RUFFED CAT REVELATIONS - LESSER-KNOWN MEXICAN MYSTERY CATS, PART 1 (OF 3)

 

Reconstruction of the possible appearance in life of Mexico's mysterious ruffed cat (created by me using Grok X1)

When cryptozoologists think of Mexican mystery cats, the example that always comes instantly to mind is the onza – that elusive gracile enigma that may simply be  a bona fide puma, taxonomically speaking, or may not be at all, because the controversy regarding its taxonomic status is still far from resolved (click here to read my detailed ShukerNature article on this subject, and check out my definitive book on feline cryptids, Mystery Cats of the World Revisited, for additional information).

However, it is by no means the only Mexican feline cryptid – I was aware of three others, but earlier this year Mexican palaeo-artist and cryptozoological enthusiast Hodari Nundu, who is also a longstanding friend of mine on Facebook, presented on his FB page some information regarding several additional ones. Not only that, he also prepared a series of exquisite full-colour illustrations of some of these creatures, and has now very kindly permitted me to include them in my exclusive coverage here on ShukerNature of his home country's fascinating diversity of lesser-known feline cryptids – thanks very much Hodari!

Having spent a very productive Christmas Day morning yesterday writing this article (living alone with no family any more, I enjoy Christmas in my own way, by doing what gives me pleasure and keeps my mind occupied, which is writing), its final sizeable word count persuaded me that it would be better served split into three separate, reader-friendly parts rather than presented as a single decidedly lengthy read. So that's what I've done. Herewith, therefore, is Part 1 (with Parts 2 and 3 following later this week), which I have devoted entirely to what may sound somewhat paradoxical – the best-known of these lesser-known Mexican mystery cats. Namely, the ruffed cat.

 

THE RUFFED CAT

I first documented this hitherto obscure Mexican mystery cat in my very first book, Mystery Cats of the World (1989), but expanded my coverage of it three decades later in that book's updated, greatly-enlarged second edition, the afore-mentioned Mystery Cats of the World Revisited. Here is what I wrote about it there:

The onza may still share Mexico with one other mystery felid. To my knowledge, however, this second crypto-cat's existence is based solely upon a single account, written by the American zoologist, veteran cryptozoologist, and popular writer Ivan T. Sanderson in the form of an article published in April 1973 by Pursuit - the official periodical of the Society for the Investigation of The Unexplained (SITU), which Sanderson founded. In his article, no name was allocated to the creature, but for reasons that will soon become evident, I shall refer to it here as the ruffed cat.

During 1940, travelling alone through Mexico on a mammalogical collecting trip, Sanderson arrived at an unnamed mountain settlement in the state of Nayarit's Sierra mountains. These are totally separated from the neighbouring Sierra Madre Occidentale ranges, and possess their own distinctive flora and fauna. At this settlement, a few locals spoke Spanish, and Sanderson let it be known that he was seeking specimens of a particular form of squirrel. The locals promised to obtain some for him, and in the meantime they brought along a number of skins of other mammals, in the hope of selling these to him too.

Amongst them was a large and very tough skin of a most unusual cat. The skin measured just over 6 ft from nose-tip to tail-base, with a further l.5 ft constituting its relatively short tail. Of course, it is difficult to say how closely these measurements reflected this cat's actual length when alive, because it would be virtually impossible to ascertain how much the skin had stretched or shrunk during drying. Intriguingly (in view of the onza), Sanderson noted: "The legs appeared to have been rather long compared to, say, a house-cat or a puma". The paws were still attached to the skin and were very large, well-furred, and splayed, with most of them still possessing their claws, which were bright yellow in colour and very clearly retractile. The cat's face was short (again like the onza).

The cat's pelage was firm dorsally, soft ventrally, and predominantly brown in colour. The head and shoulders lacked markings, but the flanks and upper limbs bore a series of wavy stripes in alternate light and dark shades of brown, whereas the lower limbs were very dark brown in colour, almost approaching black. The ridge of the spine running along its back was also dark brown, and (as far as Sanderson could recall) so too was the tail.

By far the most outstanding feature of the skin, however, was that the hairs sited just behind its shoulders appeared to grow forward to yield a large ruff encircling the neck and covering the ears from above and behind.

 

Artistic representation of the ruffed cat (© owner of this illustration is unknown to me despite searching online, but I found the illustration itself here on the Cryptid Wiki website, where it is attributed to FreakingNews.com – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis only for educational/review purposes only)

Sanderson stated that he bought this skin, and another smaller pelt of this same strange cat form that was in poorer condition but with sharper stripes. Together with other mammal skins that he bought, these felid pelts (which apparently cost a lot more than any of the others) were sewn up in several layers of sacking, and were finally stored in the government jail of Belize, which Sanderson was using as a base.

Tragically, however, during a subsequent trip the jail was lashed by a severe hurricane and, being at sea-level, was completely flooded out. As a result, everything not in bottles was totally ruined, including the skins.

This is a most compelling, but, sadly, rather intangible affair, because there is so little in the way of hard facts that can be followed up. The area itself is unnamed; the skins are lost; and Ivan Sanderson, who travelled there alone and hence was the only named eyewitness to them, can no longer be questioned, as he passed away in 1973. The only hope is the possible existence still of the jail - perhaps, if it does survive, records regarding the skins may too, which could add some details to the account left behind by Sanderson.

 

A third ruffed cat representation (created by me using Grok X1)

What could these mystery cats have been? Lynxes have relatively long legs and short tail, large paws, and thick fur around the neck, which can look a little like a ruff, but no lynx possesses anything remotely as extensive as the ruff described by Sanderson for the Mexican ruffed cat. Moreover, as a trained zoologist and a mammal collector, Sanderson would surely have compared its skins specifically with lynxes if they had appeared comparable with such. Instead, the detailed description that he gave does not fit that of any known felid.

The only sequel that I know of to this sorry saga is that Sanderson claimed that he later saw another skin of this very distinctive cat form on sale at a tourist store in the big market at Colima, situated at the south end of Nayarit's mountain block. Regrettably, however, the price that its owner was asking was far beyond what Sanderson could afford.

It would seem that the only way to follow up any aspect relating to the Mexican ruffed cat is to do what Sanderson suggested at the end of his article:

"…pay a visit to the market in Colima. They may still have unknown cat skins for sale."

They may indeed.

Since the publication of the present book's original edition in 1989, two additional snippets of information that may have possible relevance to the ruffed cat saga have come to my attention. The first of these was a brief but tantalising paragraph in Harold T. Wilkins's book Secret Cities of Old South America (1952):

"At Atitlan, in Guatemala, is another monstrosity carved on a big boulder. It takes the form of a cat with a sort of ruff at his throat, which points to the east. On top of the boulder is a basin, but what purpose this cavity served, unless to hold a human victim's sacrificial blood, is unknown."

Guatemala is of course situated immediately to the south of Mexico, and, indeed, only separated from it as an independent nation in its own right during the early 1800s. Consequently, it would not be implausible if the ruffed cat had once existed in Guatemala as well as in modern-day Mexico.

The second, related item is the following email posted on the cz@onelist.com cryptozoology discussion group by CFZ founder Jonathan Downes on 1 June 1998:

"I think that there is still evidence for there being a new and undiscovered species of large felid in Mexico. Across Mexico City, for example, there are a number of pieces of stylised statuary which appear to show a puma like animal with a brushlike mane like a punk-rocker's Mohican! This animal seems to be a well known archetype within the Mexican culture."

A mystery Mohican cat from Mexico – I like the sound of that!

In addition, on 6 June 2017 Hodari posted on my FB page the following thought-provoking information, plus two photos of the sculpture in question:

This is an Aztec "cuauhxicalli", a stone recipient meant to receive the heart of human sacrifices. This piece is from the Anthropology and History Museum at Mexico City. The curious thing about it is that, even though it is labelled as depicting a jaguar, it has two unusual traits that would suggest otherwise. For starters, it doesn't have any spots, which the Aztec were careful to etch in most jaguar representations. Also, there's that strange ruff on its cheeks, more reminiscent of a tiger or lynx than a jaguar. Cougars lack spots as adults but they don't have anything resembling this ruff. It can't be a bobcat because it has long tail and small round ears. So what is it? A fantastical creature, product of mixing jaguar, puma and bobcat features? Or maybe something else? A tiger? A surviving American lion? Unknown felid? I thought you'd find it interesting.

 

The two photos of the above-described Aztec cuauhxicalli shaped like a mysterious ruffed cat (© Hodari Nundu/Anthropology and History Museum, Mexico City – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

I certainly do find it interesting. Although its ruff is seemingly less pronounced than that of the skins procured by Sanderson (and its tail possibly longer), this Aztec-sculpted creature certainly doesn't correspond to any currently-known Mexican felid, as noted by Hodari, and is yet another example, therefore, of a mystifying cat from this country that sports a very noticeable ruff.

But where is the mystifying ruffed cat today? I know of not a single modern-day report of a living cat fitting its instantly-recognisable description.

How ironic it would be if the skins encountered by Sanderson were from the very last representatives of a felid so distinctive, and, seemingly, so greatly feared too, that in ages past humans had been sacrificed to a graven image of it, but which had subsequently slipped into extinction before the modern scientific world had even had time to acknowledge its existence. From deity to deceased, in just a few centuries?

 

Be sure to check out Parts 2 and 3 of this article, in which I document no fewer than six additional feline cryptids of the lesser-known Mexican variety, when I post them on ShukerNature later this week.

 

The two editions of my Mystery Cats of the World book (© Dr Karl Shuker/Robert Hale Limited/Coachwhip Publications)

 

 

VALERO'S ROCK JAGUAR AND RED JAGUAR - TWO LESSER-KNOWN BRAZILIAN MYSTERY CATS

 

Did Valero's kintanari look something like this? (© William M. Rebsamen)

American correspondent Ted Leonard kindly brought to my attention some years ago a fascinating book that mentions two Brazilian mystery cats that were previously unknown to me.

Written by Ettore Biocca, first published in English in 1970 (it was originally published in Italian), and based upon firsthand testimony related to him by its subject, the book is Yanoáma: The Narrative of a White Girl Kidnapped by Amazonian Indians. It recounts the remarkable true-life story of Helena Valero, who was abducted as an 11-year-old Italian girl by Yanoáma natives back in the 1930s and reared by them in the Amazonian jungle.

One of these crypto-felids was known locally as the rock jaguar, and was briefly witnessed one day by Valero while in the company of some Yanoáma women and hunters. She described it as follows:

It was morning that day and we had seen among the rocks, as if in a window, a jaguar's head. It was a kind of jaguar which I did not know: it wasn't one of those spotted ones or those red ones that they call kintanari. It was a brown jaguar and it had long hair on its head: it was the rock jaguar.

If this description is accurate and authentic, I suspect that it was not a jaguar of any kind, but rather some other, unidentified large-sized cat, brown in colour, with what seems to have been a mane. Intriguingly, that is not the only description on record of such a felid from South America, as a maned mystery cat has also been reported from Ecuador (see my mystery cat books for further details).

 

A taxiderm specimen of an apparent reddish leopard (seemingly not sun-faded) spied and photographed by Bill Rebsamen, plus Bill's red jaguar painting (inset) (both images © William M. Rebsamen)

But what of the equally anomalous kintanari or red jaguar that Valero alluded to? Unfortunately, that single brief mention quoted above is the only time that this strange creature is referred to anywhere in the book.

Just as there are freak all-black (melanistic) and all-white (albinistic) jaguar individuals on record, might there also be occasional all-red (erythristic) specimens? Certainly, erythristic individuals have been documented with certain other felid species, including the leopard, tiger, and jaguarundi. Alternatively, perhaps it was not a jaguar at all, but instead some other large felid, with reddish fur - a burly rufous puma, possibly?

And just in case you were wondering about the taxiderm specimen of a reddish leopard depicted above, here’s what I wrote about it in my book Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery (2012):

 

THE BLACK PANTHER THAT WAS RED!

On 12 September 1998, American wildlife artist Bill Rebsamen was in Springfield, Missouri, and paid a visit to the Bass Pro Shop's famous Fish and Wildlife Museum. It possessed many spectacular exhibits - but none more so, at least in Bill's eyes, than a certain taxiderm-mounted big cat of amazing appearance (as seen in Bill's photo of it above). It resembled a black panther (i.e. a melanistic leopard), patterned with dark rosettes - but instead of its fur's background colouration being black or dark brown, it was instead a rich mahogany-red!

I have several cases on file of erythristic leopards, i.e. mutant individuals whose fur was reddish (including the rosettes) instead of yellow (with black rosettes), the most recent being the so-called 'strawberry leopard' lately spied within South Africa's Madikwe Game Reserve and photographed there by safari guide Deon de Villiers (National Geographic News, 12 April 2012 [several additional strawberry leopards have ben observed and photographed in Africa since then]), but no previous data concerning red-furred black panthers. Sometimes, a dark taxiderm specimen fades during the course of time, the mounted skin becoming brown in those areas exposed to sunlight - as from a nearby window, for instance. However, Bill viewed this panther from every angle, front and back, and could see no sign of fading on any portion of its skin; it was uniformly red all over.

 

This ShukerNature blog article is excerpted and enlarged from my book Mystery Cats of the World Revisited (2020), the greatly-expanded, fully-updated second edition of Mystery Cats of the World (1989), long recognized as the definitive book on crypto-felids.

 

Mystery Cats of the World Revisited (© Dr Karl Shuker/Anomalist Books, front cover artwork © William M. Rebsamen)

 

 

REVIEWING 'CARNIFEX' - A CRYPTOZOOLOGY-THEMED CREATURE FEATURE FROM DOWN UNDER

 

 

Publicity poster for Carnifex, showing the characters gazing up in awe at some formidable claw marks left upon a  tree trunk by a large unknown animal of seemingly arboreal ability (© Sean Lahiff/Dancing Road Productions/Arclight Films/Universal Pictures Content Group – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Thanks to longstanding Australian FB friend and crypto-enthusiast Tim Morris kindly making it available to me - thanks Tim! – my movie watch on 26 October 2023 was the fairly recent Australian cryptozoology-themed creature feature Carnifex.

Directed by Sean Lahiff, and released just a year ago in December 2022 by Universal Pictures, Carnifex takes its name in a general sense from the Latin word for 'butcher' or even (during the Roman era) 'executioner'. However, wildlife enthusiasts, especially cryptozoologists, will also be aware of its more specific, zoological meaning.

Consequently, if you're of the latter persuasion, you will have no doubt guessed straight away from this movie's title that while conservationists Ben (Harry Greenwood) and Grace (Sisi Stringer) accompanied by documentary camerawoman Bailey (Alexandra Park) are uncovering and recording deep within the Australian outback the vast wildlife devastation caused there by some recent, unprecedented bushfires, they also make the startling, totally unexpected, and truly terrifying discovery of a living marsupial lion Thylacoleo carnifex. For once they do, they also discover – very swiftly – just how hyper-aggressive and rapacious the creature is, forcing them into a desperate bid for survival against this mega-belligerent blast from the past, their thoughts echoing only too emphatically the film's tagline: "Some species should remain extinct".

This ferocious species was – or is? –  a predatory pouched mammal of feline form, leopard or lioness stature (opinions vary), and possibly arboreal capabilities, but officially deemed extinct for many millennia. However, some cryptozoologists feel that its putative reclusive survival into the present day may explain occasional reports of an Aussie mystery beast known as the yarri or Queensland tiger. It may even have inspired the spoof killer koala called the drop bear (koalas and marsupial lions were actually quite closely related). Most of this pertinent background information, however, is never alluded to in the movie, sadly.

 

Yarri or Queensland tiger, based upon eyewitness descriptions (© Dami Editore srl – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Speaking of which: its build-up to this very dramatic discovery, although very lengthy (see later), is engrossing, and features a trio of lead likeable characters that interact well together, interspersed with plenty of breathtaking shots of genuine Aussie Outback Nevertheless, Carnifex suffers from two very significant, crucial problems.

Firstly, once the story truly gets going, it consists almost entirely of night-time scenes, resulting in actual sightings of the creature (with totally black pelage, thereby rendering it even more difficult to see against the darkness)  being as shadowy and brief as they are seldom and inconclusive, i.e. plenty of growling and flesh-tearing sounds, but visually all but non-existent.

Secondly, when in this 90-odd-minute movie's last 10 minutes we finally - finally! - get to see two blink-and-you'll-miss-them close-up full-face shots of the (very) anatagonistic animal in question (so fleeting in fact that after seeing them I then had to rewind and laboriously seek them out via freeze-frame in order to be sure of what they actually revealed – something, incidentally, that cinema audiences for this movie would not have had the luxury of being able to do), guess what?

The film makers had only gone and got their Thylacoleo carnifex fundamentally wrong – and after having kept their increasingly impatient viewers waiting so long to see it properly too!

 

A selection of photo-stills from Carnifex depicting the latter beast's brief appearances and, especially, its dentition – click picture montage to enlarge for viewing purposes (© Sean Lahiff/Dancing Road Productions/Arclight Films/Universal Pictures Content Group – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

All placental carnivores have fangs consisting of enlarged upper canine teeth (and so too, for that matter, does, or did, the thylacine or Tasmanian marsupial wolf Thylacinus cynocephalus, officially deemed extinct in 1936 but which may still linger on in this island's more remote regions). In stark contrast, conversely, the tusk-like fang counterparts of Thylacoleo were actually greatly-enlarged upper incisors (it also sported a pair of extremely enlarged lower incisors, but its upper canines were only very small and stubby). Yet in this movie, its Thylacoleo has been given enlarged upper canines, not incisors, thereby rendering their Carnifex dentally deranged!

Moreover, the two close-up shots of its front paws also revealed a telling absence of the huge thumb claw constituting another morphologcal characteristic of this unique predator.

Judging from these major morphological discrepancies, I can only assume that someone apparently hadn't done their zoological homework when researching T. carnifex for this Carnifex-entitled movie. Needless to say, this is a great shame, especially as otherwise it is a most enjoyable film, with engaging characters amid the savage beauty of the Australian bush, and it would have been a wonderful showcase for a truly original animal antagonist never previously represented in a cinematic role.

Then again, it is fair to say that many viewers are unlikely to have in-depth knowledge of thylacoleonid dentition anyway. So they will simply not notice or recognize the inaccuracy of the latter's depiction in this movie (particularly as it has no effect upon the plot itself), thereby enabling them to enjoy the movie as an otherwise very watchable, well-presented conservation-minded creature feature, especially one produced by a small independent film company as opposed to a mega-bucks Hollywood studio. Also on the positive side, it does mean that a morphologically-accurate 'living Thylacoleo'-themed monster movie is still waiting to be made.

 

Thylacoleo carnifex model produced by Jeff Johnson and owned by Rebecca Lang, two longstanding Facebook friends of mine (© Jeff Johnson/Rebecca Lang – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Incidentally, a novel written by Australian horror author Matthew J. Hellscream (I'm guessing that this may be a pseudonym…) that was published in 2016, i.e. 6 years before the present movie under review here was released, was also entitled Carnifex, and also featured some visitors to a remote area of the Australian bush encountering living but scientifically-undiscovered marsupial lions. According to various Adelaide Advertiser articles, Hellstream took legal advice when the movie came out because of perceived title and plot similarities, but that is not what I am concerned with here. What I am concerned with is that the very striking illustration of one such beast present on the front cover of Hellstream's novel depicts it with totally accurate dentition – click here to view it, and take note of the greatly enlarged incisors, and all but absent canines, plus the shearing blade-like carnassials further back.

I don't own a copy of this novel (yet), but I've heard tell that the cover artwork was prepared by acclaimed horror artist Frank Walls, who created the front cover for Hellscream's previous novel, Metro 7, but I can't confirm this. Whoever did design it, however, clearly made the effort to portray accurately the unique dentition of this truly unique mammalian predator.

Anyway, if you'd like to peer through the darkness of the Outback at night in search of the toothy terror lurking in this movie, be sure to click here to watch an official Carnifex trailer on YouTube.

Finally: this review originally appeared in ShukerNature's fellow blog, Shuker In MovieLand. To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

My book Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors (2016), which contains a very comprehensive coverage of the yarri or Queensland tiger, and featuring prominently in the bottom-left portion of its front cover an artistic representation by cryptozoology artist William M. Rebsamen of what this elusive, mysterious creature may look like if it is indeed a surviving representative of the marsupial lion Thylacoleo carnifex, complete with accurate dental depiction for the latter species (© Dr Karl Shuker/William M. Rebsamen/Coachwhip Publications)

 

THE MOUNTAIN OF THE MOON AND AN AFRICAN BUNYIP

 

Photo-still of the dingonek-inspired African bunyip featured in the Bengali blockbuster movie Chander Pahar (© Kamaleshwar Mukherjee/Shree Venkatesh Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Yes, you read this ShukerNature article's title correctly – an African bunyip, not an Australian one. Allow me to explain.

One of the most famous Bengali adventure novels is Chander Pahar (retitled as Mountain of the Moon in subsequent English-language translations), which was written by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, an Indian writer in the Bengali language, and was originally published in 1937. Just under a decade ago, it was turned into a blockbuster Bengali movie that I have long wanted to watch, and finally succeeded in doing so a fortnight ago, thanks to local friend and Amazon Prime subscriber Jane Cooper, who very kindly enabled me to watch it at long last by purchasing it on AP – thanks Jane!

Directed by Kamaleshwar Mukherjee, released in 2013 by Shree Venkatesh Films, and set in the years 1909-1910, Chander Pahar follows the exciting (albeit sometimes positively Munchausenesque!) adventures of a 20-year-old Bengali man named Shankar Ray Choudhuri (played by Indian movie/singing megastar Dev). He has long dreamed of being a derring-do explorer in Africa, but seems destined to spend his life much more mundanely, working as an administrator at the local jute mill in his small Bengali town instead. Happily, however, fate steps in, in the shape of a relative who secures for Shankar a job in Kenya, as the station-master of a tiny railway terminus miles from anywhere.

 

Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay (public domain)

This posting becomes the vital stepping stone that Shankar has long sought, to set him on the path to becoming a daring African explorer. Many thrilling exploits duly follow, so be sure to click here in order to read my comprehensive plot description and review of Chander Pahar on my companion Shuker In MovieLand blog. Some of these, moreover, are so implausible that Baron Munchausen himself may well have thrown up his hands in despair!

However, the movie's principal focus is Shankar's eventful journey with an older, veteran Portuguese explorer named Diego Alvarez (played by celebrated South African actor Gérard Rudolf) to an inhospitable and virtually inaccessible arid land of high hills and even higher mountains known as the Richtersveld, situated in the northwestern corner of what is today South Africa's Northern Cape province. They are seeking a legendary diamond mine supposedly hidden inside a cave deep within a mysterious Richtersveld mountain known as Chander Pahar – the Mountain of the Moon.

According to local legend, however, this diamond mine is fiercely guarded by the cave's monstrous inhabitant – a gigantic beast still-undescribed by science, but which for reasons never explained either in this movie or in Bandyopadhyay's original novel is known here as the bunyip (despite the latter name being in reality an aboriginal name specifically applied to Australia's most famous indigenous mystery beast!). It turns out that the bunyip has already killed one explorer who accompanied Alvarez during an earlier attempt by him to locate the mine and relieve it of some of its hidden treasures. Will history repeat itself during this latest expedition, in which Shankar is now Alvarez's companion? I'll leave you to read up the full storyline here on my Shuker In MovieLand blog, and concentrate now in this ShukerNature article upon this movie's cryptozoology content – the bunyip.

 

Three more photo-stills of the ferocious bunyip (© Kamaleshwar Mukherjee/Shree Venkatesh Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Chander Pahar has proved hugely popular – having grossed US$ 3.41 million worldwide so far, it is the second highest grossing Bengali movie of all time (indeed, the only Bengali movie to exceed its takings is Amazon Obhijaan, released in 2017, which is itself a sequel to Chander Pahar, once again centering upon the character of Sankhar, but this time the action takes place in South America). Nevertheless, it has not been without its critics, especially among literary purists who believe that it has taken too many liberties in adapting Bandyopadhyay's novel for the big screen – but none more so than with its presentation of the bunyip.

In the novel, the bunyip is never directly seen – a shadow of it moving outside the tent of Shankar and Alvarez one evening is as much as is offered to the readers, leaving the rest to their imagination. In contrast, this movie presents the viewers with a truly memorable CGI bunyip in all its hideous glory, and gory activity, but which some reviewers have denigrated for destroying the monster's mystique, and others for what they considered to be its inferior quality (similar criticisms regarding their quality, or lack of it, have also been aimed at a CGI-engendered volcanic eruption).

As revealed here via the above series of photo-stills, the bunyip is undeniably a startling creation – unlike any beast known to science, that's for sure. A waddling, feline-faced abomination with a swollen, toad-like body and an exceedingly long, whip-like tail, plus a huge and revoltingly-vascular, pendant throat-sac, livid crimson in colour and hanging down so far that the creature seems in permanent danger of tripping over it when galumphing after one of its potential human victims. Most noticeable of all, however, is its pair of truly enormous vertical fangs that any prehistoric sabre-toothed cat would have given its high teeth for (so to speak!). (In fact, a Kindle e-book edition of Bandyopadhyay's novel actually depicts the bunyip on the front cover as a bona fide living sabre-tooth.)

 

A Kindle edition of Bandyopadhyay's novel Chander Pahar in which the bunyip is depicted as a living sabre-tooth (© Kindle – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Interestingly, however, this terrifying apparition does recall a traditional African mystery beast known as the dingonek (click here to read my extensive ShukerNature article surveying this and various other comparable African cryptids, the so-called jungle walruses). Moreover, the dingonek is actually mentioned in Bandyopadhyay's novel in addition to the bunyip. In contrast, as noted earlier, I have yet to discover why Bandyopadhyay applied the name of an exclusively Australian water monster to his terrestrial African mystery beast.

According to traditional African lore, conversely, the dingonek is amphibious in nature, i.e. both an adept swimmer in rivers and a formidable adversary on land – so why didn't Bandyopadhyay simply call his monster the dingonek instead of distinguishing it from the latter? Notwithstanding this etymological enigma, there is no denying that the climactic scene featuring a veritable duel to the death between Shankar's inventive brain and the bunyip's immense brawn is a highlight of the entire movie.

So, if you'd like to experience for yourself a glimpse of the thrills and spills that Shankar experiences during his search for the Mountain of the Moon and its hidden diamonds, be sure to click here to watch an official Chander Pahar trailer on YouTube showcasing its very stirring title song. (You can also watch the entire movie free here on YT, but only in the form of an Odia-language version with no English subtitles, sadly.) And don't forget to click here if you'd like to view an excerpt from Shankar's chilling confrontation with the belligerent bunyip! And for further details regarding the dingonek and other African sabre-toothed cryptids, check out my recent book Mystery Cats of the World Revisited.

 

Publicity posters for the original Bengali (top) and American (bottom) cinema releases of Chander Pahar (© Kamaleshwar Mukherjee/Shree Venkatesh Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

A BLACKER SHADE OF DARK - THE GENETIC EXPLANATION FOR PSEUDO-MELANISTIC TIGERS, REVEALED AT LAST!

 

Exquisite painting of a pseudo-melanistic tiger, prepared specifically for my writings by acclaimed animal artist and longstanding friend Bill Rebsamen – thanks Bill! (© William M. Rebsamen)

True melanism is when an animal's background colour is abnormally dark (due to the expression of a mutant gene allele), so much so that any surface patterns or markings are hidden by it, as with the rosettes of a black leopard, for example.

Despite many eyewitness reports and anecdotal accounts on file, however, no melanistic or black tiger has ever been scientifically confirmed, and this exotic cat form thus remains a cryptid – claimed to exist by locals but not verified by science (for more details on ShukerNature regarding melanistic aka black tigers, click here).

Yet in recent years, following largely unconfirmed sightings dating back half a century, media reports have documented several living specimens in eastern India's Similipal Nature Reserve of what they refer to as black tigers. Photographs of these supposed black tigers, however, swiftly confirm that they are not melanistic specimens. Instead, they represent an equally intriguing but reverse phenomenon, known correctly as pseudo-melanism.

This is characterised by the animals' background colour being normal but their surface markings being abnormally abundant and broad, and having fused together to yield an almost unbroken, solid black mass of dark pigmentation, especially dorsally and upon the tigers' flanks, that has largely obscured the background colouration.

 

Skin of a reverse-coated pseudo-melanistic tiger from Similipal, India (© Dr Lala A.K. Singh)

Until very recently, the genetic basis of pseudo-melanism in tigers has remained unknown. In September 2021, however, a newly-published study in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) conducted by a team of researchers from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bangalore revealed that this condition was the result of a rare mutation in one gene, Transmembrane Aminopeptidase Q (or Taqpep, for short).

Recessively inherited variants of this gene are also responsible for the markings in domestic cats, and in the ornately striped king mutant form of the normally spotted cheetah.

Moreover, whereas it has been estimated that up to 37% of all tigers in the Similipal Nature Reserve are pseudo-melanistic, there do not appear to be any such specimens anywhere else in India. The researchers believe this unusual situation to be due to a combination of a small founder population at Similipal, its isolation from other tiger populations, and inbreeding within the Similipal tiger population. Also, these tigers' darker colouration may be giving them a selective advantage when hunting in the shadowy forests of Similipal.

For further information on ShukerNature concerning pseudo-melanistic tigers, click here; and for feline pseudo-melanism in general, click here. See also this fascinating subject's coverage in my trilogy of cryptozoological cat books – namely, Mystery Cats of the World, Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery, and Mystery Cats of the World Revisited.

 

My trilogy of cryptozoological cat books (© Dr Karl Shuker & Robert Hale Ltd/CFZ Press/Anomalist Books respectively)

 

THE ISLE OF WIGHT MEGA-FOOTPRINTS – A CAUTIONARY CRYPTOZOOLOGICAL TALE

My cast of one of the set of Isle of Wight mega-sized animal footprints from April 1994 (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Here's a cautionary little tale for cryptozoology that I included during a lecture presented by me on modern-day mystery beast reports at the very first Fortean Times UnConvention, held in London during 18-19 June 1994. However, I've never previously documented it anywhere online – so it's high time that I did.

In April 1994, naturalist Martin Trippett from the Isle of Wight (a large island situated off southern England) informed me that a garden in the IOW town of Ride had recently received an unusual visitor. The garden had been freshly dug on the day in question by its owners, who then placed their garden rubbish in some bin-liners. The garden was completely enclosed by a 3-ft-high wall and its only entrance was via a gate, which they locked that night.

 

Showing what a bona fide big cat footprint looks like, here is a real lion spoor cast in brass as a (very!) heavy paperweight, placed alongside a ruler for scale purposes; it was purchased  for me by my mother Mary Shuker in South Africa, November 2008 (© Dr Karl Shuker)

The next morning, they found that some unidentified animal had been in their garden, ripping the bin liners to shreds and leaving huge footprints all over the freshly dug soil. The photograph opening this present ShukerNature article is of a cast of one set of those prints (later described to me over the phone by some IOW newspaper reporters), which Martin very kindly posted to me for my examination and permanent retention.

Measuring 4.5 in long and 4 in across, the prints had no claw marks at all, which ostensibly leaned towards a huge cat as an identity. However, when the casts were sent to me, I could see from the shape of the heel pad and the diverging placement of the toe pads that they were in fact dog prints, albeit from a very large and extremely well-manicured dog – so this is what I told the reporters.

 

Diagrams comparing dog and cat spoor – typical examples (click to enlarge for reading purposes) (© Trevor Beer – reproduced with his kind permission in my 1989 book Mystery Cats of the World and in its updated 2020 edition Mystery Cats of the World Revisited)

Inevitably, they were rather disappointed, as this dashed any hopes for them of dramatic headlines concerning giant cats on the loose. Nevertheless, they then confessed to me that they had actually been informed by the police that a Great Dane dog had been loose in this particular area for the past week, a huge breed that could very easily scale a 3-ft-high wall if it so chose (more details here).

All of which proves that however tempted you may be to give the media the story that it wants, regardless of your own personal opinion, it is not a good idea to do so. Cryptozoology has a nasty knack of coming back to haunt those who flirt with its favours.

 

Vintage photograph from 1910 of a Harlequin Great Dane (public domain)