FOR WHOM THE BELL TROLLS!

Painting of trolls by Swedish artist John Bauer (1882-1918) (Wikipedia)

Trolls are famously frightened of sunlight and the tolling of church bells, but did you know that they are also scared of thunder and sometimes transform into ball lightning? No? Well you do now, and so do I – thanks to an extremely interesting email that was kindly sent to me just a few days ago by a ShukerNature reader.

One of the delights of writing this blog has always been the receipt of additional and often very unexpected, significant information from its many readers and followers, some of whom post their thoughts and data directly here, whereas others send theirs to me privately. In this vein, after emailing me previously with valuable new data in response to my post on the night-raven (and which I duly included in full within the comments section of that post), on 8 January 2011 Swedish correspondent Håkan Lindh sent me another very informative and enlightening email, but this time on the subject of Scandinavia’s most famous folkloric entities - trolls.

If, like me, you were a child somewhere in Europe or North America during the mid-1960s, then it is very likely that your first encounter with the term ‘troll’ came via those ubiquitous toy figures originally created in 1959 by Danish fisherman and woodcutter Thomas Dam but which soon became toy sensations worldwide. Of varying size and often unclothed, but invariably topped with great shocks of silky hair, ‘troll dolls’ were created in their millions and in every conceivable combination of skin and hair colour (click here for more details). Fascinated by these weird yet strangely intriguing entities (clearly my future passion for cryptozoology was already beginning to surface!), I pestered my parents into buying me a sizeable, multicoloured array of them – and, hoarder that I am, I still have some of the smaller ones standing in line along the shelf of one of my bedroom bookcases, as well as a larger, fiery-haired biker troll! (Yes, my motorbike passion was an early developer too!)

My miniature troll dolls retained from childhood (Dr Karl Shuker)

From these Westernised toy trolls, it was just the smallest of steps for me to begin reading in British and American books of fables and folklore about more traditional, Nordic trolls – or what I had at least assumed until now were traditional Nordic trolls. Here I came across all of the classic troll stereotypes – slow-witted, hideously ugly, huge, hairy, and unclothed, living underground during the day and only emerging at night, liable to eat unwary humans if any strayed into their dark, forested domains, sometimes encountered lurking beneath bridges, and fated to turn to stone if caught above-ground by the first rays of the morning sun.

And then, in later years, along came cryptozoology, which introduced to me the exciting notion that perhaps trolls were more than just a myth. Could they instead have been inspired by misty, preserved memories from long ago of encounters between modern man’s ancestors and Neanderthal man? And could some of these latter have even survived into historical times, explaining reports of woodwose or hairy wild men allegedly spied in various of the more remote reaches of Europe? Moreover, there were even suggestions that perhaps trolls were man-beasts, comparable to the Himalayan yetis and North American bigfoot.

But how close – if indeed close at all – were any of these varied Western concepts of trolls to those prevalent in their Scandinavian homelands and traditions? Let’s just say, as you’ll now discover, that Håkan Lindh’s email to me regarding trolls was nothing if not eye-opening - revealing that the ‘real’ Nordic troll is very different indeed from what I had previously been led to believe or expect. It also contained a most interesting snippet concerning the possibility favoured by some cryptozoologists that dragons were real animals:

"I have been interested in cryptozoology for as long as I can remember, but I’m also very sceptical of the value of folklore as a source. Sure, stories may sometimes hide grains of truth, but folklore itself spins that according to its own "rules".

"The early folklorist/ethnographer Hyltén-Cavallius did a serious cryptozoological survey in the nineteenth century Sweden about dragons. His theory was that dragons really were a Scandinavian species of python, so he sent out advertisements to get in touch with witnesses. And people did contact him, but it is obvious that what they told him was of no real substance, exaggerated stories of grass-snakes and the staples from dragon-folklore mostly, so it ended in nothing. Hyltén-Cavallius sure was a pioneer, but also seen as something of an eccentric already in his own time. His theories about trolls and giants were also seen as too much.

"Besides a general knowledge of a phenomenon, I’m unsure if there are much facts to find from folklore.

"I read a few years back on the net about cryptozoologists trying to identify our trolls as some kind of bigfoot, and that is very strange indeed. Trolls are never described as giant apelike animals, they are people living in societies, wearing clothes, having laws and language etc just like humans. They are not even very monstrous to look at, troll-girls especially could even be exceptionally beautiful. However, they were magical, and "contrary" to humans. They lived under cliffs and mountains, they shunned steel, they feared thunder, were not Christian, and were cunning thieves. As shapeshifters they were most often seen as shadows, animals or "balls of string" (ball-lightning perhaps), and of course often they were invisible.

"After the industrialism arrived, illustrators of children’s books like John Bauer created the "modern" troll, but those were not the trolls people actually believed existed once.

"So there is nothing in the real folklore that connects trolls with bigfoot-type cryptids. No more than British fairies actually.

"But cryptozoology will continue to be a favourite interest of mine, just as folklore is, even if I’m sceptical about [whether] the two subjects will really meet very often."

Troll societies bound by laws and gifted with language, the wearing of clothes, exceptionally beautiful troll maidens, and the ability to change into spheres of string or lightning? It all sounds less like the grunge-associated trolls of yore that we all thought we knew, and more like the synopsis for a new slick fantasy movie franchise.

That gives me an idea! Hold on – what do you mean there’s already a series of films out there starring a giant green ogre who actually turns out to be quite a caring, sharing, loveable kind of guy?! You’ll be telling me next that there’s also a series of films out there starring modern-day vampires more concerned about romantic teenage angst than blood, and sporting a fetchingly wan pallor to match! What? Oh...

My biker troll doll (flanked by a pair of Biker Mice From Mars!) (Dr Karl Shuker)

FRANK AND LOUIE, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG, AND THE JANUS CATS

Frank and Louie, an adult Janus cat (Marty S)

Just in case you were wondering from its title, you can rest assured that in this latest ShukerNature post I shall not be blogging about video games or cartoon television series! Instead, I’m continuing a theme that I began a few weeks ago when I blogged about dicephalic (two-headed) snakes, but this time the category of teratological duplication under consideration here is even more unusual, and is known as diprosopia or craniofacial duplication.

This is a very rare congenital disorder in which part or all of an individual’s face is duplicated on its head. An individual exhibiting this condition is called a diprosopus, and examples have been recorded from many different species, including our own, Homo sapiens.

Very rarely, diprosopia can result with a pair of conjoined twins in which not only the body and limbs but also the majority of the head of one twin has been absorbed into the respective regions of the other twin. Only the persistence of the absorbed twin’s face, positioned alongside that of the other twin, exists as evidence that this individual was indeed a pair of twins at some earlier point in its development.

But what has any of this to do with Sonic the Hedgehog? I’m glad you asked! The much more common mechanism by which diprosopia occurs is one that results from the action of a protein known (honestly!) as sonic hedgehog homolog (SHH), whose name was indeed inspired by the eponymous video game character. SHH controls the width of facial features, so if produced in excess it causes the abnormal widening of these features and also the duplication of facial structures. Moreover, the greater the widening, the more of these structures are duplicated, often yielding mirror images of one another. Very occasionally, the two faces of a diprosopic individual are positioned back to back, but usually they are situated virtually side by side.

For some reason as yet unclear, diprosopia occurs with surprising frequency in domestic cats. And indeed, I first learned of this extraordinary condition when I read about a two-faced kitten aptly dubbed Gemini in a report published by the National Enquirer on 11 October 1983. Gemini was one of four kittens born to the pet cat of Dan Lizza, from Latrobe in Pennsylvania, USA. The other three kittens were normal.

I confess that when I first saw the published photo of Gemini, I had doubts as to its authenticity, but once I began researching the condition I discovered a number of other feline cases, some of which had been documented in great detail. Bizarre though such cats may look, diprosopia was indeed a genuine teratological phenomenon.

Surprisingly, however, they had never been given a suitable colloquial name. ‘Two-faced cats’ was open to confusion with the expression ‘two-faced’, which of course refers to someone who is duplicitous in behaviour, rather than morphologically! And the relevant scientific term, ‘diprosopus’, hardly runs off the tongue with ease.

Happily, my lifelong interest in classical myths and legends came to the rescue. One of Roman mythology’s most famous deities is Janus, god of doorways, who has two faces. Consequently, when, several years ago, I began preparing in my spare time what is now the forthcoming book from which this post is excerpted – Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery – I duly coined the much more precise and readily enunciated term ‘Janus cats’ (and, by extension, ‘Janus kittens’) for these remarkable felids of the double visage.

One of the best documented Janus cats was a grey kitten that very closely resembled Gemini, but hailed from West Hartford, Connecticut. One of four kittens born to the pet cat of John Jansen on 22 April 1931 (the other three were normal), she possessed two complete faces, each equipped with its own nose, mouth, and pair of eyes, but the two faces shared a single pair of ears. Moreover, the right eye of the left-hand face and the left eye of the right-hand face were contained within a single eye socket (orbit), though the eyes and eyelids themselves were separate. Sadly, this little Janus kitten only lived for five days, although during that time she seemed to be thriving very well, suckling successfully with her left mouth. Ironically, as suggested by Thomas Hume Bissonnette, the researcher from Trinity College in Hartford who documented her case in the Journal of Heredity, her death may well have been related far less to her diprosopic condition than to the enormous amount of handling that she received from her many curious visitors, and the inevitable lack of sleep that she suffered as a result of this.

A rather more extreme case of diprosopia was exhibited by the Janus kitten documented in the Anatomical Record for 1950 by biologists T.U.H. Ellinger, R.M. Wotton, and L.J. Hall from Duquesne University, Pittsburgh. In this specimen, which lived for just one day, the right eye of the left-hand face and the left eye of the right-hand face were totally replaced by a single medially-located eye, just like that of the legendary one-eyed cyclops giants, but with the remaining eye in each face being totally normal, thereby yielding a three-eyed kitten.

Diprosopia often occurs in conjunction with various other congenital disorders, such as anencephaly, neural tube defects, and cardiac malformations. And even when the brain is present, it may exhibit a range of abnormalities, ranging from partial to complete duplication of brain structures, and/or underdevelopment of brain tissues. Consequently, many Janus cats (and other diprosopic animals) are still-born, and few of those that do survive birth go on to live for any length of time afterwards, let alone into adulthood.

Frank and Louie at just a few days old (Marty S)

However, one very notable, vibrant exception to this tragic rule was a male individual owned by a lady called Marty S (I have her full name on file but am concealing her surname at her request), living in Millbury, Massachusetts. Named Frank and Louie, this exceptionally fit but very gentle, friendly, and contented Janus cat, belonging to the Ragdoll breed - with thick fluffy white fur and grey limbs and tail - had reached his sixth birthday by July 2006 and was still in fine health. What may well have assisted his survival was that although each of his two pale-grey faces had its own mouth, only one of them, Frank’s (on the right), was connected to an oesophagus, so only Frank could feed (in addition, Louie's mouth lacked a lower jaw). This thereby eliminated any risk of the cat choking from two quantities of food passing down into his single stomach at the same time. Like the Janus kitten documented by Ellinger et al., Frank and Louie only possessed three eyes – one functional outer eye (blue in colour) in each face and a shared medial one that was non-functional.

According to a report by Nancy Sheehan in the Telegram & Gazette newspaper for 21 July 2006, Marty was working as a nurse in the operating theatre of a local vet’s when someone brought in Frankie and Louie, then just a tiny one-day-old Janus kitten, to be euthanised. Happily, however, Marty persuaded the vet to spare this frail hamster-sized creature. She then took him home and began an intensive regime in which she fed him every two hours with special kitten formula, and carried him with her wherever she went:

"He grew up in a shoebox. He went to work with me every day for the first three months of his life. I put a tube down into his stomach and injected the formula with a syringe. That’s another reason I think he lived, because the anatomy is usually so messed up in these cases, and this way he didn’t choke or anything. They [the vets] told me ‘Don’t get too attached. You can try, but they die in a few days’. [But] he was gaining weight, and I started to get excited. I thought, maybe he’s going to live."

And live he did, becoming so strong that he was eventually able to frolic with Marty’s other cats and even with her hefty 65-lb dog, who became his special friend. Marty even took him out for walks on a leash, where he was always guaranteed to attract plenty of attention.

I haven’t been able to discover as yet whether Frank and Louie is still alive, but by his sixth birthday he had already become the longest-surviving Janus cat on record. Which just goes to show that a cat with two faces can also have nine lives (or should that be eighteen?) if given enough love and care by a devoted owner.

Click on the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=two+faced+cat&aq=2

in order to view several videos of Janus kittens on YouTube, including an ‘Animal Planet’ video of Frank and Louie posted on 7 September 2008 (in which his name is transcribed as Frankenlouie to create a pun on Frankenstein). This video shows him to be a very sizeable, robust, and happily-purring adult cat – far removed indeed from the minuscule one-day-old scrap of fur destined to be put down, but saved and given by Marty a new shot at life, which he clearly grasped firmly and tenaciously with both paws!


UPDATE

On 10 August 2011, I received an email from Marty, the owner of Frank and Louie, and I was delighted to learn that he is still alive, and will be celebrating his 12th birthday on 8 September! Truly, a remarkable record-breaker - so, wishing you a Very Happy Forthcoming 12th Birthday, Frank and Louie, from ShukerNature! Marty has also sent me a fascinating selection of photos of Frank and Louie, snapped at various stages in his life, including those reproduced here with her kind permission.

Today - 15 September 2011 - the 2012 edition of Guinness World Records (formerly entitled The Guinness Book of Records) was published, and contains an entry confirming that Frank and Louie is the world's longest surviving Janus cat; as the Life Sciences Consultant for GWR, I had nominated Frank & Louie for inclusion, so naturally I was thoroughly delighted when my recommendation was formally accepted.


SECOND UPDATE, 5 December 2014

Today, I was very sad to learn from his owner, Marty, that Frank and Louie had died. He had fallen ill a few days earlier, and after being formally diagnosed by veterinarians as suffering from a severe cancer he was euthanised yesterday to prevent him from suffering from what would soon be its traumatic effects. He was 15 years old, an incredible age for a Janus cat, far surpassing all previous examples and likely never to be surpassed by any in the future - a wonderful testament to the love and devotion that Marty had always given to him throughout his long and happy life with her. Rest in peace, Frank and Louie.

The above account is an excerpt from one of my forthcoming books, Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery.

Frank and Louie (Marty S)

PINK ELEPHANTS ON PARADE!

The pink elephants that featured in a truly surrealistic, psychedelic scene accompanying a certain very famous song from the classic Disney animated film ‘Dumbo’ that shared this particular ShukerNature post’s title were hilarious hallucinations arising from accidental over-quaffing of champagne by the little elephant with the big ears. However, as revealed here, pink elephants have also been reported in reality, although we tend to refer to them more commonly, if less accurately, as white elephants. Let me explain.

The veneration of white elephants - known as Sinpyudaw in Myanmar, and as Chang Peuak in Thailand - by many Asian cultures is well known. In reality, however, the term 'white elephant' is something of a misnomer, because the animals in question are not generally pure white. Instead, the features that traditionally characterise a so-called 'white elephant' are:

1) A very pale pink/red skin, with even paler patches on the belly and inner limbs.

2) White hairs on its body and tail.

3) A very pale pink palate.

4) Eyes of light blue or pink colouration.

5) White toe nails (sometimes 20, instead of the normal complement of 18, is also needed).

In short, a better description of a white elephant would be a polydactylous pink elephant - although it is somewhat unlikely that these animals would be looked upon so deferentially (at least by westerners) if such a term were indeed employed! (Indeed, elephants that are genuinely white-skinned are usually suffering from an acute skin disease, as with the example documented during February 1945 by Denis Lyell in The Field.)

In the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society for 1956, Tun Yin and the journal's editors collectively listed a number of white elephants recorded during the first half of the 20th Century. In its opening years, one white elephant calf was captured in the Kataha Forest Division of Burma (now Myanmar), and was presented to the Trustees of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, but due to over-feeding by pilgrims it died soon after its arrival in Rangoon (now Yangon). Another specimen, captured in the Toungoo Forest Division and exhibited by its owner in Europe and America, died in Calcutta during its journey back home.

A female calf born on 6 March 1918 to one of the elephants owned by the Bombay Burma Trading Corporation possessed a remarkably pale skin and pearl-coloured eyes, but was pronounced by a jury of prominent Burmese personages not to be a genuine Sinpyudaw, because it only had 18 toes and an unsatisfactory tail! In fact, it is just as well that they did dismiss its claim, because as it grew older its skin darkened very considerably, so it was likely to attain normal colouration by adulthood.

A few years later, conversely, another white elephant, this time born in northern Siam (now Thailand), was deemed satisfactory by local experts. Demonstrating the importance of white elephants in Thailand, there is even a Royal White Elephant Department in Bangkok, from which a deputy was dispatched to determine whether this latest specimen was indeed a true Chang Peuak. After careful scrutiny, he decided that it was.

Three white elephants were discovered in Thailand during 1977, and were presented to King Bhumibol Adulyade. And in March 1983, an even more dramatic event took place - the discovery of a whole community of white elephants in Indonesia. Not only was it very surprising to find a community of such creatures, but also it was an equally important discovery zoogeographically, because this was the very first record relating to any white elephants in Indonesia. Plans were soon made to transfer this priceless herd to a wildlife sanctuary in order to ensure its protection - but by the time that the relocation efforts had been put into action, the elephants had moved on, and were not found again.

White elephants, depicted in a batik painting (Dr Karl Shuker)

Outside Asia, perhaps the most famous of all white elephants was a male called Hanno, who was given by King Manuel 1 of Spain to Pope Leo X (of the de Medici dynasty) upon his coronation in 1514. He soon became a great favourite of the pope but, tragically, Hanno died just two years later, on 8 June 1516, from complications caused by a gold-enriched laxative administered to him in order to treat his constipation.

Even today, white elephants are still being recorded and revered. I have many modern-day reports on file, the most recent one dating from 29 June 2010, describing the capture three days earlier of one such individual, an adult cow aged about 38, in a western region of Myanmar hit by severe floods. This was the third white elephant captured in Myanmar since 2001 – the previous two were captured in the same western region in 2001 and 2002 respectively.

Myanmar's state media announced that this latest white elephant would protect the country and would be taken to its new capital, Naypyitaw, where it would reside thereafter in luxury - a fitting fate for any priceless pachyderm, white or pink notwithstanding!

Burmese white elephant at London Zoo

The above account is an excerpt from one of my forthcoming books, The Anomalarium of Doctor Shuker.

NEW VIDEO OF THE TUNCELI WINGED CAT

The Tunceli winged cat

On 22 February 2010, I posted a Turkish report of a winged cat from Tunceli, one of two Turkish winged cat reports dating from mid-2008. Recently, Richard Muirhead kindly brought to my attention a good-quality Swedish news report video featuring the Tunceli specimen, which I had not seen before (prior to this, I had only seen two relatively poor-quality videos of the cat, whose urls can be found in the comments section of my 22 Feb 2010 blog).

Consequently, I now have pleasure in presenting the url of this better, Swedish video, which was first uploaded by Webb-TV on 7 May 2008, and is entitled 'Kolla, katten har vingar!' ['Check this out, this cat has wings!']:

http://hd.se/webb-tv/2008/05/07/kolla-katten-har-vingar/#

Swedish artist Richard Svensson has translated this video's Swedish narration for me as follows, and so too, on my Facebook page, has Danish zoologist Lars Thomas - thanks guys!

"It’s got both fur and a ”meow”, but there is something weird about this kitty. It’s got wings. A woman first found the cat on her stairs, in the Turkish city of Tunceli. When the woman saw the wings on the cat, she got so startled she started to scream. The cat was scared off, but continued to prowl around the area, until a family decided to give the odd animal a permanent home. The cat seems to be enjoying itself, lapping up the milk. It’s inquisitive and cuddly, but, like most cats, also a bit untrustworthy [at this point in the video, the cat takes a bite at its owner!]. It’s not the first time someone’s discovered a winged cat. The media has, for example, reported about a winged cat from China. The curious affliction can be the result of many things, like deformed limbs, outstretched skin, and matted fur."

For the most comprehensive coverage of winged cats ever produced, see the chapter on this subject in my book Dr Shuker's Casebook (CFZ Press: Bideford, 2008).

Rear view of Tunceli winged cat, showing its wings outstretched at right angles to its back

STELLER’S SEA-BEAR – A POLAR BEAR IN JAPAN?

Polar bear

Georg Wilhem Steller (1709-1746) was a German naturalist and explorer who took part in Vitus Bering’s Second Kamchatka Expedition to Russia’s Far East during the early 1740s, and whose greatest contribution to science was the discovery and description of several major new species of animal while the expedition was shipwrecked on Bering Island. These included a new jay, eider duck, sea eagle, sea-lion, and, most famously, a gigantic sirenian, Steller’s sea-cow Hydrodamalis gigas, which, tragically, was hunted into extinction within the next three decades, though there have been some intriguing modern-day reports of unidentified sea beasts resembling this extraordinary species (click here).

Steller also documented three very puzzling creatures whose identities remain unknown to this day. One was an extraordinary sea mammal variously likened to a seal or even a merman, which has been dubbed Steller’s sea-monkey or sea-ape and was documented by me in my book Mysteries of Planet Earth (1999), excerpted here on ShukerNature. The second was a bird, Steller’s sea-raven, which I have chronicled in various articles and also here on ShukerNature. As far as I am aware, however, the third member of this mystifying trio is scarcely even remembered nowadays, has not previously been reported by me, and is known as Steller’s sea-bear.

Steller recorded it as follows in his book De Bestiis Marinis [Beasts of the Sea] (1751):

"Report, as I gather from the account of the people, has declared that the sea-bear, as it is called by the Rutheni and other people is different. They say it is an amphibious sea beast very like a bear, but very fierce, both on land and in the water. They told likewise, that in the year 1736 it had overturned a boat and torn two men to pieces; that they were very much alarmed when they heard the sound of its voice, which was like the growl of a bear, and that they fled from their chase of the otter and seals on the sea and hastened back to land. They say that it is covered with white fur; that it lives near the Kuril Islands, and is more numerous toward Japan; that here it is seldom seen. I myself do not know how far to believe this report, for no one has ever seen one, either slain or cast up dead upon the shore."

Needless to say, this description readily calls to mind the polar bear Ursus maritimus – but there is one major problem when attempting to reconcile Steller’s sea-bear with the latter species. There is no confirmed record of the polar bear ever having been found anywhere near as far south as the Kuril Islands, let alone towards those of Japan.

Could it be, as suggested back in 2002 by Steller scholar Chris Orrick, that reports of polar bears seen further north (this species was already well known in Steller’s time) had somehow become confused with those of fur seals, which are not white but are often loosely if inaccurately dubbed ‘sea-bears’ and are indeed found around the Kurils and Japan? As for his treating the very existence of the sea-bear with suspicion, perhaps Steller was not aware of the polar bear’s marine behaviour, mistakenly assuming that it was exclusively terrestrial

AZ in WMN!

The above review of my Alien Zoo book was penned by acclaimed West Country naturalist Trevor Beer, and appeared on 20 December 2010 in the Western Morning News. Thanks, Trevor!

IN QUEST OF THE KUIL KAAX

A kuil kaax (Tim Morris)

Continuing yesterday's Little People theme, several different versions have been reported from Mexico. Two of these - namely, those mysterious dwarf-sized humanoids known as the alux, long reported from the Yucatan Peninsula; and the thumb-lacking, sombrero-wearing, gnome-like duende or dwendi - are well documented in the cryptozoological and mythological literature. In stark contrast, a third Mexican mini-human entity, known as the kuil kaax, rates scarcely a mention.

I first learnt of the kuil kaax many years ago, when reading a traditional Mexican folktale concerning the basilisk lizard. According to the tale, the kuil kaaxs existed when the world was still young, were nature spirits of the forests that resembled little old gnome-like or dwarfish men, and – recalling duende descriptions - wore huge sombreros made out of leaves from the banana palm. Kind and gentle, the kuil kaaxs were revered almost as demi-gods by the animals of the forest.

This description (sombreros excepted!) closely corresponds with reports of diminutive humanoids reported widely across the Americas in modern times. Yet, bizarrely, the kuil kaax has received so little formal attention that even a Google search by me failed to elicit more than a brief note within the following Russian website:

http://www.mesoamerica.ru/indians/maya/dwarfs.html

dealing with Mesoamerican dwarf deities.

So if anyone out there has any additional information concerning the kuil kaax, I’d love to hear from you.