EXPOSING A TRULY BATTY EXAMPLE OF A FAKE THUNDERBIRD PHOTOGRAPH

The fake thunderbird photograph exposed in this present ShukerNature article (photo-manipulator(s) unknown to me – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

The case of the missing thunderbird photograph is unquestionably one of the most tantalizing – and tormenting – cryptozoological cases on file. I have already documented it in detail here on ShukerNature as well as in my two prehistoric survivors books, which should all be consulted for comprehensive coverage. However, serving to set the scene for this present article's subject, here is a concise quote from my afore-mentioned ShukerNature account of this elusive (or illusive?) image:

It all (allegedly) began back in 1886, when an Arizona newspaper called the Tombstone Epitaph supposedly published a very striking photograph, which depicted a huge dead pterodactyl-like bird with open beak and enormous outstretched wings, nailed to a barn and flanked by some men. This bird was reputed to be a thunderbird, and judging from the size scale provided by the height of the men standing alongside it, its wingspan appeared to be an awesome 36 ft! In other words, it was three times greater than that of the wandering albatross Diomedea exulans - the bird species currently holding the record for the world's biggest modern-day wingspan.

Since then, countless people claim to have seen this same photo in various magazines published some time during the 1960s or early 1970s, but no-one can remember precisely where. Those publications thought to be likely sources of such a picture include Saga, True, Argosy, and various of the many Western-type magazines in existence during this period in America, but searches through runs of these publications have failed to uncover any evidence of it.

Nor has anyone come forward with a copy of this photo as published elsewhere, and the archives of the Tombstone Epitaph do not have any copy of it either.

A number of photos claimed to be this evanescent, iconic image have been aired over the years, especially online, but these have all been exposed as hoaxes.

I should also point out here that some people have claimed that the ostensibly-vanished photo seen by them actually portrayed a bona fide pterodactyl, not merely a pterodactyl-like bird. However, just a few years after the thunderbird photo was supposedly first published, another story of a huge winged wonder began circulating, and in the same geographical region. This one concerned a huge bona fide pterodactyl having been shot in an American desert, i.e. a totally separate storyline but which has subsequently been conflated with the missing thunderbird photo's storyline, especially in online accounts. Consequently, this may explain those eyewitness reports of having seen a photo of a dead pterodactyl, rather than of a dead bird, pinned with wings outstretched to a barn door.

As will be seen if you search my ShukerNature blog, I have personally exposed a number of hoax thunderbird photos, because I feel that it is very necessary to remove from further consideration such fakes, as they serve only to confuse and detract from serious investigations being made by various researchers (myself included) regarding the original, genuine thunderbird photograph, if indeed such a picture really does exist. And now, yet another fake thunderbird photo has emerged, but one that I was able to expose very quickly, as now fully revealed here.

During the early hours of yesterday morning (12 October 2020), longstanding Facebook friend Randi MacDonald (aka Randi Mosasaur) brought to my attention via a private message on FB the following photograph that she had found on Pinterest, but with no details concerning its origin. I reproduced it at the opening of this present ShukerNature article of mine, but here it is again:

The fake thunderbird photograph found on Pinterest by Randi (photo manipulator(s) unknown to me – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

As seen, it has the outward appearance of being a very old, sepia photograph depicting what looks initially like a dead pterodactylian pterosaur pinned with wings outstretched to the front of a barn, in front of which are standing a number of human figures that may conceivably be cowboys or soldiers, or some of each. In short, it closely matches verbal descriptions that have been given by those people claiming to have seen the original, missing thunderbird photograph but alleging that the creature in question was a pterodactyl or at least a pterodactyl-like entity rather than an unequivocal (albeit extremely large!) feathered bird.

However, even the most cursory of glances at this photograph revealed straight away to me that it was a hoax, due to the unambiguously fraudulent nature of the thunderbird portrayed in it. Even if we choose to ignore the scarcely inconsiderable fact that the most recent pterodactyls known from the current fossil record are at least 65 million years old, with no scientifically-confirmed modern-day living example known, thereby rendering as decidedly remote the likelihood of the thunderbird in this photo being genuine, the latter entity is instantly recognizable as a fake, because of its readily visible composite nature. For whereas it sports the crested, beaked head of a Pteranodon-like pterodactyl, the bone structure of its wings as seen through the wing membranes is diagnostically that of a bat!

Pterosaur wing's bone structure (top) and bat wing's bone structure (bottom) (© National Geographic – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

As shown above, a pterosaur's wing only contains a single greatly elongated finger, the 4^th, which runs along its outer edge within the wing membrane. Conversely, a bat's wing contains three greatly elongated fingers. These are the 3^rd, which runs along its outer edge within the wing membrane, plus the 4^th and the 5^th, both of which are contained further down within the wing membrane. In addition, the less elongated 2^nd finger is contained within the wing membrane above the 3^rd finger. This bat wing structure is precisely the version exhibited by the fake thunderbird's wings.

Yet even though within just a few moments of having first seen it I knew categorically that this photo was a fake, I decided to see out of sheer curiosity whether  I could uncover the major original components in it that had been utilized and converted via digital manipulation to yield its image. I began with the barn, and using a combination of search engines I soon discovered the original, unmodified barn photograph that had been used. A full-colour modern-day photo, it appears on numerous websites, of which the earliest that I could find was in a 11 August 2010 post by Texas-based photographer Nancy Wingo Ridley (username = Rustic Images) on the Foundmyself website (please click here to access its site), being one of numerous attractive countryside-themed photographs that this website offers for sale. Please click here to see this photo on the Foundmyself site (where it is described as "Old barn and wagon near Fredricksburg, Tx"); and please click here to see Nancy's Foundmyself page containing her many exquisitely beautiful photographs that are available on this site.

When I compared this genuine full-colour modern-day photo of a barn with the fake thunderbird photo, it was immediately evident that the former had been used by the faker as the basis of the latter, as can be seen here:

Comparison of the fake thunderbird photograph (top) with the genuine full-colour modern-day photo of a barn (bottom) that was digitally manipulated by person(s) unknown to help create the fake thunderbird photo (creator(s) of fake thunderbird photo unknown to me / (© Rustic Photos – reproduced here in low-resolution format on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only; please click here to visit the excellent Rustic Photos page of images where the original full-colour barn photograph is just one of numerous beautiful countryside-themed pictures produced by her that can be purchased)

As can also be seen, only three major changes have been made via digital manipulation to the actual structure of the barn. The barn door has been widened, the wheeled contraption in front of it has been removed, and the triangular section on the lower right-hand side of the barn roof has been digitally raised, i.e. stretched vertically, so that its outer edge is now tucked just underneath that of the barn roof's upper right-hand side. The effect of this is to make the barn horizontally wider at that particular point – but why would the faker choose to do this? The answer is quite simple – to make the barn wide enough at that particular point for the right-hand wingtip of the wings-outstretched pterodactyl to fit fully on it and thereby match the descriptions of claimed eyewitnesses of the original missing thunderbird photo. Had the faker not done this and had simply used the original full-colour barn photo unmodified, the pterodactyl's right-hand wingtip would have projected quite a way over the edge of the barn roof's lower right-hand edge instead of being contained entirely within it.

Added to the very decent job that the faker has done in converting the modern-day colour barn photo into an aged-looking, purposefully slightly blurry, sepia-tinted photo that one might indeed assume to be 150-or-so years old (as the original, missing thunderbird photo will be by now if it truly exists), this digital widening of the barn in order to make the pterodactyl fit upon it was, I felt, was a clever, well thought-out additional modification of the original full-colour barn photograph – or it would have been, were it not for one massive oversight that again instantly exposed the thunderbird photo to me as a hoax.

Enlarge the two photos, look at the trees surrounding the barn in the original full-colour barn photo, then look at them surrounding the barn in the thunderbird photo. As you will see, they are not just similar, they are identical in every way – every leaf, every twig, every angle of foliage in the original full-colour barn photo is duplicated exactly in the thunderbird photo! An exact match in every way.

One can only assume that either the faker had been careless and had not thought to modify digitally the trees and their foliage in the thunderbird photo so that they were visually distinct from those in the original barn photo, or had chosen simply to ignore this aspect of the photos in the hope that their identical nature would not be spotted (or perhaps the faker did try but found the process too difficult, so decided to leave this aspect alone?).

How long has this fake thunderbird photo been in existence? By using a combination of different search engines once again, the earliest instance of its presence online that I could find was 27 March 2017, on the website tunepk.me (but a link to it no longer operates), which was thrown up by the search engine TinEye. Here is a screenshot of that latter result:

Earliest search result for the fake thunderbird photo discovered by me, thrown up by TinEye (© TinEye – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

In contrast, its 11 August 2010 appearance on the Foundmyself website for Rustic Images is the earliest appearance online that I could find for the full-colour barn photo, i.e. a full seven years before the fake thunderbird photo.

Turning my attention away from the barn and its surroundings to the composite pterodactyl-headed bat-winged thunderbird, I then decided to see if I could trace online the original photo from where the latter's wings had been obtained by the faker. This again proved surprisingly easy – I soon found a photo of a fruit bat in flight whose wings were identical to the thunderbird's, as readily revealed when this bat photo was simply rotated so that the orientation of the bat's wings lined up with that of the thunderbird's wings in order to make easier direct comparisons of the two images.

Of particular note is that a small notch, presumably the result of some injury, can be discerned at the edge of the section of membrane extending between the very elongated 4^th and 5^th fingers of the bat's dark brown right-hand wing. It shows up very well in the bat photo because of the pale blue sky visible through it. When these dark brown bat wings were added by the faker to the thunderbird photo, however, the notch is no longer so readily spotted because now it is the dark brown barn that is showing through it (rather than the much more contrasting pale blue sky in the original bat photo), but if you enlarge the thunderbird photo you can then detect the notch.

Here for comparison purposes is the fake thunderbird photo alongside the bat photo, the latter having been rotated by me so that its wing orientation corresponds with that of the bat-winged pterodactyl-headed thunderbird in order for direct visual comparisons to be more easily made:

Fake thunderbird photo (top) and bat photo (bottom) (photo-manipulator(s) unknown to me / (© 945ontwerp/cdc.gov – reproduced here in low-resolution format on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

I discovered that this bat photo had been snapped by a photographer with the screen name 945ontwerp, who had first uploaded it onto a Getty Images website named iStock on 5 June 2007 (please click here to browse through his portfolio of spectacular photos available for purchase), but it has since appeared in numerous online publications. In particular, it opens an article written by Linda McIntosh and entitled 'Meet bats, creepy night critters' that appeared on the same day, 18 October 2016, in a number of different American newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune (click here to access it) as well as the Morning Call, San Diego Union-Tribune, Baltimore Sun, and New York Daily News (and in which the photo, oddly, is credited to cdc.gov).

Finally: the feet of the bat in the bat photo do not match those of the thunderbird, indicating that a separate photographic source was used by the faker to yield these. Sure enough, while seeking the photographic source of the bat wings, I actually came across several different bat photos in each of which the depicted bat's feet were sufficiently similar to those of the thunderbird that some only very minor digital modification and enlargement would be needed in order to create the latter appendages. Incidentally, after some consideration I decided not to expend any additional time on this photo, as would be required were I to seek out the original image sources for the men standing in front of the thunderbird, because as can clearly be seen here, I have already presented more than sufficient evidence to confirm that this photo is a fake. However, if anyone reading this ShukerNature blog article of mine does have the time and the patience to do so, I'd certainly be very interested to learn if you succeed in tracing them online.

Another cryptozoological fake conclusively exposed, Case solved.

My sincere thanks to Randi MacDonald/Mosasaur for kindly bringing this fake thunderbird photograph to my attention.

An extensive documentation of alleged modern-day sightings and encounters with thunderbirds can be found in my book Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors.

Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors (© Dr Karl Shuker/Coachwhip Publications)

 

 

 

ARE FRUIT BATS FLYING PRIMATES? ANOTHER RETROSPECTIVE FROM OUT OF THE ARCHIVES

A fruit bat in flight at Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens, Australia (© Daniel Vianna/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

But when he brushes up against a screen,

We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:

For something is amiss or out of place

When mice with wings can wear a human face.

        Theodore Roethke – ‘The Bat’

The following article of mine was originally published by Fortean Times in its April 1997 issue (and is reprinted in unchanged form below). Yet despite the initially encouraging research documented in it, the passage of time following its publication did not prove kind to the flying primates hypothesis. In more recent years, sufficient evidence against its veracity as obtained via comparative DNA analysis with primates, mega-bats, and micro-bats has been proffered for it to be largely (though not entirely) discounted nowadays by mainstream workers. (A detailed examination of this evidence is presented online here in British palaeontologist Dr Darren Naish’s Tetrapod Zoology blog.) Nevertheless, even though the notion of fruit bats as our winged cousins may have been grounded, zoologically speaking it remains of undeniable historical interest, and was such a charming novelty while it lasted that I couldn’t resist recalling it on ShukerNature as part of my occasional 'Out of the Archives' series – so here it is.

The minute fruit bat Cynopterus minutus with outstretched wings (© Wibowo Djatmiko/Wikipedia - CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

The fortean literature contains reports of some exceedingly bizarre entities, but few are any stranger than the various bat-winged humanoids spasmodically reported from certain corners of the world. These include such aerial anomalies as the Vietnamese 'bat-woman' soberly described by three American Marines in 1969, the child-abducting orang bati from the Indonesian island of Seram, and the letayuschiy chelovek ('flying human') reputedly frequenting the enormous taiga forest within far-eastern Russia's Primorskiy Kray Territory (click here for further details).

Zoologists have traditionally averted their eyes from such heretical horrors as these, but in a classic 'fact is stranger than fiction' scenario, a remarkable evolutionary theory has lately re-emerged that unites humans and bats in a wholly unexpected evolutionary manner.

FLYING FOXES AS WINGED PRIMATES?

As far back as 1910, W.K. Gregory proposed that bats were closely related to primates - the order of mammals containing the lemurs, monkeys, apes, and humans. More recently, Dr Alan Walker revealed that dental features of a supposed fossil primate christened Propotto leakeyi in 1967 by American zoologist Prof. George Gaylord Simpson indicated that it was not a primate at all, but actually a species of fruit bat.

In 1986, however, Queensland University neurobiologist Dr John D. Pettigrew took this whole issue of apparent bat-primate affinity one very significant step further, by providing thought-provoking evidence for believing that the fruit bats may be more than just relatives of primates - that, in reality, these winged mammals are primates!

Chuuk flying fox Pteropus insularis, PZSL 1882 (public domain)

All species of bat are traditionally grouped together within the taxonomic order of mammals known as Chiroptera. Within that order, however, they are split into two well-defined suborders. The fruit bats or flying foxes belong to the suborder Megachiroptera ('big bats'), and are therefore colloquially termed mega-bats. All of the other bats belong to the second suborder, Microchiroptera ('small bats'), and hence are termed micro-bats.

MACRO-BATS AND MICRO-BATS – NOT SEEING EYE TO EYE?

As a neurobiologist, Dr Pettigrew had been interested in determining the degree of similarity between the nervous systems of mega-bats and micro-bats. In particular, he sought to compare the pattern of connections linking the retina of the eyes with a portion of the mid-brain called the tectum, or superior colliculus. He used specimens of three Pteropus species of fruit bat to represent the mega-bats. And to obtain the most effective comparison with these, he chose for his micro-bat representatives some specimens of the Australian ghost bat Macroderma gigas - one of the world's largest micro-bats. Ideally suited for this purpose because its visual system is better developed than that of many other micro-bats, it has large eyes like those of fruit bats, and retinas with a similar positional arrangement.

The Australian ghost bat, a giant species of micro-bat (public domain)

Pettigrew's examination of all of these specimens revealed that the pattern of retinotectal neural connections was very different between mega-bats and micro-bats, but far more important was the precise manner in which they differed - providing a radically new insight not merely into bat evolution but also into the family tree of humanity.

Reporting his remarkable findings in 1986, Pettigrew announced that the retinotectal pattern of connections in fruit bats was very similar to the highly-advanced version possessed by primates. That fact was made even more astounding by the knowledge that until this discovery, the primate pattern had been unique. In other words, it had unambiguously distinguished primates not only from all other mammals (including the micro-bats) but also from all other vertebrates, i.e. fishes, amphibians, reptiles, and birds - all of which have a quite different, more primitive pattern. Suddenly, the fruit bats were in taxonomic turmoil.

NOT SUCH A FLIGHT OF FANCY?

Until now, the fact that micro-bats and mega-bats all possessed wings and were capable of controlled flight had been considered sufficient proof that they were directly related, because it seemed unlikely that true flight could have evolved in two totally independent groups of mammals. Gliding, via extensible membranes of skin, had evolved several times (e.g. in the scaly-tail rodents – click here for some cryptozoological connections); the 'flying' squirrels; three different groups of 'flying' marsupial phalanger; and the peculiar colugos or 'flying lemurs' – click here), but this did not require such anatomical specialisations as the evolution of bona fide, flapping wings for true flight.

Scaly-tails, one species of which is locally dubbed the flying jackal (public domain)

Yet it seemed even less likely that the advanced retinotectal pathway displayed by primates could have evolved wholly independently in fruit bats.

In short, by exhibiting the latter organisation of neural connections, fruit bats now provided persuasive reasons for zoologists to consider seriously the quite extraordinary possibility that these winged mammals were not bats at all, in the sense of being relatives of the micro-bats. Instead, they were nothing less than flying primates!

Wallace's fruit bats Styloctenium wallacei, 1896 (public domain)

Moreover, as Pettigrew noted in his paper, even the wings of mega-bats and micro-bats are not as similar as commonly thought. On the contrary, they show certain consistent skeletal differences, which point once again to separate evolutionary lines. And even that is not all - thanks to Dermoptera, that tiny taxonomic order of gliding mammals known somewhat haplessly as the flying lemurs (bearing in mind that they are not lemurs, and do not fly!) or, more suitably, as the colugos.

For by combining previously-disclosed similarities in blood proteins between the primates and the flying lemurs with the structural and neural homology apparent between the flying lemurs' gliding membranes and the wings of the mega-bats, extra evidence is obtained for a direct evolutionary link between fruit bats, primates, and the flying lemurs - thus resurrecting another possibility that had been suggested by researchers in the past.

FACING UP TO THE FACTS

One of the most familiar external differences between mega-bats and micro-bats is the basic shape of their face.

The remarkably lemur-like face of a Pteropus fruit bat (public domain)

Whereas the face of most fruit bats is surprisingly vulpine (hence ‘flying fox’) or even lemurine, in many micro-bats it is flatter in shape - though in some species, evolution has superimposed upon this shape all manner of grotesque flaps and projections.

The uniquely grotesque face of the aptly-named Antillean ghost-faced bat Mormoops blainvillii, a species of micro-bat native to the West Indies (public domain)

The lemur-like shape exhibited by the face of many fruit bats has traditionally been dismissed as evolutionary convergence, engendered merely by these two mammalian groups' comparable frugivorous tendencies.

Judging from Pettigrew's revelations, however, there may now be good reason to believe that such a similarity is a manifestation of a genuine taxonomic relationship between lemurs and fruit bats. The faces of the flying lemurs are also very lemurine (hence their name), which ties in with the above-noted serological evidence for a direct, flying lemur-primate link.

A colugo or flying lemur, again presenting a very lemurine face (hence its name) (public domain)

Thought-provoking indeed is the evidence for believing that fruit bats are legitimate, albeit aerially-modified, offshoots from the fundamental family tree of the primates. As Pettigrew pointed out, it is highly implausible that the reverse theory is true (i.e. that the fruit bats gave rise to the primates), because fruit bats seem to be relatively recent species, first evolving long after the primate link had emerged.

EVIDENCE FOR AND AGAINST FLYING PRIMATES

Inevitably, no theory as radical as one implying primate parentage for the fruit bats will remain unchallenged for very long. In 1992, for instance, molecular biologist Dr Wendy Bailey and two other colleagues from Detroit's Wayne State University School of Medicine announced that DNA analysis of the epsilon(e)-globin gene of both groups of bats, primates, and a selection of other mammals implies that the two bat groups are more closely related to one another than either is to any other mammalian group. This finding would therefore seem to support the traditional bat classification., but as noted by proponents of Pettigrew's ideas, it does not explain the extraordinary development by fruit bats of the primates' diagnostic visual pathway. Consequently, this tantalising physiological riddle currently remains unanswered.

Moreover, in a comparative immunological study whose results were published during 1994, Drs Arnd Schreiber, Doris Erker, and Klausdieter Bauer from Heidelberg University showed that proteins in the blood serum of fruit bats and primates share enough features to suggest a close taxonomic relationship between these two mammalian groups after all - thus bringing this continuing controversy full circle.

Samoan fruit bats Pteropus samoensis, 1858 (public domain)

Many primitive tribes believe that fruit bats are the spirits of their long-departed ancestors. In view of the fascinating disclosures reported here, these tribes could be closer to the truth than they realise!

This ShukerNature blog article is excerpted from my book Karl Shuker's Alien Zoo – a massive compendium of my Alien Zoo cryptozoological news reports and my longer Lost Ark cryptozoological articles that have been published in Fortean Times since the late 1990s.