RENÉ MAGRITTE AND THE REVERSE MERMAID – A VERY FISHY TALE, IN EVERY SENSE!

'Collective Invention' - René Magritte

My cryptozoological archives contain many strange reports, but few are stranger – or fishier – than the extraordinary case of René Magritte and the ‘reverse mermaid’ from the Red Sea.

Even as a child, I would always cut out any unusual animal-related reports that I’d spotted in the various newspapers that we had each day, and would then diligently paste or sellotape them into a series of large scrapbooks, which I still have today. Sometimes I would even jot down alongside each report the date on which it had been published, but sadly, my youthful zeal did not always extend to writing down the name of the newspaper in which it had been published.

So it was that on Saturday 7 April 1973, I spotted a brief but truly bizarre article in one of the several London newspapers that we had that day, and promptly cut it out, but without noting down the newspaper in question. Looking back, however, I am certain that it was a tabloid newspaper – most probably either the Daily Mirror or the Sun. After all, I could hardly imagine the Times or Daily Telegraph, for instance, publishing the following report:

“SOME FISHY NEWS FROM CAIROHere’s the dishiest fish you’ve ever seen – a “mermaid” with a fish’s head and the hips and legs of a fully-developed woman. A Cairo newspaper claims it was caught in the Red Sea off Yemen. If one ever gets to Iceland it would hot up the Cod War.”

As can be seen from the above image of this report, it was accompanied by an extraordinary photograph of what can indeed be described as a mermaid, but, uniquely, a mermaid in reverse of the usual type, inasmuch as it combined the upper half of a fish with the lower half (legs) of a woman, instead of the other way round.

Needless to say, at the age of 13 I was sufficiently worldly to recognise that this bizarre entity was evidently a fake, but a fascinating one nonetheless, and so this intriguing clipping was dated and sellotaped into one of my scrapbooks. There it remained for a number of years until my interest in cryptozoology had flourished to the point where I had begin amassing files of reports, papers, and other publications as a discrete cryptozoological archive. Accordingly, the tabloid report of Yemen’s reverse mermaid was carefully removed from its scrapbook home and rehoused in a file exclusively devoted to mer-folk reports, where it remains to this day, constituting a truly exceptional account.

During the 1990s, while corresponding with fellow cryptozoological enthusiast Michael Playfair regarding a number of different mystery beasts, I mentioned my reverse mermaid report to him, and as he expressed interest in it I photocopied it and posted the copy to him. Like me, Mike was very intrigued by the weird, reverse nature of the entity’s composite form, promising to investigate the case and let me know if he uncovered anything relevant.

True to his word, a few weeks later Mike posted me a photocopied page from an encyclopedia of science-fiction movies published by Aurum Press that contained a film still depicting a surprisingly similar entity to the version photographed in my newspaper cutting. The still was from an American science-fiction feature film entitled ‘Phase IV’, which had been made in 1974, i.e. just a year after the newspaper report had been published, and it had won the Grand Prix at the 1975 Trieste festival of science-fiction films.

Mike's photocopy of a film still from 'Phase IV'

The only feature film ever directed by Saul Bass, a noted designer of film titles, ‘Phase IV’ starred Michael Murphy, Nigel Davenport, and Lynne Frederick, and was shot in England’s Pinewood Studios (even though it was actually set in the United States). It told the story of how, following some undescribed multi-phase cosmic event, a colony of ants in the Arizona desert had undergone a form of accelerated evolution culminating in the development of a collective or ‘hive’ mind, and had become antagonistic towards a scientific team sent out to investigate the extraordinary geometric patterns and towers that the ants had been creating there. Davenport played a typical ‘mad scientist’ character, but although I was unable to find any mention anywhere of how or where the reverse mermaid fitted into this storyline I assumed that the nature of Davenport's character meant that he had presumably created this monstrosity himself, via some grotesque laboratory experiment.

In any event, it did provide an explanation of my newspaper report, because that had been published a year before ‘Phase IV’ had even been released. Mike was unable to discover anything further of possible relevance, and for quite some time I was unable to do so either – until one day, that is, when the Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte (1898-1967) came to our rescue.

I had long been captivated by Magritte’s extraordinary art, ever since, in fact, while still a child, I had encountered in a set of encyclopedias his fascinating painting ‘The Voice of the Winds’ - depicting a trio of enormous alienesque spheres floating with somewhat menacing presence above a field. Now, many years later, I had been idly flicking through a book of Magritte’s paintings in a book fair – when, abruptly, I came upon one that I had never seen before and which quite literally took my breath away.

For although I had never before seen the painting (which was entitled ‘Collective Invention’ and had been produced by Magritte in 1935), its image was instantly familiar to me. It was a reverse mermaid, but not just any reverse mermaid. Even though I hadn’t looked at the newspaper report from my scrapbook for a long time, I could see at once that the entity in Magritte’s painting was not just similar – but was identical – to the reverse mermaid in the report.

Purchasing the book, as soon as I was back home I checked the reverse mermaid in ‘Collective Invention’ with that in the report, and confirmed that they were indeed one and the same, differing only in that the shadow effect on the entity in the painting had been enhanced in the report’s version to render it more life-like. The mystery of the reverse mermaid from the Red Sea was no more – it was simply a curious fraud perpetrated by some still-unknown hoaxer(s) and inspired by one of Magritte’s surreal works of art (which may also be the inspiration for the slightly different reverse mermaid featuring in Saul Bass's sci-fi film 'Phase IV').

Interestingly, Magritte returned to the memorable image of the reverse mermaid in 1953, this time featuring a pair of these strange semi-humanoids in his painting 'The Wonders of Nature'.

'The Wonders of Nature' - René Magritte

In early March 2011, I posted a photograph of ‘Collective Invention’ on my Facebook wall, and in response FB friend Igor Burtsev provided the following information, which independently collaborated the time period and content of my old newspaper cutting:

"I was in Aden at that time, 1972-73, when local youth had shown this pic as the photo of a real beast. The people there believed in its reality! I couldn't disillude them of that!"

Clearly, therefore, the hoax had indeed originated in or around Yemen during the early 1970s. All in all, a very fishy affair in every sense, but one that, unlike so many others in the cryptozoological world, has finally been at least partly resolved. And who knows? Perhaps one day the still-undisclosed story behind the hoax itself will come to light, and the decidedly odd case of Magritte’s reverse mermaid can then at last be closed.

Also of interest: on 13 February 2012, I received a couple of emails from correspondent Kevin Shelton who had just read this ShukerNature post, and he informed me that Magritte's reverse mermaid also apparently inspired a 1972 episode of the American TV horror series 'Night Gallery' entitled 'Lindemann's Catch'. In it, a fisherman (played by Stuart Whitman) captures a normal mermaid (played by Annabelle Garth), but when he obtains a magical potion that will transform her fishtail into human legs, he little realises that this is only half of the metamorphosis that it will engineer - the other half being the transformation of the mermaid's head and upper body into that of a fish! You can view this tragic-comic climax here.

UPDATE - 7 August 2020
Tonight, thanks to a timely alert by Mike that it was to be shown on the UK Freeview Channel 'Talking Pictures' at 10 pm, I was finally able to view 'Phase IV', which I greatly enjoyed, except for one unexpected and exceedingly disappointing aspect - the much-anticipated reverse mermaid was conspicuous only by its absence, despite my having paid particular attention regarding whether it was featured simply as a picture in a newspaper or via some other brief, fleeting appearance, rather than a more significant component of the movie. But no, nothing. Needless to say, I was very perplexed, but a few hours ago I solved the mystery of the missing mermaid. It turns out that an alternate, much longer ending to 'Phase IV' had been produced during this movie's original filming, but was ultimately deselected in favour of the much more abrupt ending that became the standard, default one, and which was present in the version of 'Phase IV' that I watched on TV tonight. However, the unused, longer ending has been uploaded onto YouTube (click here to view it), and at 2 mins 59 secs into it the reverse mermaid duly appears, albeit only very briefly, moving its head and gills. Moreover, it seems not to have been a creation of Davenport's mad scientist after all, but rather a representation of some form of future evolutionary development or interspecific fusion by humanity. Case solved!

Screenshot of the reverse mermaid as it appears in the unused, alternate ending of 'Phase IV' ((c) Saul Bass/Paramount Pictures - reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My sincere thanks to Michael Playfair for his interest and assistance in investigating this case, and for recently suggesting to me that I ought to write a post about it for ShukerNature. Hope you like it, Mike! And also to Kevin Shelton for kindly enlightening me regarding the 'Night Gallery' reverse mermaid.

'The Voice of the Winds' - René Magritte

A FEATHERED MYSTERY FROM NEW ZEALAND...MOA OR LESS!

Megalapteryx - does it still survive today?

"I read a book once about this guy who went on an expedition to find proof of the Yeti in the Himalayan Mountains. After two years there he left without a sighting or anything. But when people pointed this out to him he shrugged and said ‘In two years I never saw a Snow Leopard either and we know they exist’. Maybe that’s the same with your Moa. Maybe they were just too good at hiding. If they had survived to present day they must be fairly good at keeping out of sight."

Kelvin V.A. Allison - Ubasute


One of the first mystery bird reports that I can ever remember reading appeared in A New Dictionary of Birds (1964), edited by A. Landsborough Thompson – a weighty but thoroughly fascinating tome of a book purchased for me by my mother when I was around 10 or 11 years old, and which was the most comprehensive, encyclopaedic single-volume work on ornithology that I had ever encountered (even today, it is still inordinately useful). The detailed moa entry, written by highly-acclaimed New Zealand ornithologist Dr Robert A. Falla, contained a section discussing the possible survival of Megalapteryx, one of the smallest moas (often dubbed the upland moa), into the 19th Century on South Island. And in that section, the following brief but captivating item was included:

"Among reported direct observations by Europeans, one of the most arresting is that given in her later years by a Mrs Alice McKenzie who was born and spent her childhood at Martins Bay. Throughout her life she retained a vivid recollection of an incident when, as a child of seven, about the year 1880, she had been waiting for her brother who was mustering cattle. As she sat on a coastal sand dune adjacent to forest, she was surprised to see a large bird of dark bluish plumage standing close to her. It was about 3.5 feet in height, and her clearest recollection was of its large protruding eyes, broad beak, and powerful scaly legs which she remembered as being about the same thickness as her own forearm and wrist. After she had published this description in a book of reminiscences, Mrs McKenzie was cross-questioned by many people and interviewed for radio broadcast. She continued to give convincing and good descriptive answers."

A few years later, I read Dr Bernard Heuvelmans’s classic book On the Track of Unknown Animals (1958), which contained an entire chapter on the subject of putative surviving moas, but I was surprised and disappointed that this did not mention McKenzie’s famous sighting. Notwithstanding that strange omission, my own interest in her account has always remained keen, and finally, in my book Extraordinary Animals Revisited (2007), I documented it myself, by which time various intriguing new developments had taken place.

So here is what I wrote about the prospect of modern-day moa survival in general, and about this tantalising, controversial case in particular:

“In New Zealand, there seems little hope that any of the famous ostrich-like moas of the genus Dinornis (‘terrible bird’) still survive, but it may even now be premature to claim the same for at least one of their less familiar, smaller relatives. Apparently an inhabitant primarily of subalpine shrubland and montane forests, the upland moa Megalapteryx didinus is not generally assumed to have survived beyond the 1840s; indeed, some consider that even this extinction date is too recent.

“One of the most thought-provoking reports casting doubt upon such claims, however, is contained within the 1952, revised edition of Alice McKenzie’s book Pioneers of Martins Bay (first published 1947, but lacking this report). In it, she recalled her encounter in 1880 as a 7-year-old child at Martins Bay, South Island, with a strange bird that cannot be conclusively identified with any known species alive today. Able to walk straight up to it, she described it as a large bird at least 3 ft high, with navy-blue plumage, dark green legs with large scales, no noticeable tail, and three large claws on each foot. She endeavoured to capture it, and in response it attempted to attack her, so she ran home. When she returned to the spot with her father, the bird was gone, but its three-toed tracks remained. Using a measuring ruler, her father found that the middle toe measured 11 in from heel to tip, though the soft sand may have enlarged it a little.

“In 1889, she saw the bird again, and her brother spotted it once too. After the rediscovery in December 1948 of another supposedly extinct South Island bird, the famous flightless rail known as the takahe Porphyrio (=Notornis) mantelli, Alice McKenzie examined a preserved specimen, because its dark blue plumage suggested the possibility that the mystery bird she and her brother had seen had been a takahe. Indeed, in 1946 (two years before the takahe’s rediscovery), she had written to an Otago University professor actually claiming to have seen a takahe. After examining one, however, she then discounted this possibility, stating that the takahe seemed totally different in appearance from the mystery bird that she had seen in 1880 and 1889, noting in particular that the takahe’s legs were deep red, not green like her bird’s. Could Alice McKenzie’s mystery bird have been a living Megalapteryx? Some ornithologists are optimistic that it was, but others consider it to have been a takahe after all, or even, as proposed in 1987 by New Zealand author John Hall-Jones, a blue-plumaged white-faced heron.

Takahe (Dr Karl P.N. Shuker)

“Alice McKenzie died in 1963, but now, 44 years later [i.e. in 2007], her granddaughter, Alice Margaret Leaker, who is convinced of the veracity of her maternal grandmother’s testimony, has compiled a new edition of her book, in which she delves deeper into this longstanding controversy. Quite apart from the late date of the sighting, however, another problem when attempting to reconcile McKenzie’s bird with a moa is that none of the numerous moa remains so far recovered have included any blue-coloured feathers.

“During February and March 1978, yet another in a long line of modern-day moa hunts took place. Led by biologist Prof. Shoichi Hollie of Japan’s Gunma University and accompanied by Seido Hino (Director of Japan’s Nippon Television), a Japanese team of scientists converged upon South Island’s Fjordland, armed with a very sophisticated lure — a reconstituted moa cry on tape, created with the aid of computerised analyses of Megalapteryx throat structure using fossil remains. Tragically, however, as Prof. Hollie subsequently informed me, it failed to elicit any reply, and he now considers Megalapteryx to be extinct. This is also the opinion of Ron Scarlett, the Canterbury Museum osteologist with whom the team consulted upon arrival in New Zealand.

“Much of the Megalapteryx mystique and the continuing hope that it will eventually be discovered alive stems from another avian mystery. According to Dr Bernard Heuvelmans in On the Track of Unknown Animals (1958), the Maoris tell of an unidentified form of ‘giant kiwi’, termed the roa-roa, said to be the size of a turkey, and armed with sharp spurs on its feet. However, as I discovered from Ron Scarlett and from a number of works dealing with New Zealand’s avifauna, roa-roa is actually the name given to the largest of the known kiwis, i.e. the great-spotted kiwi Apteryx haasti of South Island.

“Even so, A. haasti never exceeds 2 ft in total length, and does not have spurs — but the well-developed clawed hallux on each foot of the small moas might well be mistaken for a spur by lay observers, and it so happens that Megalapteryx was indeed turkey-sized! Moreover, it is very possible that in life, this little moa superficially resembled an extra-large kiwi — its scientific name actually means ‘big kiwi’. In short, this suggests that the reclusive ‘giant kiwi’ is separate from A. haasti (the genuine roa-roa), but may be one and the same as Megalapteryx!”

Another name for this mysterious, unidentified ‘giant kiwi’ was the fireman – given to it by sealers from Foveaux Strait who often spent many months in South Island’s south-western fjords, living off the land. When some were questioned by Frederick Strange, a naturalist accompanying HMS ‘Acheron’ on survey there in 1852, they informed him that the reason why they called this bird the fireman was that its cry sounded like the noise made by the wooden rattle carried in those days by New Zealand firemen on duty. Rather than attempting to lure into view a living Megalapteryx using a sophisticated computer-reconstituted version of its cry, perhaps, therefore, Prof. Shoichi’s team should have simply used one of these rattles!

SHUKERNATURE - THE NEW TOP TEN MOST-VIEWED POSTS

On 2 February 2011, I posted a listing of the Top Ten most-viewed ShukerNature posts of all time - which attracted a considerable number of views itself, and also threw up some surprising results. Not least of these was the extraordinary discovery that if a ShukerNature post happened to feature a blue-coloured animal, it stood a much greater than average chance of attracting an exceptionally large number of views - but why?

I still have no satisfactory answer to that question - but what I do have is the latest listing of the Top Ten most-viewed ShukerNature posts, which is presented below. And as you will see, even in just a month, there have been some interesting changes, not least of which is the debut very near to the top of the chart of a post that was only uploaded during the past month, and yet which has proven so popular that it has effortlessly exceeded the viewing counts of almost all of the other one hundred-plus posts that I have uploaded here during the past two years since my ShukerNature blog was launched. But again, I have absolutely no idea why this particular post's subject has proven so inordinately popular.

Consequently, please cast your eyes over this list, and see what conclusions you can draw. The positions occupied by the Top Ten entries from the previous month's list are presented in red.


#1: The mystery blue spider of Yorkshire (25 August 2010) (1)

#2: Behold, Trunko!! (Trunko exclusive #1) (6 September 2010) (2)

#3: Archangel feathers (3 February 2011) (-)

#4: South Africa's hairless blue horse (24 March 2010) (4)

#5: Two more Trunko photos (Trunko exclusive #2) (9 September 2010) (3)

#6: Dragons of Babylon and dinosaurs of the Bible (18 January 2011) (5)

#7: Blue tigers (17 May 2009) (8)

#8: Smethwick devil (4 September 2010) (6)

#9: Orang pendek (24 November 2010) (7)

#10: A diversity of devil-fishes (6 March 2009) (10)


If nothing else, archangel feathers have certainly attracted very appreciable attention, and the blue connection is still very much alive - so make of that what you will!

'FINDING OUT' - THE 36 CRYPTOZOOLOGICAL/MYTHOLOGICAL BACK COVERS AT LONG LAST!

White Buffalo - my favourite Angus McBride cryptozoological/mythological illustration from the back covers of Finding Out (Angus McBride)

As readers of my ShukerNature blog for 18 September 2009 and my various Alien Zoo reports on this subject in Fortean Times will know, ever since I first learnt of them way back in 1998 from Scottish cryptozoological enthusiast Alan Pringle I have been eagerly seeking sight of the 36 lavish, full-colour illustrations by the late, highly-acclaimed artist Angus McBride depicting a wide selection of cryptozoological and mythological entities that graced some of the back covers of the long-running children's weekly factual magazine Finding Out, which was published in Britain during the 1960s. Now at last, thanks to the kindness of correspondent Ivan Waldock, my wish has finally been granted.

Not only is Ivan the proud possessor of all of these particular issues of Finding Out, he actually owns the original McBride artwork for five of them (namely, the Midgard Serpent, the Naga King, Cyclopses, the Leshy and Huitzilopochtli), and has very kindly emailed me jpg image files of all 36 of the illustrations, together with a full listing of them as they appeared in the magazine.

So here is the listing, followed by, for the first time anywhere online, the full set of the near-legendary Angus McBride cryptozoological and mythological back cover illustrations from Finding Out; these particular issues were all published in 1966. Thanks again to Ivan for making this possible, and to Alan for originally bringing the existence of these wonderful works of art to my attention. Thanks also to Stephen Tomlin of Melbourne, Australia, who in November 2010 provided me with a partial listing of the covers based upon his own collection of some of the relevant Finding Out issues, and to Alex Lamprey who very kindly donated to me recently his own collection of seven of those issues.

Please note: these illustrations are reproduced here for information purposes only, not for any commercial use; all copyright resides with the estate of Angus McBride, who died in 2007.

Volume 15 Issue No 11 - Dragon
Volume 15 Issue No 12 - Unicorns

Volume 16 Issue No 01 - Sirens as Mermaids
Volume 16 Issue No 02 - Gryphons
Volume 16 Issue No 03 - Sea Serpent
Volume 16 Issue No 04 - Phoenix
Volume 16 Issue No 05 - Harpies
Volume 16 Issue No 06 - Satyrs
Volume 16 Issue No 07 - Nymphs
Volume 16 Issue No 08 - The Wild Hunt
Volume 16 Issue No 09 - Hippocampi
Volume 16 Issue No 10 - Bunyip
Volume 16 Issue No 11 - Tokoloshe
Volume 16 Issue No 12 - Maero

Volume 17 Issue No 01 - White Buffalo
Volume 17 Issue No 02 - Cailleach-Bheur
Volume 17 Issue No 03 - Midgard Serpent
Volume 17 Issue No 04 - Morrigan
Volume 17 Issue No 05 - Werewolf
Volume 17 Issue No 06 - Thunderbird
Volume 17 Issue No 07 - Centaurs
Volume 17 Issue No 08 - Gnomes
Volume 17 Issue No 09 - Little People
Volume 17 Issue No 10 - Lamassu
Volume 17 Issue No 11 - Sphinx
Volume 17 Issue No 12 - Cyclopses

Volume 18 Issue No 01 - Paul Bunyan and Babe
Volume 18 Issue No 02 - Chinese Dragon
Volume 18 Issue No 03 - Minotaur
Volume 18 Issue No 04 - Huitzilopochtli (Aztec Hummingbird God)
Volume 18 Issue No 05 - Amemit (=Ammut)
Volume 18 Issue No 06 - Leshy
Volume 18 Issue No 07 - Naga King
Volume 18 Issue No 08 - Domovoi
Volume 18 Issue No 09 - Poleviks
Volume 18 Issue No 10 - Tarasque

Dragon

Unicorns

Sirens as Mermaids

Gryphons

Sea Serpent

Phoenix

Harpies

Satyrs

Nymphs

The Wild Hunt

Hippocampi

Bunyip

Tokoloshe

Maero

White Buffalo (=Bison)

Cailleach-Bheur

Midgard Serpent

Morrigan

Werewolf

Thunderbird

Centaurs

Gnomes

Little People

Lamassu

Sphinx

Cyclopses

Paul Bunyan and Babe

Chinese Dragon

Minotaur

Huitzilopochtli (The Aztec Hummingbird God)

Amemit (=Ammut)

Leshy

Naga King

Domovoi

Poleviks

Tarasque

THE ELEPHANT OF SURPRISE - REMEMBERING MOTTY

Motty (photo courtesy of Derek G. Lyon/Chester Zoo)

Over the years, I have documented a vast array of animal reports that contain a truly remarkable element of surprise. In this present example, the element was an elephant – and his name was Motty.

Thirty-three years ago, he was a creature that the zoological world had previously deemed impossible. Yet for just over 10 days back in 1978, by virtue of his mere existence, Motty defied every scientific pronouncement. Had he lived further, ultimately reaching maturity, he may well have become one of the most famous animals on the planet. Sadly, however, it was not to be, and because of his tragically short life, Motty soon slipped into obscurity. Today, conversely, more than three decades on, it is high time that this truly singular animal should be remembered and returned to the spotlight, for Motty was indeed unique – the only intergeneric hybrid elephant that has ever been and probably will ever be.

Today, long after the demise of such notable prehistoric pachyderms as mammoths, mastodonts, and deinotheres, there are just two living genera of proboscideans. These are: Elephas, housing the single Asian species of elephant, E. maximus; and Loxodonta, housing the two closely-related species of African elephant (until recently deemed merely to be subspecies of a single species), the savannah elephant L. africana and the forest elephant L. cyclotis. There have been well-attested cases of hybridisation between the two African species, and also between various subspecies of the Asian elephant. Conversely, for reasons not only of basic zoogeography in the wild state but also of fundamental genetics, it was not thought possible, even in captivity, for Asian and African elephants to be able to produce viable young.

Consequently, even when, in early 1978, one of Chester Zoo’s female Asian elephants, Sheba, started showing signs of a pregnancy, zoo staff initially dismissed the prospect out of hand, because the only male elephant there at that time was Jumbolino, an African elephant. True, Jumbolino had been seen mating with her in the past, but the genetic differences between the two genera that Sheba and Jumbolino represented were such that no significance was attributed to these occurrences.

Motty taking a rest with his mother close by (photo courtesy of Derek G. Lyon/Chester Zoo)

The first physical sign that something more than mere sex may have taken place was the development of a noticeable fluid-filled sac, midway between her two pairs of legs, on the ventral surface of Sheba’s abdomen in February 1978, which proceeded to swell, until by May it was roughly 60 cm long and 10 cm wide. Yet still not suspecting a pregnancy was responsible, zoo staff treated it with an oral diuretic (Vetidrex), and by July it had disappeared. However, a new symptom had appeared by then – pronounced enlargement of the left-hand-side of Sheba’s abdomen, culminating on 10 July by the onset of parturition. Genetic differences or not, Sheba was pregnant.

Although her condition, once recognised, had been closely monitored, the climax still took everyone by surprise. On the morning of 11 July, Sheba walked out of the elephant house as usual with the other elephants, and then at 9.20 am, without warning, and in full view of her keepers, she casually gave birth to a small male calf. His size, weakness, and lack of hair clearly indicated that he was premature, probably by 6 weeks or so. Moreover, as this was her first surviving calf, Sheba seemed very unsure how to treat the new arrival, and gently but firmly pushed him down whenever he attempted to stand. At this point, the keepers moved in, leading the other elephants back into the elephant house, and because Sheba had no milk due to her calf’s premature arrival they proceeded to bottle-feed him hourly with cow’s milk, a vitamin supplement, and plenty of glucose for energy, coupled with colostrum obtained from Sheba.

By the end of 12 July, the calf – subsequently dubbed Motty after Chester Zoo’s founder, George Mottershead who had died just 2 months earlier – had become stronger, and after some assistance from the staff had succeeded in standing. He was also being aided by Sheba, whose maternal instinct by now had awakened, and he even managed to walk a few faltering steps. And by Day 5 (15 July) she was also allowing him to suckle fully, after initially pushing him away.

Whatever doubts had been entertained in the past that an intergeneric elephant hybrid was possible were emphatically swept away by this living, breathing refutation, because Motty’s entire morphology was a complex and thoroughly fascinating composite of maternal Elephas and paternal Loxodonta characteristics. To begin with, whereas the back of Elephas is arched and that of Loxodonta is concave, Motty’s back was both – possessing a central hump but also a pelvic one. His head exhibited a similar ambiguity, for although his brow was sloping with a single frontal dome like Loxodonta, he also sported the smaller paired posterior skull domes characteristic of Elephas. Even his trunk was an intergeneric compromise – heavily wrinkled like that of Loxodonta, but with only a single digit at its tip like Elephas (Loxodonta has two trunk digits). Adding to his Elephas features were his feet, as they bore five toenails on each front foot and four on each hind foot (more than in savannah Loxodonta elephants), but his Loxodonta heritage reasserted itself in his longer slimmer legs and his larger pointed ears.

Motty with his mother, readily revealing his complex intergeneric combination of features (photo courtesy of Derek G. Lyon/Chester Zoo)

By the end of his first week, Motty seemed to be doing just fine, suckling enthusiastically and sleeping well, receiving care and protection from his mother, and gentle interest from the other elephants. Testing a sample of his faeces suggested that he had a mild bowel infection, but as all else seemed so satisfactory, the decision was made not to treat it because his own immune defences would most probably be more than adequate to deal with it.

On Day 8 (18 July), Motty seemed restless and troubled, and when examined it was found that his umbilical scar had become infected, so this was treated at once with a course of antibiotics, and his condition soon showed an improvement. This was sustained throughout Day 10 (20 July), and was enhanced by supplementary feeds of cow’s milk containing added vitamins. By now, it looked likely that the world’s most extraordinary elephant had won his earlier fitness battle, and would go on from strength to strength. Sadly, however, sometimes appearances can only too readily deceive.

At 9 am on Day 11 (21 July), the keepers arrived to start work at the elephant house as usual – only to discover to their horror that Motty was comatose and dying. Immediately, the zoo’s vets began emergency heart massage and artificial respiration, and also injected a cardiac stimulant as well as providing him with extra warmth, but all to no avail. Less than an hour later, little Motty the miracle elephant was dead. A full autopsy discovered that he had been suffering from an unsuspected outbreak of necrotic enterocolitis – parts of the large intestine’s wall possessed dead tissue, becoming almost perforated – plus E. coli septicaemia. It seems likely that Motty’s weakened immune system – due in turn not only to his premature birth but also to his hybrid identity – had been insufficient to combat these conditions.

Motty with his mother and Chester Zoo's other female Asian elephants (photo courtesy of Derek G. Lyon/Chester Zoo)

Yet even though, tragically, Motty was no more, the very fact that he had indeed once existed was surely enough to have immortalised him not just in the media – which covered his all-too-brief life with considerable enthusiasm – but also in the scientific literature, for he was, after all, truly unique. In reality, conversely, nothing could have been further from the truth. Indeed, the lack of formal zoological interest in Motty was in its way every bit as surprising as Motty himself. To quote an extensive online history of Motty by Sam Whitbread:

"…the coverage by scientific journals was significant by its absence. Here was an animal the like of which had never been seen before and, it is almost certain, will never be seen again. Indeed, it was almost as though the world of science had chosen to turn its back on this unique event and ignore that the impossible had occurred. Specialist elephant journals and publications did recognise the birth for what it was but the International Zoo Yearbook merely made a casual mention of the birth in their reference section and IZN only carried a brief note."

Nor was that all. Following the autopsy, Motty’s skin was professionally mounted by a London taxidermist and after a short time in storage back at Chester Zoo was taken by Michael Brambell, the zoo’s director, to the British Museum (Natural History), where the zoo hoped that Motty would be placed on permanent display to be seen by as many people as possible. To date, however, he is still in storage, preserved securely for posterity but still unseen by the general public. How fitting it would now be, therefore, more than 30 years after his birth, for the zoological marvel that was once Motty to be commemorated and celebrated at last in a public exhibition, restoring to prominence a too-long-forgotten wonder who spent all too little time in our world.

I wish to offer my sincere thanks to Derek G. Lyon, who was chief veterinary surgeon at Chester Zoo during Motty's time there, for kindly making available to me his veterinary report identifying the cause of Motty's death, and also the images included here.


UPDATE - 14 February 2015

Exciting news! Very few images of Motty exist, due to his all-too-short existence. Just over a month ago, however, a correspondent sent me a series of colour photographs of Motty, snapped in mid-July 1978 by his father during a visit to Chester Zoo by him, my correspondent (then aged 6), and my correspondent's brother. These photos have never been released publicly, but my correspondent and his father have very kindly permitted me to use them in any of my publications. And so it is with great pleasure that I now officially unveil these previously-unseen, hitherto-unknown pictures of Motty as a ShukerNature world-exclusive! Click here to see them!


UPDATE - 16 February 2015

I have always thought how sad it is that we shall never know what Motty would have looked like had he survived into adulthood, only that whatever form his appearance may have taken, it would certainly have been unique, marvellous, and magnificent. But now, in another ShukerNature world-exclusive, thanks to a couple of amazing illustrations we may finally have an idea after all of just what the mature Motty could have looked like. And as if that were not extraordinary enough, what makes this new insight even more astonishing is a totally unexpected similarity to one of the world's most spectacular prehistoric mammals. Intrigued? Confused? Excited? Click here, and all will be revealed!


UPDATE - 24 January 2020

Some additional, previously-unpublished photographs of Motty have been brought to my attention by the person who snapped them and who has very kindly given me permission to include them on ShukerNature - so be sure to click here to view these exciting new pictures!

Motty, resting at his mother's feet (photo courtesy of Derek G. Lyon/Chester Zoo)