THE MEGALOPEDUS, THE SUKOTYRO, AND A VERY CRYPTIC CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

The sukotyro, as depicted in a colour engraving from 1812 (Dr Karl Shuker)

In cryptozoology, it is always a delight to unearth accounts of hitherto-obscure mystery beasts from the archives of antiquity. Lately two such creatures, hailing from widely disparate geographical regions but of oddly similar appearance, have occupied my attention simultaneously, though with very different outcomes, as will be seen!

THE TUSKED MEGALOPEDUS

It was American cryptozoological contact Marc Gaglione who first brought the tusked megalopedus to my attention, asking me in early 2011 if I’d ever heard of this enigmatic beast:

"What are some animals, small or large, that are known only from a single specimen, skin, or skull? Is there something called a Tusked Megalopedus? I read the name somewhere."

However, I certainly hadn’t, because I would have definitely remembered a name as distinctive as ‘tusked megalopedus’, and, indeed, would have actively investigated it - if only because of the tantalising cryptozoological coincidence that ‘megalopedus’ translates as ‘bigfoot’! But a bigfoot with tusks? Moreover, judging from the context of Marc’s message, it appeared that this creature was known only from a single specimen, making it even more curious.

Mirroring that situation, internet searches for information concerning the tusked megalopedus yielded only a single but highly informative source. It stated that this mysterious creature had been described by no less an authority than Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD), the famous Roman naturalist-scholar and author of the encyclopaedic work Historia Naturalis. It also claimed that the only known specimen of the megalopedus was ensconced in a quite extraordinary cabinet of curiosities, and it included a description of this remarkable collection as witnessed by a visiting journalist that contains a brief account of that unique specimen:

"...a strange stuffed animal greeted his eye: a large, tapirlike mammal with a huge muzzle, powerful forelegs, bulbous head, and curving tusks. It was like nothing he had ever seen before; a freak. He bent down to make out the dim label: Only known specimen of the Tusked Megalopedus, described by Pliny, thought to be fantastical until this specimen was shot in the Belgian Congo by the English explorer Col. Sir Henry F. Moreton, in 1869...[But] could it be true? A large mammal, completely unknown to science?"

So where can this peerless repository of the world’s only tusked megalopedus, and untold other scientific treasures besides, be found? Yes, you’ve guessed it – in the pages of a novel! Published in 2002 and entitled (what else?) The Cabinet of Curiosities, it was written by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and is the source of the above statements and quote.

Once I’d discovered that, I contacted Marc, who confirmed that this was indeed the book where he had read about the megalopedus, but he had wondered whether, although the story was fiction, the animal itself may have been genuine. Certainly, Pliny documented many bizarre creatures in his encyclopaedia, some of which were later unmasked as legendary beasts or even wholly fictitious monsters with no basis either in fact or in folklore, so such a situation would not be unprecedented.

Reconstruction of the tusked megalopedus's appearance as described in The Cabinet of Curiosities (Tim Morris)

As far as I am aware, however, there is no mention of the tusked megalopedus in any of Pliny’s works. Another reason for doubting even an erstwhile existence for this ultra-cryptic creature supposedly hailing from the Belgian Congo is that the name of its discoverer, Col. Sir Henry F. Moreton, is clearly inspired by that of a real explorer, Sir Henry Morton Stanley, who did indeed contribute to a major zoological discovery in the Belgian Congo – the okapi, in 1901.

Nevertheless, I would be delighted to be proven wrong, and receive verifiable evidence that Pliny genuinely documented the mystifying megalopedus, or even something comparable upon which the megalopedus may have been based. Consequently, if anyone out there can do so, please send in details!

Having said that, there is one final, but extremely significant twist in the tale (if not the tail!) of the tusked megalopedus. Even though this is assuredly a make-believe mammal, its description is strangely reminiscent of a seemingly genuine yet wholly obscure, long-forgotten mystery beast that I serendipitously uncovered during my megalopedus investigations. And the name of this overlooked oddity? The sukotyro of Java.


THE SUKOTYRO

While seeking possible images of the megalopedus before discovering its true nature, I spotted a very unusual antiquarian print for sale online. It depicted two animals. One was Australia’s familiar duck-billed platypus. The other was an entirely unfamiliar hoofed mammal labelled as the sukotyro. This print was a colour plate taken from Ebenezer Sibly’s A Universal System of Natural History (1794). I collect antiquarian natural history prints as a hobby, but I was reluctant to purchase this one as I considered its asking price to be unjustifiably high. Happily, however, further internet perusal soon yielded several other plates depicting this same creature, all dating from the early 1800s.

Despite emanating from different sources, these plates' depictions were all clearly based upon the same, earlier, original illustration (see later here). And as they were reasonably priced, I duly purchased no less than three large, excellent plates (two in colour, one b/w) that included the instantly-recognisable sukotyro image (together with various well-known beasts). At a later date I also succeeded in purchasing a reasonably-priced 1804-dated version of Sibly's plate.

The platypus (top) and the sukotyro (bottom), depicted in a colour plate from 1804 (Dr Karl Shuker)

As the images reproduced here from some of these plates reveal, the sukotyro does not readily resemble any known mammal. Its large, burly body (variously portrayed as elephantine grey or deep-brown in coloured depictions) is somewhat rhinoceros-like in general shape but its smooth skin lacks these creatures’ characteristic armour, and its long, bushy-tipped tail differs from their shorter versions. Equally distinct is the short upright narrow mane that runs down the entire length of its back.

Furthermore, each of its feet appears to possess four hooves (thereby allying it with the pigs, hippos, camels, ruminants, and other even-toed ungulates or artiodactyls, whereas the rhinos are odd-toed ungulates or perissodactyls, which also include the horses and tapirs). Its head is also totally unlike that of any rhinoceros, sporting a sturdy but elongate, hornless muzzle ending in a pair of decidedly porcine nostrils, a pair of long, pendant ears, and, most distinctive of all, a pair of truly extraordinary tusks.

A b/w undated plate depicting the sukotyro (Dr Karl Shuker)

Bizarrely, all of the sukotyro illustrations that I have seen depict these tusks emerging from a point located directly beneath and behind the eyes rather than from any anterior region of the jaws. In addition, they are held above the level of the snout, and (rather like those of elephants) are almost entirely horizontal in orientation with only their tips exhibiting a slight upward curve. I can only assume, therefore, that these depictions are meant to signify (albeit with poor artistry) that the sukotyro’s tusks emerge from some site at the back of the (upper?) jaws.

Tusks aside, in overall appearance the sukotyro resembles a big wild pig, but where does (or did) it come from? What, if indeed anything, is known about this strange creature?

Niewhoff's 17th-Century illustration of the sukotyro, alongside an elephant, a jackal, and other animals (Dr Karl Shuker)

The earliest known description of the sukotyro is that of Johan Niewhoff (aka Niuhoff and Neuhoff) in his account of his travels to the East Indies, entitled Die Gesantschaft der Ost-Indischen Gesellschaft in den Vereinigten Niederländern, and published in 1669. He also included an illustration of it (as reproduced directly above this paragraph), upon which all subsequent ones appear to have been directly based. His description, kindly translated from Dutch into English for me by longstanding Dutch cryptozoological correspondent Gerard Van Leusden, reads as follows:

"The animal Sukotyro as it is called by the Chinese has a wonderful and strange shape. It is about as big as an ox, has a snout like a pig, two long rough ears and a long hairy tail and two eyes that stand high, completely different from those in other animals, alongside the head.

"At each side of the head, along the ears, are two long horns or tusks that are darker than the teeth of the elephant. The animal lives from vegetables and is seldom captured."

Tapir (top) and sukotyro (bottom) in a colour plate from A New Cabinet Cyclopedia, published in 1819 (Dr Karl Shuker)

My continuing searches revealed that the sukotyro received its most authoritative scientific coverage in 1799, by British Museum zoologist Dr George Shaw in Vol 1 of his exhaustive 16-volume General Zoology: Or Systematic Natural History.

The sukotyro as depicted in a copper engraving within Shaw's treatise (Dr Karl Shuker)

Inserting it directly but somewhat hesitantly after the elephant in this volume’s main text (and neglecting to mention, incidentally, that in 1792 its species had been formally christened Sukotyro indicus by fellow zoologist Robert Kerr), Shaw paraphrased Niewhoff's description and concisely documented this enigmatic mammal as follows:

"That we may not seem to neglect so remarkable an animal, though hitherto so very imperfectly known, we shall here introduce the Sukotyro. This, according to Niewhoff, its only describer, and who has figured it in his travels to the East Indies [Die Gesantschaft der Ost-Indischen Gesellschaft in den Vereinigten Niederländern, 1669, containing the original illustration reproduced above], is a quadruped of a very singular shape. Its size is that of a large ox: the snout like that of a hog: the ears long and rough; and the tail thick and bushy. The eyes are placed upright in the head, quite differently from those of other quadrupeds. On each side the head, next to the eyes, stand the horns, or rather teeth, not quite so thick as those of an Elephant. This animal feeds upon herbage, and is but seldom taken. It is a native of Java, and is called by the Chinese Sukotyro. This is all the description given by Niewhoff. The figure is repeated in Churchill’s Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. 2. p. 360. Niewhoff was a Dutch traveller, who visited the East Indies about the middle of the last century, viz. about the year 1563 [sic – should be 1653], and continued his peregrinations for several years. It must be confessed that some of the figures introduced into his works are not remarkable for their accuracy."

This would presumably explain, therefore, the anatomically aberrant positioning of the sukotyro’s tusks, and also, probably, the upright positioning of its eyes. Of course, if the latter are portrayed correctly, it could be suggested that the sukotyro spends time submerged in water, with only its eyes showing above the surface, as with hippopotamuses, whose eyes are also placed high on their skull. However, so too are the hippos’ nostrils and ears, whereas those of the sukotyro are not, thereby reducing the likelihood that it does spend any length of time largely submerged.

The sukotyro (top) and Asian elephant (bottom) in a colour plate from 1806 (Dr Karl Shuker)

As for the sukotyro’s tusks: ignoring their potentially-inaccurate horizontal orientation, they remind me both in shape and in size of those bizarre versions sported by the babirusas of Indonesia (formerly a single species, but recently split into several separate ones). These grotesque-looking wild pigs are famous for the huge vertical tusks sported by the males, in which not only the lower tusks but also the much larger upper ones project vertically upwards, with the upper ones growing directly through the top of the snout!

Babirusa (Hirscheber/Wikipedia)

Babirusas are native to Celebes (Sulawesi) and various much smaller islands close by, but zoologists believe that they may have been deliberately introduced onto at least some of these latter isles by human activity rather than by natural migration. If so, might they also have been transported elsewhere in Indonesia, perhaps as far west as Java, in fact?

Following Shaw’s cautious coverage of the sukotyro, other zoologists adopted an even more sceptical view of it. This deepened still further following the revelation that a pair of alleged sukotyro tusks acquired by British Museum founder Sir Hans Sloane during the 1700s were actually the horns of an Indian water buffalo. These had been presented as a gift to Sloane by a Mr Doyle after he had discovered them in a partially worm-eaten state inside the cellar of a shop in Wapping, London, and were formally documented in 1727 within the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences. Eventually, with no further specimens or data regarding it coming to light, the scientific world dismissed the sukotyro as a hoax, after which it quietly vanished from the natural history books. But was it really a hoax?

Babirusa (top) and sukotyro (bottom) - comparable, or conspecific? (Hirscheber-Wikipedia/Dr Karl Shuker)

The more I look at the depictions of the sukotyro, the more they seem – at least to me - to resemble a distorted but still-identifiable portrait of a babirusa. There is no indication that any of these porcine species exist on Java today, but perhaps Niewoff’s mystifying sukotyro is evidence that one did exist there long ago. Alternatively, could this cryptid even have been an unknown relative of the babirusas, differing from them via its bulkier form and longer ears, but still recognisably akin?

Finally, an even more controversial, dramatic possibility is that the sukotyro was a bona fide prehistoric survivor. If we assume that its extraordinary tusks really were horizontal, and not an artefact of poor artistry, its overall form calls to mind a modest-sized stegodont, a cousin of today’s elephants, complete with proboscis (albeit rather short in the sukotyro images), floppy ears, and long hairy-tipped tail.

Stegodon florensis (Povorot/Flickr)

Moreover, a dwarf, buffalo-sized species of stegodont, Stegodon florensis, is known to have survived on the island of Flores, just east of Java, until as recently as 12,000 years ago – so could a comparable form have existed on Java too, and lingered even longer there, right into historical times?

Sadly, we will probably never know, for in a very real sense the lost, forgotten sukotyro is today just as intangible as its literary, fictional doppelgänger, the tusked megalopedus.

Undated colour plate (c.1770-1820) depicting a female Asian elephant with a suckling calf (top) and the sukotyro (bottom) (Dr Karl Shuker)

This ShukerNature post is exclusively excerpted from my next book, Mirabilis: A Carnival of Cryptozoology, to be published in 2013 by Anomalist Books.

THE SMILE ON THE FACE OF THE MANTICORE AND LEUCROCUTA

Manticore, from Edward Topsell's The History of Four-Footed Beasts (1607)

“I know you,” whispered Strange again. “You are...You are...” He moved his hands through the empty air as if tracing magical symbols. “You are a Leucrocuta!”...

“You are the Wolf of the Evening! You prey upon men and women! Your father was a hyena and your mother a lioness! You have the body of a lion; your hooves are cloven. You cannot look behind you. You have one long tooth and no gums. Yet you can take human shape and lure men to you with a human voice!”

Susanna Clarke – Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Medieval bestiaries contain many monsters, but few are stranger or more sinister than the following pair of feline fabulosi.

Combining the stature and body of a red lion, with the head and leering face of a bearded man (but sporting no less than three separate rows of shark-like teeth in each jaw), and the sting-tipped tail of a scorpion (which also bore a series of long spines that could be hurled from it with deadly accuracy at any would-be foe), the manticore was a rapacious beast originally from Persian mythology. However, it also entered European folklore after being documented in a now-lost book on India by Ctesias (a Greek physician and historian at the Persian court of King Artaxerxes II in the 4th Century BC), and later appeared in many medieval bestiaries. Not only did this ferocious monster attack and devour any human that it met, it even consumed their bones, clothes, and any belongings that they had with them, thus leaving behind not the slightest trace of its victim’s former existence.

A manticore in Liber de Proprietatibus Animalium, a 16th-Century bestiary

Zoologists have attempted to identify the manticore with the tiger (or even as a shape-shifting were-tiger), but there is scant – if, indeed, any? – similarity between the two creatures. Its sting-tipped tail has been explained by the occasional prominent presence of a horny claw-like structure at the extremity of a tiger’s tail. However, such structures are regularly present at the tip of lions’ tails, as well as those of leopards and even domestic cats on occasion, so this is hardly a characteristic exclusive to tigers. Equally unsatisfactory are claims that the manticore’s triple row of teeth was merely a misunderstanding based upon the fact that each molar of a mammalian carnivore bears three cusps or lobes. And why, if the manticore were indeed based upon a tiger, did it lack that great cat’s most distinctive feature – its stripes? (Incidentally, fantasy artwork featuring the manticore often gifts it with a pair of large bat-like wings, but this is a modern invention, which does not appear in early sources.)

Somewhat akin to the manticore but less well known was another mythological Asian monster – the leucrocuta (also spelled ‘leucrocota’, ‘leucrocotta’, 'crocotta', and other variants). Sometimes confounded in bestiaries with the hyaena (whose spotted species has been given the zoological name Crocuta crocuta), and said to frequent Ethiopia or India, the true leucrocuta was believed to be the hybrid offspring of a male hyaena and a lioness, but exhibited various features not possessed by either of these creatures - such as its hoofed feet, and, instead of normal separate teeth, having only a single unbroken ridge of bone in each jaw, forming one long continuous tooth without any gum.

A bestiary portrayal of the leucrocuta

Other characteristics included the head of a badger, the limbs of a stag, a lion’s neck, breast, and tail (as well as its bravery), a stature approaching that of a male ass coupled with the speed of a horse and the strength of a bull, plus an invulnerability to any weapon made of steel. Most bizarre of all, however, was its extraordinarily wide mouth, which allegedly stretched right back to its ears in a thoroughly unnerving grin!

Just like the manticore, the leucrocuta was a man-eater, but was much more cunning, luring its victims out of their houses at night by calling their names in a perfect imitation of a human voice. Indeed, and again like the manticore, the leucrocuta was often claimed to be a shape-shifter, able to adopt human form in order to increase the success of its voice’s ability to draw its victims within reach of its deadly jaws.

The Cheshire Cat's evil doppelganger? A manticore as portrayed by celebrated fantasy artist-author Una Woodruff

Even in modern times some vestigial fear of these man-faced, horror-jawed, semi-feline were-beasts survives. As recorded in Peter Costello’s book The Magic Zoo: The Natural History of Fabulous Animals (1979), novelist David Garnett revealed that in 1930, while visiting Spain, one of his friends, a Mr Richard Strachey, was mobbed by sedentary gypsies living in the Andalusian village of Ugijar after his beard led to his being mistaken for a manticore.

Peter Costello's book The Magic Zoo, featuring a manticore at bottom-left on the front cover (Sphere Books)

More recently, in 1964, Garnett learnt that another friend, an English lady who had stayed one evening with a bearded male companion at a small inn near the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Andalusia, was approached the next morning by the inn’s greatly-perturbed hostess, who revealed that all of her staff (hired from the local peasant population) were leaving straight away, because they believed that the lady’s male companion was a manticore who would steal their babies at night, cut them up, and eat them! Despite doing her best to assure their hostess that he would do nothing of the sort, the lady was only able to convince the peasants that her companion was human when she publicly kissed and caressed him while they all watched, hidden from his view, at a safe distance!

A winged manticore on the front cover of Piers Anthony's A Spell For Chameleon - one of my all-time favourite fantasy novels, and the first in Anthony's long-running Xanth series (Del Rey Books)

If such remarkable beliefs persist regarding the manticore, what about the leucrocuta? Perhaps it may be best, just in case, to view with extreme caution any stranger who calls your name and then greets you grinning, quite literally, from ear to ear!

This ShukerNature article is excerpted from my latest book, Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery: A Feline Phantasmagoria (CFZ Press: Bideford, 2012), which is now available to pre-order at www.catsofmagicmythologyandmystery.com and is due to appear on Amazon within the next few days.

SRI LANKA’S DEVIL BIRD – INVESTIGATING A DEVIL OF A MYSTERY

Highland nightjar - the secret identity of Sri Lanka's cryptic devil bird? (Shyamal/Wikipedia)

Back in the early 1980s, one of the most popular TV series was ‘Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World’. Opening one episode devoted to cryptozoology, the show’s eponymous star briefly mentioned two Sri Lankan mystery animals – the horned jackal and the devil bird. Not having heard of either of these before, and discovering that they were not mentioned further in the show itself, I carried out extensive researches into both of them, and took as my initial source and starting point the man himself, Arthur C. Clarke, who in response to my enquiries very kindly provided me with much information and further sources of reference. As I have documented elsewhere, the horned jackal turned out to be little more than a morphological fluke, but the devil bird is more intriguing. Also called the ulama, it takes its English name from its truly hideous cry, graphically described as resembling the sound that would be made by a boy being slowly strangled!

What makes this crypto-case especially unusual, moreover, is that although its eldritch cry has been heard on countless occasions by all manner of reliable ‘earwitnesses’, sightings of the bird responsible are virtually non-existent. As discussed fully in my books From Flying Toads To Snakes With Wings (1997) and Extraordinary Animals Revisited (2007), identities put forward include various owls, nightjars (notably Sri Lanka's highland nightjar Caprimulgus indicus kelaarti), raptors, and assorted reclusive water birds such as rails, herons, and crakes. One rare, decent sighting described a long tail and a nightjar-like shape, despite sceptics claiming that it is nothing more than Sri Lanka’s well known brown wood owl Strix leptogrammica ochrogenys or the larger, familiar Sri Lankan or spot-bellied eagle owl Bubo nipalensis blighi. (Yet if it is indeed a well known bird, surely its identity as the voice of the devil bird would have been firmly established long ago?)

Spot-bellied eagle owl - NOT confirmed as the Sri Lankan devil bird

In July 2001, an abandoned immature Sri Lankan eagle owl was rescued from a flock of attacking crows in a forest by some villagers, and it was subsequently claimed for a time on some websites that this specimen perfectly matched native descriptions of the devil bird, and that the devil bird mystery had therefore been solved. Yet, as has been already noted here, the very crux of the devil bird dilemma is that detailed sightings of it are all but non-existent – it is its cry, not its appearance, that is well-documented. Consequently, I fail to see how that rescued eagle owl specimen could be confirmed to be a perfect match with an infamously elusive bird whose morphology is largely unknown, except, that is, for its long tail – which does not match that of the Sri Lankan eagle owl!

Could it be, therefore, that a still-unknown species of bird genuinely exists amid the dense forests of this tropical island? It is certainly a more rational explanation than one that seeks to shoehorn an ill-fitting known identity into the uniquely-shaped (and sounding!) crypto-box presently dubbed the Sri Lankan devil bird.

Brown wood owl - a popular yet unproven identity for the devil bird (Tanaka Juuyoh/Wikipedia)

 

A TWO-TAILED ALPINE IMPOSSIBEAST - A SHUKERNATURE PICTURE OF THE DAY

Even among the exceedingly diverse, and decidedly different, fauna of cryptozoology, occasionally there comes along what can only be described as a truly impossible beast - or, as I like to call such exotica, an impossibeast. And here, as the latest ShukerNature Picture of the Day, is one such example. Appearing in an early 18th-Century tome about Switzerland, Itinera per Helvetiae, written by naturalist-historian Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, this engraving depicts an anomalous Alpine impossibeast that was categorised as a dragon, despite sporting an extravagantly furry pelage, an unquestionably mammalian face, and two long, slender, exceedingly hirsute tails so independently mobile that each seemed to have a life of its own! If anyone has any notion of what this extraordinary creature might have been inspired by, I'd be very happy to hear from you.

CATS OF MAGIC, MYTHOLOGY, AND MYSTERY - IT'S HERE! AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER AT LAST!

My latest book, Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery: A Feline Phantasmagoria (CFZ Press: Bideford, 2012), 322 pages long, almost 300 illustrations, and in full colour throughout, is now available to pre-order!! Click here for full details and the pre-order button.

And click here for its full-page coverage on my website.

The wait is over!

MY VERY FIRST WHITE TIGER! - CAR BOOT SALES AND CRYPTOZOOLOGY #3

The eyecatching front cover of Bristol Zoo's late-1960s guidebook (Bristol Zoo Gardens/Dr Karl Shuker)

One of the most delightful features of car boot sales, bric-a-brac fairs, and suchlike is the frequent opportunity presented by them to buy items that you once possessed, perhaps many years ago as a child, but subsequently broke, discarded, or lost, and have often wished that you still owned. Out there, somewhere, are a last few surviving representatives of those items, and such selling venues as these often provide a last chance of reconnecting with them, and rekindling precious memories that they embody. Over the years, I've bought several such items, including the example presented here.

The first time that I ever saw a white tiger was when my parents took me to Bristol Zoo in the late 1960s. Whenever we visited any zoo, moreover, they would always buy me its current guidebook, and I particularly remember the one from that first of many visits to Bristol Zoo because of the stunning full-colour photo of a white tiger on the front cover – so stunning, sadly, that it was soon snipped off and pasted into one of the many wildlife scrapbooks that I used to compile at that age.

In later years, however, I bitterly regretted mutilating that guidebook, and I yearned to obtain a complete, undamaged replacement somehow, but that particular edition had long been supplanted at the zoo by later editions with different covers and contents. A couple of years ago, however, while browsing through a box containing assorted guidebooks to stately homes as well as other printed ephemera at a bric-a-brac fair, I was stunned but delighted to find a near-pristine copy of that old late-1960s Bristol Zoo guidebook with its well-remembered white tiger cover.

Purchased for £1, it now takes pride of place among my collection of other guidebooks acquired during my numerous visits to zoos in the UK and overseas.

Another photograph of Bristol Zoo's late 1960s white tigers from this same guidebook (Bristol Zoo Gardens/Dr Karl Shuker)

For an extensive account of the history and genetics of white tigers, see my latest book Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery (CFZ Press: Bideford, 2012).

   

THE CURUPIRA - A SHUKERNATURE PICTURE OF THE DAY

'The Curupira' (Manoel Santiago, 1926)

Here's something new for ShukerNature, which I plan to run as a regular series. Over the years, I have encountered all manner of unusual, noteworthy illustrations relevant to cryptozoology and/or animal mythology (and have even prepared a few myself) that may also be of interest to others. Consequently, I've decided to showcase an eclectic, annotated, ongoing selection of them here as ShukerNature Pictures of the Day.

And here is the first one - a very lush, colourful painting by Manoel Santiago from 1926, entitled 'The Curupira'. It depicts a sleeping maiden attracting the inquisitive attention of this eponymous hairy forest demon from traditional Brazilian folklore, which some cryptozoologists consider may be based upon a real, undiscovered form of small red-furred man-beast.