CRYPTOZOOLOGY AND THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The wonderful birthday card that Mom gave to me on my 11th birthday in 1970 - knowing that I liked cats and that my favourite colour was blue, she knew how much I'd love this card, and I've treasured it ever since - thanks Mom (© Dr Karl Shuker)

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

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

SOUTH AMERICAN MYSTERY BEASTS – Part 1

A mapinguary confrontation (William Rebsamen)

A few blogs ago, I noted that the ITV sci-fi series ‘Primeval’ is one of my all-time favourite television shows. And many of you know that I am currently working upon an expanded, updated version of my 1995 cryptozoology book In Search of Prehistoric Survivors. Consequently, I could not be anything but greatly intrigued to stumble upon an internet article recently that was entitled ‘Primeval Survivors?’ – and, reading it, I was certainly not disappointed.

As you’ll see if you access it in issue #38 (April 2009) of the online teenage magazine Flipside Extra – at http://www.flipside.org.uk/38/primeval.cfm and published by the Institution of Engineering and Technology - the article in question deftly utilises the excellent ‘Primeval’ TV series as a means of introducing cryptozoology, including the possibility that there are undiscovered prehistoric creatures lurking in the modern world (and without needing access here via any Anomaly), my own cryptozoological views, and those of science journal Nature’s editor, Dr Henry Gee, who looks upon cryptozoology in a positive light. All in all, then, a pleasant surprise indeed! BTW, I’m still considering ideas for the title to my book’s update. How about In Search of Primeval Survivors?! Now there’s a thought!

Back to the present, however, and herewith my latest blog post – the first of a two-part account regarding some of South America’s cryptids. These will include some mystery birds, so if you’re interested in them, check out the current issue of Paranormal Magazine, which has an entire article on crypto-birds by me.

SOUTH AMERICAN MYSTERY BEASTS
Part 1.

A 62-ft-long anaconda may sound like the stuff of nightmares, but according to the renowned South American explorer Lt.-Col. Percy Fawcett, this is precisely what he and his exploration team encountered in western Brazil during 1907 while voyaging by canoe along the Rio Abuna, near to its confluence with the Rio Negro. Uncomfortably close to Fawcett's canoe, several feet of broad, powerful, undulating, serpentine coils and a huge triangular head rose up above the surface of the river, and as he and his team watched in horror, a truly colossal anaconda began emerging onto the riverbank. Greatly alarmed by the threat posed to his team by this limbless leviathan, Fawcett shot the snake dead, and then proceeded to measure its gargantuan form. To his amazement, he discovered that the portion of its body that had emerged from the water prior to being shot was 45 ft long, and the portion remaining in the water was 17 ft, thereby adding up to a grand total of 62 ft!

Needless to say, however, Fawcett and his team had no means of transporting an immensely heavy, rapidly-decomposing (and extremely odiferous!), 62-ft carcase back to civilisation. Consequently, his claims concerning its size remain unconfirmed - and Fawcett himself famously vanished in the Brazilian jungle during 1925, never to be seen again.

As there has never been a fully-confirmed specimen of anaconda measuring over 30 ft, some snake experts today are highly sceptical of Fawcett's account. Others, conversely, are not so dismissive. One thing, however, is for sure - giant anacondas are just one of a remarkable number of controversial, still-unrecognised creatures reported over the years from the vast uncharted depths of South America's verdant jungles of mystery.

Giant anaconda (William Rebsamen)


SUCURIJU GIGANTE - OR, BEWARE OF THE SERPENT!

Immense anacondas may seem fanciful to western science, but they are apparently very real to the Indian tribes inhabiting riverside localities within the 'green hell' of Amazonia, who even give these oversized serpents their own specific name - sucuriju gigante.

Some reports seem too incredible to be taken seriously, yet have been vehemently championed by eyewitnesses to the events in question. Thus, in 1948 a stupendous anaconda emerged from the River Oiapoc in Brazil's Guapore territory, and hid itself within the fortifications of Fort Tabatinga - until it was finally dispatched by a hail of at least 500 machine-gun bullets fired by a team of soldiers sent to kill it. According to an illustrated report of this incident later published in a Rio de Janeiro newspaper, when its colossal carcase was measured this monstrous snake was found to be 115 ft long! How accurate this claim is, however, will never be known, because after they had killed it the soldiers pushed the anaconda's body back into the river.

Less incredible but still very impressive was the anaconda once spotted by Amazon voyager F.W. Up de Graffe lying in shallow water underneath his canoe. Writing in 1923:

"It measured 50 ft for certainty, and probably nearer 60. This I know from the position in which it lay. Our canoe was a 24 footer; the snake's head was 10 or 12 ft beyond the bow; its tail was a good 4 ft beyond the stern; the center of its body was looped up into a huge S, whose length was the length of our dugout and whose breadth was a good 5 ft."

There are certain fundamental problems facing anyone attempting to assess reports of giant snakes. Eyewitnesses tend to be notoriously inaccurate when estimating the length of a long snake - especially one that is coiled up. Evidence supplied in the form of extra-lengthy snake skins is of little value either, as skins can be stretched quite considerably. As for photographs purporting to show giant snakes, these rarely contain any scale by which the reptile's size can be determined. And, for obvious reasons, the prospect of capturing and bringing back for scientific examination a living specimen of a serpentine giant is a daunting one to say the very least!

Nevertheless, the likelihood of anacondas existing that do exceed 30 ft, and possibly quite considerably, cannot be ruled out of hand. If the anaconda were a terrestrial species, giant specimens would be highly unlikely, simply because they would be too heavy to move efficiently. As the anaconda is primarily aquatic, however, its body weight - even if fairly immense - would be effectively buoyed by its surrounding watery medium, thus permitting it to grow to sizes far in excess of anything that a land-living serpent could emulate.


THE ANOMALOUS ANDEAN WOLF

The pelt depicted below is currently unique - the only preserved example of a pelt from the elusive, still-controversial Andean wolf. It came from a market in Buenos Aires, where it and three others just like it were spotted by German animal dealer Lorenz Hagenbeck in 1927. After learning that it was from a strange form of dog allegedly inhabiting the Andes, Hagenbeck purchased this pelt - the fate of the others is unknown - and brought it back to Europe, where it is now housed at the Zoological State Museum in Munich, Germany.

Perplexed scientists examined its luxuriant, dense pelage, unlike anything previously documented, and proposed that it originated from an as-yet-undescribed, mountain-dwelling version of the maned wolf Chrysocyon jubatus. German zoologist Dr Ingo Krumbiegel paired it with an equally mysterious canine skull of Andean origin, and in 1949 published a paper in which he formally described this reclusive, montane-adapted maned wolf, and subsequently named it Dasycyon hagenbecki ('Hagenbeck's thick-furred dog'). No sightings or further specimens of this supposed new species, however, have ever been recorded. Hair analyses later suggested that the pelt may be (or may at least be descended) from a domestic sheepdog, but this identity of a wolf in sheepdog's clothing has not been confirmed. During the late 1990s, Guillaume Chapron, a member of the IUCN/SSC-Veterinary Specialist Group, expressed an interest in researching the Andean wolf during some planned field work in Argentina, but again there have been no further developments to date.

Andean wolf pelt (Dennis Vrettos)

MAKE WAY FOR THE MINHOCÃO

Every so often, an unexpected, unheralded upheaval of land occurs in Uruguay and in Parana, southern Brazil, substantial enough in some cases to have caused the collapse of roads and hillsides, and even the diversion of river courses. Even so, this could be dismissed as nothing more than an earth tremor or suchlike - were it not for the amazing fact that a bizarre subterranean creature sometimes reveals itself during this subsidence.

Described by eyewitnesses as resembling a huge worm, but with a pair of small stubby horns on its head, and covered in black scaly skin, it is generally referred to as the minhocão (see an earlier blog of mine for a detailed account of this cryptid). Over the years, many attempts have been made to offer a zoological identity for this cryptic beast - ranging from a giant lungfish to a surviving species of gargantuan armadillo-related prehistoric mammal known as a glyptodont. As I have proposed in previous publications and also in a previous ShukerNature blog post, however, the minhocão's description and behaviour corresponds closest to what one would expect for a giant species of caecilian - a limbless, worm-like, burrowing amphibian, which sometimes does have a pair of small tentacles on its head, and skin embedded with small scales.

IN SEARCH OF THE MAPINGUARY

For a number of years, Brazilian zoologist Dr David Oren, from the Goeldi Museum, has led expeditions into the dense jungle heartland of the Mato Grosso in search of an extraordinary mystery beast known to the local Indians as the mapinguary. According to their description, it is covered in reddish fur, stands as tall as an average adult human when squatting on its hind legs, leaves peculiar footprints that look as if they are back-to-front and other, equally strange bottletop-shaped impressions, emits a loud shouting cry, defecates horse-like droppings, and is claimed to be invulnerable to bullets. Rather more bizarrely, they also claim that it gives off a foul, lethal stench to ward away would-be attackers, and has a second mouth in its stomach! Despite its grotesque-sounding appearance, Oren is confident that although he has yet to observe a specimen, he has at least determined the mapinguary's identity - stating that he believes it to be a surviving species of mylodontid ground sloth.

Officially deemed to have become extinct several thousand years ago, various mummified specimens have been discovered in sealed-away caves. These reveal that they did indeed have red fur, feet that could leave footprints which may appear reversed to anyone unfamiliar with ground sloth foot structure, and a powerful tail whose tip, if used for support while squatting upright, could yield the strange bottletop prints. Moreover, preserved mylodontid faecal pellets that do resemble those of horses have also been found, as have preserved mylodontid pelts, which contain bony nodules that may actually deflect bullets and other missiles. As for the mapinguary's stench emission and stomach-sited 'second mouth': Oren proposes that a specialised scent gland may be present on the mapinguary's belly, releasing a vile skunk-like gaseous odour as a defence mechanism. If the mapinguary is indeed revealed one day to be a living ground sloth, it may well comprise the largest species of mammal native to South America - and hence a major cryptozoological success story.

LAKE TITICACA'S MYSTERY BEAST

One of South America's least-known creatures of cryptozoology is the enigmatic water beast reported from Peru's mighty Lake Titicaca in 1910 by Adolph F. Bandelier, within his book The Islands of Titicaca and Koati. According to Bandelier, a 12-ft-long animal variously said to resemble a manatee or a seal has been sighted near the islands of Tiquina and Titicaca, and also close to the peninsulas of Tiquina and Copacavana, in Lake Titicaca. As yet, however, no formal verification of its existence, let alone its identity, has been forthcoming.

THE CHACO'S DEADLY SLUG-SNAKE

Equally obscure is the formidable mystery beast reported from the Paraguayan Chaco region in 1954 within the autobiography of Charles W.T. Craig, entitled Black Jack's Spurs. The locals claim that this weird-sounding creature resembles a slug-like serpent, but sports the head of a dog, a poisonous barbed spike in its stumpy tail, and is as broad as a horse. Veteran cryptozologist Dr Bernard Heuvelmans opined in 1986 that it could be a form of giant catfish known to the locals as the manguruyu. Moreover, they claim that this fish can grow up to 18 ft long and weigh up to half a ton, but such gargantuan sizes have never been scientifically verified.

GUMS! - IDENTIFYING FAWCETT'S GIANT TOOTHLESS RIVER SHARK

According to Lt.-Col. Fawcett, the Paraguay River contains "...a freshwater shark, huge but toothless, said to attack men and swallow them whole if it gets a chance". However, very few shark species inhabit freshwater, and those that do are well supplied with teeth. Consequently, not all cryptozoologists who accept Fawcett's statement believe this creature to be a shark. British investigator Mike Grayson, for instance, has suggested that it may in reality be a sturgeon, some species of which do bear a very superficial resemblance to sharks and can attain a huge size. Having said that, as Grayson readily concedes, sturgeons normally do not attack and eat people (but perhaps this component of the report is based upon local superstition?). However, there is also a zoogeographical problem with this identity, inasmuch as there is not a single known species of sturgeon native to South America.

My own view is that if such a creature exists and is not a real shark, it may conceivably be a giant catfish. There are more catfish species in South America than anywhere else, and some of these are also among the world's largest. Moreover, some other very big species, such as the European catfish (wels) have been accused of swallowing people (albeit, again, a claim more probably folkloric than factual), and elderly specimens of certain giant catfishes, such as the Mekong River's pa beuk, are indeed toothless. So perhaps 'Gums' (an apt name coined by Grayson for Fawcett's edentate enigma) is actually an old toothless catfish, possibly belonging to a still-undescribed extra-large species.

Click here to read Part 2 of this article.

SEEKING MEGA-CAECILIANS

The minhocão as envisaged by Lance Bradshaw (Lance Bradshaw)

I was very interested to read Richard Freeman’s recent blogs review on the CFZ bloggo, because one of them mentioned by him discusses the possibility that a South American subterranean cryptid known as the minhocão is a giant lungfish. This is a very early suggestion, long abandoned, but reminds me of when I first suggested a new identity for this cryptid back in 1995 within my book In Search of Prehistoric Survivors - namely, a giant caecilian. Prior to then, the prevailing view, as discussed by Dr Bernard Heuvelmans in his own book On the Track of Unknown Animals (1958), had been that it may be a surviving glyptodont – one of those tank-like, mace-tailed, prehistoric relatives of armadillos.

Following the publication of my idea, however, the caecilian theory soon supplanted the latter notion. Indeed, a year after my book had appeared in print, Heuvelmans himself abandoned his glyptodont identity for the minhocão in favour of my caecilian suggestion within his updated cryptozoological checklist - published in French in 1996 by Cryptozoologia as a special paper, and also constituting Chapter 8 of an unpublished Heuvelmans book entitled The Natural History of Hidden Animals.

Sadly, Heuvelmans failed to credit my book within his paper in relation to the caecilian identity, even though its preparation and publication had notably preceded his paper. However, I suppose I should not complain. After all, he did do me the very significant honour of sending me a personally signed copy of his paper, on the first page of which he had written:

“To Karl Shuker, the most brilliant of my disciples, B Heuvelmans” (see photo below).



And no – just in case anyone is thinking of asking – this is one cryptozoological item that I shall NOT be placing on eBay!!

Incidentally, during his many communications with me by letter (mostly) and phone in his later years, Heuvelmans came over to my way of thinking with regard to the putative identity of several cryptids, including not only my identification of the minhocão as a giant caecilian, but also the New Guinea devil pig as a palorchestid, my thoughts regarding certain mystery birds, and – returning, spookily, to giant lungfishes - my proposal that the buru was indeed a giant lungfish rather than either a lizard or a crocodile (thus relinquishing views expressed previously by him in his cryptozoological checklists). Had Heuvelmans lived longer, it would have been interesting to see how such changes of view would have been incorporated in his planned series of volumes documenting the mystery beasts of the world. Tragically, however, he was not able to complete most of them before his death, so we shall never know.

Returning to the minhocão: for those of you who may not have seen my coverage of this fascinating cryptid within my book In Search of Prehistoric Survivors, here is what I wrote:

THE MINHOCÃO - AN ANOMALY IN ARMOUR

Until the close of the Pleistocene, the armadillos in South America and southern North America shared their world with a group of distant relatives called the glyptodonts. These resembled armadillos to a certain extent - but on a gigantic scale, measuring up to 13 ft long. Their body armour was also of colossal proportions, comprising as much as 20% of these animals' entire weight. Consisting of a huge domed shell of fused polygonal bony plates on their back, with a bony covering on top of their head too, it undoubtedly conferred upon these beasts a distinct similarity to an armoured tank. As for their tail, this was positively medieval - long and armour-encircled, and additionally armed in some species with a mace-like, spike-bearing ball of solid bone at the tip, which was probably used in the same way as a mace too - flailing it at potential attackers.

According to the fossil record, the glyptodonts died out around 10,000 years ago, but if they had lingered into the present, we might expect their unique appearance to be sufficiently memorable for anyone spying these animals to provide a readily recognisable description. In reality, although there is evidence on file that has at one time or another offered hope to cryptozoologists that the glyptodonts are indeed still with us, the morphological comparability between the beasts seen and bona fide glyptodonts is of very varying quality.

The inhabitants of southern Brazil and Uruguay have often spoken of anomalous, furrow-like trenches of great depth that have suddenly appeared in the ground for no apparent reason (but often near to some sizeable lake or river), and which they claim to be the work of a mysterious serpentine creature called the minhocão.

It was a paper by zoologist Prof. Auguste de Saint Hilaire, published by the American Journal of Science in 1847, that first brought the minhocão to Western attention. Revealing that its name is derived from 'minhoca' - Portuguese for 'earthworm' - he stated:

"...the monster in question absolutely resembles these worms, with this difference, that it has a visible mouth; they also add, that it is black, short, and of enormous size; that it does not rise to the surface of the water, but that it causes animals to disappear by seizing them by the belly."

In his paper, de Saint Hilaire gave several instances in which horses, cattle, and other livestock had been supposedly pulled beneath the water to their doom when fording the Rio dos Piloes and Lakes Padre Aranda and Feia in Goyaz, Brazil. He believed that the minhocão was probably a giant version of Lepidosiren, the eel-like lungfish of South America.

Thirty years after de Saint Hilaire, German zoologist Dr Fritz Müller, residing in Itajahy, southern Brazil, provided further details regarding the minhocão, when in 1877 his account of its activities appeared in the journal Zoologische Garten - later reiterated and recycled in other European publications, including the eminent English journal Nature. Here it was revealed that the channels excavated by the minhocão are so deep that the courses of entire rivers have been altered, roads and hillsides have collapsed, and orchards have fallen to the ground - and it also offered some new insights into this enigmatic excavator's morphology.

In the region of the Rio dos Papagaios, in the province of Paranà, circa 1840s:

"A black woman going to draw water from a pool near a house one morning, according to her usual practice, found the whole pool destroyed, and saw a short distance off an animal which she described as being as big as a house moving off along the ground. The people whom she summoned to see the monster were too late, and found only traces of the animal, which had apparently plunged over a neighbouring cliff into deep water. In the same district a young man saw a huge pine suddenly overturned, when there was no wind and no one to cut it. On hastening up to discover the cause, he found the surrounding earth in movement, and an enormous worm-like black animal in the middle of it, about twenty-five metres [75 ft] long, and with two horns on its head."

In 1849, Lebino José dos Santos, a wealthy proprietor, was travelling near Arapehy in Uruguay when he learnt about a dead minhocão to be seen a few miles off, which had become wedged into a narrow cleft of rock and consequently died. Its skin was said to be: "...as thick as the bark of a pine-tree, and formed of hard scales like those of an armadillo".

And in or around 1870, one of these beasts visited the environs of Lages, Brazil:

"Francisco de Amaral Varella, when about ten kilometres distant from that town, saw lying on the bank of the Rio das Caveiras a strange animal of gigantic size, nearly one metre in thickness, not very long, and with a snout like a pig, but whether it had legs or not he could not tell. He did not dare to seize it alone, and whilst calling his neighbours to his assistance, it vanished, not without leaving palpable marks behind it in the shape of a trench as it disappeared under the earth."

In a detailed letter, published by the Gaceta de Nicaragua (10 March 1866), Paulino Montenegro included accounts of a similar creature from Nicaragua. Said to be covered with a skin clad in scales or plates, it: "...is described in general as a large snake, and called 'sierpe,' on account of its extraordinary size, and living in chaquites [pools or ponds]".

In his summary of this fascinating cryptozoological case, Nature's editor offered two possible identities for the minhocão. One, echoing de Saint Hilaire, was a giant lungfish. The other, which no doubt by virtue of its more sensational potential has attracted much more attention during subsequent years, was a living glyptodont.

Fossil skeleton of a glyptodont, showing its extraordinary degree of body armour (Dr Karl Shuker)

I have always viewed this latter theory with more than a little scepticism, for several reasons. First and foremost, I cannot believe that anyone would liken a beast as bulky and tank-like as a glyptodont, with a domed carapace on its back, to a giant worm or snake. Anything less serpentine than a glyptodont would be hard to imagine! In contrast, Lepidosiren is a notably elongate, anguinine (and anguilline) beast.

Although the description of horns and upturned nose could refer to the ears and snout of a glyptodont, it could equally apply to the slender, anteriorly-positioned pectoral fins of Lepidosiren, which also has a somewhat pig-like snout.

Another problem with the glyptodont identity arises when contemplating the exceedingly fossorial (burrowing) nature of the minhocão. It seems extremely unlikely that anything bearing such an immense amount of body armour - evidently for protection from attack by predators - would have either the need or the inclination for a fossorial mode of existence.

Creatures sharing this lifestyle, such as earthworms and moles, are conspicuously devoid of body armour - because they are not likely to encounter predators as frequently as if they spent their lives on the surface, and also because such armour would greatly impede burrowing activity. Fossil remains of glyptodonts provide no evidence at all for any extensive degree of underground activity. On the contrary, the excessive development of their carapace and the mace-like construction of their tail in some species clearly imply an expectation of frequent confrontation by large surface-dwelling predators equipped with fangs and claws.

True, the comparison by some eyewitnesses of the minhocão's scales to those of armadillos might seem to favour a glyptodont identity - but in reality, the reverse is true. Whereas the armadillos' armour is composed of a series of rings, in the glyptodonts those rings became fused, to yield their characteristic domed carapace, which consists of an elaborate mosaic of plates that bear no resemblance to armadillo armour. As recently as the late Pleistocene, there was a group of creatures somewhat midway in form between armadillos and glyptodonts, called pampatheres. Native to South America and also the southern U.S.A., some attained glyptodont dimensions, but their armour was of the ringed, armadillo form. Once again, however, they did not seem to be principally fossorial.

In contrast, although Lepidosiren lacks external scales this is a modern development, as the more primitive Australian lungfish Neoceratodus is profusely scaled, like ancestral lungfishes. Hence its scales do not exclude the minhocão from the lungfish identity.

Even its burrowing activity is consistent with a lungfish. Like some African lungfishes (Protopterus), during the dry season Lepidosiren aestivates - i.e. it secretes a protective cocoon around itself, and remains buried in the mud at the bottom of ponds or river beds in a self-induced state of suspended animation until the rainy season begins, whereupon it breaks out of its encapsulating cocoon and swims away.

According to the Nature report, the minhocão's deep trenches mostly appear after continued rain, and seem to start from marshes or river beds. This is just what one would expect of a giant lungfish - emerging from its subterranean seclusion with the rainy season's onset. Conversely, although armadillos can swim they only do so when required to - they are not normally aquatic; the same was probably true for the armour-laden glyptodonts.

19th-Century illustration of Lepidosiren, the South American lungfish

In short, although the size estimates for the minhocão are certainly exaggerated, taken as a whole I feel that its description is more applicable to an extremely large lungfish than to a glyptodont. I do have misgivings concerning the minhocão's supposed propensity for hauling livestock down into its watery domain - this is hardly what one might expect from a lungfish, even a giant one. In reality, however, it may simply be an effect of turbulence or a type of localised vortex for which the minhocão is being wrongly held responsible.

There is a further identity, however, that offers an even closer correspondence to the minhocão, yet which has never been previously suggested - an enormous form of caecilian.

Native to the tropics of Africa, Asia, Mesoamerica, and South America, and spending virtually their entire lives burrowing underground, the caecilians are little-known limbless amphibians with outwardly segmented bodies that are extraordinarily similar in external appearance to earthworms - except for their readily visible mouth, and a pair of sensory tentacles on their head that resemble horns or ears when protruded. This description corresponds perfectly with the minhocão's as penned by de Saint Hilaire.

In addition, although their skin feels smooth and slimy, many caecilians do possess scales (unlike other modern-day amphibians), embedded within the skin.

The largest caecilian known to science, Colombia's Caecilia thompsoni, is marginally under 5 ft long. However, a giant species with well-developed scales and a capacity for excavation matching its great size would make an extremely convincing trench-gouging minhocão. And if its scaling mirrored its body's external segmentation, it would resemble the ringed armour of armadillos - clarifying why eyewitnesses liken the minhocão's scaly skin to this armour.

South America's Typhlonectes caecilians inhabit rivers and lakes, so even the minhocão's aquatic inclinations are not incompatible with these apodous amphibians. Moreover, terrestrial caecilians often emerge above ground after heavy rainstorms - another minhocão correspondence. Also, caecilians are carnivorous, and grab their prey from below - a giant species with comparable behaviour might therefore resolve reports of livestock pulled under the water when crossing rivers and lakes reputedly frequented by minhocãos.

All in all, the identity of a giant caecilian for the minhocão provides so intimate a correspondence, not only morphologically but also behaviourally, that I personally see little (if any?) reason for looking elsewhere for an explanation of this mysterious subterranean monster.

Finally, as a piece of personal trivia, the first words that I ever read in Heuvelmans’s classic book On the Track of the Unknown Animals were those quoted above from the report that described the minhocão as a creature as big as a house. That was when I first saw the Paladin paperpack edition of his book in a shop as an early teenager, opened it at random, and read the first lines that I saw. However, the concept of a beast as big as a house seemed so ludicrous that I actually put the book back on the shelf and forgot about it. Fortunately, my mother had watched me reading it, and secretly bought the book for me as a birthday present. Who knows - had she not done so, I may never have become interested in cryptozoology, my writings and researches in this field would therefore never have occurred, and I would have never experienced the lifelong fascination and enjoyment with which cryptozoology has filled me. So I have a lot to thank the minhocão – and my mother – for!

19th-Century colour engraving of a Siphonops caecilian