THE MONGOLIAN DEATH WORM – A SHOCKING SURPRISE IN THE GOBI?

The Mongolian death worm - shocking and spraying! (Philippa Foster)


It's not every day – or every expedition – that begins with a request from a country's head of government formally requesting that a specimen be captured of a creature so elusive, and deadly, that western science does not even recognise its existence. Nevertheless, that is precisely what happened in 1922 when eminent American palaeontologist Prof. Roy Chapman Andrews met the Mongolian premier in order to obtain the necessary permits for the American Museum of Natural History's Central Asiatic Expedition to search for dinosaur fossils in the Gobi Desert. And the creature that the Mongolian premier instructed him to procure? None other than the lethal allghoi khorkhoi – or, as it is nowadays commonly referred to throughout the world, the Mongolian death worm.

Ivan Mackerle (Ivan Mackerle)

Although in the 1920s, this extraordinary mystery beast was totally unheard of outside Mongolia, today it is one of the most (in)famous of all cryptozoological creatures – thanks to the series of pioneering expeditions to its southern Gobi homeland launched by Czech explorer Ivan Mackerle, the first of which took place during June and July 1990, and which subsequently attracted considerable interest internationally. During his searches, Ivan collected a very impressive dossier of information concerning the death worm, based upon eyewitness reports and other anecdotal evidence, which he subsequently made freely available to me to use as I wished in my own writings, and which can be summarised as follows.

Its local names – allghoi khorkhoi and allergorhai horhai – translate as 'intestine worm', because according to eyewitness testimony, this mysterious sausage-shaped creature resembles a living intestine. Red in colour with darker blotches, it measures 1-1.6 m long and is as thick as a man's arm, but has no discernable scales, mouth, nor even any eyes or other recognisable sensory organs. It is said to be truncated at both ends, but according to some accounts at least one end also bears a series of long pointed structures at its tip.

Illustration of Mongolian death worm based upon eyewitness descriptions (Ivan Mackerle)

For much of the year, the death worm remains concealed beneath the Gobi's sands, but during the two hottest months – June and July – it can sometimes be encountered lying on the surface, particularly after a downpour of rain.

Black saxaul

Locals claim that it can also be found in association with the black saxaul Haloxylon ammodendron, a yellow-flowered desert shrub, whose roots are parasitized by the goyo Cynomorium songaricum – a strange, cigar-shaped plant of uncertain taxonomic affinities.

Goyo plants (Ivan Mackerle)

According once again to local lore, the death worm is deadly for two very different reasons. If approached too closely, it is said to raise one end of its body upwards (as portrayed on the front cover of my book The Beasts That Hide From Man, 2003), and then squirt with unerring accuracy at its victim a stream of extremely poisonous, acidic fluid that burns the victim's flesh, turning it yellow, before rapidly inducing death. It is claimed that the death worm derives this highly toxic substance externally - either from the saxaul's roots or from the goyo attached to them (and thereby reminiscent of how South America's deadly arrow-poison frogs derive their skin toxins from certain small arthropods that they devour). During my own researches, however, I have uncovered no evidence to suggest that the saxaul's roots are poisonous, and I have revealed that the goyo is definitely not poisonous (it is eaten as famine food, and used widely in Chinese herbalism). So if the death worm truly emits a venomous fluid, it presumably manufactures it internally, rather than deriving it externally.

Model of Mongolian death worm emerging from sand (Markus Bühler)

Even more shocking – in every sense! – is the death worm's second alleged mode of attack. Nomadic herders inhabiting the southern Gobi tell of how entire herds of camels have been killed instantly merely by walking over a patch of sand concealing a death worm beneath the surface. Moreover, one of Ivan Mackerle's local guides recalled how, many years earlier, a geologist visiting the Gobi as part of a field trip was killed when he began idly poking some sand one night with an iron rod – as he did so, he abruptly dropped to the ground, dead, for apparently no reason, but when his horrified colleagues rushed up to him, they saw the sand where he had been poking the rod suddenly begin to churn violently, and from out of it emerged a huge, fat death worm.

The camels presumably died from coming into direct physical contact with the death worm hidden beneath their feet, but the geologist only touched it indirectly, via the metal rod. Consequently, the only conceivable way that this action could have caused his death is by electrocution – which would obviously explain the camels' instant deaths too. Although there are several different taxonomic groups of fish containing species that can generate electricity – including the famous electric eel and gymnotids, as well as the electric catfish, electric rays, mormyrids, rajid skates, and electric stargazers – no known species of terrestrial creature possesses this ability. So if the native claims concerning the camels and the geologist are correct, and always assuming of course that it really does exist, the death worm must be a very special animal indeed. But what precisely could it be?

Mongolian death worm (www.static.environmentalgraffiti.com)

Despite its English name and superficially similar external appearance, it is highly unlikely that the death worm could be a bona fide earthworm or related invertebrate. For although some earthworms do grow to prodigious lengths, and certain species known aptly as squirters even spurt streams of fluid from various body orifices, none exhibits a water-retentive cuticle, which would be imperative for survival in desert conditions to avoid drying out. Of course, there may be a highly-specialised earthworm in the Gobi that has indeed evolved such a modification, but with no precedent currently known, the chances of this seem slim. In addition, if the death worm's powers of electrocution are real, this would require even more modification and specialisation for an earthworm to fit the bill.

Caecilians constitute a taxonomic order of limbless amphibians that are deceptively worm-like in appearance and predominantly subterranean in lifestyle. Certain species can also attain a total length matching the dimensions reported for the death worm. As with true worms, however, caecilians' skin is water-permeable, so once again even a giant caecilian would soon dry out in the arid Gobi, unless, uniquely among these particular amphibians, it had evolved a water-retentive skin.

19th-Century engraving of a caecilian, Siphonops

If the death worm is genuine, it is almost certainly some form of reptile. To my mind, the likeliest solution is an unusually large species of amphisbaenian. On account of their vermiform appearance (most species are limbless), these little-known reptiles are also called worm-lizards, even though, taxonomically speaking, they are neither. As with caecilians, they spend much of their lives underground, rarely coming to the surface except after a heavy fall of rain. This all corresponds well with the death worm's reported behaviour. Furthermore, unlike real worms and caecilians the skin of amphisbaenians is water-retentive, so a giant species would not dry out in the Gobi.

Two Iberian amphisbaenians Blanus cinereus (Richard Avery/Wikipedia)

Conversely, whereas the death worm is said to be smooth externally, amphisbaenians are very visibly scaly, and they also have a readily-observed mouth. In addition, they are all completely harmless, which wholly contradicts the twin death-dealing talents attributed to the Gobi's moat greatly-feared denizen. Naturally, it is conceivable that these abilities are entirely apocryphal, nothing more substantial than superstitious fancy. After all, several known species of amphisbaenian, and also caecilian, are fervently believed by their local human neighbours to be deadly poisonous even though in reality they are wholly innocuous.

19th-Century engraving of an amphisbaenian

Much of what has been proposed for and against an amphisbaenian identity for the Mongolian death worm applies equally to the possibility of its being an unknown species of very large legless true lizard - akin perhaps to the familiar slow worm and glass snake, or even to the skinks, some species of which are limbless. However, these lizards are much less worm-like and subterranean than amphisbaenians, so overall the latter provide a more satisfactory match with the death worm.

Mexican ajolote - possessing a pair of extremely small forelegs, this is the only type of amphisbaenian with any limbs at all (picture source unknown to me)

Last, but by no means least, is the thought-provoking prospect that the death worm may be a highly specialised species of snake. Not only do most of the above-noted physical and behavioural similarities between the death worm and the amphisbaenians and legless lizards apply here too, but spitting cobras also offer a famous precedent for an elongate creature that can eject a stream of corrosive venom with deadly accuracy at a potential aggressor. Moreover, the spine-bearing tip described for the death worm recalls a genus of cobra-related species known as death adders Acanthophis spp., which possess a spiny worm-like projection at the tip of their tail that acts as a lure for potential prey.

Death adder

Their name recognises the fact that although, like cobras, they are elapids, the death adders have evolved to occupy the ecological role filled elsewhere by true vipers. Could there be a specialised, unknown species of death adder that has evolved the venom-spitting ability of its spitting cobra relatives? If so, this would vindicate the locals' testimony concerning the death worm's emissions. But what about its alleged powers of electrocution?

Remarkably, this too may be more than just a myth. For if the death worm were indeed a snake and perhaps sported such smooth, fine, tiny scales that they were not readily discernable, when it was crawling through sand these scales may be able to generate a weak electrical current via friction – a process known as triboelectricity, which has already been documented from certain sand-dwelling snake species. If this in turn gave rise to exaggerated descriptions of its potency, it is easy to see how, over the course of several generations of ever more fanciful retellings, the entirely false belief in a creature that kills by electrocution could ultimately arise.

Mongolian death worm as visualised by renowned graphics artist Andy Paciorek (Andy Paciorek)

So could it be that in spite of the death worm's initially unlikely form and behavioural proclivities, there actually could be a real, scientifically-undescribed species at the heart of this longstanding mystery, albeit one far less flamboyant and formidable than the version described in local testimony? Or is the entire death worm scenario nothing more than native folklore?

Science-fiction devotees reading about the Mongolian death worm will undoubtedly recall Frank Herbert’s celebrated series of 'Dune' novels. These were set on a desert planet called Arrakis – home to an enormous species of vibration-sensitive sand worm called the shai-hulud, which could be ‘called’ to the surface when the planet’s human inhabitants used a vibration-engendering device known as a thumper.

The shai-hulud or giant sand worm of Arrakis in Frank Herbert's 'Dune' novels (picture source unknown to me)

In a classic scenario of transforming science-fiction into science fact, and directly inspired by the 'Dune' stories, during his first Gobi expedition Mackerle and his team tested out their very own specially-constructed thumper, but to no effect. During their second Gobi expedition, clearly favouring a more emphatic approach this time, they set off a number of controlled explosions in areas said by the locals to harbour subterranean death worms, in the hope that the massive vibrations elicited by these explosions would stimulate the worms to surface. Sadly, however, their summoning again went unheeded, as no worms appeared.

Model of the Mongolian death worm (Takeshi Yamada)

Moreover, in recent times several expeditions other than those of Ivan Mackerle have also searched the southern Gobi's vast terrain in search of its purported 'monster', but once again none has met with any success so far.

These include an expedition led by English cryptozoological field researcher Adam Davies in 2003, a team sent out by the Centre for Fortean Zoology in 2005, and more recently a two-man expedition led by New Zealand journalist David Farrier in August 2009. Unfortunately, none succeeded even in seeing, let alone capturing, a death worm (a local man informed the CFZ team that on one occasion a killed specimen had been taken away by Russian zoologists, but he did not provide any names or details that could be pursued). Nevertheless, some informative anecdotal evidence has been gathered, and both the Adam Davies-led team and the CFZ team observed and photographed a carving of a supposed death worm (although it sported eyes) on exhibition at the remote Gobi Museum.

'Mongolian Death Worm' - an action-packed made-for-television sci-fi film from 2010, in which the heroes battle gigantic specimens far bigger than anything reported in real life by the Gobi nomads (Syfy)

Most telling of all, however, as some of these later expeditions were startled to discover, the newest generation of Gobi nomads are as likely to be riding desert motorbikes as camels, and some even carry mobile phones inside the folds of their traditional desert robes. So perhaps they are also heeding less and less the traditional stories and beliefs of their elders.

'Tremors' - one of my all-time favourite monster movies, this is a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek sci-fi film from 1990 featuring gigantic desert-concealed worms in the USA

Having said that, there may be another, very different reason why these expeditions have returned empty-handed. Some locals claim that death worms have been seen far less frequently in recent years than in the past. Who knows - perhaps, just as the rest of the world has finally started to learn about and become interested in it, the Mongolian death worm has begun slipping inexorably into extinction.

Mongolian death worm (Alex Tomlinson)

How ironic that would be – almost as ironic, in fact, as Prof. Roy Chapman Andrews's straight-faced promise to the Mongolian premier back in 1922 that if his expedition did indeed encounter a death worm during their search for dinosaur fossils in the Gobi, they would do their best to secure its capture using a pair of long steel collecting forceps. In view of what reputedly happened to the hapless geologist who poked one of these fearful creatures with a metal rod, it's probably just as well that Prof. Andrews and his team never did find any!

For the most detailed, comprehensive coverage of the Mongolian death worm ever published, see my book The Beasts That Hide From Man (Paraview: New York, 2003).

The Beasts That Hide From Man, featuring one of Ivan Mackerle's Mongolian death worm illustrations on its front cover (Dr Karl Shuker)

THE TRUTH ABOUT BRAZIL'S AMAZING 'PENIS SNAKE' - NOT A SNAKE, AND CERTAINLY NOT A...

One of the recently-captured specimens of Atretochoana eiselti (Matt Roper)

During the past 24 hours, the world media has been full of stories concerning the supposed discovery in Brazil of a 'new species' of 'blind snake' that 'resembles a human penis'. As is so often the case with media reports describing unusual, little-known animals, however, the truth is very different - as I shall now reveal in an attempt to set the facts straight regarding this beast once and for all.

In reality, although it is indisputably a most amazing and very distinctive form it is not a new species, it is not a snake, and its claimed afore-mentioned resemblance is very much in the eye of the beholder – or, to put it another way (so to speak!): if the relevant portion of my body looked like this creature, I'd be seriously worried!

Vermiform, eyeless, grey in colour, and each measuring approximately 3 ft long, six specimens of the aquatic species in question were found at the bottom of the Madeira River during the draining of a portion of it by engineers in November 2011 for a new hydroelectricity dam in the northern Brazilian state of Rondonia. According to biologist Juliano Taban who works for the company constructing the dam, all six were captured for initial observation. Sadly, however, one of them died, but three of the others were released back into the river shortly afterwards, with the remaining two being retained for further scientific study and formal taxonomic identification, news regarding which was only made public this week. So what exactly did these sizeable but very peculiar creatures turn out to be?

In fact, they belonged to a species of limbless amphibian known as a caecilian - but no ordinary one. On the contrary, this particular caecilian constituted one of the most extraordinary herpetological discoveries of the 20th Century when officially described and named back in 1968. In my recent book The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals (Coachwhip: Landisville, 2012), I documented this highly significant yet scarcely-known species' uniquely surprising history as follows:

A 19th-Century colour engraving of a caecilian, Siphonops

"Caecilians [constitute] a taxonomic order of entirely limbless species, many of which greatly resemble earthworms. Most are predominantly subterranean, fossorial species (although there are also some aquatic river-dwelling forms), and are rarely seen above-ground unless flushed out during rainfall. They inhabit wet tropical localities in Africa, Asia, and South America, feed principally upon insects and worms, and most are relatively small, but a few extra-large species also exist, growing up to 4 ft long and superficially similar in outward appearance to snakes.

"One feature that all species share is a pair of lungs – or at least they did until 1968, or, to be exact, 1995; as will be seen, the history of the following ground-breaking species is nothing if not complicated. It began in 1968, when a notably large preserved specimen of caecilian originating from an unspecified location in South America became the type (and for a long time thereafter the only) specimen of a new species, which was formally christened Typhlonectes eiselti by Kansas University herpetologist Dr Edward H. Taylor in a major monograph entitled The Caecilians of the World.

"Measuring 27.5 in long, this new species’ unique specimen was an adult female housed in the collections of Vienna’s Naturhistoriches Museum, but Taylor’s official description of it had been unusually brief, and concentrated primarily upon its external morphology. Not until the early 1990s did it attract any further scientific attention, even though it was on full public display inside a glass exhibition case at the museum during the intervening years. When it was finally re-examined, however, by zoologist Dr Ronald A. Nussbaum from Michigan University and Bristol University caecilian specialist Dr Mark Wilkinson, they closely investigated its internal form, which duly revealed a very remarkable and hitherto-unsuspected surprise – this large, enigmatic, but previously neglected caecilian was lungless.

"Indeed, their discovery meant that T. eiselti was now the largest species of lungless tetrapod known to science, and was sufficiently removed from all other caecilians to require them to publish a major redescription of it, which appeared in 1995. Moreover, in their paper, they also created a new genus for it, renaming this radically disparate species Atretochoana eiselti, which highlighted the fact that even its choanae (internal nostrils) were sealed. It also totally lacked any pulmonary blood vessels. Clearly, therefore, this caecilian respired entirely through its skin (cutaneous respiration is also carried out by other caecilians, but only as a supplement to normal pulmonary respiration). Its cranium exhibited fundamental differences from that of other caecilians too. If only there were other examples of this extraordinary species to examine, but where to look? The provenance within South America of its one and only specimen was unknown.

"Happily, in 1998, after 30 long years, a second specimen was finally recorded – documented by Wilkinson and three co-researchers – which was confirmed to have originated from a river in Brazil, but its precise location was unknown. Measuring 31.7 in (80.5 cm), it was longer than the first one but otherwise very similar in form. And that is where the remarkable history of A. eiselti comes to an end, at least for now, as no further specimens have been discovered.

"What has been discovered, meanwhile, is a second species of lungless caecilian, and whereas A. eiselti is aquatic, this new one is land-based. Found in the scrub of Guyana’s Iwokrama Forest and described online in late 2009 (in hard-copy format in 2010), when it was formally named Caecilita iwokramae, it is the only member of a new genus and is much smaller than A. eiselti, its holotype only measuring 4.4 in long."
My book containing the above account concerning A. eiselti (Dr Karl Shuker)

Thanks to those engineers' discovery at the bottom of the Madeira River last November, however, A. eiselti has now been formally rediscovered and is no longer such an enigma. Yet, inevitably, its zoologically-imposing twin status as both the world's biggest species of caecilian and the world's largest species of lungless tetrapod have been entirely overshadowed by the media's obsession with promoting phallic comparisons relating to it. As a result, this once-obscure species can now boast a number of newly-coined common names worthy of screenwriter Talbot Rothwell – double-entrendre maestro for Britain's famous and much-loved series of 'Carry-On' comedy films - at his most inspired, ranging from floppy snake and penis worm to man-aconda! (Incidentally, the term 'penis worm' has also been applied to an entirely unrelated group of animals, Priapulida, an invertebrate phylum whose members, the priapulids, are again somewhat phallic in shape.)

Amusing though these may be, I sincerely hope that in the future the media will treat this rediscovered marvel rather more seriously, and accord it the scientific respect that it so richly deserves after having languished so long in virtual anonymity. So, to quote 'Carry On' veteran Kenneth Williams's most famous catch-phrase: "Stop messing about!"

Some of the recently-captured specimens of Atretochoana eiselti (Juliano Taban/Divulgação)

WASHINGTON’S EAGLE AND OTHER GIANT MYSTERY EAGLES OF NORTH AMERICA

Washington's eagle (John James Audubon)

Even though celebrated American naturalist-artist John James Audubon (1785-1851) produced some of the most spectacular paintings of North American wildlife ever created, he has also stirred up a degree of controversy among ornithologists, because his artwork includes depictions of certain birds that cannot be identified with any species known to present-day science. Most of these feathered mysteries are small, relatively nondescript perching birds, but there is one big (indeed, very big) exception – Washington’s eagle.

Today, science recognises the existence of just two species of eagle in the USA – the bald eagle Haliaeetus leucocephalus (a sea eagle), and the golden eagle Aquila chrysaetos (a true eagle). According to Audubon and a number of contemporary writers, however, there was – and may still be? – a third, much larger, visibly distinct species, referred to variously as the great eagle, great sea eagle, bird of Washington, Washington eagle, and Washington’s eagle. Said to possess an enormous 3.1-m wingspan, it hardly seems the kind of bird that could be readily overlooked or forgotten, and yet it is nowadays conspicuous only by its absence from present-day bird books. So whatever happened to Washington’s eagle, and could this cryptic bird be of especial relevance to cryptozoology?

John James Audubon, painted in 1826 (John Syme)

It was Audubon who first brought this majestic but mystifying raptor to widespread attention, after he and his Canadian fur-dealer companion aboard a trading vessel on the Upper Mississippi observed one such bird flying overhead on a cold February day in 1814. His companion informed him that it was a rare bird called the great eagle, which he had previously seen only in the Great Lakes region, and after viewing it attentively Audubon was convinced that it was a species new to science, native to America’s northern realms.

During the next few years, Audubon made four other sightings, which included observing at close range on some cliffs bordering Kentucky’s Green River a pair at their nest with two young – but to his great disappointment he missed the opportunity to shoot any of them. (This was, of course, the pre-conservation era of the 1800s, when Audubon’s overriding desire was to obtain a specimen in order to paint it for his increasingly impressive folio of North American bird illustrations.) Then, just two years after spying the nesting birds, came his fateful encounter close to the village of Henderson, Kentucky, with an adult individual scavenging at a pig slaughter. Audubon had a gun with him, took careful aim, and duly bagged his long sought-after specimen of the noble Washington’s eagle.

After parcelling up its corpse, Audubon ran with it excitedly to the nearby home of his friend, experienced hunter Dr Adam Rankin, who, after examining it, claimed never to have seen such a bird before, even though he had lived in the area for many years. Both men studied the corpse in depth, which proved to be that of a male specimen. Furthermore, while it was still freshly-killed, Audubon penned the following extensive morphological description of this remarkable eagle:

"The male bird weighs 14 ½ avoirdupois [pounds], measures 3 ft. 7 in. in length, and 10 ft. 2 in. in extent. The upper mandible dark bluish black. It is, however, the same colour for half its length, turning into yellow towards the mouth, which is surrounded with a thick yellow skin. Mouth blue; tongue the same; cere greenish-yellow; eye large, of a fine chestnut colour, iris black, the whole protected above by a broad, strong, bony, cartilaginous substance, giving the eye the appearance of being much sunk. Lores lightish blue, with much strong recumbent hair; upper part of the head, neck, back, scapulars, rump, tail coverts, femorals, and tail feathers, dark coppery glossy brown; throat, front of the neck, breast, and belly, rich bright cinnamon colour; the feathers of the whole of which are long, narrow, sharp-pointed, of a hairy texture, each dashed along the center with the brown of the back; the wings, when closed, reach within an inch and a half of the tail feathers, which are very broad next to the body. Lesser coverts rusty iron grey, forming with that colour and elongated oval, reaching from the shoulders to the lower end of the secondaries, gradually changing to the brown of the back as it meets the scapulars. The secondaries of the last middle tint. Primaries brown, darkest in their inner veins, very broad and firm; the outer one 2 ½ in. shorter than the second, the longest 24 in. to its root, about a half an inch in diameter at the barrel. The under wing coverts iron grey, very broad, and forming the same cavity that is apparent in all of this genus with the scapulars, which are also very broad. Legs and feet strong and muscular: the former one and a half inches in diameter; the latter measuring, from the base of the hind claw to that of the middle toe, 6 ½ in. Claws strong, much hooked, the hind one 2 in. long, the inner rather less, all blue black and glossy. Toes warty, with rasp-like advancing hard particles, covered with large scales appearing again on the front of the leg, all of dirty strong yellow. Leg feathers brown cinnamon, pointed backwards."

He then utilised this specimen as the subject of a magnificent, meticulously-executed, life-sized painting depicting its species, which he formally dubbed Falco [now Haliaeetus] washingtonii, the bird of Washington or Washington’s eagle, in honour of America’s first president, George Washington.

Washington's eagle without background (John James Audubon)

According to Audubon’s account and painting, Washington’s eagle resembled in superficial outward appearance an immature bald eagle (i.e. predominantly brown in colour, lacking its species’ characteristic white head and tail until it has attained maturity). However, it exhibited certain very distinct differences from the latter.

All-brown, immature bald eagle (John James Audubon)

Washington’s eagle’s cere (a soft, fleshy swelling on the beak’s upper basal region, containing the nares or nostrils) did not correspond in appearance with any known version reported from the bald eagle. The uniform scutellation (scaling) on Washington’s eagle’s tarsi is not seen in any developmental stage of the bald eagle. And Washington’s eagle’s size was bigger – far bigger – than that of any specimen of bald eagle ever documented. Audubon claimed that his specimen measured 3 ft 7 in (109 cm) long, and sported a wingspan of 10 ft 2 in (3.1 m), which significantly exceeds the measurements of any known species of North American raptor, including the golden eagle.

Golden eagle (John James Audubon)

Faced with these distinctions, the ornithological world initially accepted Washington’s eagle as a valid species, including it in several authoritative publications. Moreover, several other notable persons (respected Boston naturalist Dr Lemuel Hayward and ornithologist Thomas Nuttall among them) reported their own Washington’s eagle sightings and those of additional eyewitnesses too. Hayward actually captured one such eagle, but after keeping it alive for a considerable time he supposedly killed his hapless prisoner with mercury in order to send its body to what he referred to at that time as the ‘Linnaeum Museum’ (presumably the museum of London’s Linnaean Society?); according to another report, the museum did receive the bird’s body, then later auctioned it off, but its subsequent fate is unknown.

Eyewitnesses even stated that the flight and feeding behaviour of Washington’s eagle differed from those of the bald eagle. Thus, when hunting, Washington’s eagle allegedly flew in wider circles than the bald eagle, and whereas the latter swoops down directly after spotting prey, Washington’s eagle would descend in spirals before finally diving. Also, although the bald eagle is often seen stealing fish from another native piscivorous bird of prey, the osprey, Washington’s eagle was never reported indulging in this kleptoparasitic practice. And whereas the bald eagle usually builds its massive nests in trees, Washington’s eagle built ground nests on rocky cliffs near water, even in wooded localities.

Adult bald eagle (John James Audubon)

Nevertheless, even before Audubon’s death in 1851, the first shadows of doubt had begun to be cast upon the authenticity of his great sea eagle. In particular, claims were aired that the morphological differences specified by him for it were contentious, and that his measurements were in error. Ultimately, Washington’s eagle became totally discredited, at best synonymised with the bald eagle’s northern subspecies and at worst dismissed as a mythical species or even a deliberate hoax perpetrated by Audubon. But is this attitude justified?

Worth noting here is that a few museum specimens (such as Hayward’s above-mentioned ‘Linnaeum Museum’ example, one at the New England Museum, one at the Cleveland Academy of Science, and one at Boston’s Museum of Natural History) have been claimed, but none of them, not even Audubon’s own specimen, seems still to survive, or at least be traceable. A specimen was also reputedly housed at Philadelphia’s Peales Museum, but this was presumably destroyed when the museum later burnt down.

Four mutually-exclusive options seem to be on offer with regard to the zoological identity of Washington's eagle:

1) It may be a hoax, plain and simple.

2) It may be based upon nothing more than normal but misidentified immature bald eagles and/or golden eagles.

3) It may involve some exceptionally (or even abnormally) large immature bald eagles and/or golden eagles.

4) It may truly represent a species distinct from all those currently accepted by science.

Shocking as it may sound, Audubon is known to have form for creating fraudulent species (he invented no fewer than 30 hoax mammals, birds, fishes, and invertebrates supported via fake descriptions and sketches that he supplied to unsuspecting fellow naturalist Constantine S. Rafinesque specifically to prank him, and which he succeeded in doing as Rafinesque duly described all of them in his own writings), and also for painting others that have not been exposed as hoaxes but which are unrepresented by any physical specimens, the latter including several species of song bird. So could Washington's eagle be his greatest triumph in this shadowy field? In my book Karl Shuker's Alien Zoo (2010), I included details and Audubon's original paintings of three very contentious birds - the Blue Mountain warbler, the carbonated swamp-warbler, and the small-headed flycatcher, all seemingly parulids but whose existence is entirely unsubstantiated outside Audubon's work.

But what if Washington's eagle was real? In his excellent blog Biofort, wildlife author-teacher Scott Maruna of Jacksonville, Illinois, has republished online his very comprehensive review of the Washington’s eagle saga (previously published by him as a paper in two American ornithological journals, Meadowlark and The Ohio Cardinal), in which he meticulously examines the pros and cons for considering Washington’s eagle to be a genuine species in its own right. These can be summarised as follows.

Beginning with its uniform tarsal scutellation: one critic boldly stated that Audubon’s painting was inaccurate and mistakenly claimed that Audubon’s description had been written years after his painting had been prepared, and must therefore have been based upon his own inaccurate depiction. In reality, of course, Audubon’s description was penned shortly after the eagle had been killed, and hence well before his painting had been prepared. Another critic opined that the uniform scutellation in Audubon’s painting was merely an optical illusion created by the angle at which the bird had been portrayed. Again, however, this argument is dismissed by Audubon’s substantiating written description. In addition, the greenish-yellow colour of Washington’s eagle’s cere does not match the bright primrose-yellow colour of the bald eagle’s; nor does its long thin shape as painted by Audubon correspond with the squat cere of the latter species.

As for Audubon being mistaken about the bird’s size: when creating his spectacular, painstakingly-detailed life-size paintings of birds, Audubon used a complex double grid system to guarantee precision of dimensions, with one grid placed directly behind the mount and an identical one for his folio, thereby corresponding the respective shape and size of subject and image exactly. So unless he deliberately misrepresented his Washington’s eagle’s dimensions (and there seems no good reason why he would do this, as this would inevitably compromise the scientific worth of all of his other bird paintings), we must assume that its mighty size was genuine.

Immature bald eagle (Walter Siegmund/Wikipedia)

One of the most popular explanations on offer is that Audubon simply did not recognise that his and all other Washington’s eagles were merely immature bald eagles and/or golden eagles. Yet Audubon’s diaries clearly differentiate between the various eagle types, consistently referring to all-brown immature bald eagles as ‘brown eagles’, and Washington’s eagles as ‘s. eagles’ (sea eagles). The latter designation shows that Audubon also readily differentiated Washington’s eagle from the golden eagle (which is a species of true eagle, whose extended leg feathers instantly distinguish it from sea eagles – a characteristic with which Audubon would certainly have been acquainted, because he had painted the golden eagle).

Golden eagle (Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK/Wikipedia)

Moreover, Audubon was very familiar with all-brown immature bald eagles, which he had seen on countless occasions (and again also painted), and was fully aware that they mature into the well-known white-headed adult form (unlike some of his contemporaries, who had mistakenly deemed the all-brown immature form and the white-headed adult to represent two separate species). He even remarked in one diary that the sea eagles (Washington’s) that he had seen were roughly one quarter larger than the brown eagles (immature bald eagles). This is significant because, intriguingly, all-brown immature bald eagles can be very slightly rangier than their white-headed adult counterpart due to marginally greater contour wing feather length. So for him to note how much larger than immature bald eagles was Washington’s eagle only emphasises its great size. By comparison, adult bald eagles are 70-102 cm long (Audubon’s specimen of Washington’s eagle was 109 cm long), and boast a wingspan of up to 2.44 m (Audubon’s eagle’s wingspan was 3.1 m). (Even adult golden eagles, moreover, are only up to 1 m long, with an average wingspan of just over 2 m.)

Adult bald eagle, 19th-Century painting

In addition, female bald eagles are roughly 25 per cent larger than males, thus making the size of Audubon’s eagle even more noteworthy. For although it was huge in bald eagle terms (regardless of sex), it was, according to Audubon, a male – which, if true, suggests that female Washington’s eagles would be quite enormous!

A related aspect that discounts an immature bald eagle as a likely candidate for Washington’s eagle is the fact that Audubon (in the company of others) witnessed a nesting pair of the latter birds with two young. Very occasionally, a bald eagle will breed while still sporting immature all-brown plumage. However, for two such plumage-perplexed oddities to meet, mate, and rear young together is so unlikely as to be unworthy of serious consideration – especially when such freaks would of course need to be not only aberrantly-plumaged but also exceptionally large, thereby compounding the implausibility of this proposal. As for the hunting and flying idiosyncrasies of Washington’s eagle, witnessed by observers other than just Audubon, these offer yet another challenge to any bald eagle-related identification.

So could it really be that Washington’s eagle was indeed a valid, giant species of eagle, native to northern North America? Even if this were true, it was already so rare in Audubon’s time that it must surely have died out soon afterwards – otherwise it would still be reported today. And with the handful of alleged preserved specimens all lost or of presently unknown location and therefore unavailable for scrutiny via modern-day taxonomic analytical techniques, there seems no way now in which this riddle can ever be conclusively resolved – unless, that is, Washington’s eagle is, in fact, still alive and still being reported today.

Giant eagle (Gymnogene/deviantART.com)

If we turn to the annals of cryptozoology, modern-day reports in North America of huge eagles (as distinct from other reports of giant vulturine or condor-like birds, with naked heads and ring-necks) have indeed been filed. Scott Maruna noted in a sequel to his Washington’s eagle paper that surviving Washington’s eagles may conceivably be the source of such reports originating in particular from Pennsylvania’s Black Forest region – Washington’s eagle having been documented a century earlier from the Great Lakes area north of Pennsylvania. And in the remote coastal areas of northern and western Alaska, containing localities rarely if ever visited by humans, even such a sizeable bird form as this could persist, undisturbed and unseen, for generations. Could it even be that the legendary Amerindian thunderbird originated at least in part from doubtlessly awe-inspiring sightings of Washington’s eagles?

Needless to say, of course, this is all highly speculative (especially with no apparent palaeontological support for such a bird). And yet...every so often, a report comes along that makes me wonder, what if?

One such report was placed online by Maruna, and recounted a sighting of a huge raptor one winter’s morning in 2004 by William McManus and his wife, spied across a small meadow between their cabin home (located roughly 24 km north of Stillwater, Minnesota) and a river channel, as it perched in a dead tree. They immediately discounted any bald eagle, adult or immature, and also a golden eagle, on account of the sighted bird’s dark brick-red colour, and also because of its size, which they estimated to be well over 3 ft (1 m) tall. After viewing it for some 2 hours at a distance of only 60 m or so, they moved nearer but the bird flew away, revealing itself to be indeed an eagle (and not a condor, as they had begun to wonder), with an eagle’s head and neck, and an enormous wingspan far exceeding a bald eagle’s. After seeing Audubon’s painting of his Washington’s eagle in Maruna’s blog, McManus believed that this is what he and his wife saw that day.

California condor Gymnogyps californianus, North America's only native species of modern-day condor (John James Audubon)

This communication received two interesting responses posted in Maruna’s blog. One, posted by Kurt N on 24 October 2006, stated that he had seen at the Hawk Mountain bird observatory in Pennsylvania a photo taken there in or around 1993 that depicted a large unidentified eagle that was clearly no bald or golden eagle but had elicited speculation that it was some kind of sea eagle. And in a post of 9 January 2007 (later removed), a reader with the username of dogu4 mentioned that a couple of years earlier (2005), a bush pilot and some passengers flying over a remote stretch of western Alaska claimed to have seen a gigantic bird.

As dogu4 also noted pertinently:

"If there were ever an area where it [Washington’s eagle] could have survived as a small population un-noticed, the coastal areas out along the edges of the Y-K Delta would fit the description as far as inaccessibility and remoteness, not to mention the abundance of sea-life, rookeries and breeding grounds for a multitude of relatively un-disturbed populations of birds and sea-mammals. And the incredible solitude."

An equally thought-provoking report reached me in November 2009, courtesy of a longstanding correspondent called Mark, from Birmingham, Alabama, who emailed me with news of an intriguing report aired a month or so earlier on an episode of the popular North American late-night radio talk show entitled ‘Coast To Coast AM’, presented by George Noory. Apparently, on two separate occasions during the course of this particular episode, which focused upon cryptozoology, a man aged in his 40s called in, claiming a remarkable sighting made by him and two ex-army friends while in a harbour around the Aleutian Islands off western Alaska.

The caller stated that while standing not far away from some telegraph poles, they saw that perched on top of one of them was what he referred to as a gigantic bald eagle. He mentioned that there were other, normal-sized bald eagles flying around it and that it was therefore very easy to estimate its size – 10 ft (3 m) or so tall. This seems far too large, but perhaps the caller was thinking of wingspan rather than height? In any event, he told host Noory that he and his two friends looked at each other in amazement, hardly believing what they were seeing. Referring to it as a gigantic bald eagle implies that it had a white head. Yet, as already discussed here, only adult bald eagles have this, but immature, all-brown bald eagles are just as big and eyecatching, so we cannot say for sure that the Alaskan mega-eagle was white-headed simply because it was likened to a bald eagle. What we can say, however, is that if it was all-brown, it would bear much more than a passing resemblance to that most enigmatic of northern USA mystery birds, Washington’s eagle.

So if any eagle-eyed (pun intended!) reader heard this ‘Coast To Coast AM’ episode, I’d be delighted to receive any additional information concerning the above caller report that you could send in.

Could there really be a type of eagle even bigger than the golden eagle but unrecognised by science living in North America?

Most recently of all, beginning on 17 March 2011 with one that was forwarded by Fortean Times to me, I received a series of detailed emails from Mike E. Richburg of West Columbia in South Carolina, USA, in which he described what he believes to have been a truly enormous eagle that he spied approximately 20 years earlier in his home state near the Combahee River. A letter from Mike (using the pseudonym Mike Richards) in which he reported his sighting was subsequently published in FT (June 2011).

Mike's letter as published in Fortean Times #276 (June 2011)

But now, combining all of the much more comprehensive accounts contained in his various emails to me and presented here as a ShukerNature world-exclusive (with his kind permission for me to do so and fully credited to him under his real name), this is Mike's full description of what he saw:

"I witnessed a very, very large bird (6-7 ft. tall) that looked almost exactly like a Golden Eagle except for its extraordinary size. The avian flew off with a small deer in its grasp. Its wingspan was wider than one lane of US HWY 21. It lifted the deer from the roadway and cleared the treetops with three cycles of its wings.

"The deer's neck was clearly visibly broken, and not just a little bit. It had clearly very recently happened. I have spent much of my life outdoors, hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, etc, and have seen deer in all manner of states and speak from a position of knowledge on the deer itself. I am also quite clear on the size and age of the deer, and stand firmly by my 50 lb estimate. Also not included was what first caught my eye, the movement of spooked (alerted) deer far ahead in the roadway. I saw the flashes of white on their hind ends as they bounded briefly about in the roadway, in an obvious attempt to get the heck out of there, apparently as afraid of this thing as I was. I am sure there are many more small details that may or may not be important.

"Also, one thing that really stuck out to me about the whole thing is when the bird looked up. It didn't look at my vehicle. It looked straight at me. In my face. We made eye contact, which totally freaked me out, and convinced me that the creature was very intelligent. This has always stuck out as being very impressive to me. It looked straight into my eyes. Still kinda creeps me out.

"In addition, I will inform you that I think about what I saw almost daily, and frequently dream about it. I often wake up when the animal looks at me. I still feel afraid of it. I was so afraid at the time of the sighting, it is hard to explain. Let's just say I knew a human would be no match for this thing.

"I could actually see the wind created by the flapping motion of the bird's wings affect the vegetation (bushes, grass, etc) on the side of the road. This was most noticeable on the second cycle of the wings, which was the first "full cycle" while still low over the roadway. This effect was very similar to the "wave" of air created by a passing truck that can be seen in tall grass on the roadside. Also of note was the great ease in which the bird took flight with the deer in tow. Much like a Hawk with a mouse, or an Eagle with a 3 lb rabbit. It looked very easy for the bird, and I am sure it was not the first time he flew away with very large prey.

"I have extensively researched both the Haast's Eagle [Harpagornis moorei, the giant eagle of New Zealand that officially died out in c.1400 AD] and Washington's Sea Eagle, both thought to be extinct. I believe what I saw was similar to both in appearance with some differences worth noting. The bird I saw clearly had a yellowish beak, most depictions of Washington's Eagle report a dark beak. The overall coloration however, was not that dissimilar. The underbelly coloration was similar to Haast's eagle, but appeared to be a different pattern. The overall size of the bird I saw was also even larger than either of these great birds. The bird I saw was very, very Eagle like, as I previously stated, looking almost exactly like a Golden but much larger. Its feathers were also a little more "ruffled" or out of place, for the most part, except for the head itself where the feathers clung closely and neatly, giving a "smooth' appearance. This greatly contrasted with the "rough" look of the rest of the bird, which started at the neck.

"The bird I saw also had very impressive legs. The top of the leg was very large and apparently muscular. Comparable to a great dane with feathers. The lower legs looked very much like tree trunks, and were very noticeably stout. The feet themselves were also very impressive and noticeable, not as yellow as I would have thought, more like dirty dishwater grey and had the look of leather that was excessively cracked and peeled. There ain't no lizard in the bird I saw. It was 100% Eagle, and could have lifted prey much larger.

"As I have stated in the summary attachment, it was in the roadway directly in front of me at close range. I had a very good look at it."

Haast's eagle attacking giant moas (John Megahan/PLoS Biology/Wikipedia)

Here is Mike's summary attachment, which I received from him on 18 April 2011:

"I wanted to thank you again for your interest in my encounter with a giant eagle type bird in SC in about 1990. Although I am not much of an artist, I took a shot at drawing what I saw that morning, and have enclosed the illustration with this correspondence. Albeit crude and somewhat primitive, it provides a visual aide. If the average picture is worth a thousand words, then this one ought to be worth a million. This is how the animal looked when it raised its head and looked at me, at which time I finally realized what I was looking at. The bird flared out his wings slightly and gave me a very intimidating glare, as if to say that the deer was his and he was ready to defend it. It was a very fierce and menacing look. Of particular interest was the very robust, stout girth of the body and the very wide stance. His right leg was on the deer’s neck and the left on the hind end. His eyes also seemed very large, even for such a large animal. The bird also had very noticeably large feet. I did not notice the great length of the beak until he turned. Here is a brief list of observable physical attributes.

"Size of animal:
"6-7 ft from highest part of wings to roadway as pictured. Please note that highest part of wings was tilted toward vehicle, and wingtips pointed away from vehicle and noticeably laying on road, as were the tail feathers. Exact height of animal if upright is unknown.

"Width of wingspan was undeterminable until bird turned around and took flight, was then estimated at least 16 ft, and probably around 18 ft. Broadness of each wing estimated at least 4-5 ft from leading edge to trailing edge.

"Very wide girth and very wide stance. Distance between legs at least 2.5-3 ft.

"Very large feet with large visible talons.

"Color of animal:
"Overall color was dark brown to charcoal gray.

"The underside of the wings appeared lighter in color with white “spots” that were actually not round, but square-ish and rectangular and “L” shaped.

"The underside of the tail which the bird presented to me after turning around was also much lighter in color as it got closer to the bird. Tips of tail feathers were dark on underside as well as the top.

"Yellow beak.

"Yellow to gold eyes.

"Grayish looking feet with black talons."

Mike's drawing of the bird that he saw (Mike E. Richburg)

In a subsequent email, sent to me on 3 May 2012, Mike included two further descriptive accounts, both of which offered some important additional insights into the appearance and nature of the giant eagle that he had encountered:

"I awoke from a dream this morning with the proverbial light bulb over my head. I have now realized why the bird's feet looked like they did. In a word, it was mud. To fully understand why I am so sure, one must appreciate the geography of the area. This is a flat almost featureless coastal plain, except for the Carolina Bays (a unique unexplained phenomenon in their own right), that was once the sea floor. Fresh water is in abundance, but everywhere there is water, and in a lot of places there is not, there is also a very greasy black to charcoal gray mud. This is the only kind of mud around and there is plenty of it. This mud, of course, dries to a lighter shade of gray. The bird had to drink fresh water, and to do that I am 100% sure he would have had to stand in that kind [of] mud, or fly at least 50 miles. I am now very confident what I saw was half dried mud that was flaking off, thus explaining the coloration and extreme texture on the bird's feet.

"Several years after the sighting I confided in a friend and told him what I had seen. The conversation turned to the pattern under the wings and my curiosity about it. I insisted that it must be for camouflage purposes, to help conceal the large animal. In my attempt to describe the pattern I took some white spray paint to a piece of plywood I had. One thing lead to another, and with the help of some other colors, I had quickly made a rough imitation of the pattern over the whole side of the 4’ x 8’ sheet of plywood. A debate about the effectiveness of the camo ensued immediately.

"To settle the debate we tried a very unscientific study, by placing the plywood in different surroundings, and stepping back to take a look. It did not work against a clear sky, nor around a stand of Pine trees and a few other places. To make a long story short it sucked in everyplace we put it except for one. When we placed the wood up in an Oak tree behind my house it became virtually undetected. There were other hard wood trees around, behind and in front of the wood. There were Persimmon, Gum, Sparkleberry, Maple etc. It became astonishingly clear that the white “blocks” closely imitated the small “bits” of sky one can see when looking up thorough the trees.

"I had hoped to conduct the same experiment again just to send you pics, but I was much younger then and the chances of me climbing 30’ up in a tree with a 4’ x 8’ sheet of plywood are slim to none, and I think I just saw Slim leaving town.

"Conclusions: The camouflage system is very area specific and only works well in growths of deciduous trees, where it excels in the extreme. Noteworthy is the fact that this is also where the bird was seen. This pattern works very well half way up a mature 50’-70’ tree, where the bird might likely hunt from at times. The pattern was so effective that a deer, much less the average person, would never detect the presence of the great bird unless the bird moved or made noise, even with its wings open and just above its prey. In fact, if the bird was on a large branch next to the trunk of the tree, much like a large Owl might sit, it would be virtually invisible even with the wings fully opened, as long as it was facing towards its prey. I believe the bird would in fact hunt this way due to its many advantages. Humans hunt deer from tree stands in similar fashion to gain these same advantages. The predator's scent is not at ground level, better vision, etc. It would only make sense that this creature would use these advantages as well."

The combined accounts from Mike quoted here constitute the most extensive eyewitness description of an unidentified giant eagle in North America that I have ever read, added to which is his hand-drawn illustration. Although not identical, this mysterious mega-eagle certainly recalls the equally mystifying Washington's eagle, and makes me wonder anew as to whether such a form was not only truly distinct from all other North American species of eagle but still survives on this continent today, albeit assuredly in very small numbers, yet very effectively camouflaged, thus preserving the secrecy of its existence from all but a scant few, highly fortunate observers.

Alternatively, is it conceivable that the individual birds documented in this ShukerNature post, including the specimen upon which Audubon established his Washington's eagle species, in reality constitute freak, over-sized specimens of the golden eagle, possibly exhibiting genetically-induced gigantism?

Of particular interest is Mike's statement that the eagle carried off a small deer whose weight was estimated by him to be approximately 50 lb (22.7 kg). Adult male golden eagles living in the wild weigh around 3.6 kg (7.9 lb) on average, and adult females living in the wild weigh around 5.1 kg (11 lb) on average, though females weighing up to 6.8 kg (15 lb) have been confirmed. Golden eagles are normally able to lift and carry off prey roughly half their own weight – which would be around 1.8 kg (4 lb) for an adult male, and 2.6 kg (5.5 lb) for an adult female, though prey victims up to 4 kg (8.8 lb) in weight have been recorded. Yet even this is far short of the 22.7 kg (50 lb) weight claimed by Mike for the deer abducted by the giant eagle seen by him. So either Mike over-estimated the deer's weight, or there are some phenomenally powerful - as well as gargantuan - eagles out there.

Whatever the explanation for such birds may be, the fact remains that eagles much bigger than science believes they have any right to be may indeed exist in the USA – such birds could even have inspired the age-old Native American legends of thunderbirds, as documented in my book In Search of Prehistoric Survivors (1995) - and that in itself is something well worth investigating further.

Wooden figurine of giant eagle attacking stag (Dr Karl Shuker)


UPDATE: 28 June 2020
Today, on his Strangeark Facebook group, American cryptozoologist Chad Arment brought to attention a newly-published article, authored by Matthew R. Halley, that casts severe doubt upon the authenticity of Washington's eagle. Having trawled extensively through multiple archives and transcripts to check the timelines associated with Audubon's supposed procurement of the specimen painted by him and subsequent claims made by him concerning it, and having also compared Audubon's painting with various other eagle illustrations existing during that same period, Halley concludes that Washington's eagle is a hoax, with Audubon's painting of it the product of plagiarism and invention. Click here to read this very thought-provoking paper, which, especially if substantiated by further findings, threatens to set fire, albeit metaphorically, to one of cryptozoology's most magnificent mystery birds as effectively as the flames from its coruscating nest did with Egypt's legendary phoenix.


FURTHER READING
Scott Maruna, “Substantiating Audubon’s Washington Eagle”, biofort.blogspot.com, posted 14 Oct 2006.

Scott Maruna, “Of Washington Eagles, Ivory-bills and ‘Thunderbird’ Sightings”, biofort.blogspot.com, posted 18 Oct 2006.

Scott Maruna, “Witness Claims a Washington Eagle Sighting”, biofort.blogspot.com, posted 23 Oct 2006.

Kenneth C. Parkes, "Audubon's Mystery Birds", Natural History, vol 94(4), pp. 88-93 (April 1985).

'Mike Richards' [=Mike E. Richburg], "Giant Bird", Fortean Times, #276, p. 74 (June 2011).

C.W. Webber, Wild Scenes and Song-Birds (Leavitt & Allen: New York, 1858).

Neal Woodman, "Pranked by Audubon: Constantine S. Rafinesque's Description of John James Audubon's Imaginary Kentucky Mammals", Archives of Natural History, vol 43(1), pp. 95-108 (2016).

Adult bald eagle (Eric Frommer/Wikipedia)

MERMAID BODY FOUND? IN SEARCH OF FOLK WITH FINS

Medieval bestiary engraving of merman and mermaid

Since the very earliest times, stories of merfolk or merbeings - sea-dwelling entities with the upper bodies of humans and the tails of fishes - have been reported by maritime travellers. Such accounts have been traditionally dismissed as nothing more than quaint folklore, and in some cases this is unquestionably true. Various others are simple misidentifications of seals or sirenians (manatees and dugongs.

Semi-humorous 19th-Century engraving of a manatee and a mermaid
Equally, most accounts of preserved mermaid specimens are based upon skilfully prepared hoaxes (gaffs), usually featuring the head and body of a monkey deftly attached to the tail of a large fish - not so much folk with fins as fakes with fins. These extraordinary entities are typifed by American circus impresario Phineas T. Barnum's infamous 'Feejee Mermaid', exhibited by him at Broadway'sConcert Hall on 1842:

Engraving of Barnum's 'Feejee Mermaid'

as well as by the excellent, highly impressive modern-day faux mermaid prepared specially for me by expert movie model-maker Alan Friswell - thanks Al!

My very own genuine fake mermaid! (Dr Karl Shuker)
However, there are also certain other cases on record that cannot be readily discounted as either folktales or frauds, as demonstrated by the following highly intriguing selection of thought-provoking, still-unresolved examples.


SWALLOWED BY A SHARK

If merfolk exist, then they must surely fall prey at times to some of the seas' greatest predators - the sharks. One little-known case on file not only supports such a possibility but may also provide an insight into merfolk morphology. The creature in question was discovered inside the stomach of a shark caught on the northwest coast of Iceland, and was closely observed by the priest of Ottrardale. His description was quoted in a 19th-Century book by Sabine Baring-Gould called Iceland, Its Scenes and Sagas, and reads as follows:

"The lower part of the animal was entirely eaten away, whilst the upper part, from the epigastric and hypogastric region, was in some places partially eaten, in others completely devoured. The sternum, or breast-bone, was perfect. This animal appeared to be about the size of a boy eight or nine years old, and its head was formed like that of a man. The anterior surface of the occiput was very protuberant, and the nape of the neck had a considerable indentation or sinking. The alae [lobes] of the ears were very large, and extended a good way back. It had front teeth, which were long and pointed, as were also the larger teeth. The eyes were lustreless, and resembled those of a codfish. It had on its head long black, coarse hair, very similar to the fucus filiformis [filamentous seaweed]; this hair hung over the shoulders. Its forehead was large and round. The skin above the eyelids was much wrinkled, scanty, and of a bright olive colour, which was indeed the hue of the whole body. The chin was cloven, the shoulders were high, and the neck uncommonly short. The arms were of their natural size, and each hand had a thumb and four fingers covered with flesh. Its breast was formed exactly like that of a man, and there was also to be seen something like nipples; the back was also like that of a man. It had very cartilaginous ribs; and in parts where the skin had been rubbed off, a black, coarse flesh was perceptible, very similar to that of the seal. This animal, after having been exposed about a week on the shore, was again thrown into the sea."

'Swamp Dweller' merman painting (Jade Gengko)


THE MERMONKEY OF YELL

During the 1800s, six fishermen acquainted with naturalist Dr Robert Hamilton were fishing off the island of Yell, one of the Shetland Islands north of Scotland, when they captured a decidedly monkey-like mermaid, which had become entangled in their lines:

"The animal was about three feet long, the upper part of the body resembling the human, with protuberant mammae, like a woman; the face, the forehead, and neck were short, and resembling those of a monkey; the arms, which were small, were kept folded across the breast; the fingers were distinct, not webbed; a few stiff, long bristles were on the top of the head, extending down to the shoulders, and these it could erect and depress at pleasure, something like a crest. The inferior part of the body was like a fish. The skin was smooth, and of a grey colour. It offered no resistance, nor attempted to bite, but uttered a low, plaintive sound. The crew, six in number, took it within their boat; but superstition getting the better of curiosity, they carefully disentangled it from the lines and from a hook which had accidentally fastened in its body, and returned it to its native element. It instantly dived, descending in a perpendicular direction."
Mermaid painting (Warwick Goble)


SOME LITTLE-PUBLICISED MERFOLK REPORTS

The following reports have previously received little if any mainstream attention, so I am especially indebted to American cryptozoological author Michael Newton for passing them on to me.

The first of these was published by the Daily Kennebec Journal newspaper of Augusta, Maine, on 24 June 1873. The most pertinent section reads as follows:

"About the same time [c.1737] a story came from Virgo, in Spain, to the effect that some fishermen on that coast had caught a sort of a merman, five feet and a half from head to foot. The head was like that of a goat, with a long beard and moustache, a black skin, somewhat hairy, a very long neck, short arms, hands longer than they ought to be in proportion, and long fingers, with nails like claws; webbed toes, and a fin at the lower part of the back."

Interestingly, an engraving of a weird goat-headed merbeing, variously dubbed a sea-Pan, sea-satyr, or sea-devil, based upon a skeleton and some mummified exhibits, appeared in the second edition of Conrad Gesner’s Historiae Animalium Liber IV. Qui est de Piscium et Aquatilium Animantium Natura (1604). Allegedly, it had been fatally wounded by stones thrown at it by some sailors who had witnessed it throwing itself out of the Illyrian Sea onto the shore in an attempt to capture a small child there. This must surely have been another cleverly-constructed fraud.

Gesner’s goat-headed merbeing

Continuing the Daily Kennebec Journal article:

"The magazines for 1775 gave an account of a mermaid which was captured in the Levant and brought to London. One of the learned periodicals gravely told its readers that the mermaid had the complexion and features of a European, like those of a young woman; that the eyes were light blue, the nose small and elegantly formed, the mouth small, the lips thin, "but the edges round like those of a codfish; that the teeth were small, regular and white; that the neck was well rounded, and that the ears were like those of an eel, but placed like those on the human specie [sic], with gills for respiration, which appear like cork." There was no hair on the head, but "rolls...” There was a fin rising pyramidally from the temples, "forming a foretop, like that of a lady's headdress." ["]The bust was nearly like that of a young damsel, a proper orthodox mermaiden, but, alas! all below the waste was exactly like a fish! Three sets of fins below the waist, one above the other, enabled her to swim. Finally it is said to have an enchanting voice, which it never exerts except before a storm." The writer in the Annual Register probably did not see this mermaid, which the Gentleman's Magazine described as being only three feet high. It was afterward proved to be a cheat, made from the skull of the angle [angel] shark.

"A Welsh farmer, named Reynolds, living at Pen-y-hold in 1782, saw a something which he appears to have believed to be a mermaid; he told the story to Dr. George Phillips, who told it to Mrs. Moore, who told it to a young lady pupil of hers, who wrote out an account of it to Mrs. Morgan, who inserted it in her "Tour to Milford Haven." How much...[it] gained on its travels - like the Three Black Crows or the parlor game of Russian Scandal - we are left to find out for ourselves; but its ultimate form was nearly as follows: One morning, just outside the cliff, Reynolds saw what seemed to him to be a person bathing in the sea, with the upper part of the body out of the water. On nearer view, it looked like the upper part of a person in a tub, a youth, say of sixteen or eighteen years of age, with nice white skin!, a sort of brownish body, and a tail was under the water. The head and body were human in form, but the arms and hands thick in proportion to length, while the nose, seeming up high between the eyes, terminated rather sharply. The mysterious being looked attentively at Reynolds, and at the cliffs, and at the birds flying in the air, with a wild gaze, but uttered no...[sound]. Reynolds went to bring some companions to see the merman or mermaid, but when he returned it had disappeared. If we like to suppose that Reynolds had seen some kind of seal, and that the narration had grown to something else by repeating freely mouth to mouth, perhaps we shall not be very far wrong."
Mermaid painting by John Waterhouse

Also of interest is the following report, published by the Cape Brooklyn Eagle newspaper on 22 August 1886:

"The fishermen of Gabarus, Cape Breton [an island off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada], have been excited over the appearances of a mermaid, seen in the waters by some fishermen a few days ago. While Mr. Bagnall, accompanied by several fishermen, was out in a boat, they observed floating on the surface of the water a few yards from the boat what they supposed to be a corpse. Approaching it for the purpose of taking it ashore, they observed it to move, when to their great surprise, it turned around in a sitting position and looked at them and disappeared. A few moments after[,] it appeared on the surface and again looked toward them, after which it disappeared altogether. The face, head, shoulders and arms resembled those of a human being, but the lower extremities had the appearance of a fish. The back of its head was covered with long, dark hair resembling a horse's mane. The arms were shaped like a human being's, except that the fingers of one hand were very long. The color of the skin was not unlike that of a human being. There is no doubt, that the mysterious stranger is what is known as a mermaid, and the first one ever seen in Cape Breton waters."
Were it not for the mention of fingers, I would be inclined to identify this particularly hirsute merbeing as a seal, quite probably a fur seal. Could it be that there is an unknown species of seal with a foreshortened muzzle, rendering its face superficially humanoid, and with flippers in which the digits are more prominently revealed than in other seals? Such a species would correspond closely with a number of noteworthy merbeing reports.

Seal in upright mermaid posture (L. Heafner)
Finally: On 3 November 1896, the Cape Brooklyn Eagle published another noteworthy merbeing report:

"Seattle, Wash., November 3 - A party of Englishmen who have been porpoise fishing in the Pacific discovered and killed a monster that resembled a merman. The party was off the island of Watmoff on the hunting boat and Lord Devonshire, one of the fishers, had just shot a porpoise, when some one called out, "Look there!" pointing to a frightful looking monster about a cable's length away. Hastily raising his weapon his lordship fired and hit the creature between the eyes. The shot, though it did not kill it, so stunned the animal that it lay perfectly still on the surface of the sea.

"It showed fight when hauled into the boat and had to be killed to prevent it from swamping the craft. The monster is said to be one of the strangest freaks ever put together. It measures 10 feet from its nose to the end of its fluke shaped tail and the girth of its human shaped body was just six feet. It would weigh close to 500 pounds. From about the breast bone to a point at the base of the stomach it looked like a man. Its arms, quite human in shape and form, are very long and covered completely with long, coarse, dark reddish hair, as is the whole body.

"It had, or did have, at one time four fingers and a thumb on each hand, almost human in shape, except that in place of finger nails there were long, slender claws. But in days probably long since gone by, it had evidently fought some monster that had got the best of it, for the forefinger of the right hand, the little finger of the left and the left thumb are missing entirely. Immediately under the right breast is a broad, ugly looking scar which looked as if sometime in the past it had been inflicted by a swordfish. The creature is now being preserved in ice at Seattle and will be shipped to the British museum."
Merman (triton) sculpture in the Piazza Navona, Rome (Dr Karl Shuker)
As I feel sure that the scientific world would have heard more about this entity had it indeed reached the British Museum, I am assuming that it was never shipped there after all. In June 2008, I sent details concerning this fascinating case to Mandy Holloway in the Department of Zoology at London's Natural History Museum, who very kindly promised to pursue the matter for me through the museum’s archives – just in case! However, no trace of any merman was found. Ah well, at least we tried!


SOUTH AFRICA’S MERMAID ROCK PAINTINGS

Created for untold centuries by the San hunter-gatherer people, the rock paintings in the Karoo, South Africa, depict some remarkable entities, but none more so than certain ones bearing a striking resemblance to mermaids! Seeking to provide a rational scientific explanation for them after the discovery of some additional examples in Ezeljachtpoort (again in the Karoo) was made public during 1998, anthropologists have suggested that they either portray departed spirits (a dominant theme in San society) or represent the hallucinogenic experience of San shamans. According to one elderly San man interviewed by the paintings’ researchers, however, they depict bona fide water maidens, and even today such beings are indeed reported quite frequently in this African region.

San rock-art mermaids in the Karoo (travel.iafrica.com)


AN UNDISCOVERED AQUATIC PRIMATE?

In July 1960, eminent British scientist Professor Sir Alister Hardy FRS published a highly thought-provoking hypothesis in New Scientist - speculating that instead of evolving from upright plains-dwelling ancestors, man learned to stand erect by having descended from aquatic ape-like forms. This startling idea has since been pursued in great detail by researcher Elaine Morgan in The Aquatic Ape (1982) and later books, and has provoked much dissension among scientists. I plan to assess this notion in detail within a future book. For now, therefore, let me just say that if it is indeed valid, it has great bearing upon the question of mermaids and their kind.

Merfolk, or aquatic apes? (picture source unknown to me)

After all, if, while some of these water-dwelling ape-like primates did indeed become terrestrial and evolve into modern-day Homo sapiens, others remained in the sea - continuing to evolve and surviving into modern times but retaining their fully aquatic form -what would they be like today? Perhaps we already know the answer - and perhaps that answer already has a name: merfolk.

Fake but fabulous - a supposed mermaid skeleton (9gag.com)