families – Elapidae for the kraits as well as the cobras, and Viperidae for the vipers.) So it is not unreasonable to assume that back then the colloquial name 'karait' had been more inclusive too, all of which could in turn explain why Kipling had applied the latter name to a snake that was quite evidently not a krait but a saw-scaled viper.

My sincere thanks to Robert Twombley, Dr Christopher Mallery, Mark O'Shea, and all of the other correspondents who so kindly responded to my FB enquiry with their greatly-valued thoughts and views.

Photographic portrait of Rudyard Kipling (public domain)

SHUNKA WARAK'IN, RINGDOCUS, GUYASTICUTUS, ROCKY MOUNTAIN HYAENA – A TANGLE OF TERMS FOR A VERY TAXING TAXIDERM BEAST

Enlargement photograph of a picture postcard of The Beast displayed alongside its glass case (photograph © Shane Lea)

Last month, a friend of mine informed me that just a few years ago he had been fortunate enough to view up close and personal(ly) something truly rare in cryptozoology – an actual physical specimen of a putative cryptid. And not just any cryptid either. Nothing less, in fact, than a suspected shunka warak'in – one of North America's lesser-known but no less interesting mystery creatures.

I first documented the shunka warak'in back in 2007, within my book Extraordinary Animals Revisited, and I added a very important update to my account when that book was reprinted not long afterwards. So, before I document my friend's first-hand impressions of the afore-mentioned specimen, here is what I originally wrote 12 years ago concerning this very intriguing New World unknown animal:

The taxiderm ringdocus exhibit (aka The Beast) originally displayed in Sherwood's store/museum, where it was also labelled as a guyasticutus and a Rocky Mountain hyena (public domain)

Translating as ‘carrying-off dogs’, 'shunka warak'in' is the name given by the Ioway and other Native Americans living along the U.S.A.-Canada border to a strange dark-furred creature likened morphologically to a cross between a wolf and a hyaena, which sports a lupine head and high shoulders, but also a sloping back and short hindlimbs - bestowing upon it a hyaenid outline. As its name suggests, the shunka warak’in is said to sneak into the tribes’ camps at night and seize any unwary dogs, and it cries like a human if killed.

Sometime during the 1880s, a mystifying creature fitting this description was shot and killed by the grandfather of zoologist Dr Ross E. Hutchins (who documented the incident in his book Trails to Nature’s Mysteries, 1977) on his ranch in the Madison River Valley north of Ennis, Montana. Unlike so many other cryptozoological corpses, however, this one was actually preserved, becoming a cased taxiderm specimen that was subsequently exhibited for many years by a grocer called Sherwood at his store-cum-museum near Henry Lake, Idaho, Sherwood terming it a ‘ringdocus’. Moreover, a good-quality photograph of this unique specimen was taken, revealing its somewhat composite form – and appears in Hutchins’s book. This is just as well, because the whereabouts of the specimen itself are currently unknown, as it has apparently been moved in recent years to somewhere in the West Yellowstone area.

After reading Hutchins’s account and seeing the photo, veteran American cryptozoologist Loren Coleman keenly pursued this intriguing subject further, and together with fellow cryptozoologist Mark A. Hall he uncovered other accounts and data concerning odd hyaena-like beasts reported in North America over the years, which he duly collated in an article devoted entirely to the shunka warak’in (Fortean Times, June 1996). One further report dates from as recently as 1991, in Canada, when a peculiar hyaena-lookalike beast was observed by several eyewitnesses near to the Alberta Wildlife Park (Fortean Times, February-March 1992).

A seemingly different, clearer photograph of the taxiderm ringdocus/The Beast specimen (photographer's identity presently unknown to me, photograph seemingly in the public domain, but in any case reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Moreover, an additional report that may well have bearing upon the shunka warak’in case but which has not been published until now is one that was brought to my attention by cryptozoological artist William Rebsamen in an email to me of 19 May 1998. In it, Bill recalled meeting up a few days earlier with his high school art teacher, Ron Thomas, and had been very surprised to learn that Ron had a longstanding interest in cryptozoology. Described by Bill as a very non-nonsense person with a lifetime’s woodsman experience from growing up on a New Jersey horse ranch and moving to the Oklahoma pan-handle working with horses before finally settling down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, to become an art teacher, Ron passed on to Bill some very interesting information:

Ron also asked me if I’d ever heard of a strange predator that was not to be mistaken by locals as a bear or dog. Ron said he did not think much after first hearing about this from an old farmer who lived near him until he heard the same description from a totally unrelated second source near the same area. It is described as massively built in the front of its body while having shorter legs in back and travels in an unusual gait. As though Ron read my mind he next told me it sounds to him like some sort of hyena except that it is coal black in color. This reminded me of an article in Fortean Times (FT 87, page 42) in Loren’s ‘On the Trail’ of the mysterious (but poorly taxidermed) hyena like creature pictured in a photo from the Southwest.

I totally agree with Bill that Ron’s mystery beast certainly recalls Loren’s shunka warak’in – but if such a beast does indeed exist, what could it be? The most conservative notion is that reports of it feature nothing more than freak/deformed wolves or odd feral mongrel dogs. Even the stuffed specimen, sloping back notwithstanding, appears more canine than hyaenine in overall form as depicted in the photo of it. Additionally, an escaped/released genuine hyaena or two may also have been sighted. However, with the exception of the very dark-furred but also very rare brown hyaena Hyaena brunnea, modern-day hyaenas are generally light-coloured with distinctive spots or stripes (depending upon the species).

Brown hyaena in the Gemsbok National Park, South Africa (© Bernard Dupont/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 2.0 licence)

As for any possibility that it really is a wolf x hyaena hybrid, this is not tenable, because canids and hyaenids belong to two totally separate taxonomic families. Consequently, it is highly unlikely that a wolf-hyaena mating would even produce offspring at all, let alone viable ones.

Three very dramatic identities that have been proposed [by various cryptozoological investigators] involve the prospect of prehistoric survival. One of these identities is an undiscovered, modern-day borophagine – a superficially hyaena-like subfamily of canids represented by fossils in North America’s Oligocene to Pliocene epochs (34-2.5 million years ago). However, their hypershortened faces differ markedly from the long-snouted profile of the stuffed creature. The second suggestion is a surviving Chasmaporthetes ossifragus, America’s formidable hunting hyaena, which officially became extinct around 10,000 years ago [since revised to around 0.78 million years ago]. And the third is a relict amphicyonid, an identity that has also been applied to another mystery mammalian carnivore reported from North America, the waheela [click here to read more about this cryptid on ShukerNature].

Of course, one of the best possible ways of ascertaining the identity of at least one supposed shunka warak’in is to trace the Sherwood-owned taxiderm specimen, and perform DNA analysis on hair samples taken from it. So if you live in or plan to visit the West Yellowstone area, and you happen to spot a strange-looking, stuffed ‘hyaena-wolf’ ensconced in a large glass case there, don’t shun it as a freak or a fake. Take some photos, ask its owners as many questions about it as you can, and please send me whatever images and information concerning it and its new location that you are able to. It may indeed prove to be nothing more startling than a shabbily-preserved wolf or dog – then again, it might prove to be a major cryptozoological find.

Cormocyon copei, a species of dog-like borophagine, depicted by Roger Witter in his Turtle Cove mural (public domain, according to Wikipedia – click here for details)

Not long after my book containing the above account was published, a highly significant rediscovery was made – none other than the seemingly long-lost taxiderm ringdocus itself! Needless to say, I was most anxious to add details of this very important new episode in the history of the shunka warak'in to my earlier documentation of it, so an updated reprint of my book was swiftly published that contained the following additional coverage:

STOP PRESS: The long-lost stuffed 'ringdocus' (p. 99), which corresponded well with descriptions of the mysterious shunka warak’in, has been found! After reading a story about it in late October 2007, Jack Kirby, another grandson of Israel Hutchins, tracked down the elusive exhibit to the Idaho Museum of Natural History [IMNH] in Pocatello [where, unbeknownst to cryptozoologists, it had long been in storage together with Sherwood's other taxiderm specimens, ever since they had all been donated to this museum]. Moreover, the museum agreed to loan it to Kirkby in order for it to be displayed at the Madison Valley History [Association] Museum [MVHAM, in Ennis, Montana]. A new examination of this famous specimen has revealed some previously-undocumented details. It measures 48 inches from the tip of its snout to its rump, not including its tail, and stands 27-28 in high at the shoulder. As portrayed in a photograph accompanying an article concerning its unexpected rediscovery published by the Bozeman Daily Chronicle on 15 November 2007 [click here to read this article and view the full-colour photo of it alongside Jack Kirby], its snout is noticeably narrow, and its coat is dark-brown, almost black, in colour, with lighter tan areas, and includes the faint impression of stripes on its flanks. Despite its age and travels around America, this potentially significant taxiderm specimen is in remarkably good condition, with no signs of wear or tear or even any fading of coat colouration. Could it truly be a shunka warak’in? And, if so, what in taxonomic terms is the shunka warak’in? Now that the lost has been found, DNA analyses of hair and tissue from the long-preserved exhibit may at last provide some answers.

More than a decade after I wrote the above stop-press account, however, my hopes and expectations that samples from the stuffed ringdocus (nowadays also known as The Beast) would be submitted for DNA analysis to reveal its taxonomic identity have still to be fulfilled. Apparently, this is or has been due at least in part to legality issues concerning which of the two museums featuring in this specimen's modern-day history (i.e. the INHM and the MVHAM) has the legal authority to allow such samples to be procured from it and dispatched for testing – click here for more details regarding this complex matter as contained within a Cryptomundo article authored and posted by Loren Coleman on 27 May 2009. Having said that: according to a noteworthy comment posted below that article on 21 September 2012 by now-retired museum professional/vertebrate palaeontologist Richard S. White, the INHM has deaccessioned the specimen and conveyed ownership of it to the person who had previously borrowed it, i.e. Jack Kirby, which if so presumably means, therefore, that responsibility for permitting or preventing DNA analyses now lies wholly within the MVHAM's remit.

Meanwhile, I am pleased to be able to present herewith some interesting, hitherto-unpublished Beast data, in the form of first-hand eyewitness information and photographs kindly supplied to me by Shane Lea from Montana, plus details of a second, much more recent Montana mystery canid. Shane is a longstanding cryptozoological correspondent and friend of mine, who specifically visited Ennis's MVHAM a few years ago in order to observe its most enigmatic exhibit, The Beast, where it has been housed ever since it was originally loaned there from the IMNH in 2007.

Enlargement photograph of a second picture postcard of The Beast (photograph © Shane Lea)

In a series of emails sent to me during May and June 2019, Shane revealed that the MVHAM is a small natural history museum containing a nice collection of familiar North American mammals, plus The Beast, which is contained within a large glass case at the front of the building. Due to a combination of poor lighting and camera-flash reflections off its glass case dooming to inevitable failure any attempt made to photograph this specimen directly, Shane chose instead to photograph in close-up a couple of full-colour picture postcards depicting it that he purchased there, and then print enlargements of his photos on glossy paper in order to exhibit and examine The Beast's features afterwards in more detail.

When subsequently discussing its possible identity with me via email, Shane stated that he favoured a wolf, whereas I mentioned in reply that I leaned more towards either an exceedingly cross-bred domestic dog or the hybrid offspring of some such dog and a wolf. Both of us readily discounted any hyaena or prehistoric survivor identity, because it clearly was not the former and it appeared far too nondescript in appearance, relatively speaking, for it to be any of the latter options noted earlier here. To quote Shane:

[The] specimen I saw was no larger than an ordinary wolf…As I viewed “The Beast,” the whole time I was thinking in my mind “wolf.” Believe you me, I was looking for any hyena-like characteristics. No-one would love to find something “prehistoric” more than me, but, you have to keep your head on straight and be realistic, otherwise you’ll just end up fooling yourself. You brought up a very valid point that I had not considered before, the cross-breed consideration. One thing that always bothered me about the account of this beast, was that as recalled in the book: “Trails To Nature’s Mysteries,” this animal that was shot and killed, was described as being friendly toward the dogs around the ranch in Montana. Now, why would an animal described as “carrying-off-dogs” be friendly and non-aggressive w/dogs, unless it was actually part dog itself?

Trails To Nature's Mysteries by Dr Ross E. Hutchins (© Dr Ross E. Hutchins/Dodd, Mead – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only – click here to purchase a copy on Amazon's USA site)

This latter comment by Shane is a very valid one. For although it is not unknown for a wild canid to lack hostility towards an encountered domestic dog, such encounters generally involve either downright hostility or open avoidance between the two animals.

Equally worthy of note, however, is a comment dated 10 January 2008 and posted underneath a Cryptomundo news item authored on 15 November 2007 by Loren Coleman regarding The Beast's rediscovery (click here to read it), in which a reader with the username MustangAppy claimed:

I know for a fact that the previous Mammology [sic] Curator and the current Paleontology Curator at IMNH have both examined this animal and stated that this is a poorly mounted black wolf, period.

John James Audubon's classic painting of a black wolf (public domain)

Also of interest is that in May 2018 a large canine mystery beast was once again shot in Montana. Here is what I subsequently wrote about it in one of my Alien Zoo cryptozoology news columns of 2018 for Fortean Times:

IS A MONTANA CRYPTID CRYING WOLF? Even more perplexing and media headlines-generating is the mystifying canine cryptid that was shot on a private ranch near Denton in the Lewistown area of northcentral Montana, USA, on 16 May 2018. With long greyish-brown fur, a large head, and a definite canine appearance, it superficially recalls a wolf in overall form. Yet according to Ty Smucker, wolf management specialist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP), who has examined close-up colour photos of this creature's body, its feet seem too small, its ears too large, and its body and limbs too short. As to be expected, the story of its procurement and unresolved taxonomic status soon went viral on social media, resulting in a diverse array of identities having been proposed for it, ranging from the mundane to the monstrous. At one end of this taxonomic spectrum are suggestions that it may be a specimen of the elusive dogman, a bizarre entity whose existence remains unconfirmed but is said to be capable of walking bipedally, like a humanoid dog. A related notion, whose seriousness remains as undetermined as the creature's identity, is that it is a werewolf. No less thought-provoking are opinions that it is nothing less than a dire wolf Canis dirus, a very large, burly New World species believed to have become extinct almost 10,000 years ago. Another postulated cryptozoological connection is one that links it to an equally contentious wolf-like or even hyaena-like American mystery beast known variously as the shunka warak'in or ringdocus, an alleged (but never verified) taxiderm specimen of which is currently on display at the Madison Valley History Association Museum [MVHAM] in Ennis, Montana. And then there is the proposal that it is a young, emaciated grizzly bear – but I have yet to see any young bear, emaciated or otherwise, that has a characteristically canine head and jaws, not to mention a long bushy tail! My own thoughts are that it is a pure-bred wolf, a wolf x domestic dog hybrid, or a pure-bred domestic dog but of decidedly crossbred ancestry in terms of the number and varieties of breeds that may well have contributed to it (i.e. a mongrel or mutt of no recognised heritage). Among domestic species of mammal, the domestic dog is unparalleled in terms of its morphological and genetic diversity, so much so that I have little doubt that this diversity could readily engender the phenotype of the Denton beast under consideration here. All too often in cryptozoology, an unusual specimen is procured, only for its remains to be discarded or lost without any samples having been secured from it and subjected to formal scientific examination. Happily, however, in this particular instance that sorry series of events has not occurred. Instead, FWP game wardens went to investigate it after it had been shot, and its entire carcase has been sent to their laboratory at Bozeman for continued study. Bruce Auchly, information manager for Montana FWP, has publicly stated that they are now awaiting a DNA report back from the lab, after which we may finally know whether Denton's cryptid was merely crying wolf or whether it really was something out of the ordinary. In mid-June, the results contained in that keenly-awaited DNA report were made public by Montana's FWP in an official press release. This revealed that despite the fact that certain investigators had opined that it looked odd, the mystery beast in question was in reality nothing more than a very ordinary adult female grey wolf Canis lupus. In other words, not a dire wolf at all, merely a dire disappointment, at least as far as some cryptozoologists were concerned. [A CBS news report of this specimen's discovery and denouement that includes photographs of it can be accessed here.]

Conversely, neither of the two cryptozoologically fundamental questions regarding The Beast can be answered conclusively at present. What is its taxonomic identity? And regardless of what it is taxonomically, is The Beast one and the same as whatever the shunka warak'in is? (Always assuming, of course, that the shunka warak'in traditional folklore is actually based upon a real creature, rather than merely a wholly mythical, non-existent one.) Or, to combine the two: assuming once again that it is indeed real and not just a myth, is the shunka warak'in whatever The Beast is?

Digitally-created shunka warak'in image created by '69.146.147.248 aka A FANDOM User' (who states here: "I'm happy to see it still floating around the internet" (© 69.146.147.248 aka A FANDOM User, reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Let us hope that whatever legal wrangles may be impeding the prospect of samples from The Beast being made available for DNA analyses can be resolved in the near future, so that at least the first of these two questions can at last be answered. Of course, who can say whether the likelihood that an unidentified mystery beast will always attract more visitors than an identified non-mystery one may also be playing a part in this complex scenario…?

The last words on The Beast, ringdocus, guyasticutus, shunka warak'in, Rocky Mountain hyaena, or whatever else one chooses to term this most taxing of taxiderm specimens belong to Shane, to whom I owe a great debt of thanks for so very kindly providing me with his very informative insights and photographs regarding The Beast, and also for his unfailing support and encouragement that he has always given to me down through our many years of cryptozoological correspondence, which I appreciate most sincerely – thank you so much, Shane!!

For lack of a better name, the cryptid in Montana was also called “Ringdocus,” an unfortunate moniker. But…at least the “Ringdocus” was preserved and can be viewed to this day. That at least is some small consolation for the poor cryptid’s unfortunate demise. R.I.P. “Ringdocus,” whatever you are.

Amen to that!

My book Extraordinary Animals Revisited, in which I first documented the shunka warak'in and The Beast (© Dr Karl Shuker/CFZ Press)