HIDING FROM THE HIDE? EERIE DEEPSEA ENCOUNTERS WITH ABYSSAL ABOMINATIONS

 

A photo-still from Encounter In The Abyss by Richard Svensson, depicting the nameless horror from the underwater abyss about to encapsulate the stricken shark while the terrified diver stood motionless, on a ledge at the abyss's edge, watching in petrified fascination  (© Richard Svensson)

The decidedly creepy cryptozoological report of a deadly underwater mystery beast documented by me here today is one of my all-time personal favourites, which I've included in several of my books and articles down through the years, and also previously on ShukerNature (click here). Now, thanks to a wonderful new animated short that brings the eerie encounter vividly to life for the very first time (full details at the end of the present blog article), I decided that it was time to revisit this terrifying denizen of a deepwater abyss and provide some additional information, so here it is.

In 1953, while testing a new type of deep-sea diving suit in the South Pacific, an Australian diver named Christopher Loeb encountered a Lovecraftian horror from the ocean’s unpenetrated depths. In my book From Flying Toads To Snakes With Wings (1997) and also in my previous ShukerNature coverage of it, I provided a much-abbreviated paraphrased version of Loeb's report, but here now is his full first-person account, as originally provided by Eric Frank Russell in his own book Great World Mysteries (1967:

All the way down I was followed by a fifteen foot shark which circled around full of curiosity but made no attempt to attack. I kept wondering how far down he would go. He was still hanging around some thirty feet from me, and about twenty feet higher, when I reached a ledge below which was a great, black chasm of enormous depth. It being dangerous to venture farther, I stood looking into the chasm while the shark waited for my next move.

Suddenly the water became distinctly colder. While the temperature continued to drop with surprising rapidity, I saw a black mass rising from the darkness of the chasm. It floated upwards very slowly. As at last light reached it I could see that it was of dull brown colour and tremendous size, a flat ragged edged thing about one acre in extent. It pulsated sluggishly and I knew that it was alive despite its lack of visible limbs or eyes. Still pulsating, this frightful vision floated past my level, by which time the coldness had become most intense. The shark now hung completely motionless, paralyzed either by cold or fear. While I watched fascinated, the enormous brown thing reached the shark, contacted him with its upper surface. The shark gave a convulsive shiver and was drawn unresisting into the substance of the monster.

I stood perfectly still, not daring to move, while the brown thing sank back into the chasm as slowly as it had emerged. Darkness swallowed it and the water started to regain some warmth. God knows what this thing was, but I had no doubt that it had been born of the primeval slime countless fathoms below.

Moreover, this may not be a unique report, for as revealed here by the online Encyclopaedia of Cryptozoology website:

According to Russian sources, at least two other sightings of the amorphous sea monster have been reported in local newspapers. Members of a Chilean hydrographic expedition to the South Pacific in 1968 told the press that they had seen an animal which resembled the Australian diver's "black mass," near an abyssal trench. A fatal encounter with such an animal allegedly occurred off Thailand in 2005, when a French scuba diver named Henri Astor told the press that he had observed a very large "strange brown mass" paralysing and killing a shoal of fish. Astor's unnamed companion allegedly disappeared after attempting to follow the entity.

 

Cirrothauma murrayi, a species of deepsea cirrate octopus (public domain)

In the past, a deepsea octopus has been offered as a possible identity for this disturbing creature, but as I discussed in detail within my book, a far more satisfactory candidate is a deepsea jellyfish, possibly akin to one of the known relatively shapeless types, such as Deepstaria enigmatica, which moves via peristalsis and lacks tentacles. This bizarre species remained undescribed by science until 1967, following its discovery by the famous French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau while exploring the deep waters of the central Pacific Ocean near Southwest Baker Island in a submarine called Deepstar 4000. It is known from the Pacific Ocean, Antarctica, and the Gulf of Mexico, but only at depths below 3,000 ft. Please click here and here to watch on YouTube a couple of short videos of this strange species filmed in its natual habitat.

Whereas all octopuses have tentacles, some deepsea jellyfishes do not. What they do have, however, are potent stinging cells called nematocysts on their bodies (and tentacles if they possess any), armed with venom that swiftly paralyses their prey. This would readily explain the immediate paralysis of the shark. Moreover, jellyfishes do not possess true eyes but they are equipped with sensory structures responsive to water movements. Consequently, the creature would have learnt of the shark’s presence by detecting its movements in the water. How lucky, then, that the diver had remained stationary!

 

Artistic representation of el cuero, the deadly Chilean hide (© Tim Morris)

Interestingly, Chilean legends tell of a very similar beast called el cuero or the hide, as it is likened in shape and size to a cowhide stretched out flat, with countless eyes around its perimeter, and four larger ones in the centre. As it happens, jellyfishes possess peripheral sensory organs called rhopalia that incorporate simple light-sensitive eyespots or ocelli.

Moreover, some jellyfishes also have four larger, deceptively eye-like organs visible at the centre of their bell. In reality, however, these organs are not eyes at all. Instead, they are actually portions of the jellyfishes' gut, known as gastric pouches, with the jellyfishes' horseshoe-shaped gonads sited directly underneath these pouches and also very visible (as in the familiar moon jellyfish Aurelia aurita).

 

Moon jellyfishes Aurelia aurita (© Tila Monto/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

So perhaps the deadly hide is more than a myth after all, lurking like so many other maritime horrors reported down through the ages in the deep oceans' impenetrable black abyss, but only very rarely encountered by humankind – which in view of the dreadful fate that befell the hapless South Pacific shark in 1953 may be just as well!

And now, as noted above, this chilling cryptozoological vignette has been brought to vivid life by longstanding friend and awesome Swedish animator Richard Svensson, aka The Lone Animator, in a wonderful 3-minute mini-movie entitled Encounter In The Abyss, and available to watch for free on YouTube since 8 August 2024 – just click here. Don't miss it!

 

Thumbnail image on YouTube for Encounter In The Abyss by Richard Svensson (© Richard Svensson)

 

 

MEDUSA'S MENAGERIE - NAME-CHECKING SOME ZOOLOGICAL GORGONS FROM THE PRESENT AND THE PAST

Photo-bombed by a gorgonopsid – it could only happen to me! © Dr Karl Shuker)

Deriving their name from 'gorgos', an ancient Greek word translating as 'dreadful', the gorgons are undoubtedly among the most infamous, terrifying monsters in classical Greek mythology. A trio of nightmarish sisters born to the ancient sea deities Phorcys and Ceto, each of these three horrific entities was feared for the writhing, seething, sibilant mass of living venomous serpents that composed her hair, and even more so for her hideous visage's dreadful gaze, which was absolutely petrifying, literally – because anyone who looked directly into her face and eyes was instantly and irrevocably turned to stone.

The decapitated head of Medusa, slain by Perseus, as painted by Peter Paul Rubens, c.1617-1618; intriguingly, note that among the snakes breaking free from her hair following her death is an amphisbaena (head at each end of its body) directly below her head, and a very strange-looking fox-headed serpent to the left of the amphisbaena (separating the two is a scorpion) - click to enlarge (public domain)

Ironically, the two immortal gorgons, Stheno and Euryale, scarcely feature at all in Greek mythology and are therefore all but forgotten beyond the cloistered domain of classical scholars, even though one might have expected that their invulnerable, inviolate nature coupled with their lethal power of petrification would surely have set them in good stead indeed as truly daunting opponents for any of the famous Greek heroes to vanquish. However, it is commonly believed that their existence was a later addition to an original myth of just a single, mortal gorgon, because there are so many trinities of female monsters or other entities in Greek mythology (e.g. the Graeae or Grey Sisters, the Furies or Erinyes, the Horae, the Charites or Graces), so this may well explain, their virtual absence from classical legend.

(Interestingly, the premise of a 1964 British horror movie made by Hammer Films, starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, and entitled The Gorgon was the survival into modern times of one of the two immortal gorgons; but the film's researchers apparently made a major error, because they named her as Megaera, who in Greek mythology wasn't a gorgon at all, but was instead one of the three Furies, together with Tisiphone – erroneously named in this same movie as the second immortal gorgon – and Alecto.)

Poster advertising the 1964 Hammer Films horror movie The Gorgon (© Columbia Pictures/reproduced here on the basis of non-commercial fair use only)

Conversely, it is the third gorgon, that single mortal representative, who has seized virtually all of the public attention afforded to this terrifying trio. Her name? Medusa.

Medusa's horror-laden history has assumed many forms during the countless tellings and retellings by all manner of writers, chroniclers, and narrators down through the ages – even including variants in which she was originally a stunningly beautiful maiden but was transformed into a merciless, embittered monster with deadly gaze after finding disfavour with one or other of the Greek deities.

Perseus and the head of Medusa (© Simon Wyatt)

Irrespective of her origin, however, Medusa was eventually slain by the demigod hero Perseus, who skilfully succeeded in slicing off her head with his sword while only looking at her indirectly, via a reflection in the highly-polished surface of his mirrored shield – a gift to him from his divine protector, the goddess Athena.

Perseus and the gorgons, with Perseus holding up the decapitated head of Medusa; illustrated by Walter Crane for Nathaniel Hawthorne's A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys, 1893 edition (public domain)

Perseus was the very first of the classical Greek heroes, who went on to become the legendary founder of Mycenae. His father was the god Zeus, his mother Danaë, a daughter of King Acrisius of Argos and his wife Queen Eurydice, whom Zeus famously visited and impregnated in the guise of a shower of golden rain.

In later ages, carvings of Medusa's head were incorporated in a number of classical architectural features, such as columns, arches, door panels, decorative grilles, sarcophagi, fountains, statues, and mosaics, to ward off evil spirits, and the image was also a popular depiction on protective amulets. This visual device is known as a gorgoneion.

A gorgoneion entitled 'Medusa and the Seasons', in a Roman mosaic found at Palencia, Spain, and dated at 167-200 AD (© Luis Garcia/Wikipedia)

Today, Stheno and Euryale remain largely unknown; but despite having been slain, Medusa still lives on, or at least her name and that of her monstrous kind do – which is due not only to the popularity of her memorable legend but also, in turn, because both 'gorgon' and 'Medusa' have been applied to a wide range of very remarkable, entirely real creatures, some living, others once-living. So permit me now to take you all on a brief, ShukerNature-led visit to the extraordinary menagerie of Medusa.

HOW AN AQUATIC GORGON-HEAD BECAME AN INTERNET ALIEN – OR WAS IT THE OTHER WAY ROUND?!

According to a report posted online during late September 2014 by Britain's Sunday Express newspaper and written by Levi Winchester, a 54-year-old Singapore fisherman named Ong Han Boon had recently captured in waters off the southern Singapore island of Sentosa a creature so bizarre in appearance that he seriously wondered whether it might be an alien, an extraterrestrial! Before releasing it back into the sea, he filmed a short video of it that duly appeared in the above-noted newspaper report (click here to view it there), and on 28 September a Singapore-based member of Facebook called Jr Saim publicly shared the video on his FB timeline (click here to view it on Facebook). The video swiftly went viral, soon appearing – and still appearing – on numerous news and video-sharing websites.

Still from the Singapore Gorgonocephalus video (© Ong Han Boon / inclusion here strictly on Fair Use/non-commercial basis only)

But what was the creature that it showed? Those of an ophidiophobic disposition who have not already watched it might choose to avert their eyes from the video, because the entity in it looks disturbingly like a hideous matted wig composed of writhing, twisting, curling and uncurling serpentine tresses – a veritable Medusa scalp, in fact. And nomenclaturally, if not taxonomically, that is precisely what it is, because its scientific binomial name is Gorgonocephalus caputmedusae – 'gorgon-headed Medusa head'.

Happily, however, this grotesque entity lacks the petrifying power of its namesake, and it isn't of extraterrestrial origin either, because in reality it is nothing more startling than a sea-dwelling starfish, or, more specifically, a basket star. These particular invertebrates belong to a taxonomic class of echinoderms known as ophiuroids, whose most famous members are the notably long-limbed brittle stars.

Gorgonocephalus arborescens, from Alfred Edmund Brehm's famous multi-volume animal encyclopaedia Tierleben ('Animal Life'), which was originally published in 6 volumes during the 1860s and then republished as an expanded 10-volume second edition during the 1870s (public domain)

In a Gorgonocephalus basket star, however, of which there are several species, each of the five arms radiating from its central disc repeatedly divides and subdivides, yielding the somewhat disturbing, wriggling mass of miniature snake-like 'armlets' so vividly captured in the above video, and whose serpentine resemblance is heightened by their fleshy covering of pink rubbery skin. For a much more appealing, stationary representation of a Gorgonocephalus basket star, here is German biologist and artist Prof. Ernst Haeckel's exquisite rendition:

Gorgonocephalus basket star, appearing in Prof. Ernst Haeckel's gorgeously-illustrated, 2-volume tome Kunstformen der Natur ('Art Forms in Nature'), published in 1904 (public domain)

And here's an illustration of a reddish-coloured species named after the famous 19^th-Century American zoologist and geologist Prof. Louis Agassiz – Gorgonocephalus agassizi:

Gorgonocephalus agassizi, 1800s rendition (public domain)

When seeking prey, Gorgoncephalus takes up a stationary position and then spreads out its innumerable tiny armlets like a basket. Each of these small but highly dexterous armlets is equipped with hooks and spines to seize and hold prey, normally krill or other planktonic forms, which they then convey to the mouth on the underside of the animal's central disc with the added assistance of a series of suctioned tube-feet.

A GORGON-GUTTED RIBBON WORM

No less grotesque and slightly stomach-churning than the Gorgonocephalus video of 2014 was a more recent one, seemingly first aired in May 2015 but again swiftly going viral and appearing on numerous websites, but featuring, as it turned out, another gorgon-dubbed creature with equally discomforting behaviour. The video (whose original ownership is presently unknown to me) can be viewed here, and shows a long blood-red worm-like creature originating in the seas off Thailand but resting on someone's hand that suddenly releases from its mouth a long thick white tube from which an intricate mass of white filaments shoot forth and which momentarily writhe about before sticking to the person's hand – almost as if this mini-monster has disgorged a gorgon's head of serpentine hair! Nor is that my own peculiar impression – the same notion clearly occurred to others too, because the generic name of the vermiform creature in question is none other than Gorgonorhynchus. This roughly translates as 'gorgon-beaked', though the beak in this instance is actually a proboscis.

Still from the video of the Thai Gorgonorhynchus nemertean everting its proboscis on a person's hand (copyright owner currently unknown to me / inclusion here strictly on Fair Use/non-commercial basis only)

As someone who studied such creatures during a university project, I was very familiar with this animal's behaviour, repulsive though it evidently seemed to many other viewers of the video, judging from various comments posted concerning it. The creature is a nemertean, or ribbon worm, Nemertea (aka Rhynchocoela) being a phylum of invertebrates whose members are characterised by their often very long slender bodies and in particular by their possession of a lengthy prey-capturing proboscis. This distinctive organ is normally held inside the worm's mouth within its own sheath (the rhynchocoel) and in an inverted, inside-out conformation, but when the worm encounters a potential prey victim, it is instantly and quite explosively shot out through the worm's mouth in everted form. The proboscis usually bears hooks at its tip that seize the prey, and sometimes inject it with venom too, after which the prey is swiftly hauled back inside the worm's body via the proboscis's immediate muscle-powered retraction through the mouth in inverted form once more.

Illustration of Gorgonorhynchus reptens everting its branched proboscis after feeling threatened from being touched (© Rachel Koning/Wikipedia)

In most nemerteans, the proboscis is a long, simple tube, but in certain species, including those of the genus Gorgonorhynchus, the tube possesses many branching sticky filaments that divide and subdivide in a manner analogous to the armlets of the basket star Gorgonocephalus, and which, again like the latter's armlets, wriggle and writhe as if they were a multitude of tiny snakes, before wrapping themselves around the prey, encapsulating it in an adhesive mass from which it cannot pull out, almost like the gossamer produced by a spider. In effect, therefore, when the nemertean everted its proboscis all over the person's hand, it was either stressed or feeling threatened from being handled or it was reacting as if the hand were prey, and hence was vainly attempting to wrap it up in its proboscis's sticky filaments.

GORGONS FROM PREHISTORY

Moving now from the present back to the (very) far-distant past: in the mid to late Permian Period (265 to 252 million years ago), when dinosaurs were still merely a future twinkle in the eye of evolution, a reptile-originating lineage existed whose members were so genuinely monstrous in form and size that in 1876 the great 19^th-Century palaeontologist Prof. Sir Richard Owen fittingly named them after Greek mythology's own historical (albeit not prehistorical!) horrors, the gorgons. For he christened their type genus and species Gorgonops torvus, after which genus their entire taxonomic group (currently deemed a suborder) duly derived its name – Gorgonopsia – in 1895, as dubbed by British palaeontologist Prof. Harry G. Seeley.

Also called gorgonopsians, the gorgonopsids belong to the taxonomic order of synapsid reptiles known as Therapsida, whose members are often referred to colloquially as the mammal reptiles or mammal-like reptiles, and do indeed belong to the same taxonomic clade, Theriodontia, as do true mammals.

A life-sized animatronic gorgonopsid on exhibition at the West Midlands Safari Park in England, August 2015 (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Gorgonopsids were among the largest of all carnivorous vertebrates alive at that time (the biggest, Inostrancevia from northern Russia, was up to 11.5 ft long, the size of a large bear or small rhinoceros, with the aptly-named Titanogorgan maximus from Tanzania only slightly smaller), and they were certainly the dominant ones. Even so, in genera such as Gorgonops itself, native to what is now Africa, their most memorable features were their enormous sabre-like canine teeth – so large that they almost projected below their lower jaw.

Gorgonopsids also had pillar-like legs that arose from underneath their bodies like those of mammals rather than splaying from their sides like reptiles. This important anatomical feature enabled them to move more swiftly and energy-efficiently than their lumbering herbivorous prey, which included some very large, hefty plant-eating reptiles known as pareiasaurs, some of which, like Scutosaurus, were armoured for protection.

The gorgonopsid Inostrancevia alexandri attacking the pareiasaur Scutosaurus karpinski (© Dmitry Bogdanov/Wikipedia)

The gorgonopsids perished entirely during the mass extinction at the end of the Permian, the only theriodont lineage to become extinct during that catastrophic event, but they were sensationally resurrected in CGI if not in life itself during the early 2000s by Britain's highly popular ITV sci-fi television show Primeval. In the very first episode, originally screened in Britain on 10 February 2007, a marauding gorgonopsid of the genus Gorgonops equipped with a monstrously large pair of upper canines confidently stepped forth from out of the Permian and into the present day via a temporary gateway through time known as an anomaly, wreaking havoc in Gloucestershire's Forest of Dean, tenaciously stalking the perplexed scientists sent to deal with this ferocious anachronistic therapsid, and vibrantly demonstrating to enthralled viewers everywhere that carnivorous dinosaurs were not the only prehistoric predators that oozed charisma and exuded terror in equal proportions. Moreover, another Gorgonops featured in the final episode of this first series of Primeval.

A gorgonopsid on the prowl in Episode 1, Series 1 of Primeval (© ITV Studios/ProSieben/Impossible Pictures/Treasure Entertainment/M6 Films / inclusion here strictly on Fair Use/non-commercial basis only)

Nevertheless, bearing in mind that prior to Primeval coming along, gorgonopsids were scarcely known beyond the palaeontological community, to utilise one as the star monster in the opening episode of a brand-new, potentially major new sci-fi show rather than going for the safer tried-and-trusted option of a rampaging dinosaur was not only inspired but also very brave – and yet, as it turned out, highly successful too. All of which only goes to show that, clearly, you can't keep a good gorgon, or gorgonopsid, down!

Two African therapsids - the gorgonopsid Rubidgea battling a dicynodont Oudenodon, as depicted on a postage stamp issued in 1973 by Zambia, from my personal collection (© Zambia postal service / inclusion here strictly on Fair Use/non-commercial basis only)

THE FRAGILE, STINGING SEA-FLOWERS OF MEDUSA

Needless to say, no documentation of real-life gorgon namesakes could be complete without considering the most famous example of all, named specifically after the most famous gorgon of all – Medusa herself.

In the phylum Cnidaria, there are two basic body forms, both of which are produced by many species, but only one or the other by some. The two body forms are the sessile, stalk-bodied, tentacle-headed, hydra-like polyp; and the free-swimming, umbrella-shaped, often (but not always) tentacle-fringed, jellyfish-like medusa. The principal taxonomic classes of cnidarian are Hydrozoa (the hydrozoans, including the hydras, freshwater jellyfishes, and siphonophores), Staurozoa (the stalked jellyfishes), Scyphozoa (the true jellyfishes), Cubomedusae (the box jellyfishes), and Anthozoa (the sea anemones and corals). Certain hydrozoans, scyphozoans, and cubomedusans all produce a medusa form, many of which are usually equipped with long stinging tentacles that fancifully resemble the living snakelock hair fringing the dread face of Medusa, thereby earning the cnidarian medusa form its name, as coined for it in 1752 by none other than Linnaeus himself.

And so, what better way to bring to a memorable close our visit to Medusa's menagerie than to savour some of the most extravagantly exquisite illustrations ever produced of the varied types of cnidarian medusae, often resembling bizarre, exotic sea-flowers, as contained within Hackel's artistic masterpiece Kunstformen der Natur ('Art Forms in Nature'), published in 1904. Please click the images to enlarge them.

Three species of Discomedusae, true jellyfishes belonging to the class Scythozoa (public domain)

More Discomedusae (public domain)

Various species of Narcomedusae, a hydrozoan order whose species normally lack a polyp stage (public domain)

Various species of Trachymedusae, another hydrozoan order whose species never produce a polyp stage, only reproducing sexually via medusae (public domain)

Various species of Leptomedusae or thecate hydroids, a hydrozoan order whose species produce ensheathed polyp colonies (the protective sheath is known as a theca or perisarc), as well as sexually-reproducing medusae (public domain)

Views of the siphonophore Physophora hydrostatica – like all siphonophores, what looks like a single large complex organism equipped with bell, tentacles, etc, is in reality a super-organism, consisting of an entire colony of highly-specialised individual organisms, each of which is one of the super-organism's organs, e.g. one organism is the bell, another organism is one of the tentacles, yet another is another of the tentacles, etc (public domain)

More siphonophores (public domain)

Views of the helmet jellyfish Periphylla periphylla, a deepsea species of true jellyfish or scyphozoan (public domain)

Various species of Anthomedusae, the athecate hydroids, a hydrozoan order whose species produce polyp colonies not ensheathed in a protective sheath (the theca or perisarc), as well as sexually-reproducing medusae (public domain)

Various species of Stauromedusae, the stalked jellyfishes, sole members of the taxonomic class Staurozoa, whose medusae are attached rather than free-swimming (public domain)

Various species of Cubomedusae, the box jellyfishes, which include Flecker's sea wasp Chironex fleckeri, the world's most venomous jellyfish, yet still-undiscovered by science in Haeckel's time, and remaining so until the mid-1950s (public domain)

More Discomedusae, true jellyfishes belonging to the class Scyphozoa (public domain)

Various species of rhizostome Discomedusae, true jellyfishes belonging to Scyphozoa (public domain)

More siphonophores (public domain)

More species of Discomedusae, including the medusa of the familiar moon jellyfish Aurelia aurita (top centre) (public domain)

Still more siphonophores (public domain)

Also commemorating Medusa, incidentally, are Medusaceratops lokii (also commemorating Loki, the Norse god of evil), a late Cretaceous species of ceratopsian horned dinosaur, which inhabited what is now Montana, USA, and was formally named in 2010; and Medusagyne oppositifolia, the critically-endangered Seychelles jellyfish tree, earning its genus name from the fancied resemblance of its flower's gynoecium to Medusa's head, plus its common name from the distinctive jellyfish-like shape of its dehisced fruit, and believed extinct until some individuals were discovered on the island of Mahé during the 1970s.

The front cover of Prof. Ernst Haeckel's truly beautiful book, Kunstformen der Natur (1904) (public domain)

And speaking of jellyfishes: how ironic it is that in certain instances, creatures as beautiful as cnidarian medusae are also potentially lethal, due to the potency of the venom produced by their tentacles' nematocysts or stinging cells. Then again, how can we really expect anything else from organisms that are, after all, specifically named after a legendary figure feared not only for her thanatic eyes but also for the deadly nature of her living tresses?

Me and my mate the gorgonopsid (© Dr Karl Shuker)

UPDATE - 31 August 2015

Today, I received a scan of this very different, highly original, and totally delightful Medusa illustration, drawn by crypto-enthusiast and friend Jane Cooper. Hidden amongst Medusa's traditional serpentine hair strands are several that are inspired by all manner of other creatures, including some notable cryptozoological ones, such as Nessie, the Mongolian death worm, and the Dover demon, as well as a very imposing terror bird. How many can you spot and identify? Thanks Jane!!

 Medusa goes crypto!! - click to enlarge (©  Jane Cooper)

2nd UPDATE - 29 March 2018

Today I visited Valence House Museum in Dagenham, Essex, just outside London, England, to see a wonderful exhibition entitled 'Dinosaurs, Harryhausen and Me', which featured a sizeable number of the iconic, priceless dinosaur and monster models created by the legendary Ray Harryhausen and appearing in a number of his famous Stop-Motion sci-fi and fantasy movies, including Jason and the Argonauts (hydra, two fighting skeletons), The Valley of Gwangi (Gwangi, Styracosaurus, Eohippus, Ornithomimus, Lope), Clash of the Titans (Pegasus, Medusa, Bubo the living mechanical owl), Mysterious Island (giant ammonite/nautiloid mollusc), One Million Years BC (Ceratosaurus), and First Men in the Moon (Grand/Prime Lunar the big-brained leader of the moon-ruling insectoid Selenites). The 'Me' in the exhibition's title is none other than a longstanding Facebook friend of mine, expert model maker Alan Friswell, who was personally appointed by Ray to restore all of his priceless models, as some had suffered damage and wear during the 40-odd years since they had originally been made. Alan also very kindly made for me my wonderful Feejee mermaid.

With my Feejee mermaid that Alan Friswell made for me (© Dr Karl Shuker)

As Alan is local to Dagenham, the Museum was keen to stage the exhibition, which is proving extremely popular, and it was an absolute delight for me to see at first hand so many of the awesome creations that captivated me on screen when I first saw them as a youth and which still do when I rewatch them today. A selection of framed artwork produced by Ray is also on display here, together with some of Alan's own stunning models, and entry is free. The exhibition lasts until 30 June 2018, so do try and visit, especially if, like me, you're a Harryhausen fan. Highly recommended!!

Click here to read my full review of this awesome exhibition. And here am I in an almost too-close-for-comfort meeting with Medusa - notice how I am taking good care not to look her in the eye...

Alongside Ray Harryhausen's original model of the gorgon Medusa, which appeared in his spectacular fantasy film Clash of the Titans (1981) (photograph © Dr Karl Shuker)

GLOBSTERS ABOUNDING! - PART 2: SEEKING GIANT OCTOPUSES… BUT FINDING ROTTING SPERM WHALES

Vintage illustration of a deepsea octopus, by Ernst Haeckel (public domain)

In Part 1 of this ShukerNature blog article (click here), I surveyed a wide range of globsters, including the celebrated Trunko, and I also chronicled a selection of reports featuring alleged giant octopuses – traditionally, the most popular identity for globsters. As now revealed, however, modern-day studies of these latter anomalous entities have unveiled a very different explanation for them.

UNMASKING THE GLOBSTERS, AND UNVEILING THE QUASI-OCTOPUS

Thanks to the advances in DNA technology during the past two decades, science now has a reliable tool with which to investigate and expose the hitherto-cryptic identity of globsters, and in the past few years this is precisely what has happened, with eye-opening results.

The first notable globster to be unmasked by DNA analyses was the Fortune Bay specimen from Newfoundland. In February 2002, a team of researchers led by Newfoundland molecular systematics expert Dr Steven M. Carr published their findings in the Biological Bulletin scientific journal, summarising them as follows:

"DNA was extracted from the carcass and enzymatically amplified by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR): the mitochondrial NADH2 DNA sequence was identified as that of a sperm whale (Physeter catodon). Amplification and sequencing of cryptozoological DNA with "universal" PCR primers with broad specificity to vertebrate taxa and comparison with species in the GenBank taxonomic database is an effective means of discriminating otherwise unidentifiable large marine creatures."

Effective it has certainly been. One South Florida scientist with a longstanding interest in globsters is Dr Sidney K. Pierce, and in recent years he has led several studies of preserved globster remains, culminating in a detailed Biological Bulletin paper of June 2004 co-authored by Carr and several other researchers, which concentrated upon the Chilean globster but also examined samples from various additional specimens.

Chilean globster (© Dr Elsa Cabrera – Fair Use/Educational Purposes Only)

The team announced:

"Electron microscopy revealed that the remains [of the Chilean globster] are largely composed of an acellular, fibrous network reminiscent of the collagen fiber network in whale blubber. Amino acid analyses of an acid hydrolysate indicated that the fibers are composed of 31% glycine residues and also contain hydroxyproline and hydroxylysine, all diagnostic of collagen. Using primers designed to the mitochondrial gene nad2, an 800-bp product of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was amplified from DNA that had been purified from the carcass. The DNA sequence of the PCR product was 100% identical to nad2 of sperm whale (Physeter catodon). These results unequivocally demonstrate that the Chilean Blob is the almost completely decomposed remains of the blubber layer of a sperm whale. This identification is the same as those we have obtained before from other relics such as the so-called giant octopus of St. Augustine (Florida), the Tasmanian West Coast Monster, two Bermuda Blobs, and the Nantucket Blob. It is clear now that all of these blobs of popular and cryptozoological interest are, in fact, the decomposed remains of large cetaceans."

Yet how can a decomposed sperm whale transform in shape and texture so dramatically that it becomes a globster, sometimes even equipped with apparent tentacles? As I revealed in my book, Extraordinary Animals Revisited (2007), the answer is fascinating, and also has a notable precedent:

"There is a notable precedent for such dramatic misidentification when dealing with beached remains, which is known as the pseudo-plesiosaur effect. When a basking shark Cetorhinus maximus dies and its body decomposes, it undergoes a remarkable transformation. The gill apparatus falls away, taking with it the shark's jaws, leaving only its small cranium and exposed backbone, thus resembling a small head and long neck. The end of the shark's backbone only runs into the upper fluke of its tail, so during decomposition the lower fluke falls off, leaving what looks like a long slender tail. And to complete the plesiosaur deception, the shark's pectoral fins, and sometimes its pelvic fins too, remain attached, resembling two pairs of flippers. Little wonder, therefore, why a number of amazingly plesiosaurian carcases have been reported over the years, only for anatomical and biochemical analyses to expose them as sharks.

"Now, moreover, we have confirmation that an analogous transformation is responsible for at least some of the hitherto perplexing globsters that have come to light - a transformation that I propose should hereafter be referred to as the quasi-octopus effect. As detailed by Drs Pierce, Carr, and Letelier, after a whale dies its body can float for months, decomposing, until eventually its heavy backbone and skull dissociate from their encompassing skin-sac of rotting blubber, and sink to the sea bottom, leaving behind a thick gelatinous matrix of collagen - the tough protein found in skin and connective tissue. It is this mass of collagen, still encased in its skin-sac, that washes ashore, as a globster. Furthermore, if a few of the whale's ribs remain within the collagen matrix, and any 'fingers' of fibrous flesh are attached to them, these resemble tentacles [or even a trunk, in the case of Trunko]. And if the whale is a sperm whale, the spermaceti organ gives the resulting globster a bulky shape reminiscent of an octopus."

So does that mean that globsters are a dead-end as far as providing evidence for the reality of giant octopuses is concerned? Not quite, perhaps...

VERRILLY A GIANT OCTOPUS?

The grand-daddy of all globsters was washed ashore near St Augustine, Florida, on 30 November 1896. Its prodigious remains, pinkish-grey and pear-shaped, were over 6 m long, 1.6 m wide, and 1.3 m high, and were estimated to weigh 5 tons. What appeared to be the stumps of five massive tentacles were clearly visible in photographs taken of this monstrous carcase by local physician DeWitt Webb, as was what seemed to be a severed tentacle, measuring 8.7 m long and 20 cm thick. Webb sent a sample of its tough flesh to Yale University cephalopod (squid and octopus) expert Prof. Addison E. Verrill, who announced that the carcase had been a giant octopus, which he formally christened Octopus giganteus. Later, however, Verrill recanted, claiming that it was merely the spermaceti organ of a sperm whale.

St Augustine globster (public domain)

A second sample, sent to the Smithsonian Institution, has been tested on numerous occasions via several different techniques, and has yielded differing results. Whereas Pierce’s studies indicated that it was indeed of sperm whale origin, analyses by eminent Chicago University biochemist and longstanding cryptozoological investigator Prof. Roy P. Mackal strongly supported an octopus identity. However, the sample has been preserved for so long that it has probably been contaminated and rendered useless for detailed study - which would explain the greatly diverging results - unless future advances in technology can overcome this obstacle. If they can, then interested researchers should apply to the Institute of Creation Research (ICR) in El Cajon, California, for it is here that the only surviving sample of tissue from the St Augustine globster can be found, donated by Prof. Mackal in 2003 to the ICR’s Professor of Biology, Dr Kenneth Cummings.

Drawing of St Augustine globster by Prof. Addison E. Verrill (public domain)

How ironic it would be if the existence or otherwise of what would be (if real) one of the largest marine creatures alive today – the elusive giant octopus – is ultimately determined by this tiniest sliver of substance, the last remnant from one of cryptozoology’s most enduring enigmas. For a further picture and details concerning this globster, click here to access my ShukerNature-reprinted interview conducted back in the 1990s with Prof. Mackal.

THE MULTI-LIMBED MONSTER OF ANTIBES

In addition: A truly bizarre sea monster was allegedly sighted between Antibes and Nice in 1562. Oval in shape, with a pig’s head at one end and a trunked elephant-like head at the other, it boasted no less than eleven claw-bearing limbs.

Antibes multi-limbed sea monster (public domain)

Is it possible that this weird entity, depicted in the Paralipomena (supplement) to the second edition of Conrad Gesner’s Historiae Animalium Liber IV: Piscium et Aquatilium Animantium Natura (1604), was a distorted description of a giant octopus?

GIANT OCTOPUS, OR MYSTERY JELLYFISH?

Finally: In 1953, while testing a new type of deep-sea diving suit in the South Pacific, an Australian diver named Christopher Loeb encountered a Lovecraftian horror from the ocean’s unpenetrated depths, which I documented as follows within my book From Flying Toads To Snakes With Wings (1997):

"The diver had been following a shark, and was resting on the edge of a chasm leading down to much deeper depths, still watching the shark, when an immense, dull-brown, shapeless mass rose up out of the chasm, pulsating sluggishly, and flat in general outline with ragged edges.

"Despite appearing devoid of eyes or other instantly-recognizable sensory organs, this malign presence evidently discerned the shark's presence somehow, because it floated upwards until its upper surface made direct contact. The shark instantly gave a convulsive shudder, and was then drawn without resistance into the hideous monster's body. After that, the creature sank back down into the chasm, leaving behind a very frightened diver to ponder what might have happened if that nightmarish, nameless entity had not been attracted towards the shark!"

Cirrothauma murrayi, a species of deepsea cirrate octopus (public domain)

In the past, a deepsea octopus has been offered as a possible identity for this disturbing creature, but as I discussed in detail within my book, a far more satisfactory candidate is a deepsea jellyfish.

Whereas all octopuses have tentacles, some deepsea jellyfishes do not. What they do have, however, are potent stinging cells called nematocysts on their bodies (and tentacles if they possess any), armed with venom that swiftly paralyses their prey. This would readily explain the immediate paralysis of the shark. Moreover, jellyfishes do not possess true eyes but they are equipped with sensory structures responsive to water movements. Consequently, the creature would have learnt of the shark’s presence by detecting its movements in the water. How lucky, then, that the diver had remained stationary!

Artistic representation of the deadly Chilean hide (© Icarito)

Interestingly, Chilean legends tell of a very similar beast called el cuero or the hide, as it is likened in shape and size to a cowhide stretched out flat, with countless eyes around its perimeter, and four larger ones in the centre. As it happens, jellyfishes possess peripheral sensory organs called rhopalia that incorporate simple light-sensitive eyespots or ocelli.

Moreover, some jellyfishes also have four larger, deceptively eye-like organs visible at the centre of their bell, though in reality these organs are not eyes at all. Instead, they are actually portions of the jellyfishes' gut, known as gastric pouches, with the jellyfishes' horseshoe-shaped gonads sited directly underneath these pouches and also very visible (as in the familiar moon jellyfish Aurelia aurita).

Exquisite illustration of various jellyfish species revealing their four centrally-sited gastric pouches, depicted by Ernst Haeckel (public domain)

So perhaps the deadly hide is more than a myth after all, lurking like so many other maritime horrors reported down through the ages in the deep oceans' impenetrable black abyss, but only very rarely encountered by humankind – which in view of the dreadful fate that befell the hapless South Pacific shark in 1953 may be just as well!

A sinister-looking deepsea octopus in a 19th-Century illustration (public domain)

For further details concerning globsters and Trunko, check out my books Extraordinary Animals Revisited and Mirabilis.