ShukerNature

"I NEVER SAW A PURPLE COW" – WELL, NOW I HAVE (SORT OF...)

2012-01-25T21:08:00.018Z

My own idea of what a purple cow may look like (Public domain photograph adapted by Dr Karl Shuker)

One of the shortest but most famous of all nonsense poems is 'The Purple Cow', penned by American author Gelett Burgess (1866-1951). It originally appeared in the first issue of The Lark, a magazine published in 1895 that was co-edited and (at least initially) largely written by Burgess. Here is the illustrated page from The Lark containing this poem:

It is well-documented that this humble little verse attracted such attention in the years to come that eventually Burgess was driven to distraction by its unexpected yet unrivalled popularity – to the extent that he announced publicly how he wished that he had never written it. He even wrote the following humorous parody of it to that effect:

Ah, yes, I wrote the "Purple Cow" —
I'm Sorry, now, I wrote it;
But I can tell you Anyhow
I'll Kill you if you Quote it!

Gelett Burgess

Outside poetry circles, 'The Purple Cow' is also often used nowadays as a symbol or representation of any highly unlikely occurrence or object encountered in life – something so unusual that it couldn't possibly exist...

Except that in its original bovine connotation, it could and has done – at least twice, in fact!

Having said that, however, until today I only knew of one real-life example – this one:

In 1948, the head of Florida's State Nutrition Laboratory was very bemused by the discovery that one of the cows present in a herd grazing on poor land in this U.S. state was purple in colour. Needless to say, this herd and in particular its singularly-shaded member soon attracted detailed scientific attention, and the cows were all found to be very mineral-deficient. Following a course of feeding upon a natural, balanced diet, however, they became much more healthy and appeared in no way different from any others – all except one, that is.

For although it too became much more healthy, the purple cow never lost its extraordinary hue. And despite close study, neither the reason for its remarkable colouration having arisen in the first place nor the reason for its persistence following a proper diet was ever uncovered.

Now, moreover, as I learnt today, courtesy of an online news video kindly brought to my attention on Facebook by Lazarro Baca, there is a second specimen on record. On 17 January 2012, media worldwide published reports of a certain male calf lately born in Jezdina - a small mountain village close to the Serbian city of Čačak - which is attracting considerable local interest and publicity, due to its remarkable purple colouration.

Having said that, in videos and still photos of it that I have seen so far, such as those included in this present blog post of mine, the animal variously looks grey and white or very pale lilac and white. In view of the appreciable attention that it is receiving, however, I am assuming that it appears more purple in colour when seen in the flesh.

Serbia's purple calf

Its owner is farmer Radmila Glavonjić, who has stated that his unique calf will certainly not be sent to the slaughterhouse. Due to its resemblance to the famous purple cow emblem of Milka chocolate, Radojka would have named it Milka had it been female, but as it is male, he is toying with the idea of naming it either Milkan or Sladjan ('Cutie' in Serbo-Croat).

Veterinary surgeons who have examined this calf claim that it is perfectly healthy, and consider its unwonted colouration to be of genetic rather than external origin. It will be interesting to see whether the animal retains its purple shade as it matures.

Serbia's purple calf with its mother

Speaking about the purple cow logo of Milka chocolate, cryptozoological colleague Markus Bühler has shared the following fascinating information with me:

"I am not completely sure if this is an urban legend, but apparently many children who lived in towns and had never seen a cow in life really assumed that cows are purple, as a result of the wide precence of purple Milka cows on tv and on chocolate."

Wonderful! Thanks Markus!

A short video of Serbia's purple calf can be viewed on YouTube here.

FELIS - LOST CONSTELLATION OF THE CAT

2012-01-21T22:43:00.014Z

Felis, as depicted in Alexander Jamieson's 1822 star atlas

Today, only 88 constellations in the night sky are formally recognised by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), but many additional ones were once described and named too. One of these was Felis, the Cat, which was originally designated in 1799 by French astronomer Joseph Jérôme de Lalande, a noted cat-lover who had lamented the domestic cat's absence in a sky populated by no less than three different domestic dog constellations (Canis Major, Canis Minor, and Canes Venatici), as well as three wild cats (Leo, Leo Minor, and Lynx). And so Felis, situated between the constellations of Antlia (the Air Pump) and Hydra (the Water Snake), was duly added to the list, becoming the thirty-fourth animal constellation (albeit a rather small one).

Accordingly, in 1801 it was portrayed in German astronomer Johann Elert Bode's magnificent atlas of the heavens, Uranographia Sive Astrorum Descriptio (the largest star atlas ever published, containing the positions of over 17,000 stars), as well as in a map of 1805 prepared once again by Bode.

Felis, as depicted in Bode's Uranographia (1801)

It also appeared in an equally spectacular star atlas by Alexander Jamieson, entitled Celestial Atlas Comprising a Sistematic [sic] Display of the Heavens, which was published in 1822.

In later years, however, just like numerous other once-recognised constellations, Felis lost its place in the night sky. After having been deemed by French astronomer Nicolas Camille Flammarion to be superfluous, it was not included in the final list of 88 constellations drawn up and officially approved by the IAU in 1922. And that is why – just like other 'extinct' constellations such as Rangifer the Reindeer, Bufo the Toad, Cerberus the Three-Headed Hound of Hades, Hippocampus the Sea Horse, Noctua the Owl, Limax the Slug, Apis the Bee, Dentalium the Tooth Shell, Gallus the Rooster, Anguilla the Eel, and (truly!) Manis the Pangolin, to name but a few - Felis the Cat no longer gazes down upon us from the Heavens far above.

Manis - the Pangolin constellation - as designated and depicted in 1754 by John Hill within his Urania: A Compleat View of the Heavens; Containing the Ancient and Modern Astronomy, in Form of a Dictionary

This blog post is extracted from my forthcoming book, Last Night I Saw The Strangest Cat: A Cat-alogue of Feline Magic, Mythology, and Mystery.

AS EASY AS ABC? TRACKING DOWN AN ICONIC CRYPTO-TERM

2012-01-07T21:56:00.018Z

With the Ludlow jungle cat, an ABC from 1989 (Dr Karl Shuker)

I recently received on Facebook a most interesting enquiry from fellow mystery cat investigator Stuart Paterson. Stuart was interested in discovering where and when the term 'alien big cat' and its acronym 'ABC' had first appeared in print.

Keen to track down the answer to this very thought-provoking query, and mindful that they have long been standard usage in Fortean Times, Britain's pre-eminent anomalies journal, I duly conducted some bibliographical research, and this is what I discovered.

Being fortunate enough to own a complete run of Fortean Times, I trawled through every issue starting from #1 (published in November 1973, when it was entitled The News), and I found that the first time that either of these phrases appeared in it was in issue #44 (summer 1985), p. 28. In an article by editor Bob Rickard entitled 'Once More With Felines', reviewing recent mystery cat reports in Britain, the opening section of the first line read as follows: "Our last round-up of alien big-cats (ABC) - we have decided to adopt this acronym - was in FT 42...".

Although previous issues of FT contained numerous accounts of feline cryptids, they had only ever been referred to variously as 'mystery cats', 'phantom felines', 'phantom panthers', 'MAs' (Mystery Animals), or by location-specific terms such as 'Exmoor Beast', 'Surrey Puma', etc.

However, back in 1980, Janet and Colin Bord had referred to 'alien big cats' several times in the mystery cat chapter of their book Alien Animals, though they never abbreviated this term to 'ABC' in it.

I have also scoured through a number of additional books as well as articles from other magazines published during the late 1970s, but I have not uncovered any usage of 'alien big cat' pre-dating that of the Bords in their book. Thus it would appear that they coined this now-iconic phrase, as an offshoot of the 'alien' tag that they also attached to various other terms in their book, and that FT shortened it to 'ABC' five years later in their summer 1985 issue.

GROW YOUR OWN HOMUNCULUS

2012-01-04T13:25:00.014Z

Creating a homunculus via alchemy

Even today, the alchemists of medieval times remain famous for their supposed (but unconfirmed) ability to transmute base metals into gold, using the fabled philosopher's stone. Less well-remembered, yet even more controversial, is their alleged artificial creation of tiny living humanoids - known as homunculi. Some references to homunculi in alchemical texts featured them as symbolic rather than literal. For instance, the fabled Philosopher's Stone is sometimes considered to be a homunculus, with its creation no less than the representation of the Great Work (Magnum Opus) process, merely described in a different way.

A symbolic homunculus, depicted in The Pretiosissimum Donum Dei ('The Most Precious Gift of God'), an important 15th-Century alchemical work by Georgius Aurach de Argentina

In September 1994, however, Paul Thompson published an engrossing review of this largely-forgotten arcane subject in America's Fate Magazine that contained some remarkable revelations regarding the alleged creation of living homunculi.

Alchemists claimed that the culture medium required for the growth of homunculi contained several biological fluids such as sputum or egg-white, and sometimes inorganic fluids like dew, but the two substances most commonly cited as essential were human blood and semen - both of which are widely believed in primitive or non-scientific societies to harbour the vital essence of life. Also required was horse manure, whose heat-releasing properties were utilised to incubate the medium.

Bearing in mind that all of the above ingredients are readily obtainable, why was the production of homunculi a skill restricted to alchemists? The answer is that the recipes always seemed to contain one vital ingredient that was exceptionally complex and difficult to prepare.

Paracelsus, painted by Quentin Massys

For example, in the homunculus recipe contained within the treatise De Natura Rerum, written by 16th-Century Swiss scholar and alchemist Theophrastus Paracelsus (aka Philippus von Hohenheim), 'the arcanum of human blood' was included - essential but esoteric, its constituents known only to the alchemical fraternity. Here, just in case any reader wishes to attempt it himself, is Paracelsus's description of how to create a homunculus:

"Let the semen of a man putrefy by itself in a sealed cucurbite [glass vessel] with the highest putrefaction of the venter equinus [horse manure] for 40 days, or until it begins at last to live, move, and be agitated, which can easily be seen. After this time it will be in some degree like a human being, but, nevertheless, transparent and without body. If now, after this, it be every day nourished and fed cautiously and prudently with the arcanum of human blood, and kept for 40 weeks in the perpetual and equal heat of a venter equinus, it becomes, thenceforth, a true and living infant, having all the members of a child that is born from a woman, but much smaller. This we call a homunculus; and it should be afterwards educated with the greatest care and zeal, until it grows up and begins to display intelligence."

Equally obscure is 'animal tincture', listed in another medieval recipe.

The vaguely human-looking root of the mandragora or mandrake plant Mandragora officinarum inspired the false belief during medieval times that it could be utilised in the production of homunculi. During his body's last convulsive spasms before death, a hanged man will sometimes ejaculate semen, and it was said that where this fell to the ground, a mandrake would grow. If its anthropomorphic root was then pulled out before dawn on a Friday morning by a black dog, then washed, and nurtured with milk, honey, and sometimes human blood too, the root would subsequently develop into a homunculus, which would guard and protect its owner.

Mandrake with unrealistically humanoid root, depicted in Tacuinum Sanitatis, a 15th-Century manuscript

An even more exotic recipe for growing your own homunculus was cited during the 1700s by no less a figure of learning than Dr David Christianus from Germany's Giessen University. According to his claim, an egg should be taken from a black hen, and a tiny hole should be poked through its shell. A bean-sized portion of the albumen then needed to be removed and replaced by human semen, after which the egg's opening should be sealed with the hymen from a virgin maiden. Once this was accomplished, the egg must be buried in dung during the first day of the March lunar cycle. After 30 days, a homunculus should emerge from the egg, and as long as its owner provided it with a regular diet of earthworms and lavender seeds it would protect him and assist him in all of his endeavours.

Notwithstanding the inherent difficulties in obtaining the necessary ingredients and in performing the intricate series of processes required, records detailing the successful culturing of homunculi do exist. An extraordinary specimen grown from distilled human blood and able to emit beams of red light was reputedly cultured and exhibited at the court of France's King Louis XIV by royal physician Dr Borel.

Homunculi feature in many contemporary novels including Peter Ackroyd's The House of Doctor Dee (1993), in which he portrays real-life Elizabethan magus John Dee successfully creating a homunculus

As fully documented in Dr Emil Besetzny's book Sphinx (1873), however, the most outstanding case must surely be the creation of ten living homunculi in a mere five weeks, accomplished by two Austrian alchemists from the late 16th Century - Count Johann Ferdinand von Kufstein and Abbé Geloni.

Like all homunculi, they were grown in sealed jars (homunculi die if exposed for any considerable period to the air), filled with water and eventually buried under heaps of manure. These were treated (as usual) with some special, but unspecified, solution, and doubled the size of eight of the homunculi, producing a series of 1-ft-tall specimens.

No two homunculi looked the same, and to each was fixed an identity. Eight were physical manikins, known respectively as the king, queen, knight, monk, nun, seraph, miner, and architect, and clothes pertinent to their identities were manufactured for them. Each of these eight homunculi was fed with special pink tablets every 3-4 days, and their water was changed once a week. On at least one occasion, the 'king' homunculus escaped from his jar, and was earnestly trying to remove the seal on the jar housing the 'queen' when he was spotted by Count Kufstein's butler. Chased by Kufstein and the butler, the 'king' soon fainted from exposure to the air, and was put back inside his own receptacle.

The remaining two homunculi were non-corporeal, and only appeared when Geloni tapped their jars and chanted certain magical words. A face would then materialise in each of them; moreover, in one the liquid would turn blue, in the other it would turn red. The red 'spirit' homunculus was fed on blood, and its water was changed every 2-3 days, but the blue 'spirit' homunculus was never fed and its water was never changed.

All ten homunculi would answer questions concerning future events, invariably predicting correctly the outcomes, and they were observed by many people. These included some very notable personages, like Count Franz Josef von Thun and Count Max Lamberg. Surely, however, such bizarre man-made entities could not really have existed - or could they?

I cannot help but wonder whether these particular homunculi were nothing more than large amphibians brought back by travellers from the tropics. One likely candidate is the African clawed toad Xenopus laevis, a common species vaguely humanoid in shape, which lives permanently in water - explaining why the 'king' fainted soon after escaping from its jar?

Homunculi – created from blood, or merely specimens of the African clawed toad (like this one)? (Michael Linnenbach/Wikipedia)

No-one knows what happened to nine of the homunculi after Geloni and Kufstein ultimately went their separate ways. However, an event occurred that may actually have left behind some tangible evidence of the tenth. Once, the jar containing the 'monk' homunculus was accidentally dropped, smashing as it hit the floor and killing its humanoid inhabitant. His body was afterwards buried in the grounds of Kufstein's Tyrolean residence - but where is this today? If only we knew its locality, the soil around it could be sifted, as suggested by Paul Thompson - and who knows what remains might be found?

One thing is certain. If a 12-in-long skeleton is ever found under these circumstances, Thompson would be very interested to learn more about it - and so would I.

This article is extracted and expanded from the homunculus section of my book The Unexplained: An Illustrated Guide to the World's Natural and Paranormal Mysteries (Carlton: London, 1996).

THE FAIRY HOUND AND THE POOKA - A CRYPTO-FOLKTALE FOR CHRISTMAS

2011-12-19T02:27:00.020Z

My very own Celtic fairy hound! (Dr Karl Shuker)

During my time on Facebook, I've made many friends all over the world who share my interests in cryptozoology and animal mythology. One of these friends is Randi Wood, from Texas, USA, to whom I recently recounted a very brief version of a traditional Irish folktale about a Celtic fairy hound. She liked it so much that she said she would love to read a full-length version of it if ever I decided to write one. Well, now I have done, so here, as an early Christmas present to you, Randi, is my story. I hope you enjoy it - Happy Christmas!

According to Irish mythology, one of the most formidable enchanted beasts occasionally met with in lonely rural locations is the fairy hound, or hound of the hollow hills, where the Faerie folk of Erin dwell. Gracile in form, and white in colour, but extremely large, often shaggy-coated, and always instantly distinguished from mortal, non-magical dogs by virtue of its bright red eyes and the red inner linings of its ears, even the mere sight of one of these ethereal creatures is said to bring bad luck. And to speak to or touch one means certain death – usually. Very rarely, however, a fairy hound will bring its human observer good fortune, if it is treated with sufficient courtesy and compassion – as was the case in the following traditional folktale, featuring both a fairy hound and a pooka, which has variants on record not only from Ireland but also from Cheshire and certain other regions of England. But what, may you ask, is a pooka? Let's just hope that you're never unlucky enough to meet one and find out...!

It had been a very long, arduous day, and the apprentice labourer was weary as he slowly trekked across the mist-shrouded moorlands, following the winding, shadowy road that would lead him back home, aching, hungry and earnestly yearning for the warmth, comfort, and security of his parents' little cottage. Whistling to himself to keep his spirits up as he continued on his way through this somewhat depressing, forbidding terrain, where strange shadows lurked all around him, and without warning a tree would abruptly loom out of the darkness up ahead like some frightful apparition, he suddenly heard what sounded like a dog, whining somewhere close by. He walked on a little further, and there, lying in some bushes at the side of the road, was what seemed on first sight to be a large red and white foxhound.

Having seen a number of footsore foxhounds in the past, which had been left behind by the pack when they had grown too weary to pursue their quarry any further, the youth called to it in a friendly voice, telling it that he'd take it back to the kennels but would first do something for its sore paws. True to his word, he scoured around and soon spotted some large dock leaves that he soaked in water from the stream running close by. Then he whistled to the dog, and called to it to come out of the bushes, so that he could treat its tender paws with the cooling wet leaves.

Celtic fairy hounds (Roger Garland)

Sure enough, up stood the dog and trotted out of the bushes towards him – but it was no foxhound. As large as a calf, with a shaggy pure-white coat, but red-lined ears and bright scarlet eyes that glowed like rubies, it was – as the terrified youth was only too readily aware – a fairy hound! Shaking with fear, he stood there, as still as a statue as the great dog padded right up to his side. All of the stories that had passed down through the generations in his family and in those of his friends and neighbours came flooding back. If you so much as see a fairy hound, you will experience bad luck, and if you should be foolish enough to speak to one or touch one, death will swiftly and assuredly follow. And yet, somehow, he sensed that it meant him no harm. Scarcely knowing what he was doing, or why, the youth spoke gently to the fairy hound, politely asking it to give him each of its paws in turn, so that he could bathe them.

The hound raised its huge head until its scarlet eyes were gazing directly into those of the youth, transfixing him for what seemed to him like an eternity yet was the merest moment in real time, and then, slowly, it raised its right front paw, and placed it heavily in his hands. At its first touch, the youth felt a strange sensation course through his body, like a living stream of electricity rippling and sparking beneath the surface of his skin. As if awakening from a dream, he shook his head, and then, after carefully inspecting the creature's paw, wrapped some wet leaves around it in a cooling bandage. As soon as he had done this, the fairy hound pulled its paw away, sniffed it for a moment, then gingerly placed it on the ground. The dock leaves were clearly working their own kind of magic, because the hound never flinched when it placed its full weight on the paw.

The youth expected to receive the hound's left front paw next, but the hound had other ideas. Instead, it turned sideways, and raised its right back paw towards him. So the youth knelt, and bandaged this paw with some more soaked dock leaves, then repeated his actions with its left back paw. When this was bandaged, the fairy hound turned to face the youth again, and as he looked down at its one remaining untreated paw – the left front paw – he realised that the hound was barely resting on it at all. Instead, it held it up just above the ground. Clearly, this was the most painful of its four paws, and when the youth knelt down to it, he immediately saw why.

Embedded in one of the paw's thick pads was a long curved thorn! Shocked, he looked up at the fairy hound, once again meeting its bright scarlet stare. Surely he dare not attempt to pull a thorn from the paw of a fairy hound? To do so would certainly inflict pain upon it, and that in turn would surely be more than sufficient to bring about his own death. But scarcely had these thoughts materialised within his petrified mind than the hound raised its wounded paw and delicately placed it in his open hand. As if sensing his hesitation, it then licked the thorn and nuzzled his hand with its large, icy-cold nose before gazing directly into his eyes again.

'Hound Wraith' - a very different, unicorned fairy hound (Heather L. Kidd)

Drawing a deep breath, and trying hard to hide the fear in his voice, the youth softly spoke to the fairy hound, telling it that he would try his best to remove the thorn but warned that its paw might hurt for a moment while he was doing so. Taking a second deep breath, and focusing his attention entirely upon the thorn in the hope of remaining as calm as possible, the youth gripped it tightly between thumb and finger, and then, in a swift fluid movement, withdrew it from the pad of the creature's paw with Androclesian skill.

The fairy hound jerked its leg back, and the youth heard what sounded like the faintest rumble emanating from its chest, like the onset of thunder on a humid summer evening, as it attempted to pull its paw from his grasp. At the same moment, however, with his other hand the youth deftly placed a dripping-wet bandage of dock leaves upon the pad, and immediately he felt the hound relax, leaving its paw within his hand. After holding the leaves against the wounded pad for a few moments, the youth then removed them and replaced them with some more, which he bound in place.

The fairy hound placed its paw on the ground, and, as before, the dock leaves had evidently proven effective, because it discovered that it could place its full weight upon the paw without discomfort. For one last time, the fairy hound looked up at the youth, capturing his eyes with its own, and then it slowly wagged its long white tail from side to side, several times, before turning away. Remembering how he had been told by his elders to be respectful at all times to the Faerie folk, he bid it a polite "Goodnight, Sir", and he saw it wag its tail again as it departed into the mist.

Fairy hound (C Martin)

Scarcely believing that he had survived such an extraordinary encounter with a fairy hound, the youth hurried on along the road leading home, hoping to leave this deserted, lonely terrain before it became completely dark. Happily, he did so, and although he made the same journey each evening in the weeks to come, nothing else eventful took place – until one night, just before Christmas.

The youth had worked even later than usual that particular evening, so it was already almost dark while he was still walking along the road across the moorlands - which, as a result, seemed more oppressive and threatening than ever. Even so, he smiled when he reached the area of low-lying bushes where, a few weeks earlier, he had treated the fairy hound's paws. Although he had never seen it again, he frequently thought about it, but he had never told anyone about his encounter, just in case to do so would anger the Faerie folk.

Suddenly, something large moved amid the shadows covering the road up ahead, and for a moment the youth thought that the fairy hound had returned. But as he drew nearer, he saw something very different – and even more frightening! At first, it looked like a small black pony, but as he looked at it, the creature began to grow bigger, and bigger. In moments, the 'pony' was the size of a horse, and as it turned his head towards him, the youth cried out in terror - because the head was no longer that of a horse. Instead, it now resembled a goat's, bearing a pair of long twisted horns, and with glittering emerald-hued eyes that glowed malevolently like green fire. This was neither a pony nor a horse – it was a pooka!

A pooka (Ceara Finn)

An evil shape-shifting supernatural being, a pooka often assumes the guise of a pony that is sometimes merely mischievous, chasing after humans in gleeful delight, or slyly luring them across the moors until they are hopelessly lost if they try to capture or ride it. On other occasions, however, if someone succeeds in mounting it, the pooka will instantly ride off at speed and plunge into a river or lake, drowning its hapless rider. And if it should transform into a goat-headed monstrosity like the beast now confronting the terrified youth, death is inevitable.

Leering at him with a vile grimace that revealed an abundance of sharp white teeth, the pooka reared up onto its hind legs, and flailed its razor-sharp hooves at the youth's face. Backing away, he stumbled, losing his footing in his fear as this huge black beast of nightmare come to life reared again, its hooves ready to slash him to ribbons.

Suddenly, however, a huge white shadow hurled itself out of the darkness and directly onto the pooka's back. Gazing at it in amazement, the youth saw that it was none other than the fairy hound! Equally astonished, the pooka turned away, throwing its neck back as it attempted to discover what was attacking it. The fairy hound's mighty jaws bit deeply into the pooka's neck and shoulders as the latter beast sought to shake its assailant off, and the silence was shattered by an ear-splitting cacophony of shrieking neighs from the pooka and baying growls from the fairy hound.

Never underestimate a fairy hound!

The pooka, weakening from the fairy hound's unabated onslaught, dropped to the ground, and sought to dislodge its attacker by rolling over and upon it. To avoid being crushed, the fairy hound duly released its hold upon the pooka's neck, and leapt off – at which point the pooka instantly transformed into a large black owl and flew swiftly away across the moors.

By now, the petrified youth had staggered back up onto his feet again, and there in front of him stood the fairy hound, seemingly none the worse for its battle with the pooka. It looked up at him with its bright scarlet eyes, and wagged its long tail from side to side.

The youth was about to thank it for saving him from the pooka, but just in time he remembered how his wise old grandmother had told him when he was still a child that although you must always be very respectful to the Faerie folk, you must never thank them aloud, even if they have helped you or have been kind to you in some way.

And so, just as he had done during their previous meeting, the youth nodded courteously to the great dog before him, and then bid it a polite "Goodnight, Sir". The fairy hound turned away, and in seconds was lost to sight amid the darkness and shadows of the night, and the youth continued on his way back home, well aware of how exceptionally fortunate he had been that evening, and looking forward even more than before to the Christmastime holidays with his family that awaited him there.

A pack of fairy hounds in pursuit of a wrongdoer

THE WONDERFUL THING ABOUT TIGUARS!

2011-12-13T00:26:00.012Z

Over the years, a great many unusual big cat hybrids have been born in captivity - everything from ligers (lion x tigress hybrids), tigrons (tiger x lioness), and leopons (leopard x lioness), to lipards (lion x leopardess), jaglions (jaguar x lioness), and pumapards (puma x leopardess), to name but some.

Of especial interest, however, because he is quite possibly unique, is a big cat hybrid called Mickey. Born in June 2009 at Altiplano Zoo in San Pablo Apetatlan, Mexico, Mickey is a bona fide tiguar. His father is a Siberian tiger and his mother a jaguar originating from the southern Chiapas jungle. But what does Mickey look like? Despite an extensive online search during the completion of my next book - I Thought I Saw The Strangest Cat..., due out in spring 2012 - I have been unable to locate a single description of him.

However, there may be at least one online colour photograph depicting Mickey. Reproduced below, this photo was kindly brought to my attention yesterday by mystery cat researcher Mark Fraser from BCIB (Big Cats In Britain) and cryptozoological enthusiast Ian C. Thomas. As can be seen here, it shows a very impressive, predominantly ginger-brown big cat, stocky in build, with an unmistakeably tigerine face, plus a white chin and mouth, but only very faint, greatly-reduced body striping.

Alleged photo of Mickey the tiguar of Altiplano Zoo as an adult (credit: http://www.taringa.net/comunidades/tkaffee/945148/Felinos-Hibridos.html)

Worryingly, however, on a few other sites this same photograph is labelled not as showing a tiguar but a liger (lion x tigress hybrid) instead. Moreover, the cat is surrounded by snow, which is not what one would expect from the subtropical region of Mexico where Altiplano Zoo is located. Having said that, as pointed out to me by fellow investigator Paul Willison, meteorological records show that during the winter period this region's temperature has sometimes fallen to only a degree or so above freezing point. So perhaps the presence of snow here is not so implausible after all.

In addition, I have discovered what I feel sure is a fleeting glimpse of Mickey as a 2-month-old cub in a video shot at Altiplano Zoo and uploaded by someone with the user name mvzxim onto YouTube on 9 August 2009. View it at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyv8HtA1w6M&feature=related

A still from the above video of Altiplano Zoo showing a mysterious cub that may well be Mickey the tiguar (video credit: mvzxim)

Certainly, whereas not resembling that of any familiar big cat, such as a lion, tiger, leopard, or jaguar, the cub (visible in the section of the video spanning 3.10 minutes to 3.14 minutes, and captured here in this still photograph) very closely resembles the above-noted alleged photo of the adult Mickey, complete with ginger fur, faint body striping, and white chin/mouth. Furthermore, unlike the photograph, there is no question that this video was indeed shot in Altiplano Zoo.

I am continuing to investigate the mysterious Mickey, in the hope of obtaining a verified photo of him as an adult plus any additional information concerning him that may be available, so any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF NEW AND REDISCOVERED ANIMALS - A FIRST GLIMPSE OF MY LATEST BOOK

2011-12-08T01:45:00.010Z

I've just received, one day early, the perfect birthday present! Here's the fully-approved, finalised version of the cover for my soon-to-be-published book The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals: From the Lost Ark to the New Zoo - and Beyond (which is off to the printers in the next few hours!). My very sincere thanks to Bill Rebsamen for his wonderful front and back cover illustrations!

Here's some information concerning my book:

At the beginning of the 20th century, scientists and laymen alike appear to have been peculiarly confident that the world had been thoroughly explored and most of its creatures named and documented. Few, if any, large animals still awaited discovery. The scientific unveiling of the giraffe-like okapi in 1901 was one of the earliest of this century's discoveries to shake this belief. But many consider it to be the last great find, and view the rediscovery of extinct animals to be as likely as the alchemic conversion of iron into gold.

Since 1901, however, a whole host of new and rediscovered creatures has turned up to contradict these views - including a giant 7-ft-long forest hog from Africa, a colossal Indonesian monitor lizard called the Komodo dragon, the lobe-finned coelacanth fish resurrected from 64 million years of supposed extinction, the incredible megamouth shark, deep-sea tube-dwelling worms over 8 ft tall with huge red tentacles resembling strange alien flowers, plus the extraordinary Vu Quang ox and giant barking deer both discovered in Vietnam during the 1990s. And discoveries continue to be made today, in the 21st century - ranging diversely and dramatically from giant peccaries and zombie worms to an entire new suborder of insects known as the gladiators, a veritable jungle of new monkeys, and an extraordinary chameleonesque snake. And nor can we possibly forget the sensational rediscovery in North America of the near-legendary, supposedly long-extinct ivory-billed woodpecker.

The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals is the third, wholly-updated edition of the very first - and still the definitive - book to be devoted to the spectacular zoological discoveries and equally amazing rediscoveries of the 20th century, which attracted international acclaim and exemplary reviews following its original publication in 1993 (when it was entitled The Lost Ark), and its subsequent republication in 2002 as an updated, greatly-expanded second edition (entitled The New Zoo). This latest edition also contains an in-depth survey of the 21st century’s most celebrated discoveries and rediscoveries made during its first decade, a superb foreword by pre-eminent American cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, plus an exhaustive, significantly-increased bibliography, as well as the only comprehensive collection of colour and b/w illustrations of these spectacular animal species ever published (including new, previously-unpublished photographs, and several exclusive, specially-commissioned full-colour paintings).

Unquestionably, The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals provides good reason indeed for believing that our world continues to holds many more animal surprises in store for future revelation.

It is published by Coachwhip Publications in the USA, and is due out very shortly (printers permitting!) - so keep checking Amazon!

MOA FOR YOUR MONEY - REVIEWING THE BEST BOOK ON THE CRYPTOZOOLOGY OF NEW ZEALAND'S AVIAN GIANTS

2011-12-02T21:15:00.021Z

My review of: Moa Sightings (Volumes 1-3) by Bruce Spittle.

Paua Press (www.pauapress.com), Dunedin, 2010; ISBN 978-0-473-15356-4 (Vol. 1), 978-0-473-15357-1 (Vol. 2), 978-0-473-15358-8 (Vol. 3); £101.97 for the 3-volume set. Hb with dustjacket, 415 pp (Vol. 1), 422 pp (Vol. 2), 416 pp (Vol. 3), colour and b/w illus., colour maps, footnote refs, index.

With such terms used so frequently yet all-too-often so undeservedly nowadays, it is rare indeed today for a book to warrant being referred to as 'the standard work' or 'the definitive treatment'. Both of these superlatives, and many others of a similar nature too, however, are fully-justified when considering Bruce Spittle's monumental three-volume treatise on putative sightings of living moas – if only because I simply cannot conceive how anyone could ever produce a more comprehensive account of this subject.

The giant, and not-so-giant, moas constituted a diverse family of flightless birds unique to New Zealand, but according to mainstream scientific belief most if not all of the eleven currently-recognised species had become extinct at least 300 years prior to the landing here of the first Europeans with Captain Cook in 1769. And even if a few stragglers had somehow lingered on in remote localities up to and even for a time beyond this initial European influx, these had still died out long ago – or had they?

Giant Dinornis moas - 19th-Century painting (Heinrich Harder)

In his vast, exhaustively-researched trilogy of tomes, Spittle painstakingly documents and assesses every known eyewitness report alluding to possible moa survival since the early 1400s, devoting an entire chapter to each such report, and including 151 reports in total. Each chapter follows the same format – a headline giving the eyewitness, the year, and the location of the alleged sighting, which is then followed by an introduction, a detailed account of the sighting, and a thorough discussion. Each report is also accompanied by one or more full-page colour maps of the location, plus various relevant colour or b/w illustrations, including many previously obscure images that were new to me. The same, exceedingly detailed index is included at the back of all three volumes, which is very handy.

The degree of scholarship evident in the sightings' discussions is breathtaking – Spittle gives the impression of having consulted everyone ever involved in and everything ever written on the subject of moas (and if he hasn't, it clearly isn't from want of trying!) - and his examination of each sighting is both incisive and commendably objective. Nowhere is this more apparent than when Spittle surveys the two most famous (and contentious) putative moa sightings of all - one (Sighting Report #22) by Alice MacKenzie at Martins Bay in 1880, to which he devotes 98 pages; and the other (Sighting Report #151) by Paddy Freaney and two companions in 1993 within Craigieburn Forest Park, to which he devotes no fewer than 283 pages (taking up most of Volume 3, in fact), and which include several detailed maps and even full-colour reconstructions based upon the enigmatic, famously-fuzzy photo snapped by Freaney. In each case, Spittle produces a review so meticulous and fascinating that it would stand alone very well as an entire book in its own right.

Newspaper account reporting Freaney's alleged sighting

Every report is also liberally annotated with footnotes supplying key references (there is no collective bibliography – perhaps this work's only failing in my view) and additional information where required.

I dare not even begin to guess how long it took Spittle to produce his magnum opus, which Moa Sightings assuredly is, but when preparing any work as extensive as this, errors of typography and of fact are inevitable, however earnestly one seeks to eradicate all such gremlins from the final version, and I did spot certain instances of this in Moa Sightings. Needless to say, I do not wish to overshadow or diminish the magnificent overall contribution to the field of moa study and beyond that this work has made, so two such examples of errors, one from each of the above-noted categories, will suffice here.

Upland (dwarf) moa, Megalapteryx - did Alice MacKenzie encounter one at Martins Bay in 1880?

In all three volumes, the outer edge of each page contains three figures – the top one indicates the volume number, the middle one the chapter number, and the bottom one the page number within that chapter (this is also repeated in expanded version at the bottom of each page). Unfortunately, however, in Volume 2, Chapter 35 is incorrectly labelled as being in Volume 1. Ditto for Chapter 137 in Volume 3. These could easily be rectified in future reprints. As for factual blips: I noticed on p. 189 of Chapter 151, dealing with the Freaney sighting case, that Spittle claimed a letter by him sent to the British magazine Fortean Times updating that case was never published. In fact it was – twice! It first appeared on p. 54 of the Letters section in FT No. 98 (May 1997), and then it was summarised by me on p. 16 of my Alien Zoo column in FT No. 221 (April 2007).

Early, archive photo of life-sized Dinornis moa model alongside a kiwi for scale purposes

Never mind. Such slips as these pale into insignificance against the greater backdrop of a truly extraordinary publication that is unquestionably one of the finest additions to the canon of cryptozoological literature in modern times. The price might seem steep, and may limit the numbers sold, especially to private individuals, but I do feel that it is fully justified with respect to what it purchases.

As a final thought, I just hope that there isn't someone else out there still working away on their own in-depth coverage of reputed sightings and encounters of living moas – because, now that Spittle's Moa Sightings is in print, I'm afraid you're too late!

Standing alongside a life-sized Dinornis moa statue in Auckland, when I visited New Zealand in 2006 (Dr Karl Shuker)

A shortened version of this review of mine appears in Fortean Times, No. 283 (January 2012).

SKY BEASTS, NOT SPACE CRAFT - UNMASKING THE UFOS?

2011-12-01T03:22:00.030Z

'Cosmic Leap' – Sky medusae painting (Philippa Foster)

"Unknown, luminous things, or beings, have often been seen, sometimes close to this earth, and sometimes high in the sky. It may be that some of them were living things that occasionally come from somewhere else."

Charles Fort - Lo!

It has often been said that Nature abhors a vacuum – and evolution certainly does. Every conceivable niche upon planet Earth has been populated by life forms – on land, in freshwater and the seas, beneath layers of rock far below the earth’s surface, even buried within the formless ooze on the ocean beds and encircling their scorching water-spewing hydrothermal vents. Yet, inexplicably, there is one lone but vast ecological niche that has remained totally untouched by such animate activity – the rarefied atmospheric layers above and encompassing our world. True, insects, bacteria, birds, bats, and various other living entities spend varying extents of time in the sky, but there is no known life form that has evolved to live exclusively here, never venturing groundward except to die. There are no sky beasts, or cloud creatures – or are there?

One of the most intriguing UFO explanations on offer is that at least some of these elusive aerial entities are not alien spacecraft or anything else from beyond our planet. Instead, they are living creatures – huge, fast, and exceedingly fragile, but life forms nonetheless, highly-specialised for an absolute existence high above our earthbound domain. In my recent book Dr Shuker’s Casebook (2008), I devoted a lengthy chapter to this fascinating, but previously largely-forgotten scenario, which has helped to revive interest in the sky beast theory - one that, as will now be seen, is certainly greatly deserving of renewed attention.

Dr Shuker's Casebook (CFZ Press: Bideford, 2008)

CRITTERS AHOY!

Down through the decades, a sky beast identity for UFOs has been championed by a number of writers and researchers, of which the most famous must surely be Trevor James Constable, who spent over 20 years investigating this subject, and published two books. The first of these, They Live in the Sky, came out in 1958, but the second, The Cosmic Pulse of Light, published in 1976 and then again, in abridged form, in 1978 as Sky Creatures: Living UFOs, brought this fascinating notion to a much wider audience than it had ever before reached.

Sky Creatures (1978) – Trevor James Constable

Constable considered the sky beasts – or ‘critters’, as he dubbed them – to resemble gigantic unicellular amoebae, but encased in a metallic or mica-like outer shell or capsule, and with the majority of their bodies composed of plasma, the fourth state of matter, comprising an ionised gas. Although some critters may be as small as a few centimetres, others could be several kilometres long, and remain hidden on most occasions from humans by virtue of their ability to reflect infra-red light, thus rendering them invisible to our eyes – except if they change colour, thereby temporarily reflecting light within the electromagnetic spectrum’s visible section.

Yet even if critters are usually beyond our range of vision, their presence can still be detected, for according to Constable they can actually be photographed – using infra-red film and appropriate filters. In his books, he published a number of photos depicting supposed critters snapped by him in the skies above California’s Mojave Desert, and one of his acolytes, Richard Toronto, duplicated Constable’s attempts in this same locality during 1977, obtaining similar pictures. Their photos have never been exposed as hoaxes (though Kodak representatives have suggested that Toronto’s critters may be nothing more exciting than dirty fingerprints and drying spots), and show several different morphological types. These include fusiform entities, giant amoeboid blobs, huge bladder-shaped objects, gigantic discs, and even some with curiously reptilian ‘beaks’. Moreover, cine-films taken by Constable show that these objects change shape as they move through the sky, and are luminous.

IN SEARCH OF IDEOPLASMS

Another dedicated supporter of the sky beast theory was John Philip Bessor, whose own interest in such a concept was in no small way inspired by Kenneth Arnold’s historic sighting on 24 June 1947 of a phalanx of nine UFOs while flying a Callair aeroplane near Mount Rainier in Washington State, USA. What fascinated Bessor in particular concerning this encounter (which heralded the modern-day wave of UFO interest and sightings worldwide) was Arnold’s belief that what he had seen were: “…living organisms, sort of like sky jellyfish” – far removed from today’s popular spacecraft image for UFOs.

Kenneth Arnold holding a sketch of one of the UFOs sighted by him

Bessor later stated that, in his view, UFOs were a form of living creature (which he christened an ideoplasm) composed of a highly attenuated substance, enabling them to materialise or dematerialise at will, utilising telekinetic energy for propulsion. As would be echoed by Constable in relation to his critters, Bessor opined that these entities must be capable of becoming visible, invisible, and changing colour, all very rapidly. He even submitted his thoughts to the U.S. Air Force, and, remarkably, was informed by them that they considered his notion to be “one of the most intelligent theories we have received” regarding the possible nature and identity of UFOs.

Yet another theory of sky beasts, proposed during this same era of thought regarding UFOs, was that of Countess Zoe Wassilko-Serecki. Authoring a number of articles on this subject, she deemed it plausible that such entities were enormous, glowing, stratosphere-inhabiting creatures resembling gargantuan bladders of colloidal silicones, containing a central core of insubstantial matter but otherwise composed predominantly of pure energy. She claimed that they appeared spherical when stationary but became fusiform when moving, and so diffuse at higher levels as to appear virtually invisible.

In addition, hydrophone inventor John M. Cage, commenting upon how closely the pursuit of aircraft by UFOs resembled that of dolphins with ships, suggested that some UFOs may be sentient beings feeding upon negative electricity. And in his book The Circlemakers (1992), veteran psychical investigator Andrew Collins speculated that perhaps some cropfield circles may be created by energy released by biological UFOs when swooping downwards from the skies.

'Guiding Lights' – a painting of biological UFOs flying over a cropfield circle (Philippa Foster)

FOO FIGHTERS, ANGELS, AND OTHER MINI-SKY BEASTS

Not all sky beasts may be enormous and often invisible. Certain much smaller and more readily discernible (but no less perplexing), luminous, spherical entities are on record that may also be variations upon the fundamental sky beast theme. Take, for instance, the foo fighters.

Usually white or red in colour, and highly animate, these small balls of light (BOLs) were (in)famous during World War II for appearing on the outside of aeroplanes in flight and dancing around them, to the bewilderment of their pilots. At first, the Allies and the Axis powers each thought that foo fighters were a secret weapon developed by the other side to detract fighter pilots from their missions – until eventually it was realised that British, American, French, German, and Japanese pilots were all seeing them! The most mystifying aspect, however, was these BOLs’ apparent ‘intelligence’, because they would swiftly move out of reach if the pilots tried to swat them, but would tenaciously pace alongside if the planes tried to out-fly them, and behaved in what can only be described as a playful, even inquisitive manner. Consequently, veteran BOL investigator Vincent Gaddis boldly proposed that perhaps foo fighters were indeed sentient entities, composed of pure energy yet possessing a basic level of intelligence, and supported earlier claims that UFOs were comparable, albeit much bigger, life forms – a view also subscribed to by Constable.

Archive photo of foo fighters near airborne planes during World War II

Interestingly, foo fighters could not be detected by radar. Moreover, a kind of converse foo fighter has also been reported. Known as gizmos or angels, these objects are small, rapidly moving, and again display suspiciously sentient behaviour, sometimes even flying in small groups moving in precise formations. Yet whereas gizmos do show up on radar, and exhibit a very characteristic, idiosyncratic trace pattern readily distinguishable from birds, aircraft, insects, ionised air masses, and other known airborne objects, they are invisible to the human eye.

Are BOLs living entities? (Philippa Foster)

SERPENTS OF THE SKY

Very different from sky beasts, big or small, are sky serpents or sky fishes, spasmodically reported from all around the world. One of the most famous examples was the so-called ‘sky eel’ viewed by countless eyewitnesses during two successive nights in early September 1891 in the sky above Crawfordsville, Indiana. It was said to wriggle like a swimming fish, was white, luminous, and measured approximately 6 m long. Hovering around 100 m above the ground, but sometimes swooping even lower, it wheezed loudly and emitted hot air, but lacked any discernible head or tail. The Crawfordsville sky eel was subsequently 'explained' as a flock of killdeer (a species of plover).

A huge entity resembling a writhing serpent with yellow stripes was seen floating over a farm in Bonham, Texas, one day in June 1873. And in May 1888, a hissing counterpart was reported from Darlington County, South Carolina. Back in 1762, a twisting sky serpent was spied for six minutes as it illuminated from on high the Devon town of Bideford on 5 December. More recently, in March 1935, a Scandinavian sky serpent was reported over southern Norway and Denmark, and in December of that same year another one was witnessed twice in the sky above Cruz Alta, Brazil.

The most popular explanation for these is that they are meteorological phenomena known as fire drakes - on account of their fiery countenance and superficially dragonesque form - caused by charged particles accelerated in solar flares and diverted by the Earth’s magnetic field, so that they enter the upper atmosphere, yielding streams of wavering light. Nevertheless, in some reports the eyewitnesses were convinced that what they had seen was a bona fide living creature.

Sky dragon – merely a meteorological phenomenon, or something more?

STAR ROT, OR DEAD SKY BEASTS?

A mysterious phenomenon that has been recorded for centuries but never fully explained is star rot, also known as pwdre ser or gelatinous meteors. As its last-mentioned name suggests, often what appears to be a meteor or shooting star is seen streaming across the sky, then later, at the site where it is thought to have landed, samples of a strange jelly-like substance are found. Samples of this star rot that have been formally analysed have unmasked a diversity of identities, including various species of algae, fungi, slime moulds, and even the semi-digested remains of food regurgitated by birds. However, some samples have defied identification, and others have quite literally disappeared even as they were being collected, leaving behind nothing more than an odd smell or a greasy trace to verify their erstwhile existence.

Pwdre ser (CFZ)

Perhaps the most dramatic explanation for these more mystifying samples of star rot, as suggested by Bessor, is that they are actually the mortal remains of sky beasts that have died and plummeted downwards from their lofty abode in the sky to the ground far below, leaving nothing more than transient masses of jelly as corpses, with the earlier-spied streams of light in the sky the release of their dying bodies’ energy.

LEGLESS IN NEW GUINEA

When skins of New Guinea’s exotically-plumed birds of paradise were first brought back to Europe, in 1522, naturalists were very surprised to discover that they did not possess flesh, blood, bones, or feet. Consequently, they mistakenly deduced that these gorgeous, ethereal-looking, and seemingly near-weightless birds spent their whole lives permanently airborne, feeding upon an ambrosial diet of nectar and dew like feathered sylphs, descending earthward only to die. In reality, however, as they subsequently discovered, the reason for these birds’ insubstantial nature was that when preparing their skins for sale, the New Guinea natives routinely but with great skill removed all of their bodies’ fleshy parts, leaving only their feathers, wings, head, and beak!

Greater bird of paradise – scientifically named Paradisea apoda ('footless') in recognition of the erstwhile, erroneous belief that these birds genuinely lacked feet and were permanently airborne

MYSTERY OF THE RODS

Often cited as examples of atmospheric creatures, rods are cylindrical objects, often just a few centimetres long but sometimes much bigger, with wings or a rapidly-undulating lateral membrane. These enigmatic objects cannot be seen with the naked eye but have frequently been photographed and filmed, their most notable researcher, José Escamilla, having done so many times. Likened by believers in their status as unknown life forms to flying centipedes, rods have been dismissed by sceptics as camera artefacts, digital distortions, and known, living creatures such as insects or even birds. Arguments have raged for years, but in May-June 2005, research staff at China’s Tonghua Zhenguo Pharmaceutical Company provided a satisfactory solution. Setting up huge collecting nets, they filmed many rods flying inside them, but when they then inspected these nets’ contents, all that they found were moths and other insects. Subsequent investigation revealed that their filmed rods were artefacts – normal insects ‘transformed’ into rods by an optical illusion resulting from their video camera’s slow recording speed. It is now believed that what is happening is that when a fast-flying insect such as a moth is filmed by video equipment, its wings move too rapidly to produce a clean image. Instead, a time-lapse of its wings occurs, which yields the mysterious wings or undulating membrane of the rod, with the rod itself being the time-lapsed body of the flying moth. If so, and it certainly seems the most plausible explanation, we can spare the rod from any further consideration as a bona fide cryptid of any kind, let alone one of sky beast relevance or affinity.

A selection of rod types

SKY BEASTS ON JUPITER?

In 1977, Cornell University astrophysicist Dr E.E. Salpeter and eminent astronomer Prof. Carl Sagan published a paper in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement outlining their thoughts on the possible presence of life on Jupiter, and the likely forms that it may take, existing amidst this gargantuan gas planet's clouds. They concluded that much of whatever life might indeed reside there may well parallel the ecology of Earth's ocean fauna - yielding Jovian equivalents to our plankton, fishes, and larger fish-eating marine predators (turtles, sharks, etc), and which the two scientists have termed sinkers, floaters, and hunters respectively.

A fractal picture of space jellyfish

Salpeter and Sagan postulated that they could be enormous sac-like organisms, filled with helium, and propelling themselves through the planet's atmosphere by controlled expulsion of this gas from their bodies. However, they did not consider these airborne balloon-like beasts to be wholly conjectural. In fact, they suggested that the presence of such creatures (perhaps even attaining a total diameter of many miles in the case of the Jovian 'hunters') may explain the frequent occurrence over the planet of clearly-perceived areas of red colouration.

The two scientists hoped that this prospect could be examined by the close-up cameras that would be focused upon Jupiter by the U.S.'s Mariner 11 and 12 space probes after their launch later in 1977, but no evidence to support the existence of these (or any other) Jovian life forms was found. Even so, the ideas of Salpeter and Sagan remain plausible relative to the likely nature of life on that huge gaseous world, should any truly exist there. Back in 1971, moreover, the scenario of colossal sky jellyfishes on Jupiter had been the basis for one of Arthur C. Clarke's most famous science-fiction stories, 'A Meeting With Medusa'.

'A Meeting With Medusa' – Arthur C. Clarke

More recently, in 2005, the concept of a carnivorous species of space jellyfish invading Earth and causing havoc was the basis of a decidedly strange Japanese science-fiction film, 'Dogora'.

'Dogora'

FINAL THOUGHTS: SKY BEASTS AS STRATOSPHERIC FISHES?

If a pebble is thrown into a pool, its fishes and other occupants flee in all directions, but soon venture back to see what had caused the disturbance. Several sky beast investigators claim that the same principle explains sightings of UFOs. Sometimes they are coming down towards earth to feed upon energy released by energy-releasing sources such as TV transmitters, power stations, etc. In addition, and again like aquatic creatures, which migrate to deeper levels to avoid weather-related disturbance at the water surface, perhaps the sky beasts migrate vertically downwards to avoid bad weather in higher atmospheric strata. On other occasions, however, could their appearances at lower levels be due to simple curiosity regarding disruptions to their airy kingdom caused by those pesky terrestrial creatures known as Homo sapiens sending all manner of strange objects skyward? As I noted in Dr Shuker’s Casebook:

"For millions of years, the upper reaches of the sky have remained sacrosanct from contact by the realms of land and sea below. Here, according to the sky beast theory, these metrically vast but materially insubstantial entities have evolved in supreme isolation, unsullied and undisturbed by events on Earth. Since the early 20th Century, however, aeroplanes have roared on silver wings through the sky beasts’ cathedrals of clouds, rockets have surged relentlessly upwards like volleys of scorching arrows, and nuclear explosions have spewed forth their deadly emissions in bilious contempt upon the once-immaculate roof of the world. Is it any wonder, therefore, as argued by Cage and the Countess, that UFO sightings are increasing? The sky beasts are cautiously venturing down, to discover what is happening in the frenetic zones far beneath their own languid kingdoms of air and space."

Sky beasts (Tim Morris)

“AND HAST THOU SLAIN THE PERYTON?” - AN ANTLERED ATLANTEAN

2011-11-21T21:43:00.017Z

A peryton (Pat Burroughs)

Evil can assume many guises, and not all of them are ugly or repellent. On the contrary, in the shadowy, sequestered realm of legendary non-human entities that were once widely believed to be real, there are numerous examples of alluring, deceiving, malign beasts of murderous beauty and deadly innocence, as epitomised by the following lesser-known but invariably lethal monsters of hoof and antler.

According to fable, the perytons were once a mighty race of noble beasts that inhabited the mountainous peaks of Atlantis. Here they lived in peace with all living things, until humanity’s evil gradually spread like a vile cancer across the entire expanse of this vast and glorious island continent. Eventually even the gods despaired of the Atlanteans, whose skills in the dark arts threatened the existence of the entire world, and so it was decided that Atlantis and all of its heathen practitioners must be destroyed. The gods duly besieged the continent with earthquakes, tidal waves, plagues, and, most catastrophic of all, an immense volcanic eruption that decimated Atlantis and finally sank this once-illustrious land beneath the waves, staining with blood and ash the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean.

Just before it vanished forever, however, the perytons were able to flee, flying far from their doomed homeland to find sanctuary amid the high peaks of Greece and also, on the far side of the Mediterranean, those of Carthage and elsewhere in North Africa. Here these formidable creatures vowed to take relentless, bloody revenge on all mankind for the annihilation of their idyllic Atlantean domain. If a peryton saw an opportunity to kill a human, it would take it unhesitatingly, and would be assured of success on account of its invulnerability to all weapons created by men. Moreover, once a peryton had killed a human, it would gain a prize valued beyond all others by these creatures. Fortunately for humanity, however, each peryton could only kill a single human with impunity – after that, its invulnerability was lost and it too could therefore be slain. But what were perytons – what did they look like? As will be revealed here, a peryton was unlike anything else that had ever existed, and so could not be mistaken for anything else – except, that is, when it resorted to a unique form of dark, fatal trickery.

After their enforced exile from Atlantis, a mighty flock of these lethal beasts had attacked a mighty Roman fleet led by the celebrated general Scipio as its flotilla of four-score war ships and countless accompanying transport vessels journeyed across the Mediterranean to sack Carthage, and the perytons had inflicted terrible carnage before they were eventually repelled with unparalleled success by Scipio’s formidable troops. Since then, the perytons had remained concealed and aloof from humans in their mountainous retreats, humiliated by their unwonted defeat and gradually diminishing in numbers as the centuries slipped by, until they had become largely forgotten by the world beyond their remote peaks, relegated like the harpies, the minotaur, and other monstrosities of long ago to the neverland of nightmare. But very occasionally, a nightmare can become a reality...

An interesting variation - Una Woodroffe's spectacular painting of a blue, horned peryton in her superb book Inventorum Natura (1979), which attempts to recreate the lost journal of Pliny the Elder (Una Woodroffe)

It had been a weary journey for the once-valiant, now-broken knight crusader, returning to his Greek homeland not in jubilation but rather in desolation for all of his dead and dying comrades, and accompanied only by his faithful squire. During the past weeks, they had ridden far indeed from the hideous scenes of bloodshed and mayhem that they had experienced for so long but had now left behind amid the corpse-strewn battlefields of the Holy Crusade. Yet those same scenes, and even worse ones, still rampaged with unending fervour in their shattered minds and within every nightmare that their fevered, ever-disturbed bouts of sleep generated.

And now, scarcely had they returned home before their friends, neighbours, and other townsfolk had beseeched the knight to seek out and vanquish a mysterious monster that had supposedly been glimpsed from time to time amid the dark, forbidding mountains close by during his absence. No-one was certain of the beast’s appearance, but all were certain that it existed. And so, armed with lance and shield, the knight, accompanied once more by his trusty squire, set off along the lonely path that wound its way up through the forests towards the plenitude of caves and caverns that pitted the mountainsides like pockmarks on the face of a titan.

Who knows what the knight would face if he did indeed encounter a monster there? Having said that, the dread beasts of ancient Greek tradition were just stories and legends, weren’t they? And even if they had been real once upon a time, surely that time was long since past now? Then again, certain of those entities were said to be immortal, such as the twin sisters of Medusa - she of the petrifying stare and snake-locked hair. Could that be what lay ahead, lurking in wait for him – the last of the gorgons? Or might it instead be a conflagrating multi-headed dragon, or even a hag-faced harpy with foul wings and fouler breath, ready to tear him apart with her crooked beak and talons of steel?

At least such thoughts, unpleasant though they unquestionably were, had succeeded in supplanting those previously tenacious images of the battlefield’s carnage. So, in a strange way, the knight’s mood had actually begun to lighten and lift as he and his squire continued their cautious ascent along the mountain path.

By now, their little town had been left far behind, so far that it could no longer be clearly discerned even from their lofty vantage point. And ahead? A grey vista of cliff faces, cloud-embraced peaks, and shadowy cave mouths surrounded them. The monster, if it did indeed exist, could be anywhere – so where should they begin their search?

As if in answer to their unspoken question, a cry suddenly echoed forth from the bowels of a tall but fairly narrow cave to their left, whose entrance was at the end of a high corridor-like passage through some rocks. The knight and his squire paused, listening closely, and the cry came again. It was a human voice, surely, a man’s voice, calling out for help, pleading to be rescued before the monster appeared!

Armed and ready for mortal combat (Dr Karl Shuker)

The knight and squire rode closer, but the knight was well aware from the ancient legends and superstitious folklore of his land that many monsters had successfully lured men and women to their doom by skilfully imitating a human voice. And so the knight called out, in the direction of the passage, for whoever was crying forth to show himself, and thus prove that he was human.

For a few moments there was silence, then came the sound of something moving slowly down the passage, until a shadow fell upon the exposed rock face at the passage’s entrance. It was the shadow of a man, a little stooped, perhaps, as if elderly or ailing, but undeniably human.

When the knight saw this, he and his squire rode up, approaching the entrance – but just before they reached it, the knight’s horse gave a wild neigh of fear and tried to swerve away, shaking in terror. Yet all that could be seen was the lone shadow of the man.

The knight looked away from the entrance as he sought to gain control of his panicking steed, which by now was thrashing its head from side to side and frothing madly in uncontrollable fright. And so it was his squire that saw who – or, rather, what – emerged from the passage to confront them.

Hearing his squire’s shrieks of horror, the knight turned back to look at the cave, and there, rearing up on its hind legs, was a beast that even in his wildest nightmares he had never thought of as anything other than fable and lurid fantasy. Yet here it was right now – only too real, and only too ready to kill him. It was a peryton!

On first sight it resembled a huge stag, sporting a pair of magnificent branching antlers, but as it reared directly in front of him, flailing its gleaming hooves, an enormous pair of plumed wings, sprouting from its shoulders, spread forth like the very pinions of Pegasus. And instead of fur, this unnatural creature was clothed in dark-green plumage, like some monstrous miscegenation of deer and tropical bird.

But most bizarre and uncanny of all was its shadow, which confirmed the creature’s identity as a bona fide peryton, albeit quite possibly the very last of its kind remaining on Earth. For there, cast upon the rock face as before, was not the shadow of a winged, feathered deer but instead the perfect facsimile of a human shadow – that which had fooled and lured the knight and his squire to the lair of this terrifying relic from an earlier world, whose eyes of fire and savage mien revealed only too readily its murderous intent.

For if a peryton should succeed in killing a human, not only would it rid the world of yet another member of the race that it would forever blame for the destruction of its own species’ blessed homeland, it would also gain something uniquely precious for itself – its own true shadow, the shadow of a peryton. Even so, upon killing a human a peryton would lose its resistance to man-made weapons, but that was a small price to pay – and it was evident that the peryton confronting the knight and his squire was more than willing to pay it.

All of this the knight knew only too well, as did his squire. In short, to vanquish this monster from a vanished land one of them must meet a grisly end - gored to death by the peryton’s antlers, then ripped asunder and trampled into the earth by its razor-sharp hooves. Undaunted, however, the knight swiftly dismounted from his nervy steed, and with shield and lance at the ready he slowly advanced on foot, signalling to his squire to stay back and hold his horse fast, in case he should need it. Perhaps the peryton possessed some vulnerable spot not spoken of in the old stories and myths – if so, he would find it, or die in the attempt.

Lowering its great head, the peryton eyed the knight with vibrant hatred, then charged toward him like a bull before a matador, but the knight fended it off with his burnished shield, rather than with a cloak of scarlet, which directed beams of sunlight into its eyes, temporarily blinding the raging creature and granting the knight precious moments in which to scrutinise it at close range in the hope of spying some weakness, some flaw, that might engineer its destruction.

But there was none.

If only he had known before ascending the mountain that the monster he would face there would be a peryton, he could have prepared himself accordingly, by abandoning human weapons and utilising the natural elements instead, against which the peryton had no invincibility. Fire or water to drive the creature back into its cavernous hideaway, and then perhaps the triggering of an avalanche in this unstable, rocky terrain, in order to imprison it inside the cave forever with a barrage of falling boulders sealing the entrance. That strategy might have succeeded, but now, now it was all too late.

A further representation of a peryton (Tim Morris)

Time and again the peryton charged, and each time the knight deflected it with his shield, in a chilling dance of would-be death, but he was tiring. Months of fighting in the Crusade and weathering the most traumatic and draining of living conditions had severely weakened him – a lengthy respite from all forms of conflict was what he needed to recuperate, not a mortal battle with a monster of the peryton’s stature and power.

Suddenly, as he attempted yet another feint of the peryton’s antlers with his shield, the knight lost his footing, dropping his lance onto the ground as he stumbled backwards, falling awkwardly against the trunk of a tree. And in those few seconds while he struggled with the weight of his armour to stand upright, the peryton saw its opportunity and charged directly at him, hitting him with such force that his armour’s breastplate split down the centre, exposing his chest to the sharp tines of the peryton’s antlers. They pierced his torso with such force, impaling him upon themselves, that the peryton was momentarily pinned by its own antlers into the tree’s hard trunk, before, with a mighty heaving movement, it hauled them back out.

Freed from their deadly tines, the body of the dying knight slumped to the ground. His head turned one last time, to look at his squire, who stood transfixed with horror and rage at his master’s fate, and he smiled gently. By meeting his own demise at the antlers of the peryton, he had saved his squire, who had also been his friend for more years than either of them could remember, and so there was no shame in his defeat, only quiet thankfulness. The knight closed his eyes, and then, finally at peace with a world in which he had lately seen so much turmoil and terror, he died.

And at that same moment, the peryton let out a roar of triumphant joy, for as it gazed at its shadow against the rock face, the shadow began to shiver and tremble. Its outline became blurred and its form extended and expanded, rapidly transforming – until, within just a few moments, the shadow of a man had metamorphosed into the shadow of a peryton.

Exultant, the peryton opened its great wings, ready to depart elsewhere, to seek out a more remote land where, now that it was no longer impervious to human weapons, it could live on in safety and anonymity. But still it gazed at its new shadow, delighting in its appearance after dreaming of and waiting so long for this supreme moment, this ultimate triumph.

And so it never saw the squire creep across the ground and seize the lance of his dead master, and it never saw the squire take the lance in his right hand, pull back his arm, and take deadly aim with the lance at the peryton’s own chest. It never heard the squire’s muttered prayer to the God who had kept him and his master safe during the horrors of the Crusade, and it never felt the strong breeze that seemed to blow in from nowhere, lifting, bearing, and empowering the lance as the squire hurled it with all his might at the peryton’s chest.

The squire’s aim, guided surely by the divine breeze, found its mark – spearing the shocked peryton through the very centre of its beating heart, skewering it like a moth impaled upon a lepidopterist’s pin. Open-mouthed, the peryton turned its head to meet the flushed face of the squire, and as it sank to its knees, the last vision that the slain peryton saw was the squire’s own eyes, suffused with the raging, glowing fire of retribution as he watched with grim satisfaction the peryton’s death. He had avenged his master, his friend, and as he knelt before the knight’s body in thankful prayer for his success in doing so, the breeze momentarily caressed his cheek before disappearing as swiftly and mysteriously as it had arisen - leaving the squire in silent vigil.

Here in the mountains, he would remain, guarding the knight’s body throughout the oncoming hours of nightfall and darkness, until the dawn’s first light, when he would then descend the winding path leading to their little town and seek help there in transporting with all due reverence and care his master back home, for the last time.

The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges (featuring Peter Goodfellow's fantastic front cover painting)

According to Jorge Luis Borges’s classic work The Book of Imaginary Beings (1969), which is often said to be the first modern-day book to document perytons, all of the information concerning these creatures that is known today is derived from a 16th-Century Fez rabbi’s historical treatise, or, rather, from the now-lost work of an unnamed scholar from ancient Greece that the rabbi had quoted in his own treatise. Borges asserted that until the outbreak of World War II, the single known copy of that treatise was held in the University of Dresden’s library. Tragically, however, perhaps as a result of the severe bombing of this German city by the Allies, or of the Nazis’ own notorious book-burning sessions, by the end of the war the rabbi’s unique manuscript had gone missing, and has never been found again – nor, indeed, has any additional copy of it.

Having said that, some authorities have suggested that Borges invented the entire peryton myth himself (including his assertions concerning the supposed erstwhile existence of the rabbi’s treatise, as well as another claim by him, that a sibyl had foretold – wrongly – that a phalanx of perytons would destroy Rome); and that, in fact, there was no peryton lore or tradition whatsoever prior to his book. However, there are several notable sources of winged deer information and portrayals (especially in heraldry, Western architecture and sculpture, early Hindu art, occultism, and even antique jewellery) that very considerably pre-date the publication of Borges’s book. Whether they are meant to represent genuine perytons is unclear, but they certainly exist.

As noted, for instance, in K. Krishna Murthy’s book Mythical Animals in Indian Art:

"The winged deer or stag...gets its sculptural representation more than once in the early Indian sculptures. However, the best specimens of the winged stags can be seen in the reliefs of Sanchi. A clear example of two winged stags sitting back to back occurs on the front of the northern Torana gateways."

Nor should we – or, indeed, could we – overlook the visual extravaganza that constitutes the glorious fountain replete with golden statues of winged deer that forms part of the huge garden around La Granja – the sumptuous palace in Segovia, Spain, that was built in 1721-24 by Philip V.

Perhaps the most distinctive British example is the ornate statue of a winged stag sitting upright on its haunches that is just one of many large, intricately-detailed sculptures of fantastic beings forming part of the elaborate fountain in the courtyard of West Lothian’s Linlithgow Palace. Nowadays, this Scottish palace is largely in ruins internally, but the fountain still survives and dates back to the reign of King James V (1512-1542).

Statue of a green winged stag at Linlithgow Palace (amyhooton/deviantart)

Although the fountain’s winged stag statue may simply represent a composite heraldic beast, it is interesting to note that algal growth has turned it green in colour – the same colour that the perytons were said to be. Just a coincidence? Perhaps the next time that anyone visits this fountain, they should take note of the shadow cast by the winged stag’s green statue. If the shadow resembles a winged stag, then clearly all is well – but what if it resembles a man...?

A second photo of Linlithgow Palace's winged stag statue

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE PURPLE MACAW?

2011-11-18T20:12:00.017Z

John G. Keulemans's painting of the purple macaw in Lord Walter Rothschild's Extinct Birds (1907)

Famed for their gaudy plumage, macaws come in many colours, but purple has never been one of them – or has it?

The genus Anodorhynchus – the so-called blue macaws - contains three present-day species (though one of them, the glaucous macaw, may have lately become extinct). Interestingly, in terms of plumage colouration, this genus's trio can be arranged in a very neat gradation, beginning with, as its name indicates, the intense hyacinth-blue shade of the hyacinth (or hyacinthine) macaw A. hyacinthinus, then moving subtly into the slightly more turquoise-blue hues of Lear's macaw A. leari, which then transforms further, yielding a paler, turquoise-green shade, in the aptly-named glaucous macaw A. glaucus.

Brazilian postage stamp portraying all three species of recognised Anodorhynchus macaw - hyacinth (left), glaucous (centre), Lear's (right)

But what if this colour gradation were also extrapolated in the opposite direction? That is, in addition to the hyacinth macaw's striking blue hue faintly greening into turquoise and thence even more so into a glaucus tone, how about deepening it, to yield a macaw whose plumage was a darker, predominantly violet or purple shade? If this quartet of macaws were then arranged in a continuous linear spectrum of transforming colour, running from purple into blue into turquoise-blue into pale turquoise-green, the line-up would be: purple macaw, hyacinth macaw, Lear's macaw, and glaucous macaw. Of course, the purple macaw is purely hypothetical – isn't it?

In reality, such a bird may indeed have existed. Based upon certain centuries-old eyewitness accounts, in 1905 no less an ornithological authority than Lord Walter Rothschild - founder of the famous ornithological museum at Tring in Hertfordshire (now part of London's Natural History Museum but still based at Tring) - formally described a mysterious long-extinct macaw-like bird from Guadeloupe, which he christened Anodorhynchus purpurascens, the purple macaw (also referred to by some authorities as the violet macaw, and sometimes accorded the incorrect specific name purpurescens). His description of it was published in volume 16 of the British Ornithologists Club's Bulletin.

Rothschild also included this species in his book Extinct Birds (1907), together with the specially-prepared colour plate included here in this ShukerNature post of mine. His original source of information was a brief account penned by a 'Don de Navarette', entitled 'Le gros Perroquet de la Guadaloupe [sic]', which appeared in Rel. Quat. Voy. Christ. (1838). This writer was actually none other than Martin Fernández de Navarrete y Ximénez de Tejada (1765-1844) - a Spanish sailor-historian who rediscovered an abstract by Spanish reformer-bishop Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566) of the log made by Christopher Columbus during his first voyage to the West Indies.

This account stated that according to Columbus, who visited the island in November 1493 during his second New World voyage, there lived on Guadeloupe a very large type of macaw that was entirely of a deep, intense violet/purple colour, and which the native Carib people referred to as the oné couli. No such bird lives there today, however, and neither a single preserved specimen nor even an illustration prepared directly by an eyewitness exists of this enigmatic purple macaw.

Conversely, until the early 18th Century, a second species of parrot with violet feathers definitely did live there. This was the Guadeloupe amazon parrot Amazona violacea, which was formally described and named by German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1789, around which time it became extinct, due to hunting for food and wholesale clearance of the forests in which it thrived.

John G. Keulemans's painting of the Guadeloupe amazon parrot in Lord Walter Rothschild's Extinct Birds (1907)

Although, just like the purple macaw, there is no known preserved specimen of the Guadeloupe amazon in existence, unlike the purple macaw this showy parrot is nonetheless known from good, consistent descriptions of it given by several naturalists (such as Jean-Baptiste Labat, and French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson) and travellers (notably French missionary Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre). Consequently, in his authoritative book Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World (2nd revised edit., 1967), ornithologist James C. Greenway Jr from the American Museum of Natural History suggested that Navarrete's description of the violet-plumed oné couli may in fact have been nothing more than "a careless description of A. violacea".

In my view, however, it would need to have been an exceptionally careless description in order to confuse a long-tailed parrot the size of a macaw with a much smaller, short-tailed amazon. Moreover, whereas the purple macaw was said to be entirely violet/purple, in the Guadeloupe amazon this particular colour was confined predominantly to its head and neck (and even there it was a slaty black-violet rather than an intense purple). In stark contrast, this amazon's back, tail, and much of its wings and underparts were deep green, with portions of its wings additionally sporting bright yellow, red, and jet-black feathers. Not only with regard to its size and shape, therefore, but also in relation to its multicoloured plumage, I fail to see how this species could in any way be mistaken for a wholly purple macaw.

Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World (2nd revised edit., 1967) by James C. Greenway Jr

A second suggestion offered by Greenway, and one that is also supported by various other ornithological scholars, is that Guadeloupe's purple macaws may simply have been hyacinth or even Lear's macaws imported by trading natives into Guadeloupe from the South American mainland. Again, however, it is difficult to see how the unequivocally blue plumage of the former species or even the slightly more turquoise tones of the latter one could come to be described as deep violet or purple.

So here, leaving it lingering perpetually in a shadowy ornithological limbo as a avian of tantalising ambiguity unless any additional information concerning it should one day become available, is where we must take our leave of Guadeloupe's very perplexing purple macaw – a bird that may, or may not, have existed, but which, if it truly did, and was indeed a macaw, must surely have been one of the most beautiful creatures ever seen by the eyes of its extremely fortunate beholders.

GAUGUIN’S MAGICAL MYSTERY KOAO

2011-11-16T02:10:00.020Z

Representation of the koao* (Philippa Foster)

One of the most celebrated modern-day artists is Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), a figure whose name may not be instantly associated with mystery birds, as his fame lies far more with paintings of dusky South Sea Island maidens than with ornithological subjects. Having said that, however, it may well be that one of his paintings has considerable crypto-twitching significance. One of his last works was painted in 1902while on the small Pacific island of Hiva Oa in French Polynesia's Marquesas group, and is now at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Liege, Belgium. Entitled 'The Sorcerer of Hiva Oa', it depicts a tall man in a striking red cape standing near a forest - but what is most intriguing from a cryptozoological viewpoint is the brightly-plumaged bird portrayed in the painting's bottom-right corner, and seemingly held in place by a dog, which is seizing it with its jaws.

Gauguin’s painting ‘The Sorcerer of Hiva Oa’

Remarkably, this bird looks very like the famous New Zealand takahe Porphyrio mantelli, the large flightless gallinule thought to be extinct until rediscovered on South Island in 1948. In recent years, specimens of this greatly-endangered species have been transferred to, and have successfully bred on, the small island bird sanctuary of Tiritiri Matangi, which I visited in November 2006 and where I was greatly privileged to see wild takahes at close range. Hence I can confirm that Gauguin's bird does indeed look very like - though not identical to - a takahe; the main difference is that the mystery bird's head is green, whereas the takahe's is dark blue. But what could any such bird be doing far from New Zealand, on the tiny South Pacific island of Hiva Oa? No such species is known to exist here.

The New Zealand takahe (digitalrails)

Nevertheless, two aspects of the painting clearly indicate that the bird was indeed native to this island. Firstly, the sorcerer depicted by it in 1902 was a famous Hiva Oa local of that time called Haapuani. Secondly, there is a distinct suggestion that the bird had been newly-captured on the island during a hunt, because Gauguin depicted it gripped by the jaws of a hunting-type dog.

Close-up of the mystery bird in Gauguin’s painting

What makes this painting so important cryptozoologically, as brought to attention by French researcher Michel Raynal in a number of his writings, is that Gauguin's rara avis compares very closely with descriptions of a still-undescribed, uncaptured species of bird reported on several occasions from Hiva Oa and known locally here as the koao. The latter mystery bird's most famous eyewitness to date was none other than the Norwegian voyager Thor Heyerdahl. In his book Fatu-Hiva (1974), Heyerdahl reported that while visiting Hiva Oa in 1937, he briefly spied a hen-sized flightless bird scurrying rapidly between some tall ferns, almost like a rabbit through a burrow, and was told by the islanders that this was the koao.

Koao eyewitness Thor Heyerdahl

Moreover, subfossil remains of an officially-extinct gallinule, Porphyrio paepae, have been uncovered on Hiva Oa, leading to the exciting possibility that this species and the elusive koao are one and the same. And perhaps, unknowingly, Gauguin has left us a unique portrait of this bird.

* = In her reconstruction, Philippa elected to paint the koao's beak yellow rather than red, as there is no firm agreement as to the koao's beak colouration.

This post is inspired by a section from my book Karl Shuker's Alien Zoo: From the Pages of Fortean Times (CFZ Press: Bideford, 2010).

PLATASTERIAS LATIRADIATA - THE LIVING FOSSIL THAT NEVER WAS

2011-11-08T21:43:00.011Z

Platasterias latiradiata - dorsal view

Fifty years ago saw the remarkable elevation of a hitherto-obscure invertebrate species to the rank of a veritable living fossil - but was it? The following fascinating episode from the zoological chronicles is excerpted from my book The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals, due to be published next month.

The most familiar members of the phylum Echinodermata are the starfishes, which have traditionally been divided into two subclasses - Euasteroidea (the true starfishes), housing all of the modern-day species; and Somasteroidea, known only from fossil species dating back to the early Ordovician Period, some 488-478 million years ago. (More recently, Somasteroidea has been elevated from a sub-class to a class in its own right by some workers.) During the 1960s, however, Somasteroidea experienced a most unexpected (albeit only temporary) renaissance.

The seeds for this had been sown some years earlier, when Prof. H. Barraclough Fell, from New Zealand's Victoria University, had become very interested in the obscure species Platasterias latiradiata from Mexico's Pacific coast, described in 1871 but still virtually unknown. After studying the meagre amount of published data concerning its structural anatomy, he began to wonder whether it really was a true starfish after all, because it seemed to exhibit certain features more comparable to those of somasteroids than eusasteroids - including petal-shaped arms whose skeletal components resembled rod-like structures called virgalia (possessed by somasteroids but not by euasteroids).

Yet to satisfy himself totally, Fell needed to examine a specimen of this enigmatic echinoderm - which immediately posed a problem, as earlier enquiries to museums in Mexico had failed to elicit one. Undaunted, he contacted Alisa M. Clark, Curator of Echinoderms at the British Museum (Natural History), and promptly received a portion of an arm from a preserved Platasterias. From his study of this vital material, he felt sure that the arm's ventral skeleton was indeed constructed from virgalia-like rods, and other anatomical features likewise seemed to substantiate a somasteroid identity for it.

Thus, in December 1961 Fell announced that Platasterias was a living somasteroid, thereby resurrecting an entire subclass of echinoderms from 400 million years of extinction. In 1962, he published details of his structural analysis of Platasterias and his conclusions in several scientific journals, which attracted appreciable zoological interest.

By 1966, however, doubts regarding the somasteroid affinities of Platasterias had begun to be voiced. In particular, Dr F. Jensenius Madsen, of Copenhagen's Zoological Museum, opined that the virgalia of somasteroids were not so significant as previously thought. The skeleton of euasteroids is composed of numerous bone-like knobs called ossicles, and Madsen considered virgalia to be nothing more than ventrolaterally-sited versions of these, thereby reducing their taxonomic value. Leading on from this, he postulated that Platasterias was merely a somewhat aberrant member of the starfish genus Luidia, and that its distinctive petal-shaped arms were simply an adaptation for life on an unsteady sandy seafloor. His opinion swiftly gained support from other researchers (notably Dr D.B. Blake) investigating ossicle structure in starfishes; so by the early 1970s Platasterias was not only reclassified as a euasteroid, but was also renamed, becoming Luidia latiradiata - thereby jettisoning the subclass Somasteroidea back into Ordovician obscurity.

Platasterias latiradiata - ventral view

MIRAPINNA ESAU - A FURRY FISH FROM THE AZORES

2011-11-03T21:07:00.011Z

Mirapinna esau

A century ago saw the discovery of one of the world's most unusual fishes, Mirapinna esau, the hairy fish, whose controversial, highly unexpected zoological identity has only recently been exposed. Here is its fascinating history - excerpted from my soon-to-be-published latest book, The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals.

The year 1956 saw the description of a 2.5-in-long hump-backed fish so grotesque in appearance that it required a wholly new family to accommodate it. Caught many years earlier (in June 1911) at the surface of the mid-Atlantic about 550 miles north of the Azores, this extraordinary fish seemed to be covered in hair! Closer examination, however, disclosed that its 'fur' was really a mass of living body outgrowths (hair, conversely, is composed of dead cells) containing secretory cells. Their function is unknown, though they may produce distasteful compounds to deter would-be predators.

No less extraordinary than its 'hair' were its fins. The pelvic fins were large and wide, their wing-like appearance additionally enhanced by their long rays, diverging outwards from a broad base, and directed upwards rather than downwards. Equally odd was its pair of very small, reduced pectoral fins, placed much higher up on its body's flanks than those of most other fishes. Most peculiar of all, however, was its tail fin, because the rays in the lower half of its upper lobe uniquely overlapped those in the upper half of its lower lobe, and like the rays of the pelvic fins they were extremely long and spine-like. Little wonder that this bizarre species, commonly termed the hairy fish, was given the generic name Mirapinna - 'wonderful fins'; its full scientific name is Mirapinna esau (after Jacob's hairy brother, Esau, in the Bible).

Sketch of Mirapinna esau

Until very recently, the hairy fish, along with two previously described genera of much slimmer fishes (Eutaeniophorus and Parataeniophorus, collectively containing five species known as tape-tails), was placed by many authorities within a distinct order, Lampridiformes, set apart from all others. In January 2009, however, an international team of ichthyologists published a revelatory paper in which they announced that their morphological and genetic studies of specimens of these fishes had shown them to be nothing more than juvenile forms of certain deepsea species known as whalefishes, housed in the taxonomic family Cetomimidae. After more than half a century, therefore, the hairy fish with the wonder fins was a wonder no longer, and the family Mirapinnidae is now obsolete.

A whalefish

VAMPIRE CATS AND DEVIL CATS - FELINE FIENDS FOR HALLOWE'EN!

2011-10-31T05:11:00.011Z

With my very own - but totally unfiendish! - Hallowe'en cat (Dr Karl Shuker)

In Asia, belief in vampire cats is still very much apparent. One of the most feared examples is the Bengalese chordewa, the bane of a hill-frequenting tribe known as the Oraons. According to their traditional lore, the chordewa is a witch whose soul can temporarily leave her body and assume the guise of a black-furred vampire cat. While in this form, it seeks out victims among the tribe's sick and dying, and lays claim to them by licking their lips or consuming their food. The chordewa's power will be assuaged, however, if her feline-shaped soul can be captured, thereby preventing it from re-entering her body, which sinks into a coma and remains in this state until (if ever) her soul returns to it.

Even more deceptive but equally deadly is the Japanese vampire cat. This feline demon can assume the form of a beautiful maiden to seduce an unsuspecting man and drain him of his life, imperceptibly but inexorably, night after night - until he eventually becomes an inanimate husk. Happily, this dire spirit-beast can be recognised when spied in its true state, for a vampire cat cannot disguise the fact that it possesses not one tail but two.

Japanese vampire cat

One famous Japanese legend tells of how the Prince of Hizen's favourite concubine, the lady O Toyo, was secretly strangled by a vampire cat who then assumed her form, and took her place at the unsuspecting prince's side. In the weeks that followed this surreptitious substitution, however, his friends and courtiers became alarmed to see that the prince was becoming ever paler and and weaker, especially at night, as if his very life-force was somehow being drained away. But how - and by whom?

Finally, one of the prince's most loyal soldiers kept watch over his master's bed chamber, and spied the false O Toyo approach the sleeping man - ready to change back into a vampire cat and imbibe his blood, as it had been doing each night since it had killed the real O Toyo. Sensing the soldier's presence, however, this feline female paused, but the soldier had accurately guessed her evil intent and leapt forward to slay her. Instantly, the false O Toyo became a vampire cat again, and fled away into the mountains. Some say that it was later killed there, but others believe that it survived, and will one day have its revenge. There have even been claimed sightings of this vampire cat; the most recent was in 1929.

Rather less easy to espy is the Indian devil cat, which can haunt homes like a feline poltergeist, for this creature is normally invisible. However, its presence can be readily detected, due to its spine-chilling shrieks, likened to a bloodcurdling fusion of a cat's yowling cry with the ear-splitting scream of a peacock! One or more of these evil entities will sometimes invade a house, much to the consternation and despair of its inhabitants, or will take up residence on its roof and regale the people below with hideous eldritch screeching. Fortunately, if a house troubled by a devil cat is sprinkled with holy water and blessed by a priest, its shrill sounds will be heard there no more.

This post is excerpted from my forthcoming book I Thought I Saw The Strangest Cat...

WHO'S A PRETTY MYSTERIOUS POLLY, THEN?

2011-10-21T03:09:00.059+01:00

'Dodo and Red Parakeet' - c.1773, attributed to William Hodges

What is it with paintings of dodos and red parrots? In a previous ShukerNature post, I investigated the still-unidentified red mystery macaw depicted in a famous painting of the dodo by Flemish artist Roelandt Savery in 1626. Now, I've just discovered a contentious painting popularly assumed (but not confirmed) to be by English painter William Hodges (1744-1797) portraying a dodo, and what do I find also depicted in that painting? You've guessed it – another unidentified red mystery parrot!

William Hodges took part in Captain James Cook's second Pacific Ocean voyage (1772-1775), and is chiefly remembered today for the various paintings and sketches that he produced during that voyage, which visited a number of exotic Pacific locations, including Tahiti, Easter Island, and the sub-Antarctic, as well as South Africa's Table Bay in the south Atlantic.

Consequently, it came as something of a surprise to me recently when I came upon a certain painting, unsigned but generally attributed to Hodges, that portrayed a dodo Raphus cucullatus - a species native to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean until its extinction there around 1681, i.e. several decades before Hodges was even born. Clearly, therefore, assuming that he is indeed the artist who produced this work, Hodges cannot have painted his dodo from life, so he must have drawn his inspiration for it from depictions by other, earlier artists. And indeed, it does closely resemble dodos portrayed in various previous works (particularly Roelandt Savery's afore-mentioned dodo painting from 1626).

Roelandt Savery's 1626 dodo painting, featuring a red mystery macaw to the left, and an equally mysterious green and yellow macaw at top right

Entitled 'Dodo and Red Parakeet', and measuring 23 x 27.5 cm, this alleged Hodges oil on academy board painting is believed to have been produced in c.1773, and is part of the Rex Nan Kivell Collection, housed at the National Library of Australia. Indeed, it was Rex Nan Kivell who provided the controversial attribution of this painting to Hodges. Yet until now, it has seemingly attracted little zoological interest, and does not even feature in acclaimed bird painter-author Errol Fuller's very comprehensive book Dodo: From Extinction to Icon (2002).

In reality, however, it deserves very serious attention, not only on account of the question mark regarding the artist responsible for its creation but also due to the parakeet that it portrays – because this remarkable bird does not appear to resemble any known species alive today or extinct in historic times.

There is no indication of whether this parakeet and the dodo were painted to the same scale, so the parakeet's absolute size cannot be estimated from the painting. Incidentally, due to its long tail I refer to it as a parakeet rather than a parrot. Moreover, although in terms of relative proportions its slender, long-tailed form also recalls that of a macaw, it lacks the distinctive match of bare facial skin characterising all of these large or very large species, and it seems to possess a crest (albeit a somewhat wispy one), which no known species of macaw does. As for its highly distinctive colour combination of bright red head, back, underparts and tail coupled with deep bronze-green wings: when added to its body shape and crest, this collectively delineates it from all other parrots on record.

Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice - who famously encountered a dodo and a parakeet when visiting Wonderland - might well have said!

Sir Arthur Tenniel's famous illustration of Alice and the dodo (with the parakeet among the crowd of animals in the background); incidentally, Tenniel's dodo also seems to have been inspired by Savery's version

So what exactly is the alleged Hodges painting's mystifying crested red parakeet (is it even real, or just an invention of the artist?), where did it originate, and where did whoever the painting's artist is see it? So far, I have been unable to answer any of these telling questions – which is where, gentle readers, you come in!

If any of you have information relating to this intriguing painting, the identity of its artist, or, in particular, the enigmatic parakeet depicted in it, I would very greatly welcome any details that you could post here on ShukerNature or on my Facebook wall, or could email to me at karlshuker@aol.com – many thanks indeed!

UPDATE - 25 October 2011

After posting the above account on ShukerNature four days ago, I contacted two dodo authorities for their opinions concerning the alleged Hodges painting and, in particular, the enigmatic red parakeet depicted in it. One of these authorities was the afore-mentioned dodo author Errol Fuller, who emailed me his thoughts just a few hours after my blog post had appeared, and also kindly gave me permission to quote them. So here they are:

"The dodo element to the painting is clearly a derivative from the famous picture by Roelandt Savery that is now in The Natural History Museum. Whether it was copied directly from that picture or from a copy of it I can't, of course, tell. However, the parrot is another matter. In the Savery painting there is a parrot in the same place, but it is a macaw. My own suspicion is that this is just an invented parrot, just put in for decorative purposes - however, I could be wrong, and would be happy to be proved so. It certainly doesn't match any parrot that I know of, so if it is a genuine portrait of a bird, rather than a made up image, then it is something unknown.

"As far as the Hodges attribution is concerned, I can see nothing to stylistically link this with Hodges. My feeling is that it has nothing to do with him. Therefore there is no real reason to necessarily give the parrot a Pacific origin. There are, of course, a number of parrots from Mauritius known only by skeletal material, so if this is a genuine attempt to show Mauritian birds, it could be one of these. This is something of a conceptual leap, however."

This accords well with my own views, but it would be wonderful if some additional, physical evidence could be uncovered that might tilt the balance one way or the other, i.e. either towards the parakeet being an invention or towards it being a genuine, but seemingly unknown species. Just four days later, that elusive evidence arrived, in the form of a fascinating engraving.

Today, 25 October 2011, I received an email from the second dodo authority contacted by me, Jolyon ('Joe') C. Parish, whose own dodo book is due to be published soon; he is also in the process of establishing an accompanying website, 'The Dodologist's Miscellany'. Not only was he already familiar with the alleged Hodges painting, he had also encountered a pertinent engraving that I had not seen before, and which he kindly emailed to me with his reply, which was as follows:

"Strangely enough, I was just looking at the very same picture on the NLA website only a matter of hours before I got your message (what a coincidence!) There is an engraving in Broderip (1833)* [William J. Broderip, Vice-President of the Zoological Society of London at that time], which shows the dodo and parrot (albeit sans crest), taken from Savery’s British Museum painting (see attached). As Broderip does not mention Hodges, or indeed any painting with a dodo and red parakeet, in the article (or in his subsequent articles), it might indicate that the engraving was the original (taken from Savery’s painting, albeit with modification) and that the red parakeet picture was made afterwards, based on this. I don’t know the reasons for the attribution of the painting to Hodges.

"If the painting was made from the engraving, rather than vice versa, then the colouring would probably be imaginary (as with the parrot’s/parakeet’s head crest). It would be interesting to find out the reasons behind the attribution of the picture to Hodges and its date to decide the matter."

The dodo and parrot engraving in Broderip's article

What is so remarkable, and telling, about this engraving (which, incidentally, is an early one, long pre-dating Broderip's 1833 article) is that it is tantalisingly intermediate between Savery's dodo painting and the version attributed to Hodges. I have reproduced this engraving here, and as can be readily seen, not only is the dodo in it clearly based upon Savery's, but it also includes the macaw present in the top-right section of Savery's painting. However, in the engraving it has been transformed somewhat, so that although there are still sufficient similarities between the two parrots for there to be no question that the engraved version was indeed inspired by Savery's macaw, it has a number of noticeable differences too - differences, moreover, which the Hodges parakeet also exhibits and, in some cases, enhances even further, as with the crest.

The three images together, for direct comparison purposes (click pic to enlarge)

In my opinion, therefore, it seems likely that the engraving in Broderip's article was inspired by Savery's painting, and that the alleged Hodges painting was inspired by the engraving in Broderip's article, because the right-hand parrot exhibits a clearly visible transition in transformation from Savery's macaw to the Broderip engraving's parrot to the Hodges parakeet. Moreover, whereas both the engraving's dodo and the Hodges dodo are similar to Savery's, the Hodges dodo is virtually identical to the engraving's, thus providing further evidence that the alleged Hodges painting was inspired directly by the engraving, rather than directly by Savery's painting.

As a result, I now believe it unlikely that the Hodges mystery parakeet is anything other than an invention...or at least I did until 16 November 2011!

SECOND UPDATE - 16 November 2011

Today I received a greatly-welcomed email from David Alderton, an acclaimed authority on parrots and other cage-birds and webmaster of http://www.petinfoclub.com/ who had just read this present ShukerNature blog. Here are his thoughts:

"My immediate impression on seeing the William Hodges painting, which I hadn't seen before - was that the parakeet is actually a cardinal lory (Chalopsitta cardinalis) - see below - which ranges from eastern parts of Papua New Guinea to the Solomon Islands. These birds don't have a crest as such, but they can raise the feathers on their foreheads to some extent when excited, aggressive etc.. Their colouring is highly distinctive."

Indeed it is, as seen here:

Cardinal lory

There is no doubt that, crest notwithstanding (or simply artistic licence?), the Hodges red mystery parakeet does indeed closely recall the cardinal lory, though, if this is the correct identification, why the painting's artist should combine a Mauritius dodo with an Australasian parrot is unclear. Yet even if this is true, the fact that in general pose and outline the Hodges parakeet readily mirrors the Broderip engraving's parrot still suggests that the engraving directly inspired the painting. In short, it may well be that the latter's artist used a cardinal lory as his subject, but painted it in the same pose as the engraving's parrot.

Cardinal lories, painted by John Keulemans

Having said that, however, certain noteworthy morphological differences are definitely apparent between the cardinal lory and the Hodges red mystery parakeet, such as the lory's patch of white bare facial skin, its shorter tail, and of course its lack of a crest (to my mind, the crest of the mystery red parakeet seems more pronounced than I'd expect from merely some raised brow feathers). Echoing my sentiments are those also received by me today from Errol Fuller:

"I can see no real reason to associate the bird in the picture with the lory. Certainly they are both red with a darker colour on the wings - but so what? This isn't enough to make a match. The parrot in the engraving also has a darker colour on the wing so the painter may have got his inspiration from that. Also, you can't just ignore the crest and the fact that the painted image has a long tail - unlike the lory. So to sum up I don't think this putative identification gets us anywhere.

I still think the most likely solution is that this is just a parrot made up for decorative purposes. Otherwise, this is a hitherto unknown species. But this seems highly - very highly - unlikely to me."

In his email, Errol - who, remember, is not only an author but also a highly accomplished bird painter himself - went on to point out that artists cannot always be relied upon to "get things right", because it is not always their intention to paint true to life:

"Artists have all sorts of reasons for doing what they do. They aren't necessarily trying to tell the absolute truth. Some of them aren't actually capable of it!

"What could be interesting would be to know the date at which the print made its first appearance. If we knew this we could perhaps rule Hodges out of the equation. Incidentally, in my mind he's already ruled out!"

So although the cardinal lory provides the closest match among real species to the Hodges mystery red parakeet, it may be that whoever painted it was merely inspired by this lory, rather than seeking to prepare a true-to-life depiction of it.

I have the feeling somehow that this cryptozoological conundrum is going to run and run - or should that be fly and fly?!

*BRODERIP, William J. (1833). Dodo. Penny Mag. Soc. Diffus. Useful Knowl., 75: 209–211. [reprinted in 1837 within The Penny Cyclopaedia, 9: 47.]

My sincere thanks go to Errol Fuller, Joe Parish, and David Alderton for their much-valued comments and thoughts.

ROTHSCHILD'S MYNAH - THE FIRST HUNDRED YEARS.

2011-10-19T20:57:00.009+01:00

Rothschild's mynah (Brian Jelonek/Wikipedia)

Continuing my series of ShukerNature posts concerning species featuring in my forthcoming book The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals that are celebrating major anniversaries in 2011, here's Bali's only endemic species of bird, which was discovered by science exactly 100 years ago.

ROTHSCHILD'S MYNAH

On 24 March 1911, while participating in the second Freiburger expedition to the Moluccas, avian expert Dr Erwin Stresemann collected an adult female of a quite exquisite species of crested starling at Bubunan, on the northern coast of Bali. Except for the black edge to its tail and its black wing tips, its plumage was an immaculate snowy white. In contrast, its unfeathered legs and feet were pale grey, its bill was brownish-yellow, and a conspicuous patch of bright blue skin encircled each eye. A new species, related most closely to the mynahs, it was unique to Bali - moreover, it is this island's only endemic bird.

In 1912 it was officially described by Stresemann, who created a new genus for it, and named it Leucopsar rothschildi, as a token of his gratitude to Lord Rothschild for permitting him to spend such a considerable time during his ornithological researches at the magnificent natural history museum at Tring, founded and owned at that time by Rothschild.

The highly attractive appearance of Rothschild's mynah ensured its rapid rise to fame as a popular cage bird, but by being restricted to such a tiny island as Bali (no more than about 2000 square miles in area, of which only the Bubunan portion is inhabited by the mynahs) it is, unavoidably, a species with a small population size. As a result, the depletion of its numbers in the wild by local trappers supplying birds to zoos, aviculturalists, etc, ultimately transformed it into an endangered species – so much so that in 2001 the wild population had reached an all-time low of just six birds and is categorised as critically endangered by the IUCN.

Happily, however, it breeds well in captivity, enabling its numbers to be built up. At Jersey Zoo, for instance, 185 mynahs had been bred by mid-1990 from an original group of just four. Conservationists hope that captive-bred specimens released onto Bali will boost the wild population to its former level, before this mynah became a popular aviary species.

Rothschild's mynah (Dr Karl Shuker)

A CENTURY OF OWSTON'S BANDED CIVET

2011-10-18T01:31:00.010+01:00

Owston's banded civet (Chris Brack)

To promote my soon-to-be-published Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals - the fully-revised, thoroughly-updated, and greatly-expanded third incarnation of what began as The Lost Ark in 1993, and then became The New Zoo in 2002 - during the next few weeks I shall be excerpting from this latest book of mine as a series of ShukerNature exclusives some of the remarkable animals whose discoveries or rediscoveries are celebrating notable anniversaries in 2011. Here's one of them.

OWSTON'S BANDED CIVET

Owston's banded civet Chrotogale owstoni is an obscure Asian species, measuring up to 3.5 ft in total length. Named after Alan Owston, whose native collector procured its type specimen on 16 September 1911 at Yen-bay, on Tonkin's Song-koi River in southern China, it was officially described in 1912 by Oldfield Thomas, who designated it as the sole member of a new genus. The visually arresting pattern created by contrasting light and dark, transverse bands on its body and the basal portion of its tail closely resembles that of the banded palm civet Hemigalus derbianus, but the latter species lacks the dark spots visible on the neck, shoulders, flanks, and thighs of Chrotogale.

Furthermore, anatomical comparisons uncovered distinct differences in cranial structure and dentition between the two species, differences sufficiently marked to warrant these civets' respective residence in separate genera. Most remarkable of these contrasts were the very slender muzzle of Chrotogale, and its incongruous incisors - these latter teeth are surprisingly broad and close-set, and arranged almost in a semi-circle, a condition more comparable to that of certain insectivorous marsupials than to any species of viverrid.

Whether Chrotogale too is predominantly insectivorous, however, remains uncertain, as even today it is still a very mysterious animal, known from less than two dozen preserved specimens originating variously from northern Vietnam, Laos, and from Tonkin and Yunnan in China. A live individual was captured in Vietnam in 1991, followed by others more recently. These latter include (in 1999) three males and seven females at Hanoi Zoo, six males and four females at Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) Zoo, four of each sex at Pittsboro Zoo in North Carolina, and one female at Frankfurt Zoo. More recently, an international conservation and breeding programme for them was established in co-operation with Vietnam’s Cuc Phuong National Park working with various zoos including Newquay Zoo.

My scraperboard illustration of Owston's banded civet (Dr Karl Shuker)

AN UNCOMMONNESS OF UNICORNS

2011-10-10T01:16:00.037+01:00

My unicorn wall rug, based upon 'Unicorn' - a painting by Johfra Bosschart (Dr Karl Shuker)

Not all unicorns are of the equine or cervine varieties beloved by poets, painters, storytellers, and other purveyors of literature and art. Following on from the unicorn rabbit of County Durham that I recently documented in a previous ShukerNature post (click here to view it), I now have pleasure in presenting a singularly eclectic selection of extraordinary unicorns from the past, the present, reality, fantasy, and somewhere in between.

THE YALE AND THE EALE

Originally native to southern India, the yale or yali was somewhat of a contradiction in terms – a unicorn with two horns. Moreover, unlike the fixed horn of the true unicorn, the paired horns of the yale could be rotated in different directions, enabling it to aim them at any attacker approaching from any direction. Quite apart from its mobile horns, the yale was nothing if not memorable morphologically. The size of a horse, it sported the tusks of a boar, the tail of an elephant, and the body spotting of a leopard. Not surprisingly, this startling beast was reputedly kept inside Indian temples to ward off evil spirits, and, perhaps rather more surprisingly, it ultimately entered British heraldry as one of the four heraldic beasts of the monarch.

The yale, in Jonathan Hunt's Bestiary

An earlier version of the yale was the eale, which shared the yale’s Indian provenance, boar-like tusks, elephant tail, and moveable horns (though the eale’s were far longer than the yale’s). However, it was black or tawny all over, was much bigger than the yale, attaining the size of a hippopotamus, and was amphibious, able to live in the water as well as on land.

Medieval engraving depicting the eale (bottom right)

THE WEB-FOOTED CAMPHOR

Even more amphibious than the eale, however, was the camphor or champhur. For this was a single-horned Ethiopian unicorn whose hind feet were webbed like a duck’s, not hoofed.

Engraving of the camphor

THE WOOLLY-COATED, TWIN-HORNED PIRASSOIPI

Less familiar than the yale and eale is yet another double-horned unicorn, the pirassoipi. Illustrated in a number of bestiaries down through the ages, and native to the Arabian lands bordering the Red Sea, it was normally depicted with two seemingly-fixed, forward-pointing horns, and, most distinctive of all, an extremely woolly, curly coat – giving this creature the appearance of a large ibex-like goat, upon which it may well have been based.

Engraving of the pirassoipi

THE BAISTE-NA-SCOGHAIGH - A WERE-UNICORN FROM SKYE

One of the most bizarre yet least-known unicorns, due to its very limited distribution, was the baiste-na-scoghaigh, confined entirely to the Isle of Skye in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides. This one-horned creature was more like the monoceros than the unicorn, as it has been variously likened to a huge lumbering ram, shire horse, or even a rhinoceros. According to a communication penned by Donald Finlay (Daily Mail, 16 June 2010), however, every baiste-na-scoghaigh was male, so in order to perpetuate their race each one would shape-shift into a man and copulate with women, who gave birth only to sons. Moreover, a baiste-na-scoghaigh would not hesitate to dispatch with its great horn any man that it considered to be weak and take his place, in order to sire a stronger, worthier son.

THE ICELANDIC BJARNDÝRAKÓNGUR

By far the most unusual mammalian unicorn of all, however, must surely be the bjarndýrakóngur of Iceland, because this extraordinary beast is said to be a polar bear of gigantic size that bears a long glowing horn projecting forward from the centre of its brow. As revealed by Glen Vaudrey in a CFZ blog post of 2 August 2009, the bjarndýrakóngur supposedly results from a mating between a polar bear and either a walrus or a bull, and in addition to its size and horn is also distinguished from normal polar bears by virtue of its red cheeks.

The most recent report of a bjarndýrakóngur that Glen was able to uncover during his researches dated from the 1700s and took place as follows on the island of Grímsey:

"Just before a Whitsun church service a group of a dozen bears were seen to be approaching the island led by a bjarndýrakóngur with its glowing horn. Unused to such a sight, the congregation stood outside watching the bears walk past towards the south of the island. As the creatures drew level with the crowd the clergyman bowed to the bjarndýrakóngur and in turn had the bow return; clever things these unicorn bears.

"The bears then headed off into the distance but before they disappeared from view, the last polar bear in the line ate a passing sheep. It appears that the bjarndýrakóngur did not approve of such uncivilised action and promptly, fatally ran the bear through with his glowing horn, so putting an end to such murderous action. After that the bears headed off into the sea and once again were hidden from view."

As nothing more seems to have been heard of the bjarndýrakóngur, we can only assume that this truly unique unicorn, or at least the tradition of it, has died out. After all, if anything as memorable as a gargantuan polar bear with ruddy cheeks and a long glowing brow-horn were still being reported, I’m sure that it would be hitting the headlines, even if only in Iceland!

The extraordinary Icelandic bjarndýrakóngur or unicorn bear (Pat Burroughs)

KUBANOCHOERUS – PREHISTORY’S UNICORN PIG

Real-life unicorns but known only from the distant past were the several very large, long-legged species of prehistoric pig belonging to the genus Kubanochoerus. Known from fossils found throughout Eurasia (ranging from Greece to China), and living during the Miocene epoch (23-5.3 million years ago), what made these pigs so distinctive was not just the small pair of horns protruding up from their eyebrows but also the much larger, single horn projecting forward and upwards from the centre of the brow in male individuals, and probably used in competitive jousting with one another.

Reconstruction of Kubanochoerus gigas (Apokryltaros-Wikipedia)

SCREAMING OUT FOR SOUTH AMERICA’S UNICORN BIRD

Not all unicorns are mammalian in identity. One of the world's weirdest birds bears more than a passing resemblance to a feathered unicorn! Native to marshy grasslands of South America and the size of a turkey, the horned screamer Anhima cornuta has an extraordinary horn, long and curved, that grows out of its skull between its eyes. Present in both sexes, composed of cartilage (gristle), and originating as an unbranched feather shaft, it can measure up to 15 cm long, but is so thin, curved, and delicate that the screamer certainly couldn't use it as a weapon, for defending itself or for attacking other creatures. So what is the purpose of this unique structure? No-one knows - the best suggestion is that it is simply for decoration, but if so, why should this particular bird be the only one out of the many thousands of bird species alive today to grow such an outlandish ornament?

The horned screamer's unicorned head

However, this is not the only bizarre feature of the horned screamer. Between its unusually thick skin and its muscles are lots of tiny airsacs that are extensions of its lungs, and whenever it opens its wings to take flight these airsacs make a very strange crackling noise, as if someone is squeezing a large bag of crisps! It also has an incredibly loud cry, giving voice over and over again to ear-splitting screams that can be heard up to 3 km away!

Most amazing of all, however, is the fact that this weird bird is most closely related to waterfowl - ducks, geese, and swans. For anything less like a waterfowl in external appearance and behaviour than a screamer - which doesn't even swim unless it really has to - would be difficult to imagine!

Painting from 1864 of a pair of horned screamers

In general form, the horned screamer looks more like a turkey than any waterfowl. Also, it has a pointed chicken-like beak rather than the familiar duck bill of waterfowl, it has very long stork-like legs instead of shorter waterfowl-like ones, broad wings that each bears a pair of sharp peculiar spurs at its edge, and feet that have only the smallest amount of webbing between their toes. Yet anatomical and biochemical studies indicate that unlikely as it may seem, the horned screamer really is a cousin of the waterfowl - proving once again that you should never judge anything by its outward appearance!

19th-Century engraving of a horned screamer

UNICORN SNAKES AND UNICORN SNAILS

Finally: two further, very different (but equally remarkable) categories of non-mammalian unicorn, yet rarely if ever documented nowadays, are unicorn snakes and unicorn snails.

Unicorn snakes can themselves be split into two very distinct, dissimilar categories. The first consists of a bona fide unicorn snake from southeast Asia – Rhynchophis boulengeri, known variously as the green unicorn snake or rhinoceros rat snake on account of the prominent scaled protrusion on the front of this bright green species’ snout.

Rhynchophis boulengeri (Vladimír Motyčka)

The second category consists of fake unicorn snakes - created from normal snakes into whose brow a spine has been skilfully inserted in order to create the illusion of a unicorn snake. The ‘horn’ borne by these deceptive serpents was usually either a cut-down porcupine spine or a spine extracted from the fin of a ray or some other spiny-finned fish, and these fraudulent unicorn snakes were sold by canny Eastern vendors to gullible Western tourists or travellers.

As I documented in my book Mysteries of Planet Earth (1999), unicorn snails are freak, teratological individuals in which the normal pair of laterally-sited stalks with an eye at the tip of each stalk is replaced by a single centrally located stalk bearing two eyes side by side at its tip. Two such specimens, both of which were Roman (edible) snails Helix pomatia discovered in France, were documented in 1959 within the Journal de Conchyliogie by E. Fischer-Piette.

'The Woman With the Unicorn' (1505) - Raphael

For many more remarkable types of unicorn, see my book Dr Shuker's Casebook (2008).

A UNICORN RABBIT FROM COUNTY DURHAM

2011-10-03T21:22:00.013+01:00

Unicorn, the aptly-named unicorn rabbit of County Durham

Last week, it was all about Frank and Louie - the record-breaking, 12-year-old Janus cat, a cat with two faces. This week, I have pleasure in introducing another furry wonder - a bona fide unicorn rabbit!

As someone passionately interested in unicorns, I have documented many different types over the years, ranging from the familiar equine version to rather more exotic counterparts - including a lethal carnivorous desert-dweller with a musical flute-like horn, an ostensibly semi-aquatic form with webbed feet, an extremely bellicose bovine or even rhinocerine equivalent from Persia that could be soothed only by the calming cooing of a turtle dove, and a small hare-like but extremely malign entity from an unnamed tropical island. However, there is one particular example, which I investigated a fair few years ago but have never previously documented, that I find especially intriguing - for the simple reason that whereas most unicorns of whatever type they may be are fictitious, this one was real.

On 29 September 1982, writer Paul Screeton at the Hartlepool Mail published a report (subsequently picked up by other media sources, and also reproduced in his own magazine, The Shaman – see photo) documenting a most extraordinary pet rabbit that its owner, 9-year-old Kathy Lister of Trimdon Grange in County Durham, England, had very aptly named Unicorn. Due to a genetic fluke, Unicorn had been born with just a single ear. Yet whereas there are numerous reports on file of individual mammals of many different species in which one or other ear is missing, Unicorn’s condition was rather more special. For unlike typical one-eared individuals, her single ear was not laterally positioned, but arose instead from the centre of her head, standing upright like a long furry horn!

Holding my copy of Paul Screeton's article re Unicorn in The Shaman

Intrigued by this highly unusual condition (even today, I have never encountered any additional ‘median-ear’ instances), I decided to pursue the case personally. So after first discussing it with Paul Screeton, in July 1988 I contacted Kathy (then aged 15) and her father James, requesting further details, and am most grateful for the following information that they very kindly sent to me.

Born in spring 1981, Unicorn was a Flemish Giant doe bred on James’s farm, and she subsequently became the much-loved pet of his daughter Kathy. In more than 35 years of rabbit breeding, this was the only one-eared rabbit that James had ever observed. In autumn 1984, Unicorn escaped from her pen, but three days later she was found, recaptured, and placed in a new hutch. Over the next month, she grew steadily fatter, and 31 days after her original escape Unicorn gave birth to a litter of five offspring. As she had never been introduced to any of the farm rabbits, it is clear, therefore, that during her brief period of freedom Unicorn had encountered and mated with a wild rabbit.

Of her five offspring, four were normal, but the fifth displayed its mother’s remarkable median-ear condition. Regrettably, however, all five offspring died shortly afterwards during a very severe thunderstorm, so no details of their sex are known. Happily, Unicorn survived, and lived for a further two years, but she did not give birth to any further litters, so the unidentified mutant gene presumably responsible for her median ear and that of one of her offspring was lost forever when she died in November 1986.

Kathy Lister and Unicorn

Judging from the 4:1 normal:mutant ratio of offspring, it is likely that the median-ear condition was induced by a recessive allele (gene form), and that Unicorn was homozygous for it (i.e. possessing two copies), thereby enabling the condition to be expressed by her. If so, then it must also be assumed that her wild mate was at least heterozygous (possessing one copy) for this same mutant allele, in order to explain the birth of the single median-eared offspring in her litter. Yet if this mutant allele is indeed present in the wild population, one might have expected it to have been expressed far more frequently (especially in animals that are famous for breeding...well, like rabbits!). Could it, therefore, be associated with some debilitating trait too, so that individuals expressing it are more vulnerable in some way to predation?

The most obvious affliction to be expected that may prove detrimental to survival in the wild is some form of hearing impairment – an occurrence that normally accompanies most ear-related mutations. Yet Kathy had observed that when Unicorn was called, she would turn towards the direction of the voice, thus suggesting that her hearing was not severely impeded (although by having only one ear, it meant – inevitably - that Unicorn’s hearing could only be monoaural, not stereo).

Tragically, however, in the absence of further litters from Unicorn upon which to base breeding observations, little more can be said of her apparently unique mutation. So it is likely that its identity will remain undiscovered, unless this remarkable ‘unicorn ear’ condition reappears one day in some other rabbit farm.

Thanks very much to Paul Screeton for kindly making available to me the photos included here.

UPDATE - 19 October 2011

Today, while browsing through the newly-published 2012 edition of Ripley's Believe It Or Not, I discovered a second unicorn rabbit. Owned by rabbit breeder Franz-Xaver Noemmer, from Egglham, Germany, it was born in February 2010, and has snow-white fur.

This post is extracted from The Anomalarium of Doctor Shuker, one of my current books-in-progress.

A NEWLY-PUBLISHED REVIEW OF MY ALIEN ZOO BOOK

2011-09-11T21:24:00.005+01:00

Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 25, No. 3, pp. 609-610, 2011.

Karl Shuker’s Alien Zoo by Karl P. N. Shuker. CFZ (Centre for Fortean Zoology) Press, 2010. 392 pp. $26.99, softcover. ISBN 9781905723621.

This book is an excellent introduction to cryptozoology as well as a feast for people already interested in the subject. There are interleaved chapters dealing on the one hand with specific topics in some depth, on the other hand with snippets of relevant news items from the years 1995 to 2010, arranged chronologically. The items are from columns Shuker wrote for Fortean Times, and several have been updated with more recent information.

The wide scope of cryptozoology is illustrated, and the approaches to specific subjects illuminate the inevitably interdisciplinary character of cryptozoological research: an inescapably needed background of zoological knowledge, plus sophisticated understanding of how to weigh different kinds of evidence, which ranges from actual specimens through photographs and paintings of (claimed) specimens through written reports from the most varied sources to, not least, eyewitness accounts.

That complexity calls for expert guidance, and Shuker is fully equipped to provide it, with a Ph.D. in zoology, membership in learned societies, and long fascination with and work in cryptozoology. Those credentials do not necessarily entail good judgment, of course, and in this vital respect Shuker is very trustworthy indeed. He is determinedly skeptical and his assessments are based squarely on empirical evidence. In cryptozoology as in anomalistics more broadly, the rarest and most desirable resources are compendia that can be relied upon to be factually accurate and judicious in making judgments. In those respects, I rate Shuker’s works as highly as I (and others, of course) rate the works of Jerome Clark. As to specifically cryptozoology, Shuker’s work inevitably reminds one of that of Bernard Heuvelmans, often described as the founder of cryptozoology and also a zoologist by orthodox training. Heuvelmans broke barriers and displayed the bravado needed by those who bring into existence some new institution or subject; Shuker displays the qualities needed by the successors who bring more order and judiciousness to the field.

Alien Zoo offers the pleasure of browsing in the knowledge that one will be able to enjoy it over a long time: Each of the “topic” chapters is an independent essay, and the collections of news snippets in each year or set of years can be taken in one or in several gulps.

The introductory essay, debunking a story published by a quite well-known writer on oddities of Nature, sets the stage appropriately by illustrating Shuker’s diligent perseverance in tracking down evidence and then determinedly hewing to that evidence.

Over the years I’ve read quite widely in cryptozoology, yet I found new specifics here as well as welcome interpretations of more familiar subjects, for instance on the “mystery cats” reported from all sorts of places around the world. New to me were such things as angel feathers, bacteria reproducing in clouds, or the possible relationship between fruit bats and primates—the latter highly instructive about the complex task of tracing evolutionary lineages even in the era of DNA analysis.

I recommend Alien Zoo highly and without reservation. Readers should not neglect what looks at first like many pages of advertisements at the back of the book: On pp. 381–382 there is a list of other works by Shuker that those who appreciate Alien Zoo will then want to read, too. One of my own favorites is the 1995 In Search of Prehistoric Survivors.

HENRY H. BAUER
Professor Emeritus of Chemistry & Science Studies
Dean Emeritus of Arts & Sciences
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
hhbauer@vt.edu
www.henryhbauer.homestead.com

HORSE-COWS, SHEEP-PIGS, AND THE REAL BABE!

2011-09-06T19:23:00.050+01:00

Babe the Sheep-Pig, created by Dick King-Smith

Countless fully-authenticated cases testify that closely-related animal species sometimes mate successfully with one another, yielding hybrid progeny. Also on file, however, are reports of certain highly controversial hybrids - supposedly resulting from crossbreeding between pairs of animal species generally considered to be too distantly related to yield viable offspring.

UNMASKING THE JUMAR

Take, for instance, the jumar - purportedly the product of an illicit liaison between a horse (or donkey) and a cow (or the reverse cross). The birth of such a creature would require a successful mating between species from two entirely discrete taxonomic orders of hoofed mammal - Perissodactyla (odd-toed ungulates, which include horses and donkeys) and Artiodactyla (even-toed ungulates, which include cattle) - whose respective members are far too dissimilar genetically to yield viable offspring.

Horse x cow interbreeding - not a viable prospect, surely...?

Yet there are many cases of supposed jumars on record, dating back at least as far as 1546, when documented by the learned physician/mathematician Jerome Cardan. It seemed to gain its name from the famous bestiary compiler Conrad Gesner; in the first volume of his great work Historia Animalium (1551), he wrote about a creature resulting "...from a she-ass and a bull, which as I hear is met with at Gratianopolis, and is called the jumar in French".

Referring to the jumar in Magiae Naturalis (1558), Neapolitan physicist Giovanni Battista della Porta stated: "I myself saw at Ferraria, certain beasts in the shape of a Mule, but they had a Bull's head, and two great knobs instead of horns: they also had a Bull's eyes, and were exceedingly stomackful, and their colour was black...I have heard, that in France, they be common: but I could see none there, though I have passed through the whole country".

Photoshop's answer to the jumar

Throughout the 17th Century, scholars readily accepted the jumar's reality, but during the 18th Century scepticism grew, voiced in particular by the eminent French zoologist George de Buffon in his Histoire Naturelle. Buffon oversaw the dissection of two supposed jumars, one from the Pyrenees, the other from Dauphiné, but found no trace of bovine characters in either specimen.

The same outcome was obtained from the dissection of two jumars at the instigation of Cardinal Delle Lanze. They were nothing more than small, stunted mules, just like other jumars subsequently examined. Experiments striving to induce matings between stallions and cows, and between bulls and mares, were wholly unsuccessful too. And so, by the end of the 1700s this impossible hybrid had finally been exposed and expunged.

Exit the jumar.

CUINO - IN SEARCH OF THE REAL BABE

Whereas novelist Dick King-Smith's world-famous if entirely fictitious sheep-pig Babe was merely a piglet trained to herd sheep, there are many reports on file of what were supposedly the real thing.

Accepted by some writers until much more recently than the jumar, yet scarcely less improbable, was the cuino - claimed to be a hybrid of sheep and pig, and widely met with in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. At the turn of the 19th Century, a highly-esteemed American journal called the Breeder's Gazette published a detailed article concerning the cuino, in which it stated that this remarkable crossbreed results from matings between sows and polled (de-horned) rams of the typical long-legged, light-bodied Mexican sheep.

In a somewhat contradictory account, the article claimed that the cuino has: "...the form and all the characteristics of the pigs, but he is entirely different from his dam; he is round-ribbed and blocky, his short legs cannot take him far away from his sty, and his snout is too short to root. His head is not unlike that of the Berkshire. His body is covered with long thick curly hair, not soft enough to be called wool, but which, nevertheless, he takes from his sire. His colour is black, white, black and white or brown and white".

No, these are NOT photoshopped - these are real! (click photo for enlargement)
See below* for details concerning their zoological identity (photo/website credits as given in photos).

In 1900, this and various similar accounts, including one concerning Brazilian cuinos, came to the attention of W.B. Tegetmeier of London's Zoological Society, who duly denounced the cuino's crossbred identity in a series of communications within The Field. The matter was finally resolved in 1902, when he received a cuino skull from a Mexican correspondent.

Quoting Tegetmeier's response:

"I was very glad to receive the skull, but, as I anticipated, it has no hybrid character about it whatever. It is purely and simply the skull of a pig. Without stopping to enter into such details as the character of the orbit, or the articulation of the lower jaw, which are utterly distinct in the sheep and in the pig, I need only call attention to the teeth in the fore part of the upper jaw. These are present as in the pig, and perfectly developed, whereas in the sheep, as every anatomist knows, the fore part of the jaw is utterly destitute of teeth, there being only a horny pad against which the lower incisors act. No zoologist could for a moment regard the skull as showing the slightest trace of ovine structure. In order to obtain corroboration of these facts I exhibited the skull at the last meeting of the Zoological Society, and its true character was recognised by every anatomist and zoologist present who noticed it."

Farewell the cuino.

However, there are no less than three surviving, genuine breeds of pig that are often dubbed sheep-pigs on account of their very distinctive and decidedly unporcine woolly coats. These curly-haired curiosities are collectively known as mangalitzas (aka mangalitsas), and although originally bred in Hungary and the Balkans, mangalitzas are now reared elsewhere in the world too. Indeed, it is more than likely that some reports of cuinos were actually based upon sightings of mangalitza-like pigs, i.e. freak hairy specimens of Mexican pig breeds, or possibly even early imported specimens of genuine mangalitzas.

Swallow-bellied mangalitza hog at the Franciscan Monastery gardens in Kadaň, Czech Republic (click photo for enlargement)

Traditionally maintained as lard pigs, they subsequently fell out of favour when the popularity of lard diminished. As a result, some breeds of mangalitza eventually died out, such as the black, the wolf, and the baris, although there are plans to reconstruct them in Hungary via selective backbreeding using a mixture of other breeds.

Prior to its extinction, the black mangalitza had been bred with the blonde mangalitza (two specimens of which arrived in April 2010 at Tropical Wings Zoo in Essex, England, as part of an education and breeding program, and are featured in the two photos* included earlier in this blog post), yielding the swallow-bellied mangalitza (which, like the bird that it is named after, has a dark upper body but paler underparts). And by breeding the swallow-bellied mangalitza with the szalonta (a hardy, unfleeced Hungarian breed), a further form known as the red mangalitza has been created, sporting a ginger fleece. The red, blonde, and swallow-bellied trio still exist today, but remain scarce enough to be categorised as rare breeds. There was once an additional, totally separate breed of woolly pig - the Lincolnshire curly-coat - but just like the black, wolf, and baris mangalitzas, it too, sadly, is now extinct

Hair today, gone tomorrow - 'twas ever thus.

WELCOME TO MY ECLECTARIUM!

2011-08-23T02:54:00.014+01:00

It's taken a while, but I've finally got around to establishing a blog devoted to my varied interests outside cryptozoology, animal mythology, and poetry.

Entitled 'The Eclectarium of Doctor Shuker', it will encompass everything from fantasy art and novels, James Dean, masks, Forteana, motorbikes, clowns, science fiction, ancient civilisations, science anomalies, stamp collecting, Sherlock Holmes, animation, the supernatural, rock 'n' roll music, quiz trivia, and much more.

If it's unusual, intriguing, and obscure, there's a good chance it will appear here, sooner or later! So please check it out, at:

http://eclectariumshuker.blogspot.com/

SURF HIPPOS, HERE THEY COME!

2011-08-16T21:04:00.037+01:00

Surfing hippopotamus (picture source unknown)

Hippopotamuses surfing in the sea may seem as improbable as polar bears gambolling across the desert, but as the remarkable photograph above readily demonstrates, in the world of nature few things are even impossible, let alone merely improbable. For although the common hippopotamus Hippopotamus amphibius is traditionally associated with freshwater habitats, such as rivers and lakes, it does also frequent saltwater in certain localities. These include the southern Orango group of islands, part of the Bijagos Archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean off the western coast of Guinea Bissau (formerly Portugese Guinea) in western Africa, which are now a national park. Saltwater hippos occur off the Kenyan island of Manada Toto too, and - the location of the stunning photo here - in the Petit-Loango Reserve in southwestern Gabon. Here, the hippos spend much of the day taking their ease in swamps and lagoons close by, but emerge at dusk to graze upon grass along the beach and indulge in boisterous surfing safaris out to sea.

Photos of surfing hippos in South Africa (sources unknown)

What makes such scenes even more extraordinary than their mere setting is the fact that despite being intimately associated with water, hippos are far from being the animal world's most competent swimmers.

Only when seen in its entirety on land, can the hippo's immense size be fully comprehended (Dr Karl Shuker)

Indeed, even though their massive bulk (they are beaten in the heavyweight stakes among terrestrial mammals only by the elephants and some rhinoceroses) is effectively buoyed by their aqueous surroundings, these gargantuan cousins of pigs and peccaries (but actually most closely allied to whales, dolphins, and other cetaceans) often do not venture into expanses of lake or river deeper than their own bodies.

Common hippopotamus (Dr Karl Shuker)

Even hippos seen with just their heads above water are, in reality, usually standing on the riverbed or lake bottom, stretching their necks to keep their heads above water, ably assisted by the evolutionary relocation of their eyes, ears, and nostrils close to the top of their heads. If, moreover, a hippo does decide to dive or swim underwater, a reflex action closes its ears and nostrils entirely, and it will commonly stay wholly submerged for 3-5 minutes - but may, if required, continue to do so for up to 30 minutes! And as the surfing hippos ably prove, if necessary it can indeed swim unaided by terra firma beneath its feet.

Note the hippo's upward-opening nostrils (Dr Karl Shuker)

Equally interesting is that despite their far-from-streamlined form, hippos are able to attain some nifty turns of running speed - even underwater. One hippo was timed charging along the bed of a river at a highly respectable 5 miles per hour, in spite of the appreciable drag effect of its watery surroundings acting upon it. And on land, hippos can readily outpace human runners, having been timed at up to 30 miles per hour - so beware!

Hippopotamus figurine carved out of blue sodalite

Certainly, hippos, in spite of being predominantly peaceful creatures, have acquired a formidable reputation as arguably the most dangerous animal to humans in Africa - adult females are notoriously ferocious if challenged or disturbed when they have calves. Their weapons are of course their colossal mouths, armed with huge curving tusks. Including their gum-embedded roots, the lower canine teeth of a hippo can sometimes grow up to 3 ft long - the length of an average human arm! And when a male hippo opens its stupendous jaws to yawn - not an indication of boredom, incidentally, but a sign of aggression toward another male seeking to invade its territory, or of courtship intent toward a female - the resulting gape can be up to 150°. Only whales among mammals can outgape a yawning hippo!

Hippo gape (Aqwis/Wikipedia)

Indeed, it has been claimed that a hippo can open its jaws wide enough to accommodate a 4-ft-tall child inside! And this beast's mighty maws are so powerful that an adult specimen can bite a 12-ft-long crocodile in half! But even when not chomping a croc, male hippos fighting for territory can inflict terrible wounds upon each other, and even kill one another, with their huge curved tusks.

Skull of common hippopotamus

So tough, in fact, are these awesome teeth that little more than a century ago hippo ivory was popular among dentists for use in manufacturing human artificial teeth - once they had succeeded in dissolving with acid the yellow enamel covering the ivory, because this enamel is as hard as glass and accounts for a third of each tusk's total weight! Much further back in time, the ancient Egyptians carved amulets for babies out of hippo ivory, believing that this substance had the power to ward away demons. Furthermore, the Egyptian goddess of childbirth, Taueret, was popularly portrayed as a bipedal hippopotamus.

Statuette of Taureret carved out of faience (Jon Bodsworth)

Undoubtedly, the hippo attracted great interest from early humans, and not just on account of its huge size and formidable jaws, but also due to the longstanding belief that it could sweat blood. The explanation for this curious but totally inaccurate notion is that in order to ensure that its thick, almost-hairless skin remains supple and moist when out of the water, and also to avoid it becoming sunburnt, the hippo secretes a sticky, oily, pink-hued substance from glands beneath the surface of its skin, which on first glance can appear a little like seeping blood but is in reality an efficient, ready-made sun-block! It may also act as an antibiotic, helping to promote germ-free healing of wounds inflicted upon each other by bellicose male hippos.

Having said that, a rare bona fide pink hippopotamus was photographed in Kenya's Masai Mara Game park during late September 2010 by British tourist brothers Will and Matt Burrard-Lucas (and others have previously been reported in Uganda). Apparently a leucistic individual, exhibiting reduced body pigmentation, photos and a full news report of this extraordinary creature can be found here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1315917/Rare-pink-hippo-images-captured-Masai-Mara-Kenya.html

Another of the hippo's secrets, conversely, has only been revealed quite recently. Not surprisingly, for a creature that spends so much of its time partly or fully submerged, the hippo is able to vocalise not merely on land but underwater too - thanks to a stentorian voice and powers of vocal projection that would put even the most skilled of human opera singers to shame. Hippos can communicate with one another directly through the medium of water via ear-splitting bellows of such potent force that they can be both heard and physically felt by anything positioned up to 50 ft away! But that is not all - scientists have lately discovered a hitherto unsuspected infrasonic component to this bellow, an amazing rumble beneath the threshold of human hearing but which can be detected underwater by other hippos as far away as 18.7 miles!

Hippo swimming (Dr Karl Shuker)

No less amazing than its voice, however, are the eyes of the hippo - due to the bizarre shape of their pupils, each resembling an inverted, smooth-cornered capital 'T'! Yet again, this is an evolutionary adaptation to assist the hippo in its amphibious lifestyle, for it uniquely (among mammals) enables the hippo to see above and below the water surface with the same intensity of light, thus yielding a complete view, unimpeded by the water.

Pygmy hippopotamuses

Less familiar, smaller, and much daintier than the well known, common hippopotamus is the much more terrestrial, forest-dwelling pygmy hippo Choeropsis (=Hexaprotodon) liberiensis, which looks more like an over-sized shiny-black pig than a hippo. For many years, the very existence of this reclusive animal was discounted by science, in spite of longstanding native testimony and reports brought back to Europe by western travellers. Some even attempted to dismiss it as nothing more than a freak, stunted version of the common, larger species. As noted in my book The New Zoo: New and Rediscovered Animals of the Twentieth Century (2002; new, greatly-expanded edition due out later this year!!!), not until five living specimens were brought back alive by German explorer Hans Schomburgk in 1913 was the pygmy hippo scientifically accepted as a second, valid species of hippopotamus in its own right.

Pygmy hippos

Most remarkable of all, however, is that there could even be a third, supposedly long-extinct species of hippo still awaiting scientific detection - on the island of Madagascar. Several millennia ago, at least three different species of undersized, dwarf hippo existed here, but these are officially deemed to have died out long ago. However, even today locals in southwestern Madagascar occasionally claim to encounter a shy, unidentified mystery beast that they refer to as the kilopilopitsofy or tsomgomby, which, when described by them, sounds irresistibly similar in both appearance and habits to a small form of hippo. Even the alleged vocalisations of the kilopilopitsofy seem remarkably reminiscent of the bellows of a hippo.

Is the kilopilopitsofy a surviving species of Madagascan dwarf hippo? (Dr Karl Shuker)

Clearly, the fascinating realm of the river horse - the literal translation of 'hippopotamus' - may still have some hefty surprises in store!

My late grandmother Gertrude Timmins's blue hippopotamus ornament - a fond memory from my childhood (Dr Karl Shuker)

NB - Unless stated otherwise, all images included in this post are, to the best of my knowledge, in the public domain.

THE HOBBIT ACTOR AND A REAL-LIFE SHELOB – OR SOMETHING PRETTY DARN CLOSE?

2011-07-16T10:34:00.035+01:00

With my very own Shelob! (credit: Dr Karl Shuker)

British actor Dominic Monaghan has starred in many films and TV series, but is probably best-known for his role as the hobbit Merry in Peter Jackson’s spectacular ‘The Lord of the Rings’ (LOTR) trilogy of movies, based upon J.R.R. Tolkien’s monumental fantasy epic.

However, following a tip-off from a member of my regular pub quiz team (thanks Mark!; who said that pub quizzes aren’t educational?!), earlier this year I came upon a very intriguing online report previously unknown to me that suggested Dominic might have been taking his LOTR role even more seriously than expected. In LOTR, two of Merry’s fellow hobbits, Frodo and Sam, experience a life-threatening encounter with Shelob – a colossal spider. Yet whereas Shelob was fictional, the media report, which was reproduced on several websites, claimed that Dominic was planning to launch a 12-man expedition in search of a real-life mega-spider that, if proven to exist, would be the world’s largest.

Dominic Monaghan in his LOTR role as the hobbit Merry (credit: New Line Cinema Productions)

According to this report (click here to view it), which was written by Alexandru Stan and published on InOut Star’s website on 12 March 2008, the spider in question was called the hercules baboon spider, measured 14-15 inches across, and, of particular interest, was known only from a single specimen obtained in Nigeria during the early 1900s, which is now preserved in alcohol at London’s Natural History Museum.

As the Life Sciences Consultant for Guinness World Records (formerly known as The Guinness Book of Records), I am naturally well aware that the current record-holder as the world’s largest species of spider by mass is the goliath bird-eating spider Theraphosa blondi. This nocturnal burrowing species, native to wet swamps and marshy areas in the mountain rainforests of northeastern South America, boasts a leg span of up to 11 in (the diameter of a dinner plate!), and can weigh over 6 oz.

Indeed, the biggest specimen of this species on record was a 12-year-old captive female called Rosi, which sported a body length alone of 119.4 mm (4.7 in), i.e. not including its leg length, and weighed an astonishing 175 g (6.17 oz) – which is almost as heavy as six house sparrows! Consequently, any spider that allegedly exceeds these dramatic dimensions, and, as a bonus, is also virtually unknown to science, is definitely going to attract my undivided attention!

An adult female specimen of the goliath bird-eating spider Theraphosa blondi

Eager to learn more, in case Guinness’s existing record for the largest spider species by mass needed to be amended, I lost no time in researching this subject personally and also contacting a number of likely sources of further information, including the Natural History Museum itself, as well as a number of other institutions, organisations, and individuals. Over the next few weeks, a welter of information came my way, the most informative of which can be summarised as follows.

Firstly, I discovered to my surprise that in spite of the report’s claim that only a single specimen of hercules baboon spider existed, there seemed to be a veritable embarrassment of specimens out there in the pet trade, and there was even a plentiful supply of videos posted on YouTube of what were claimed to be hercules baboon spiders. Something, clearly, was amiss here – but what?

After learning of my desire to discover as much as I could regarding this enigmatic species, palaeontologist Dr Darren Naish, who shares my own interest in cryptozoological matters, sent me the following illuminating email on 16 March 2011:

"It is implicated by spider people that the things now being called 'hercules baboon spiders' are actually nothing of the sort (they're actually king baboon spiders), and that the animal that really should go with this name is indeed only known from the type specimen."

Pursuing this promising lead, I discovered that the ‘real’ hercules baboon spider is Hysterocrates hercules, which is genuinely known only from its type specimen or holotype – a female collected by a Lieutenant Abadie at Jebba in what was then Upper Niger, now Nigeria. Characterised by a black cuticle covered with a thick coating of dark olive-brown hairs, and shining with a greyish silky sheen under reflected light, as well as by having the fourth leg unthickened, this unique specimen is held at the Natural History Museum, and its species was formally described in the 14 November 1899 issue of the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London by none other than renowned British zoologist Reginald I. Pocock.

As for the so-called hercules baboon spider specimens in the pet trade and on YouTube, these pretenders to the throne of H. hercules are indeed specimens of the related but smaller king baboon spider Pelinobius muticus (aka Citharischius crawshayi, a junior synonym), which is an East African species with a leg span of up to 8 in. So there was the first riddle concerning the hercules baboon spider duly solved.

The hercules imposter – a king baboon spider Pelinobius muticus

On 21 April, I received another very insightful email, this time from Richard Gallon, the administrator of the British Tarantula Society Study Group:

"I can confidently state that Pocock’s holotype specimen of Hysterocrates hercules (which I have measured and examined for forthcoming taxonomic papers) does not even come close to members of the genus Theraphosa in terms of leg-span or body mass.

"Pelinobius muticus females are large and bulky, but not as large as H. hercules or any Theraphosa. Indeed there are several South American genera (e.g. Pamphobeteus, Sericopelma, Lasiodora etc.) which are bigger than these African taxa."

Judging from this, Dominic’s notion that H. hercules may well be the world’s biggest spider appeared to be in error – an assumption comprehensively confirmed when I received on 21 May an email from Dr George Beccaloni of the Natural History Museum containing the following crucial details:

"With regard to the West African baboon spider Hysterocrates hercules, it is certainly very large, but the heaviest spider known is undoubtedly the 175 gram [6.17 oz] female Theraphosa blondi listed by Guinness, and the largest in terms of legspan is the giant huntsman Heteropoda maxima, from caves in Laos, which has an accurately measured maximum legspan of 300 mm [12 in]...Any claims of larger spider specimens remain to be proven - and I don't think that any baboon spider is likely to displace the current champions!"

On 3 June, Jan Beccaloni, the museum’s arachnid curator, also emailed me, kindly enclosing some information received from fellow arachnologist and theraphosid specialist Ray Gabriel from the British Tarantula Society, who stated that H. hercules is only about two-thirds the size of T. blondi.

So there it was – everyone was agreed that H. hercules was neither the heaviest species of spider nor even the species with the greatest leg span. And that seemed to be the end of the matter, until, in a subsequent email, Dr Beccaloni suggested a highly entertaining means of publicising this former controversy – by staging at the Natural History Museum a filmed comparison by volume of the type specimen of H. hercules with a suitably sizeable specimen of T. blondi, supervised by a member of the Guinness World Records (GWR) team. Needless to say, I considered this to be an excellent idea, and passed it on at once to the editor of GWR, Craig Glenday, who thought so too, and was happy to act personally in the capacity of official adjudicator.

And so it was that my original investigation of H. hercules ultimately led to a filmed ‘Battle of the Spiders’ weigh-in at the Natural History Museum later last month (June 2011), conducted by Dr George Beccaloni and witnessed by Craig Glenday for GWR. Utilising Archimedes’ Principle of liquid displacement as a means of accurately determining the volume of the challenger (the H. hercules holotype) and the defender (a hefty adult female T. blondi called Tracy, a long-deceased pet of Jan Beccaloni) as both were preserved in alcohol, the two species’ rival claims to the title of the world’s heaviest spider were finally put to the test.

The Natural History Museum’s online press release, containing a video of this historic arachnological bout, can be viewed here.

And the result? Tracy’s volume was found to be more than double that of the H. hercules holotype. In short, a straight knock-out, with T. blondi the undisputed heavyweight spider champion, retaining its title with ease.

Even so, as a nonetheless respectably (albeit not superlatively) large species yet still known only from a single specimen, H. hercules retains an air of mystique. Moreover, Dominic Monaghan never did succeed in launching an expedition to look for it. Consequently, an excellent way to bring this investigation to a satisfactory close would be for an intrepid spider seeker to pursue the hercules baboon spider in the field, as the rediscovery of this long-lost semi-Shelob is certainly long overdue! Any takers?

A model of the LOTR’s mega-spider, Shelob (credit: Dr Karl Shuker)

I wish to thank everyone who assisted me during my researches into this fascinating case, in particular Dr George and Jan Beccaloni of the Natural History Museum, Ray Gabriel and Richard Gallon from the British Tarantula Society, Craig Glenday at Guinness World Records, and Dr Darren Naish for their most welcome expertise and interest.

SEEKING THE SANDEWAN - ON THE TRAIL OF A TRAIL...OF BLOOD!

2011-07-03T21:01:00.018+01:00

A trail of blood

Cryptozoology - the study of mystery animals - has a seemingly infinite capacity for springing surprises, by unfurling accounts of extraordinary beasts of the most unexpected nature, met with at the most unexpected times. So it was that when English zoologist Carina Norris, arrived in southern Africa during the late 1990s for a well-earned vacation, she little realised that she would soon be pursuing the unique trail of a bizarre creature that apparently had never been documented before in the cryptozoological chronicles (my book Mysteries of Planet Earth, 1999, became the very first to do so). Nevertheless, trail it she did, so here is the strange history of the elusive sandewan.

It was in northern Zimbabwe's Chizarira National Park where their white guide showed Carina and fellow members of her trekking party the sandewan's sinister but diagnostic trail - for whereas other beasts leave behind footprints, the sandewan always yields a trail of blood. Carina's guide claimed that this creature was very much a legend of the local native trackers, and was not spoken of by the country's white inhabitants. Nevertheless, the characteristic sign of the sandewan's recent presence here was undeniably visible for all to see. It occurred on an area of rocky ground, and consisted of a series of large red spots, each an inch or two across, which led towards a cliff face, where they simply petered out.

The guide commented that various 'orthodox' explanations for such enigmatic trails as these had been proposed in the past, such as spots of fruit juice left behind by frugivorous monkeys, or simply bird droppings. However, in Carina's opinion the spots certainly looked like blood, thus indicating that it was the trail left behind by a wounded animal. Moreover, as the trail consisted of discrete spots, it seemed more likely that the animal was running and therefore not badly wounded, rather than being an extensively wounded animal that might be expected to drag itself along the ground, and thus leave a smeared trail instead.

Needless to say, however, nothing in cryptozoology is quite so straightforward as this, and the sandewan is no exception. From the amount of blood present in the trail, it seemed reasonable to assume that the creature in question was fairly large. Yet when Carina and her party followed its sanguineous progression, they discovered that it passed under low branches and through narrow crevices, where only a very small animal could move. And how could it simply vanish when it reached the cliff face - unless, as in all the best lemming legends, it hurled itself over the edge; or simply flew away, on unsuspected wings?

According to local lore, if anyone is fortunate enough to capture a sandewan and presents it to the tribal chief, he will receive great riches. Unfortunately, however, there does not appear to be any record of what a sandewan actually looks like, so unless you are successful in following its bloodied trail and can stealthily pounce upon it, your chances of gaining such wealth are somewhat on par with winning the Lottery jackpot!

Yellow-spotted rock hyrax (D. Gordon E. Robertson/Wikipedia)

It has been suggested, on account of its preference for rocky terrain, that the sandewan may be a hyrax, a very small hoofed mammal superficially resembling a burly guinea-pig yet taxonomically akin to the elephants (I saw rock hyraces Procavia capensis when I visited Table Mountain and the Shamwari Private Game Reserve in South Africa during 2008). However, these mammals are herbivorous, whereas the sandewan's trail of blood (assuming of course that the substance in question is genuinely blood) implies a carnivore.

Although the biochemical nature of the sandewan's trail may be unique in cryptozoology, there are many other cases on record of mysterious tracks left behind by elusive beasts of wholly unknown morphology. One of the most peculiar of these is the amazing pe de garrafa ('bottle foot'), said to inhabit the dense verdant rainforests of Brazil. It is named after its extraordinary trail, which comprises a single line of deep prints resembling the circular holes that would be created by repeatedly pressing the bottom of a bottle into the ground!

Pe de garrafa (© Tio Merka)

Among the various unsatisfactory identities that have been offered over the years for the mysterious maker of these tracks are an unknown form of bipedal South American ape, or even a deer with a broken leg. To quote the wry words of veteran cryptozoologist Dr Bernard Heuvelmans, however, in On the Track of Unknown Animals (1958):

"...it is hard to see how a limping animal could have left such a regular track, or indeed how anything short of a race of three-legged deer could have accounted for all the tracks of the pe de garrafa seen in the Amazon jungle."

Much closer to home, during the early snowy morning of 9 February 1855 a series of baffling tracks mysteriously appeared over a considerable area encompassing the Devon towns of Topsham, Lympstone, Exmouth, Teignmouth, and Dawlish. According to a detailed account published in The Times on 16 February, the track looked more like a biped's than a quadruped's. Each print was generally placed 8 in ahead of the one before, resembled a donkey's shoe, and measured 1.5-2.5 inches across. Moreover, these prints appeared in the most unexpected locations, running across the tops of houses and narrow walls, through gardens and courtyards enclosed by high walls, and even vanishing in the middle of open fields.

Painting of devil's hoofprints from 1855

Due to their mystifying nature and origin, Devon's eerie tracks became known as the devil's hoofprints. The most popular solution for them is they were made by fieldmice, but just like the sandewan's trail they have never been conclusively explained. A similar incidence of mystery tracks occurred during March 2009 in the Devon village of Woolsery.

As for the sandewan: unless someone can track it successfully to its lair, this bewildering beast's identity will doubtlessly remain unrevealed indefinitely. And as there are few things deemed by native hunters to be more dangerous than a wounded, bleeding animal - particularly one whose identity is not even known - how many hunters are likely to be brave (or foolhardy?) enough to attempt pursuing such a creature anyway?

THE TRANSFORMATION OF SAINT EUSTACIUS

2011-06-13T19:22:00.007+01:00

'White Hart' - Mike Hearld

Certain religious stories, such as St George and the Dragon, have generated very considerable interest down through the centuries and have become extremely well known, but there are others that have attracted much less notice, yet are no less memorable. The following story is one of these hitherto-neglected Christian legends, which has always stayed in my mind ever since I first read it many years ago, so I finally decided to retell it in verse.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF SAINT EUSTACIUS

Through the emerald forests
Of golden-hued Dawn,
Rode Eustacius, a soldier
Of Rome, one fine morn,
As his hounds bayed all round him
With dark, fearful eyes,
Like a torrent of shadows
‘Neath newly-born skies.

So the soldier rode onward
Through golden-leaved trees,
While the hounds’ dismal howling
Still hung on the breeze
Like a dream half-forgotten
‘Twixt Future and Past –
Yet still doomed by its maker
Forever to last.

Then ahead of Eustacius
A white stag appeared,
And the soldier’s steed trembled,
Then, shivering, reared.
Just as if the stag’s presence
Imbued it with awe,
As the hunter peered onwards
And then, the deer, saw.

All at once, the stag stiffened,
Then fled through the trees,
But Eustacius pursued it,
Through clearings and lees.
On he chased this white wonder,
Past mountains and vales,
And the morn became noontide
In forests and dales.

Later, Evening drew gently
The curtains of Night
Far across the blue heavens,
Now dappled with light
From the glistening stars set
In countless array,
Each a tiny eye peering
Through blankets of grey.

And as they witnessed softly
The hunt far below,
E’en the moon wept in sadness,
And shrouded its glow
To give cover of darkness
‘Midst shadowy glades
To the hunted stag, weary
As still the hounds bayed.

But the stag was now tiring,
Its head dangled low,
As its heart heaved and pounded,
Its eyes full of woe,
Till it sank down exhausted
On carpets of dew,
As the hounds’ ghastly howling
More terrible grew.

Then Eustacius perceived it,
Stretched outwards to die,
As its fragile heart throbbed ‘neath
The sorrowful sky.
And the stag watched the soldier
With eyes dark and mild,
For it made no swift movement,
Yet cried like a child.

Then a pale shaft of moonlight
Fell softly from Space,
And its shimmering beauty
Lit up the deer’s face.
And as all the world waited,
The stag raised its head.
Its mouth opened, and then, with
A human voice, said:

“Why dost thou still pursueth
Me long through the trees?
I am Christ,” as Eustacius
Dropped low to his knees.
For the stag was surrounded
By radiant light,
Like a star incandescent
That passed from all sight

To the heavens resplendent
In Glory Divine.
Then Eustacius looked up, and
Drew slowly the Sign
Of the Cross there before him –
A new saint was born,
In the reincarnation
Of God’s golden Dawn.

This poem is just one of more than a hundred that are contained within Star Steeds and Other Dreams - my first volume of poetry, published by the CFZ Press in 2009.

LIONS WITH CRESTS AND LIONS WITH HORNS

2011-06-12T19:05:00.016+01:00

Despite having used the internet on a daily basis for many years in relation to my writings and researches, I still forget just how effective it can be in uncovering information on obscure subjects that have long perplexed me.

The crested lion is a case in point. Roughly 15-20 years ago, while browsing at a book fair, I came upon a travelogue book from the 1950s whose title intrigued me, because it referred to a legendary far-eastern creature that I hadn’t previously heard of, but when I looked through the book I found only the briefest of mentions to it. Feeling somewhat cheated, I decided against buying the book, and put it back on the shelf.

Unfortunately, however, by the time that I arrived back home I’d forgotten the book’s title, and had not even noticed the name of the author, so there seemed little hope of tracking down any information on the mythical creature. All that I could recall was that it was some form of lion, with a horn, or a crest, or a tuft, or some such accoutrement that distinguished it from the real world’s more prosaic maned variety.

Many years passed by, during which time the faint memory of this creature and the book whose title referred to it periodically rose to the surface and sent a few ripples through my conscious mind before sinking back into the depths of obscurity once more. But then, just a few evenings ago, while I was completing a chapter on monstrous and mythological cats for my all-new, second mystery cat book - I Thought I Saw The Strangest Cat... (due to be published later this year) - it entered my consciousness yet again – and this time I took notice.

Accessing Google, I entered the words “horned lion” into its search engine, and although various interesting entries appeared, none was remotely relevant to the elusive book that I had seen. “Tufted lion” was equally unsuccessful. But when I entered “crested lion”, the mystery that had baffled me for so long was a mystery no longer.

There before my eyes appeared a lengthy list of entries all headed by the same book title – Land of the Crested Lion, written by Ethel Mannin, a travelogue first published in 1955 that described the author’s journey across what was then Burma (now Myanmar) in 1954. And there on the cover was the striking image that until now I had only dimly remembered, depicting a huge statue of the crested lion, or chinthé, to give it its correct name. Cheered by my belated success, I penned the following paragraph for inclusion in my new cat book’s chapter on mythical felids:

"In Myanmar (formerly Burma), one of the most popular mythical beasts depicted in statues is the chinthé or crested lion, which is frequently encountered in pairs at the entrances to temples and pagodas. It is featured prominently on this country’s currency, the kyat, too, and appeared on the dustjacket of Ethel Mannin’s famous book, Land of the Crested Lion (1955), which charted her journey across Burma in 1954 as a guest of the Buddha Sasana Council, from the Siamese border in the south to the Chinese border in the north. It also gave its name to the Chindits, the name assumed by the forces commanded by British Brigadier Orde Wingate that were charged with long-range penetration operations behind Japanese lines in Burma during World War II. "

But this was not the end of my good fortune regarding Burma’s crested lion. Looking at online images of it, I made another discovery, and one that was very much closer to home than Burma, little more than a couple of feet away, in fact.

Behind where I was sitting in my lounge is a large glass cabinet containing a number of mythological animal figurines and ornaments that I’ve collected over the years, but one of them was now attracting particular attention from me. It was a small elegantly-carved wooden ornament that I’d purchased from a small antique shop a long while ago, but it had always intrigued me because I’d been unable to identify which creature it represented. Now, looking at it once again, I realised that it bore a very close resemblance to various internet images of the chinthé! In short, it appears that my mysterious little ornament is a crested lion, and therefore presumably originated from Burma.

My very own chinthé? (Dr Karl Shuker)

But even this is not the end of the story. Next to this ornament was a second one that had long perplexed me. Another purchase made during my travels, it is carved from jade and is somewhat leonine in overall form, but bears a single horn on its head, and does not resemble any mythical beast (including India’s majestic horned lion or sardula) that I’d ever seen depicted or documented either in a book or online – which, once again, is what originally attracted me to it, and why I duly purchased it.

Interestingly, this enigmatic little figurine came with a small label on which a few details regarding it were written. The creature was apparently called a ‘good luck liou pijo’, which possesses a dragon’s head, a horse’s body, and a unicorn’s feet. Needless to say, after purchasing it I’d soon googled its name, and various spelling variations upon it, but all to no avail. Not even the tiniest snippet of information came to light. So, just as I’d been with the Burmese crested lion, I became resigned never to discover what creature my ornament represented – until now, that is.

Buoyed by my success in tracking down the crested lion book, I suddenly thought of a new approach for uncovering information regarding my ‘good luck liou pijo’. Instead of googling its name, I entered in the search engine’s box the description of it that was written on its accompanying label: “head of dragon body of horse feet of unicorn”. And lo! There it was!

Entry after entry appeared on Google, all of them referring to the same mythical Chinese beast, but one that I had never previously heard of – the pixiu (sometimes spelt 'pi xiu' or 'pi yao'). Yet there could be no doubt that this was the correct creature, because the entries’ illustrations of it corresponded perfectly with my ornament. Why its label referred to the creature as a ‘liou pijo’ remains mystifying, but I think it likely that ‘pijo’ is merely a transliteration of ‘pixiu’.

My little jade pixiu (Dr Karl Shuker)

In any event, the riddle of my ornament’s zoomythological identity was now resolved. So, in a very short space of time, I penned another paragraph for inclusion in my book’s mythical cats chapter, this one dealing with the long-sought-after pixiu:

"Although said to combine the head of a dragon with the body of a horse and the feet of a unicorn, the Chinese legendary beast known as the pixiu resembles a single-horned lion in overall appearance (or a single-horned winged lion in those examples that also sport wings). One of the five auspicious animals in ancient Chinese mythology (the other four being the Chinese dragon, Chinese phoenix, Chinese unicorn or ki-lin, and tortoise), the pixiu is believed to attract wealth and good fortune, and, because it has no anus, retain it too, so figurines of this remarkable creature can frequently be found in Chinese homes. "

How strange, and yet how marvellous also, that two totally separate, longstanding mysteries came to be solved within just a few minutes of each other. Then again, perhaps it was only to be expected – after all, one of them did feature the lucky pixiu!

GIANT SEA SERPENTS AND CHUPACABRA SNAILS - WELCOME TO THE MONSTROUS MENAGERIE OF TAKESHI YAMADA

2011-06-02T19:38:00.035+01:00

For any self-respecting cryptozoologist, rogue taxidermy is very much like cream cakes – naughty, but nice! I know that I’ve never been able to resist viewing and reading about all manner of fabricated fauna, from Feejee mermaids and Jenny Hanivers to jackalopes, pygmy bison, vegetable lambs, the bizarre exhibits of Charles Waterton, and much much more.

Consequently, it was only ever likely to be just a matter of time before I became acquainted with the spectacular zoological creations of multi-award-winning Japanese-born artist, author, and educator Takeshi Yamada (click here here for a detailed biography), now living in Brooklyn, New York City. Below is a summary of his highly successful career, as reported fully here by the Brooklyn Public Library:

"Artist, educator and author Takeshi Yamada has won numerous prestigious awards and honors such as the "International Man of the Year," "Outstanding Artists and Designers of the 20th Century," "2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century," "Who's Who in America" and "Who's Who in the World". In addition, the mayors of New Orleans, Louisiana and Gary, Indiana have awarded him the "Key to the City". Yamada, as a visual anthropologist, has had over 350 fine art exhibitions including 36 solo shows internationally in Spain, the Netherlands, Japan and the United States. Yamada has also published 21 books. His artwork has been chosen for inclusion in the collections of numerous museums and corporations internationally."

Over the years, Yamada has very skilfully produced all manner of fantastic creatures that never were but should have been - from the magnificent sea serpent pictured at the beginning of this blog, many-finned mer-folk, human-headed ants, and vampire monkeys, to the chupacabra snail, the whip-tailed tree octopus, flesh-eating fungi, and even a Mongolian death worm (or two).

Takeshi Yamada alongside some of his creations

Moreover, these are only a few of his astounding collection of self-manufactured marvels that can be viewed in Yamada’s Museum of World Wonders on Brooklyn’s Coney Island, and also in his various ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ exhibitions that have been touring the USA since 1983. One of these is currently being staged at the Coney Island branch of the Brooklyn Public Library (see note at the end of this ShukerNature post).

Advertising poster for one of Dr Yamada’s touring exhibitions

You want more? Here’s a quote from an article by Silke Tudor published in the 7 November 2006 issue of New York City’s Village Life weekly magazine concerning Yamada and his multifarious menagerie:

“Born out of the mythos of Coney Island, Yamada's present-day cosmos includes several six-foot-long Mongolian death worms; a pair of Fiji mermaids; a two-headed baby; a hairy trout; a seven-fingered hand; fossilized fairies; jackalope stew; a five-foot-long bloodsucking chupacabra; a 16th-century homunculus; a legion of samurai warriors trapped in the bodies of horseshoe crabs; a tiny marsh dragon; a coven of freakishly large, nuclear-radiated stag beetles from Bikini Atoll; and a furry mer-bunny, all of which are brought to life using old bones, shells, resin, origami, and bits and pieces of refuse, both inorganic and fleshy.”

Irrespective of their mundane constituents, however, these gaffs (the correct term for rogue taxiderm specimens) are astonishingly life-like.

So here, albeit as much for my delight as yours, is an all-too-brief selection of specimens from the truly extraordinary world of Takeshi Yamada (together with his own supremely-entertaining and meticulously-compiled – albeit entirely fictitious! - publicity details for each specimen, where available).

NB - Utilising the Fair Dealing/Fair Use convention, all of the following photographs are presented here in the context of review and on an entirely non-commercial basis; the copyright of all of them (unless otherwise stated) is owned by Takeshi Yamada.

The chupacabra snail – a deepsea species discovered as recently as 2007, and named by Yamada after its alleged resemblance to the clawed foot of the mysterious chupacabra

...And here is the chupacabra, or at least the preserved 5-ft-tall corpse of one!

Bikini Atoll stag beetle, enlarged and mutated by nuclear radiation into what Yamada describes as: “One of the largest and most vicious carnivorous land arthropod species in the world”. The female grows up to 17 in long, and both sexes are not only very poisonous but also extremely radioactive. In reality, this specimen has been cleverly constructed in part from portions of the horseshoe crab Limulus.

A scale from the great sea serpent itself! And according to Yamada, this particular sea serpent really is a giant marine snake. Here’s an excerpt from his detailed description of the scale: “This well-preserved large scale is from the Great Sea Serpent collected by Dr. Robert L. Travis (marine biologist). Dr. Travis visited the area for his extensive research with a group of marine biologists in Gloucester, Massachusetts during the summer of 1790 for investigating and cataloguing the increasing sightings of a mysterious large marine life form there. Dr. Travis, who specializes [in] the biology of sea snakes, after extensive microscopic observation and analysis of the tissue sample attached to the scale confirmed that this specimen closely resembled that of a large tropical sea snake, Pelamis platurus [a genuine species, the yellow-bellied sea snake], which ranges from Madagascar to Mexico and is sometimes found swarming by the thousands in the open ocean. Nevertheless, the scale of this specimen is 60 times larger than Pelamis platurus.”

A Chinese vampire monkey Desmosndulus rotundidus, one of three closely-related but very rare species of sanguinivorous simian, all of which are nocturnal and seek their prey using specialised infrared sensors on their nose that detect body heat, thereby enabling them to seek out warm-blooded victims even in total darkness. It is possible that Yamada’s inspiration for this creation was the jenglot – a very small, vampiric humanoid entity in Indonesian mythology, which, if one is captured, is sustained by being fed the blood of its keeper or that of goats.

A juvenile Mongolian death worm. Measuring three ft long, this well-preserved, dried specimen was collected in c.1810 within the Gobi Desert.

Two recently-captured Japanese specimens of prehistoric horseshoe crabs Limulus spp. hitherto believed extinct for 400 million years.

Cindora, the eight-legged spider dog, now in the collection of the Lucky Devil Thrillshow - a bona fide circus sideshow that travels throughout the USA.

The whip-tailed tree octopus. According to Yamada: “It is the largest species of tree octopus indigenous to Snake Island. This specimen is a 49-inch adult female. [The] tree octopus is an extremely rare terrestrial octopus with modified gills (similar to the lungfish and frog) and thick, dry skin for terrestrial life [in] wetland and rainforest. Unlike the common eight-legged sea dwelling octopus, all the tree octopus[es] have ten legs (just like the common squid and cuttlefish).

A horned marsh dragon...

And Takeshi Yamada with the skull of a horned dragon...

And now standing alongside a mummified 6-ft-long multi-finned mermaid from the Japanese island of Shikoku.

Three species of New York City giant subway bug, for which Yamada has compiled such an extensive zoological account that if you wish to read it all, please click here.

A giant carnivorous snail, claimed by Yamada to be the world’s largest carnivorous snail species, and imbued with a similar highly-toxic poison to that of the notorious South American poison-arrow frogs.

And finally, another photo of the 32-ft-long giant sea serpent pictured at the beginning of this ShukerNature post.

For a comprehensive YouTube video presenting Takeshi Yamada, his museum, and his numerous gaffs, click here .

And if you want to see some of Yamada’s monstrously delightful creations in the flesh (or papier-mâché, depending upon the specimen in question), an eye-popping selection has been on display in the lobby of New York City’s Coney Island Library since 1 October 2006. Moreover, this long-running exhibition’s contents change each month. But you’ll need to hurry – it is due to end on 31 December of this year.

A winghead rhinoceros fish (left) and a dragon gate shark (right)

A REAL-LIFE CROCODILE-FROG FROM BORNEO?

2011-05-31T02:06:00.033+01:00

A Photoshopped crocodile frog

Earlier this month, I posted here on ShukerNature a series of photographs discovered by me online that portray some truly wonderful - albeit entirely fictitious - composite beasts created using Photoshop. Little did I realise at the time, however, that shortly afterwards I would be receiving some fascinating information concerning a hitherto little-publicised cryptid that closely resembles one of those computer-generated creatures but which is even more extraordinary – all of which only goes to show yet again that fact (if that is indeed what this cryptid turns out to be) is definitely far stranger than fiction.

This information was contained in a book by Czech cryptozoologist Jaroslav Mareš entitled Detektivem v Říši Zvířat (‘A Detective in the Animal Kingdom’) and published in Prague in 1995, but has never previously appeared in any English-language cryptozoological account. Consequently, I am greatly indebted to Czech cryptozoological enthusiast and friend Miroslav Fišmeister for kindly bringing it to my attention and translating it for me.

Mareš learnt about this cryptid from the Seluks, a river-dwelling Dusun tribe in the Malaysian state of Sabah in northern Borneo, while he was leading two expeditions, during 1976 and 1985, in search of a giant specimen of saltwater crocodile nicknamed the Devil’s Father. The relevant sections, edited to concentrate solely upon the cryptid, read as follows:

"I wanted to examine the claim of the Seluks from the kampong [village] which I had just left that less than one day by boat there lives a giant, 3-m-long, enormously dangerous frog with a crocodile head, on the left bank of the river [Segama River]. It was ridiculous, it was nonsense. Such a frog cannot exist, I was saying to myself. Yet I had uncertainty too. There were giant amphibians in prehistory – and who knows what lives in the deep Borneo jungles that has never been searched for?

"One of my guides was one of the Dusuns from Lahad Dat...and two Seluks from the previously-visited kampong who both claimed to have seen the crocodile frog themselves and that they knew exactly where it dwells. We got there in the evening...

"As soon as we finished our breakfast the following day and set off, we heard the shrieks of a hornbill, which sounded terrifying in the jungle silence. The bird shrieked four times and stopped. We could not see it anywhere.

"The reaction of both of the Dusuns from the kampong was immediate. We’re not going anywhere today. The sacred black bird predicts a disaster [the spectacular, black-plumed rhinoceros hornbill Buceros rhinoceros is venerated by the Dusuns]. A horrible disaster for each of us. How many of us are there? Four. And how many shrieks did we hear?

"I could not make them change their mind with the help of the Dusun from Lahad Dat who spoke average English; they would not believe that it was just a superstition and pure chance. Nothing could make them change their mind. If we set off today, the giant frog will eat us all. “We saw it ambush the wild pigs from a hiding place,” they explained. “It would attack us the same way.”

"Even the Dusun from Lahad Dat agreed with them at last: “Sir, that sacred bird really predicted a disaster!”

"I gave up. And so we spent the whole day in the camp. The Dusuns lay down in hammocks and I prepared an improvised bait and observed the river...

"We set off in the early morning. This time the hornbills and all the other birds were silent. In a forest glade, about 400 m from our camp, we found a mummified head with the skeleton of a wild pig. To find remains of a dead animal is nothing uncommon in the jungle. But in the nasal area there were clearly-visible holes – deep and in a row, from a crocodile attack.

"“That’s the crocodile frog’s prey,” the kampong Seluks assured me. “We are in its territory.”

"Yet we walked the whole day without seeing anything. It was not until we were coming back via the opposite part of that forest glade that our attention was captured by a strange sound that kept reappearing at certain intervals. At first it sounded as if someone were breaking tree branches there, but the mysterious sound was much deeper. It was more like stone crushing than tree breaking. And then I saw it. On the edge of bushes there stood – its back turned towards us – possibly the strangest animal I have ever seen. It had no tail, its body covered with brown scales with black spots ended in an arc right behind strong, muscled hind legs. The scales, placed evenly over the back of the animal and forming a symmetrical black pattern, were proof that the creature never had a tail. The hind legs – at that moment we could not see the front ones – were very bulky and relatively long. They were raised high and the whole body was bent forward markedly. The body was paunchy, flabby, and gave us the impression of cumbersomeness and lethargy. It was clear that the animal was just consuming its prey. At that moment we could not see anything more; both the animal’s position and the thick brushwood on the edge of the bushes prevented us from seeing more. Only the cracking of the crunched meat and the crushing of the bones proved that the mouth of the mysterious creature must be horrible.

"My guides were shaking with horror. They did not expect to see their giant frog so unexpectedly and from such a short distance. But it was evidently no frog. I was determined that I must see the head.

"I walked through the plants to the side. But the thick vegetation covered its secret perfectly. Then I saw part of the dorsum and shortly afterwards almost the whole animal. Only the head was covered by the prey – again a wild pig. The life of a Bearded Pig is not easy here, I thought.

"The surface of the body resembled a crocodile. Suddenly the animal rose on its front legs as well. A giant crocodile head appeared. The mysterious animal was huge with paunchy sides and nearly two metres long. For a while it towered above the vegetation like a stone statue, but then it started to move towards me.

"I did not wait for more. I started to retreat towards my guides who already had a good head start. The camp was topsy-turvy and disarrayed. Would it chase us all the way to there?

"At first I thought that we had encountered a new, as yet undiscovered species of land-living, tailless crocodile. In prehistory, there existed several dangerous land-living crocodiles with long legs, but they all had a tail. A tailless crocodile is completely unknown even among palaeontologists. The following day, I wanted to go there again, but my guides considered this idea pure madness. They thoroughly prepared everything for sailing away in the morning and I faced a choice: if I wanted to stay, I naturally could, but on my own. Furthermore, the hornbill shrieked again. And so we sailed on early in the morning.

"The more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that a tailless crocodile is really a strange thing. Yet I absolutely ruled out the possibility that this was a crocodile that once had a tail and lost it in a fight with another crocodile. Giant specimens of saltwater crocodiles – including one notorious maneater - whose tails were partly missing have been shot. But as I have already mentioned, in this case it was evident straight away that this animal could never have had any tail. And to be honest, I thought that the hind legs were too large and strong for a crocodile. I did not see the front legs properly. Later, when I conversed about several problems concerning crocodiles in Australia with Graham Webb, a noted specialist, I was told that among baby crocodiles hatched in one nest there can be several ones that lack a tail. The reasons are either genetic or perhaps there is too high a temperature during incubation. Could the mysterious “Crocodile frog” be one of these babies that overcame its handicap due to other extraordinary qualities and its strength and survived, specialising in hunting on the ground where the prey was easier for it to catch? Did it grow to maturity and attack the pigs in the same way that its tailed brothers do from the water, by gripping their mouths, while hiding on the forest clearances? It sounds fantastic, but still more realistic than to consider the tailless monster to be a new, as yet unknown species. It will never stop haunting me anyway."

It may be sheer coincidence, but the famously tailless Manx cats are also known for their unusually well-developed hind legs. Could there be a rare homologous mutant gene in crocodiles whose expression results in this same linked phenotypic effect?

Further evidence for the existence of tailless crocodiles can be found in a second Czech cryptozoology book, written this time by Vojtìch Sláma, entitled Hon na Vodní Pøíšery (‘The Hunt For Water Monsters’), and published in 2002. Kindly translated for me once again by Miroslav Fišmeister (thanks, Mirek!), the relevant information from this book is as follows:

"The north Borneo river Segama looks like a normal jungle river. But unlike the rest, her stream is inhabited by mysterious creatures that cannot be seen anywhere else in the world. I was told about them during my one-week voyage by an 80-year-old Kadazan [=Dusun] fisherman, Bateig Labi. This patriarch of the Bugit Balachon kampong does not tell tall tales. People around him respect him deeply and greatly value his advice and experience.

"He saw the roughly 3-m-long monster called appropriately the “Crocodile frog” by the local Kadazans several times in the jungles around Segama. He said that it had a giant crocodile head and a large slimy body of an amphibian. The scary creature gave Bateig a look with its bulging eyes and then disappeared in the impenetrable undergrowth with a big noise.

"It certainly could not be any known amphibian...

"In this situation I can think of two hypotheses – the first, albeit very improbable, would be the survival of the large amphibians well known among palaeontologists. For example the species of the Mastodonsaurus genus, which looked like monstrous frogs, were more than 4 m long and they were feared predators. As we know from fossils, the skulls themselves were longer than 1 m! Yet their survival is highly improbable due to their known general sensitivity to any changes of habitat.

Mastodonsaurus on postage stamps

"I thought of another hypothesis while visiting a crocodile farm near the north Borneo town of Sandakan. In the concrete tanks there also live – next to fully grown 5-m-long specimens – deformed crocodiles that lack a tail and whose crippled bodies with which they were born really look a bit like frogs.

"Is it possible that the legends of the mysterious frog phantom are based on the observing of these tailless specimens, which by a miracle overcame their handicap and specialised in hunting the land animals rather than fish? That is a possible solution to the Segama mystery too.

"Yet the idea of surviving mastodonsaurs that still hunt in the jungles of today is undoubtedly more inviting."

In his book, Sláma included the following photograph of one of the tailless crocodiles that he encountered at the Sandakan crocodile farm, and there is little doubt that a freak specimen of this nature might well indeed have inspired native legends of giant ‘crocodile frogs’ in the jungles fringing the river Segama.

A tailless crocodile at Sabah's Sandakan crocodile farm (Vojtìch Sláma)

Of course, just like Sláma, I’d be delighted for there to be an undiscovered modern-day species of mastodonsaur out there, but just the knowledge that a creature I’d hitherto discounted as an entirely fictitious Photoshop creation actually has a cryptozoological precedent is delight, and discovery, enough...at least for now!

Mastodonsaurus (Zdeněk Burian)

UPDATE: 31 May 2011

German cryptozoological researcher Markus Bühler has found five additional photos of tailless crocodilians. The first three of these are of Bob, an alligator with a missing tail, at:

http://shoutaboutcarolina.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/everybody-loves-bob-alligator-without-tail.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9ogZle5EgG8/SwWJ23paBbI/AAAAAAAAAoE/maHRZ7Y_s6s/s1600/bob-alligator-with-no-tail-300x225.jpg

http://www.zoochat.com/gallery/data/1397/Bob_Tailess_A_Alligator-_AA_JUN08_II.JPG

And the other two are of a tailless crocodile, at:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_k8VvKL9Z14o/SSiYrDcXrjI/AAAAAAAAAqk/GENrlPbTEVE/s320/DSC00760.JPG

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_gWXe4-mLLuM/SxC96uivIWI/AAAAAAAABfo/cvKM2BCavIk/s1600/Image0257.jpg

Thanks, Markus! He also notes that recent reconstructions of Mastodonsaurus have tended to move away from the traditional 'giant frog' form favoured by Burian and others, stating:

"For many decades it was portrayed as some kind of giant frog, a bizarre and somehow ridiculous appearance. But in fact Mastodonsaurus was much more elongated and had even a tail of considerable length. I once wrote about it at Bestiarium:

http://www.facebook.com/l/98a1e_pxQmC7Sp4tHnWKHdI8srw/bestiarium.kryptozoologie.net/artikel/mastodonsaurus-giganteus-eines-der-grosten-amphibien-aller-zeiten/

"You can see a photo of an articulated and nearly complete skeleton, a new life-sized reconstruction (sadly it´s not easy to see the whole body) as well as an old outdated model, which looks very similar to the description of the croc-frog. All photos are from the "Museum am Löwentor" at Stuttgart, one of the largest paleontology museums of the world. Most of the fossils there, including giant amphibians like Mastodonsaurus, were found in the region around Stuttgart. The only photo which is not from Stuttgart, is that which shows the bony armour plate of Mastodonsaurus, it´s from the great Museum of Natural history at Vienna. Mastodonsaurus was really an extremely large animal, some isolated fossils indicate specimens of at least 6 or probably even 7 m."

LANDSEER AND THE HORSE-DEER

2011-05-24T21:15:00.016+01:00

'The Monarch of the Glen' - Sir Edwin Landseer

Among the perissodactyls (odd-toed ungulates), there are many fully-attested cases of interspecific hybridisation, the most familiar examples being the mules and hinnies that result from successful matings between the domestic horse Equus ferus caballus and the domestic donkey E. africanus asinus. Many verified interspecific hybrids have been documented among the artiodactyls (even-toed ungulates) too, as well as some confirmed intergeneric hybrids. Moreover, I even have a few controversial reports on file of artiodactyls specimens that have been claimed at one time or another to constitute interfamilial hybrids.

Perhaps the ultimate in ungulate hybrids, however, is an extraordinary specimen that, if genuine, links two entirely separate taxonomic orders - the perissodactyls with the artiodactyls!

The English artist Sir Edwin Landseer (1802-1873) is rightly celebrated for his many magnificent paintings and drawings of animals, one of the most famous being ‘The Monarch of the Glen’ – see this ShukerNature post’s opening illustration – portraying a handsome red deer Cervus elaphus stag. Much less familiar, yet exceptionally intriguing from a zoological standpoint, conversely, is his drawing of a seven-month-old animal reputed to be a cross between a New Forest pony and a red deer!

According to a note on this amazing creature by naturalist Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald in the British monthly magazine Animal Life (December 1963), its identity as a bona fide horse-deer was supported by many people who examined it while alive, and its mare mother was seen running with red deer for several months prior to the birth of her highly contentious offspring. Nonetheless, Vesey-Fitzgerald remained highly sceptical of its reputed hybrid status, which is hardly surprising. The genetics of species belonging to two separate mammalian orders are so different from one another that the chances of a viable offspring being produced naturally by such species are exceedingly slim.

In these days of instant information access, I naturally anticipated little if any problem in locating an online image of this very thought-provoking drawing by Landseer, but all attempts by me to do so have failed. Not even the might of Google has been able to assist me in my quest. Consequently, as I would very much like to view it and thus decide for myself whether the depicted creature may indeed be a veritable horse-deer, I would be exceedingly grateful for any information as to where images of this drawing exist online, and also for any additional details regarding the animal itself.

Curiously, Google did throw up one tantalising reference that may (or may not) have some bearing upon this subject. Namely, Queen Victoria’s precise instructions to Landseer concerning the content of a painting that she was commissioning him to prepare in 1850 of herself and her consort Prince Albert at Royal Deeside in the Scottish Highlands. They read as follows:

“It is to be thus: I, stepping out of the boat at Loch Muich, Albert in his Highland dress, assisting me out, and I am looking at a stag which he is supposed to have just killed. Bertie [their son, the future King Edward VII] is on the deer pony with McDonald...standing behind, with rifles and plaids on his shoulder. In the water, holding the boat, are several of the men in their kilts, - salmon are also lying on the ground. The picture is meant to represent me meeting Albert, who has been stalking, whilst I have been fishing, and the whole is quite consonant with the truth. The solitude, the sport, the Highlanders and the water, etc will be...a beautiful exemplification of peaceful times, and of the independent life we lead in the dear Highlands. It is quite a new conception...It will tell a great deal, and it is beautiful.”

The resulting painting was “Royal Sports on Hill and Loch”, which first appeared at the Royal Academy in 1854, and is reproduced below. Yet the animal upon which Bertie is sitting clearly resembles a normal pony in every way, as opposed to a bona fide intergeneric deer pony.

'Royal Sports on Hill and Loch' - Sir Edwin Landseer

Having said that, could it be that the term “deer pony” as used by Victoria with regard to Bertie’s steed merely signified that it was a pony that regularly featured in deer hunts at Royal Deeside, rather than having any taxonomic implication or significance? In other words, if you’ll forgive the zoological mixing of metaphors, is this simply a red herring, with no relevance to Landseer’s elusive drawing of an alleged horse-deer hybrid?

Once again, if you have any views, information, or pertinent image links, please do post them here on ShukerNature. Thanks very much!

FROM PARRODILES TO OCTOPHANTS - THE FABULOUS FAUNA OF PHOTOSHOP

2011-05-21T20:52:00.040+01:00

During the past week, I've posted on Facebook an album of truly incredible Photoshopped animal hybrids encountered by me online, and which have attracted enormous interest. Consequently, I've decided to share some of my particular favourites, and my comments concerning them, with you now on ShukerNature. Our planet is surely a sadder place for lacking these extraordinary creatures! Happily, however, thanks to the wonderful world of worth1000.com and various other superb websites - their (un)natural habitats - they add diversity and delight in equal measure to the surrealiverse of cyberspace. So here, in no particular order, for your amusement and astonishment, are my Top Twenty Photoshopped fauna.

Beware the Hippocrab, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

(With apologies to Lewis Carroll!)

Everyone has seen caterpillars, so now - behold, the tigerpillar!

Zebroceros?
Of course-eros!

I don't care what all the other dragons do, you're too young to smoke!

The octophant is a curious fellow,
Beneath the waves he glows bright yellow!

How doth the little parrodile
Improve his feathered tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every pea-green scale.

How cheerfully he seems to cough,
How neatly spreads his claws,
Then bites his owner's fingers off
With wide voracious jaws!

(With more apologies to Lewis Carroll!)

Meet the friglet - the love child of Kermit and Miss Piggy?

Trunko lives!! (Not really)

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the lily pond!
Here's the frogillator - or could it be a croakodile?

Haven't you ever seen fruit bats before?!!

Jurassic Park was never like this - it's a Rhinoceratops!

Aaaawwwwwwwww!!
I always wondered what the Everly Brothers' song 'Bird Dog' was all about - now I know!

When the lorikeets are away, the mice - and cats - will play!
Who are pretty boys, then?

You lookin' at me?

The pitbull frog - its croak is worse than its bite!

Punkaburra lives in an old gum tree,
Merry merry punk of the bush is he.

For some things, there are simply no words - and this is one of them!

Hop to it! - It's the hippofrogamus!

A roaring success? A dande-lion clock from Planet Photoshop

I'll never touch another drop, ever again!!

FROM THE HOUND OF THE HEDGES TO CHIA DOGS!

2011-05-18T23:28:00.022+01:00

This delightful example of a Chia dog was photographed in Williamsburg, Virginia
(photo: http://www.livinginwilliamsburgvirginia.blogspot.com/)

Just over a month ago, on 12 April, I documented the wonderful Hound of the Hedges (click here for this ShukerNature post of mine), a unique (albeit fictitious) zoobotanical crossbred canid that featured in Charles Finney's surreal science fantasy novel The Circus of Dr Lao (1935).

Confirming that, as ever, fact is stranger than fiction, American correspondent Marc Gaglione has now brought to my attention the extraordinary real-life world of Chia Pets, which are common in the USA but which I haven't encountered here in the UK and hadn't even heard of before.

This is what Wikipedia says about them:

"Chia Pets are American styled animal-shaped terracotta figurines used to sprout chia, where the chia sprouts resemble the animal's fur.

"Produced by San Francisco, California-based company Joseph Enterprises Inc., Chia Pets achieved popularity in the 1980s following the 1982 release of a ram, the first Chia Pet. The catch phrase sung in the TV commercial as the plant grows in time lapse is "Ch-ch-ch-chia!". Moistened seeds of chia (Salvia hispanica) are applied to the grooved terra cotta figurine body.

"A range of generic animals has been produced, including a turtle, pig, puppy, kitten, frog, and hippopotamus, but cartoon characters including: Garfield, Scooby-Doo, Looney Tunes, Shrek, The Simpsons, and SpongeBob have also been licensed. Additionally, there are Chia Pets depicting presidents, including Barack Obama."

The Hippo of the Hedges? Now that's a cryptid I'd pay good money to see!

Chia ram or photoshopped Ram of the Hedges? You decide!

THE TOP TEN SHUKERNATURE POSTS OF ALL TIME AS OF MAY 2011

2011-05-06T13:00:00.004+01:00

Time, I think, for another look at the Top Ten ShukerNature posts of all time. I didn’t post a listing last month (April 2011) because, remarkably, not only did that listing contain exactly the same ten posts as the previous month’s (March 2011), but even the relative rankings of those ten posts were the same too. But what a difference a further month has made!

This latest, May 2011 listing contains no fewer than four new entries, and all are recent posts. Clearly, therefore, there must be particular interest out there in movie mystery cats, winged cats, and explanations for belief in the Little People. Even certain of the fictitious cryptids featuring in the Doctor Dolittle novels of Hugh Lofting (namely, the great pink sea snail, a living dinosaur, and a gargantuan freshwater turtle) make an appearance at #10. So here, to baffle and amuse you, is the latest ShukerNature Top Ten (with rankings from the previous listing in red brackets). And if anyone can spot a subtle trend or pattern in it, please do let me know, as I’ve long since given up trying to find one!

#1: The mystery blue spider of Yorkshire (25 August 2010) (1)

#2: Behold, Trunko!! (Trunko exclusive #1) (6 September 2010) (2)

#3: South Africa's hairless blue horse (24 March 2010) (4)

#4: Archangel feathers (3 February 2011) (3)

#5: Enchanted by the enchantress (16 March 2011) (-)

#6: The genetics of fairies (10 March 2011) (-)

#7: Two more Trunko photos (Trunko exclusive #2) (9 September 2010) (5)

#8: The wings of a winged cat (5 April 2011) (-)

#9: Dragons of Babylon and dinosaurs of the Bible (18 January 2011) (6)

#10: The cryptozoological world of Doctor Dolittle, Part 2 (21 March 2011) (-)

TWO FRENCH MYSTERIES OF THE ARACHNOLOGICAL KIND

2011-05-05T01:48:00.017+01:00

Here are two arachnological anomalies - one very old but only very recently solved by me, the other very new and currently still unsolved. Both hail from France, and each involves a species of unusual or unexpected colouration, given its location. Neither of them has previously been documented in the cryptozoological literature, so any opinions and additional information would be most welcome.

THE WHITE SCORPION OF CETTE MOUNTAIN

That was the title of a short article penned by Emile Bonnet MPNS, which was published in June 1884 within a journal entitled The Naturalist’s World (vol. 1, no. 6, pp. 94-95). As I happen to own a copy of this particular volume, purchased by me during the late 1980s, I have scanned the relevant pages, which are reproduced below (please click scan in order to enlarge to readable size):

As can be seen, the scorpion in question is referred to by Bonnet as Scorpio montis sete (translating as ‘scorpion of Sete’s mountain’), but no such trinomial name exists today. Nor does any binomial, not even one that links monte and sete to yield montesete (in earlier days, some faux trinomials were created by splitting names that were subsequently joined back together to yield binomials).

Sete, or, precisely, Sète, is a seaside town within the Hérault department in Languedoc-Roussillon, southern France; it changed its name from Cette to Sète on 20 January 1928, and is built upon and around the mountain of Mont St Clair.

Over the years that have passed since purchasing the volume containing Bonnet’s article, I have made several attempts to track down any additional details regarding this mountain’s pallid but reputedly dangerous scorpion, and have contacted a number of arachnological experts concerning it, but all to no avail – until very recently.

Prior to then, the most informative response to my enquiries had come from Prof. John L. Cloudsley-Thompson, Professor Emeritus at London’s University College, who is a renowned authority on arachnids, as well as desert organisms and a range of other zoological specialities. Writing to me on 7 April 1990 after reading the copy of Bonnet’s article that I had sent to him earlier, Prof. Cloudsley-Thompson offered the following thoughts:

“Re Scorpio montis sete. This species is not cited in modern literature and is clearly not valid. The illustration shows a species of Buthus not Scorpio (slender claws), so B. occitanus must be the answer since it is the only buthid in France. It is venomous like all Buthidae but the same species in N. Africa is said to be much more dangerous. M. Bonnet was clearly exaggerating. I wonder whether the ‘white’ scorpion was actually a newly moulted individual whose cuticle had not yet hardened? I was once asked about a white earwig in a BBC nature programme and that must have been the answer in that case.”

Buthus occitanus (Álvaro Rodríguez Alberich – Wikipedia)

Buthus occitanus is known as the common yellow scorpion, on account of its widespread distribution in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, and its predominant colour. I agree entirely that a newly-moulted individual would be the likeliest explanation for a single specimen, but Bonnet described the Cette mountain scorpion as a discrete species rather than an individual, and referred to its colour as “a reddish white” rather than entirely white (or yellow, for that matter). What always baffled me most of all regarding this case, however, was Bonnet’s allegation that this scorpion “has been studied for a long time and numerous experiments have been made on its venom”, bearing in mind that there seemed to be no mention of it in the modern-day zoological literature.

The best chance of solving this mystery was to track down a copy of the publication by Dr Ange Maccary that was cited by Bonnet in his article. Unfortunately, Bonnet gave no bibliographical details other than the title, and, for a long time at least, Googling that did not call up any details.

Inevitably, with new crypto reports coming along on a regular basis, the baffling case of the white scorpion of Cette Mountain eventually slipped from my mind. But when, just a few days ago, I received the information that constitutes the second arachnological case documented here, I suddenly recalled Bonnet’s article, and decided to try yet another online search for information – and this time, finally, I achieved success!

Googling the first part of the title of Maccory’s publication was sufficient on this latest occasion not only to locate the full bibliographical reference to it, which is:

MACCORY, Ange (1810). Mémoire sur le scorpion qui se trouve sur la montagne de Cette, département de l’Hérault, son venin, et l’usage qu’on pourrait en faire en médecine. Froullé (Paris), Gabon ed. 48 pages

but also to confirm, via the following online source:

http://www.onem-france.org/scorpion/wakka.php?wiki=RegimeAlimentaire

that the Cette white scorpion, as suspected by Prof. Cloudsley-Thompson back in 1990, does indeed belong to the Languedoc-occurring species Buthus occitanus.

But one mystery surrounding this scorpion still awaits a solution – the unusual reddish-white colouration claimed by Bonnet for the Cette Mountain specimens, which is very different from the typical yellow hue for B. occitanus. Could it be, therefore, that Mont St Clair harbours a distinct colour variant of this species, which is confined to this specific location – and which, additionally, is more venomous than its normal-coloured congeners elsewhere in Languedoc?

THE YELLOW STOWAWAY SPIDER OF BRUGES

The second of this ShukerNature article’s two mystery arachnids was brought to my attention on 30 April 2011 by 18-year-old Raphaël Marliere of Bordeaux. Here is Raphaël’s eyewitness account, reproduced here with his kind permission:

“My sighting took place approximately 8 years ago in Bruges, a northwestern suburb of Bordeaux.

“A foggy winter morning, my mother was driving me to school in her old Citroen car, when all of a sudden a big yellow spider came out of the right side ventilator, on my mother's side, that is. She was kind of surprised but kept on driving as the spider went down and disappeared under the dashboard, as mysteriously as she had appeared.

“The spider in question was bright yellow, somewhat reminiscent of a banana - even though true banana spiders aren't yellow at all - and had a legspan of about 3-4 cm. I thought it may have been a freak Olios argelasius or Cheiracanthium punctorium, because of its size, but Cheiracanthium has distinctive fangs that this spider didn't have and Olios possesses markings on the legs and abdomen that were not present on the spider I saw.

“I have been breeding native spiders for several years now and I've never seen anything like this again. The only other yellow European spider that I know of is Misumena vatia, but I have an adult female in my collection and it doesn't approach the size of the car's weirdo.

“What I thought was strange at the time was the fact that the spider actually came from the ventilator and didn't get out of the car or at least seek out an exit. I guess she might have entered the car via the outside ventilator just under the windshield, but if she took the same way to go out or died trapped in the car I'll never know, for we didn't find any - yellow or otherwise - dead spider in the car.”

Olios argelasius (http://digilander.libero.it/)

After reading Raphaël’s account, I conducted an online perusal of European yellow-coloured spiders, but I was unable to match his mystery spider with any native species. O. argelasius is a huntsman spider, but as noted by Raphaël, its description does not correspond with that of his spider. Also known as the yellow sac spider, C. punctorium has very prominent chelicerae that give a venomous bite similar in potency to a wasp sting, but it only measures 15 mm or so. Misumena vatia, a crab spider, is even smaller, with a maximum length of only 10 mm. Yellow specimens of the European garden or cross spider Araneus diadematus (which is up to 20 mm long) are sometimes encountered, but they always bear this species’ characteristic cross marking upon their opisthosoma (abdomen).

Cheiracanthium punctorium (www.biolib.cz)

Consequently, I can only conclude that it was a specimen of some non-native species that had somehow found its way into the car after having earlier escaped from captivity (a private collection, perhaps, or a local zoo, nature centre, or even a pet shop?), or from some produce container originating from overseas – large (and usually decidedly hairy!) spiders emerging from bunches of imported bananas in a supermarket are regularly reported in the media.

Nevertheless, it would be excellent to obtain a conclusive taxonomic identification of this spider, so I’d greatly value any suggestions.

DO BLACK RATELS AND ORANGE HYAENAS MAKETH THE NANDI BEAR?

2011-05-01T22:47:00.009+01:00

The Ituri black ratel (1906 engraving)

Albinism is a deficiency or complete absence of the pigment eumelanin, but the condition known as melanism is the presence of an excessive amount of eumelanin. Animals exhibiting this condition are said to be melanistic, and appear abnormally dark in comparison with normal-coloured specimens of their species. True melanism does not affect animals' body markings, targeting their background colouration instead.

One of the most interesting cases of melanism is of profound cryptozoological pertinence and concerns the ratel Mellivora capensis, also known as the honey badger. Although alluded to by Dr Bernard Heuvelmans in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals (1958), this is the first time that the true complexity of this case has been aired cryptozoologically.

Widely distributed in Africa and also found in India, the ratel is a pugnacious species of mustelid, which can attain an impressive total length of 3.5 ft - equivalent to a small bear. Its pelage colouration is very striking - laterally and ventrally its fur is jet black, but dorsally it sports a wide band of silver-grey fur that stretches from its brow along the entire length of its back to its hindquarters.

Today, only a single species of ratel is recognised, but this was not always the case. Just over a century ago, zoologists still distinguished several different ratel species. These differed from one another with regard to the relative proportion of pelage taken up by the silver-grey band, but all conformed to the basic ratel colour scheme - pale dorsally, jet black elsewhere - until 1906, that is.

During the early years of the 20th Century, while animal collecting in Central Africa, Major Powell-Cotton obtained two specimens of a ratel form dramatically different from all others on record, which he had discovered on the eastern fringe of the Ituri Forest, in what is now the Democratic Congo. The reason for the Ituri ratel's distinctiveness, however, was due not to its provenance but rather to its colouration. For with the exception of just a few grizzled hairs on the upper region of its head, it was totally black - exhibiting no trace of the familiar dorsal silver-grey band characterising all other ratels.

Powell-Cotton's two Ituri specimens soon came to the attention of noted British zoologist Dr Richard Lydekker, who documented them in a short paper published during early 1906 by the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. Comparing the marked differences in habitat between the open or bush-clad country inhabited by typical ratels and the dense shadowed seclusion of the Ituri Forest, Lydekker suggested that the latter's all-black ratels may conceivably constitute something more significant than simply a melanistic mutant form (morph) of the normal ratel. Indeed, he felt that they may actually represent a separate species, one in which the conspicuous silver band had been replaced during evolution by a uniformly black pelage in order to provide effective camouflage within the Ituri Forest's unlit interior. Honouring its discoverer, Lydekker named the new ratel Mellivora cottoni - but its status as a distinct species would be short-lived.

The first hint of this came in early 1909, with the description of yet another new ratel species, this time by carnivore specialist Reginald Pocock, which was formally christened Mellivora signata in a paper published by the Zoological Society of London's Proceedings. Significantly, the single specimen upon which this latest species was based, which had been obtained in Sierra Leone, was somewhat intermediate in colouration between M. cottoni and the typical ratel. Although it possessed a light-coloured upper band like other ratels, in this single M. signata specimen the band was not of uniform shading throughout its length. On the specimen's brow it was silver-grey, but it became ever darker as it extended backwards across its shoulders and along its spine towards its hindquarters. Thus its shoulders and anterior back portion were speckled grey, whereas its posterior back and hindquarters were virtually black.

Shortly afterwards, yet another ratel paper (written this time by Dr F.D. Welch) appeared in the Zoological Society's Proceedings, but this was one that had considerable bearing upon the Ituri black ratel and upon the whole thorny issue of ratel classification. The subject of the paper was a former inmate of London Zoo - a ratel that had been obtained in some unrecorded African locality. When it arrived at the zoo in 1890, it was already fully-grown, and displayed the usual ratel colour scheme. During the next 12 years, however, Welch observed that its silver band gradually darkened, and by the time of the ratel's death its body's dorsal surface was coloured "black merely sprinkled with grey"; even its head, whose silver colour had suffered rather less darkening, lacked a clear demarcation line between upper and lower pelage colouration.

Later records provided similar findings. Accordingly, it became clear that all of the silver-backed ratel types formerly allocated the status of separate species, as well as M. signata, were nothing more than individual colour variations of a single species - M. capensis. And as for the all-black Ituri species, M. cottoni, this appeared to be merely an age-related artefact, for scientists now recognised that the possession of a melanistic pelage by ratels was linked not to taxonomic distinction but simply to senility. The older the ratel, the blacker it became. Exit M. cottoni from the zoological catalogue!

What makes all of this so intriguing from a cryptozoological standpoint is that in many parts of tropical Africa, native tribes live in great fear of a mysterious and exceedingly savage carnivore known by a variety of native names, but referred to by westerners, especially in Kenya, as the Nandi bear. Reports concerning this creature (still adamantly unrecognised and undescribed by science) seem to refer to several different types of creature - but three in particular. Two of these appear to be an abnormally-coloured strain of hyaena (see below) and an exceptionally large form of baboon. The third could well be the ratel - except (at least on first sight) for two discrepancies. Firstly, those Nandi bear reports that describe ratel-like beasts affirm that the animals in question are uniformly dark; and secondly, these animals are somewhat larger than normal ratels. In reality, however, neither of these supposed discrepancies raises problems in reconciling such reports with the ratel.

As already noted here, very old ratels can be wholly black in colour. In addition, examination of preserved ratel pelts reveals that such ratels are frequently notably larger than the average size for their species. Nor should we overlook the fact that the ratel is ferocious out of all proportion to its size - authentic reports exist of a single ratel chasing a pride of lions away from their kill, with the lions not daring to approach again until the ratel had finished its meal and departed! Consequently, although Nandi bear reports describing distinctly hyaena-like or baboon-like beasts cannot be explained in this way, a number of other Nandi bear accounts may well be attributable to certain belligerent ratels that had attained a large size and had acquired a melanistic pelage due to advanced age.

Eumelanin is the most familiar form of the pigment melanin, but it is not the only one. Two other forms are phaeomelanin, which is responsible for light brown and yellow pigmentation, and erythromelanin, responsible for the rich reddish-orange hue characterising the pelage of such creatures as the red squirrel Sciurus vulgaris and the red fox Vulpes vulpes. In mammals, phaeomelanin is responsible for a wide range of different fur colours, ranging from light brown and dull red through to golden-orange, yellow, and even cream. The greater the number of phaeomelanin pigment granules present per given area of body surface, the darker the colour of the fur borne upon that surface. Sometimes, however, genetic mutations in mammals result in an abnormal increase in phaeomelanin, but often at the expense of the darker pigment, eumelanin, so that their pelage appears paler than normal. This condition is known as erythrism, and mammals exhibiting it are said to be erythristic.

Erythristic animals are certainly very striking in appearance - so much so, in fact, that several were once considered to be separate species in their own right, rather than mere colour morphs of no taxonomic significance. In 1927, for instance, zoologist Dr Ernst Schwarz revealed that a number of enigmatic African guenon monkeys formerly classed as full species were in reality nothing more than rare erythristic specimens of certain other species. These false species included Cercopithecus inobservatus (merely an erythristic morph of the moustached monkey C. cephus), C. insignis (merely a red morph of Kandt's subspecies of Sykes's monkey, i.e. C. albogularis kandti), and C. insolitus (simply an erythristic specimen of the greater white-nosed monkey C. nictitans).

Those monkeys are now ex-cryptozoological creatures. However, it is possible that erythrism is also an intrinsic component of an ongoing mystery beast saga - the afore-mentioned Nandi bear. For whereas some reports of this beast may well have been based upon large, all-black ratels, others appear to have derived from highly abnormal hyaenas. In June 1926, for instance, Arthur J. Stent trapped at Vizara in Nyasaland (now Malawi) a very strange-looking animal that seemed to be a specimen of the elusive Nandi bear. Stent considered it to be some form of hyaena, but was unable to identify it fully, and so he sent its distinctive red-furred skin to the British Museum (Natural History) for formal categorisation. It was closely examined there by the notable carnivore expert Reginald Pocock, who subsequently announced that it had come from an erythristic specimen of the spotted hyaena Crocuta crocuta - hence its extremely unusual appearance.

Although known from arid regions of Sudan and Somaliland, erythristic spotted hyaenas are very much rarer in Central Africa. Consequently, in view of the striking colouration of Stent’s beast - so different from its species' typical morphology - plus the great rarity of erythristic hyaenas in this region, it can readily be understood why native eyewitnesses spying such a creature (especially if only for a very brief period of time) might consider it to comprise a totally different type of animal from the normal spotted hyaena. A veritable Nandi bear, in fact.

THE ROBIN AND THE CROSSBILL - TWO EASTER-THEMED BIRD LEGENDS IN VERSE

2011-04-25T10:23:00.015+01:00

There are many traditional, quite often poignant religious folktales featuring animals, some of which are well known, others less so. In the following poem, which appears in my published poetry collection Star Steeds and Other Dreams (CFZ Press, 2009), I have combined two of these age-old stories, both of which are Easter-themed - the famous legend of how the robin gained its red breast, and the less familiar legend of how the crossbill acquired its twisted beak.

THE ROBIN AND THE CROSSBILL

A tall wooden Cross cast its pitiless shadow
Across a green hill ‘neath the grey, leaden sky.
For mankind had crucified Jesus, its Saviour,
And left Him there helpless to suffer and die.

But two tiny birds came to visit Lord Jesus,
Two small humble creatures with hearts full of love.
The little brown robin and bright crimson crossbill,
Each blessed by the Light of their Father Above.

When Jesus looked down and beheld the small robin,
He smiled at him softly, and down from His breast
His blood trickled slowly like deep scarlet teardrops,
And falling below stained the robin’s white chest.

The crossbill in vain used his bill to remove the
Cruel nails that impaled Jesus’ hands and His feet,
But prised with such force that his bill crossed and twisted
‘Ere, strength being spent, he conceded defeat.

And e’er since that day when they visited Jesus,
The bill of each crossbill is twisted and curled,
While Jesus’ red blood on each robin’s chest lingers,
Reminding us just how much God loves our world.

GOBLIN ELEPHANTS AND WERE-SPIDERS - SURVEYING THE EYE-POPPING YOKAI IMAGERY OF GOJIN ISHIHARA

2011-04-18T04:25:00.017+01:00

Kappas (Gojin Ishihara, in Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters, 1972)

Not long ago, graphics artist Andy Paciorek alerted me to a truly extraordinary Japanese book on the subject of yokai - the traditional monsters of Japanese legend and folklore. Published in 1972, it was authored by Sato Arifumi, and its title, Nihon Youkai Zukan (日本妖怪図鑑), translates into English as Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters. Yet although it was ostensibly written for children, its extremely dramatic full-colour and half-tone pictures, drawn by celebrated Manga artist Gojin Ishihara, are often so terrifying and grotesque that I can only assume that kids in Japan are made of very stern stuff indeed!

Nevertheless, slotted among the bloodcurdling images of horrific female entities with hyperextensible necks, maniacally-grinning strangler demons, bizarre ceiling-dwelling scare-ghouls, and numerous other equally macabre monstrosities in human or semi-human form, are representations of various animal yokai too. Some of these mythological creatures are fairly well known outside Japan, but many of them are not.

So here is a concise account from me for each in a brief but diverse selection of examples that appear within Arifumi’s remarkable book (which, sadly, is now long since out of print), together with Ishihara’s original, unforgettable illustrations (collected online by Pink Tentacle at: http://pinktentacle.com/2010/07/macabre-kids-book-art-by-gojin-ishihara/).

THE KAPPA

As pictured in the Ishihara illustration opening this present ShukerNature blog article, the kappa is a freshwater sprite generally likened to a bipedal humanoid frog the size of a child but bearing a tortoise’s shell on its back, and, most striking of all, an open water-containing cavity (shaped like a lily pad) on top of its head. Probably the most internationally famous representative of Japan’s vast array of animal yokai, the kappa is usually considered to be merely mischievous, but it can be much more malicious, pulling humans underwater to rape or even drown them.

Yet in spite of this dark side to its nature, the kappa is, incongruously, well known for being inordinately polite – a weakness that humans often capitalise upon if confronted by one of these web-footed, scaly-skinned, carapace-bearing man-frogs. Its magical powers emanate from its head’s cavity, which contains water obtained from its own home river or lake. Consequently, if a human encounters a kappa, he should perform with great ostentation a very deep, respectful bow. Not wishing to seem disrespectful, the kappa will return the bow, with equal ostentation – but as it does so the water in its head cavity will of course pour out, thereby rendering the kappa powerless until it can refill it. If, however, the human scoops up some water from the kappa’s aquatic domain and refills its cavity before it has chance to do so itself, from then on the kappa must serve the human faithfully for all eternity.

THE BAKU

My own particular favourite animal yokai (though it actually originated in Chinese folklore before becoming part of Japan’s pantheon of monsters), the baku looks quite ferocious - combining the tail of an ox and the body and paws of a tiger with the eyes of a rhinoceros and the head, trunk, and tusks of an elephant (as well as, occasionally, the wings of a dragon). Although it is sometimes referred to colloquially as a goblin elephant, this extraordinary mammalian composite is a very benevolent beast (unlike most yokai), and performs an extremely useful service to humans. For when it appears at night, it devours a person’s bad dreams, before they have chance to transform into fully-fledged nightmares.

In modern times, depictions of the baku have gradually changed, so that nowadays it is no longer portrayed as a chimaera sporting features drawn from several different beasts, but instead as a recognisable tapir - one species of which, the Malayan tapir Tapirus indicus, is already a well known creature in Asia.

THE WAIRA

Another veritable chimaera among Japan’s heterogeneous array of animal yokai is the waira. This mountain-frequenting monster has the head of a ferocious dog, an ursine body the size of a cow, a pair of very large feathered eagle wings as well as impressively-clawed eagle-like feet, and a long bushy-tipped tail.

The male waira’s dense hairy pelage is usually very dark in colour, whereas the female’s is reddish. It generally uses its scythe-shaped claws to dig up rodents and other earth-dwelling creatures that it feeds upon, but will not hesitate to attack and devour any human mountaineer unfortunate enough to encounter it.

THE NEKOMATA

If a domestic cat attains a venerable age, or grows above a certain size, or its tail attains too great a length, it may transform into a nekomata. This formidable animal yokai still superficially resembles a domestic cat (albeit one the size of a leopard), but is instantly distinguished from all normal cats by its tail, which has split longitudinally into two completely separate tails, and also by its ability to walk upright on its hind legs.

Other strange but highly undesirable talents of this feline monster include the capability to reanimate and take control of fresh human corpses merely by leaping over them, to generate fireballs inside the house in which it dwells, and even to kill its owner and then shape-shift into their likeness in order to replace them. Not surprisingly, perhaps, in earlier times many Japanese cat-owners would have their cat’s tail docked, in order to prevent it from splitting into two and their cat thereby becoming a nekomata.

THE ONMORAKI

This demonic bird with glowing eyes and the ability to spurt flames from its beak is believed to be the transformed soul of a newly-dead person, and is commonly depicted as a black crane-like entity – though as seen here, Ishihara has chosen to portray it as a hairy-headed eagle.

Yet despite its seemingly-malevolent form, the onmoraki is actually an upholder of religious propriety, chastising with loud shrieks of abuse anyone that it finds sleeping inside the sermon hall of a temple, or any priest who fails to read his sutras.

THE NURE-ONNA

Often encountered on a wild expanse of coastline combing her long black hair and submerged from the waist down in the sea, seen like this the nure-onna resembles a beautiful naked young woman. And placed beside her is a bundle wrapped in rags that a human observer is likely to mistake for a baby. But if the human offers to hold this ‘baby’, and the nure-onna hands it over, the human will soon discover that it is nothing more than a very large stone, which instantly becomes so heavy that the human is rooted to the spot.

As soon as the nure-onna sees this, she rises up out of the water, revealing that in reality she is an enormous snake-woman, with her body from the waist down consisting of an almost limitless extent of scaly serpentine coils, measuring up to 1000 ft long. And as the trapped human gazes helplessly into her lidless ophidian eyes, the nure-onna opens her jaws, her long scarlet tongue flicks out, enwrapping her victim, and proceeds to suck every last drop of blood from the human’s body, until all that is left is a shrivelled, etiolated corpse.

THE JOROGUMO

Perhaps the most dangerous and evil animal yokai of any documented here is the jorogumo. This foul shape-shifting entity appears at night in the guise of a beautiful maiden, seeking to entice an unsuspecting man into some lonely, secluded location where rescue or escape is unlikely. As soon as she has trapped him there, often by hypnotising him with seductive music played by her on a type of Japanese lute known as a biwa, the jorogumo transforms into its real form – that of an enormous bloodthirsty spider.

This hideous monster swiftly ensnares and enshrouds its helpless human victim with thick strands of gossamer as strong as cords of steel, before injecting his web-trussed body with potent venom, and then devouring his paralysed form while he is still alive. If, however, he is carrying a weapon, suspects quickly that the maiden luring him away is in fact a jorogumo, and can mortally wound her, she will betray her true were-spider identity by transforming into her arachnid alter-ego before dying.

Much as I am intrigued and quite fascinated by them as an adult, I am nonetheless grateful that, whereas children in Japan are seemingly brought up quite routinely on stories featuring their nation’s multifarious and quite frequently murderous assemblage of yokai, as a child in England I was reared on the decidedly less bloodthirsty exploits of Doctor Dolittle!

'FLYING SNAKE' - A NEW CRYPTOZOOLOGICAL JOURNAL

2011-04-16T22:59:00.015+01:00

It’s always great to see a new cryptozoological periodical, especially one in hard-copy form, with pages that you can touch and turn with your fingers instead of with an impersonal, intangible tap of a stylus – call me old-fashioned, but for all their promise of instant access, e-books to me are nothing more than soulless text, whereas a real book is also an experience, even a friend, to enjoy and rejoice in. So I welcome with unadulterated enthusiasm the long-awaited, much-anticipated first issue (April 2011) of Flying Snake - fellow cryptozoological investigator Richard Muirhead’s brand-new hard-copy journal of cryptozoology, folklore, and forteana. (Having said that, Richard does plan to publish a pdf version in due course, but he will continue with the hard-copy version too.)

Like me, Richard has a particular interest in unearthing very unusual and obscure reports from the literature and in collecting hitherto-unpublicised accounts from correspondents, and Flying Snake certainly does not disappoint. Within its professionally-produced 68 pages, it covers a veritable crypto-cornucopia of extraordinary subjects from around the globe – including reports of flying snakes (naturally!) from Wales, as well as unidentified flying lizards in Australia, pink-tusked elephants from China, the devil crabs of South Shields, a mermaid from Israel, a couple of fascinating Nandi bear reports that were new to me, giant centipedes in Hong Kong, an article by me concerning a previously obscure equine cryptid from Iberia, and lots more!

With a planned publication schedule of 3 issues per year, at a cost of just £3 per issue or £9 per annum, Flying Snake promises to be a very worthy investment for anyone interested in cryptozoology and wider animal-related mysteries or anomalies.

Issues of Flying Snake can be purchased from: Flying Snake Press, 112 High Street, Macclesfield, Cheshire SK11 7QQ, UK.

Cheques and postal orders should be made out to Richard Muirhead; or for online PayPal payments, visit:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richmuirhead/cryptozoology/

For further details, visit the Flying Snake Press website, at:

http://www.flyingsnakepress.co.uk

GOING WILD OVER THE WILD AMERICAN HOUND – YOUR ASSISTANCE IS REQUESTED!

2011-04-13T02:47:00.011+01:00

Johann Daniel Meyer’s mysterious ‘wild American hound’

Here’s an odd little conundrum for you to cogitate upon at your leisure, should you be so inclined. During an online surfing session a few days ago, I happened upon the curious illustration presented above.

Details concerning it are sparse in the extreme, but here is what I have been able to uncover so far. Measuring 12 inches by 8 inches, the image has a German title that translates as ‘wild American hound’, and is a hand-coloured copperplate engraving by Johann Daniel Meyer that appeared in his Angenehmer und nützlicher Zeit-Vertreib mit Betrachtung curioser Vorstellungen allerhand kriechender, fliegender und schwimmender, auf dem Land und im Wasser sich befindender und nährender Thiere etc - a three-volume wildlife tome published between 1748 and 1756 in Nuremberg, Germany.

As can be readily perceived from this engraving, however, whatever the creature depicted by it may be, it is certainly not a hound, nor, indeed, a canid, of any kind (wild and/or American notwithstanding!). So what is it?

When I first looked at it, I initially thought of the Virginia opossum Didelphis virginiana, because the engraved creature does bear a degree of overall resemblance to this largest and most famous of modern-day New World marsupials. I even found an online photo of the Virginia opossum, reproduced here, that vaguely recalls it.

Virginia opossum

Even so, Meyer’s mystery beast can be readily differentiated by its wholly brown colouration, in particular its dark face and its body’s extremely short, uniformly brown fur – in stark contrast to the white face and the longer, shaggy, grey body fur of the Virginia opossum. Meyer’s beast may have a bare tail, which, if so, likens it to the latter species, but, equally, it may simply have very short fur – the engraving does not make this clear.

Engraving of kinkajou

In addition to the Virginia opossum, I have also considered those uniformly brown-furred, Neotropical raccoon cousins known respectively as the kinkajou Potos flavus and the olingos (a quintet of Bassaricyon species). Again, as shown here, superficially these are somewhat similar to Meyer’s beast, but none of them is native to North America.

Olingo (Fiona Reid – Field Guide to Mammals of Central America)

So unless the ‘American’ in ‘wild American hound’ was being used in its very broadest sense, i.e. appertaining to anywhere within the entire New World, rather than its much more common and more specific usage as a contraction of the United States of America, I have once again come to a halt in my search for this mystifying mammal’s taxonomic identity – unless, gentle readers, you could offer any suggestions or additional information? If so, please post details here, as I’d very greatly welcome them!