SPIDER OF BLUE, DILLY DILLY...

The blue mystery spider of Batley (Mary Howard)

Hot on the many heels of the shrieking centipede and the ant-mimicking tiger beetle documented in the previous ShukerNature comes yet another anomalous arthropod. This time? It's a bright-blue, seven-legged spider!

The original info was forwarded to me by Fortean Times, for whom I am preparing a full account of this remarkable case, and I have since been in contact with the eyewitnesses themselves, but here are the principal facts - and the all-important photograph:

The photo was snapped by Mary Howard, a retired biology teacher, outside her home in Batley, W Yorkshire, one early evening in June 2009, where it was also seen by her daughter, Louise Howard. In basic shape and form, the spider resembles a wolf spider or even one of those familiar long-legged Tegenaria house spiders that we've all seen scuttling across the carpet suddenly or attempting to clamber out of the bath, except for this extraordinary blue colour.

So, what are the options regarding its identity?

Is it:

1) A non-native species;

2) A freak blue specimen of a native species;

3) A normal spider exposed to UV light when photographed, making it fluoresce blue (many spiders do this);

4) A normal spider that has inadvertently covered itself in some blue dye, paint, chalk, etc;

5) A normal spider that has been deliberately painted blue, and probably held in place by one leg with tweezers while this was done (if the spider pulled away and its leg snapped off, this option would also explain its seven-legged state);

6) A normal spider in a photograph in which the spider has been photoshopped blue?

Those, as Shakespeare never wrote, are the questions!

Any thoughts or opinions would be greatly welcomed!

UPDATE - 20 April 2012

Since writing the above post, there have been several interesting developments, which I've documented in various of my Alien Zoo columns for Fortean Times, as well as in a longer, more detailed FT article. So here is an update of what has been happening in the world of mystery blue spiders!

Among the various comments that my above post elicited here on ShukerNature was one from a reader called Colin. After reading my longer FT article, Colin contacted me directly, and he now provided me with a more detailed account of his sighting. (In accordance with his request, I am not revealing Colin’s full name or address, but I have them on file.) Confessing that he hadn’t checked back on my blog after posting his original comment and thus hadn’t realised that I’d replied to it, Colin informed me that the location of his sighting was his own back garden in the town of Holmfirth – most famous until now as the setting for the filming of the BBC’s recently-ended long-running comedy series ‘Last of the Summer Wine’. Here is his description:

"The spider was almost precisely like the one in Mary Howard's picture, a bright royal blue but quite small, about 1 cm, or no more than 1/2". The plant pot I was removing had been weakened by frost damage over the last eight years and fell to pieces, spilling soil on to the hard standing where I park the car. There were various creepy crawlies, woodlice and such like running in all directions, including the blue spider. There was no 'nest' or multiple blue spiders, just the one and although it was remarkable enough in colour, it was small and my mind was on how I was going to gather up the soil from the pebbles...The location is in a small valley, south facing, sheltered and very warm for Northern England...Just to confirm, it wasn't a bit blue, or covered in a stain (though I have since wondered whether it was the result of a phosphorescent fungus from its dark, moist home) but really very bright, even vivid."

Phosphorescent fungi do sometimes stick to animals but usually glow green rather than blue, and the glow is normally noticeable only in the dark, not in daylight. In any case, why should only a single spider have become covered in it, and why have such spiders (or glowing woodlice too, etc) not been reported before? Clearly, the mystery of Yorkshire’s blue spiders has yet to receive a satisfactory explanation - unless of course Foggy, Compo, and Clegg have something to do with it?!

And still they came! After two separate but equally anomalous blue spiders had come to light in West Yorkshire within the space of a year, I subsequently learnt of a comparable encounter in the south of England. On 9 November 2010, after having read my FT article on these oddly-hued arachnids, long-time FT reader Carl Schalck sent me the following exciting news:

"Just thought I should let you know that last summer we had a fair few blue and black spiders in our garage in Lewes, East Sussex.

"I thought they were a bit strange, but I had no idea they were that rare. I think there were three of them, very similar to common garden spiders but covered in blue and black patches. They lived on the inside of the garage door."

What makes this report even more interesting is that, judging from Carl’s description, these spiders (unlike those from Yorkshire) do not appear to have been painted. This is because whereas even daubing a spider uniformly would not be an easy task, painting each of three spiders with a covering of blue and black spots would surely be nigh on impossible. And why on earth would anyone go to such an inordinate amount of trouble anyway? I already have on file records of confirmed colour mutation (though as yet not blue) in the common garden spider Araneus diadematus, so perhaps this trio represents a hitherto-unreported mutant version.

In July 2011, after reading my earlier blue spider accounts, Brian Weilert and his wife Stacia, a teacher, each sent me an email concerning a cobalt-blue spider with seven legs (a moulting injury?) that Stacia had captured a fortnight earlier in their garden in southeastern Kansas, USA. Since doing so, they had maintained it in a small specially-created habitat, and had been feeding it on live insects. It subsequently developed an eggsac, and produced a burrow. In response to their request for suggestions as to whom they should contact concerning this very notable spider, I urged them to bring it to the attention of researchers at any local museum, scientific institution, nature centre, or zoo, especially (in view of its eggsac) as it might well soon be bringing into the world an entire brood of spiderlings – which may or may not themselves be blue, depending upon the origin of their mother’s blue colouration. The Weilerts also sent me a couple of photographs of it, the clearer one of which I am reproducing here. It appears to be a lycosid wolf spider, of the genus Hogna – which is not known for natural blue species.

The blue wolf spider of Kansas (Brian and Stacia Weilert)

Until recently, the only logical non-hoax explanation for non-natural blue spiders seemed to be contact with some external source of blue pigment, such as paint or ink. On 4 January 2011, however, Norwegian correspondent Terje Jonassen alerted me to a remarkable but hitherto little-publicised discovery (documented in the Norwegian Journal of Entomology, 14 December 2010), which is as follows.

In recent times mostly, there have been over a hundred fully-confirmed, non-hoax cases of non-natural blue invertebrates, in particular woodlice, as well as dipterans (true flies) with aquatic larvae, which, when examined, were found to have been infected by a certain type of soil-inhabiting virus known as an invertebrate iridovirus (IIV). This virus is present in such high concentrations within the infected creature’s tissues that it forms crystalline aggregations. These emit a bright blue iridescence and thereby bestow this colouration upon the creature. IIV infection can be caused by feeding upon infected animals and also by parasitic nematode worms.

So it seems conceivable that the answer to the mystery of the blue spiders (or at least to some of them) may not involve encounters with external pigments or dyes but rather to internal IIV infection, most likely due to the spiders having consumed infected prey. Consequently, as noted earlier, I recommended to the Weilerts that they show their captive blue spider to local scientists, as that may provide the much-needed opportunity to investigate this exciting possibility directly.

I had been awaiting further news regarding the Weilerts' blue spider with great anticipation for some time, but when it finally came, via an email from Brian Weilert on 23 August 2011, it was not at all what I had hoped for or expected:

"Just a note to let you know how it all ended. The spiderlings hatched and were brown. We went away for a few days and when we returned she was dead and so were the babies. During this time Purdue University had contacted me. I took some photos of her, post mortem, as they requested and am sending them her body. Thanks for all your help during this episode."

I have already noted how infection by an iridovirus can result in freak blue invertebrates, which may therefore explain this and other, previously-reported freak blue spiders. But could the viral infection be directly transmitted from parent to offspring? Had the spiderlings been blue, this would not only have demonstrated pretty effectively that an iridovirus infection was indeed responsible here but also that it was directly transmissible. As they were not, however, the only hope left for a solution to the mystery of this particular blue spider is if the Purdue University researchers' investigations can conclusively identify the cause of its novel colouration. Once again, therefore, I now await further news from the Weilerts, and this time we can but hope that it is of a more positive, happier nature.

SHRIEKING CENTIPEDES AND ANT-IMPERSONATING TIGERS.

In my book Extraordinary Animals Revisited (CFZ Press: Bideford, 2007), I devoted a chapter to cryptozoological and other controversial insects and related terrestrial arthropods. Recently, I learnt of two fascinating additions to this select company:

The upah envisaged as a green centipede (Dr Karl Shuker)

OOPS, IT’S THE UPAH – SUMATRA’S GIANT SHRIEKING CENTIPEDE!
Never heard of this cryptid before? Neither had I until I read explorer-ecologist Jeremy Holden’s illuminating account of it in the August 2009 issue of BBC Wildlife Magazine. Several years ago, while he had been visiting a small village in western Sumatra, the locals had solemnly revealed that the jungle creature they feared the most was a giant 1-ft-long tree-dwelling centipede with a thick ghostly-green body, an agonisingly painful bite, and – most extraordinary of all - the unique ability (for a centipede) to shriek or yowl like a cat. Although initially sceptical of such a bizarre beast, which the locals termed the upah, several weeks later while walking through the forest Jeremy suddenly heard a loud cat-like cry coming from high up in the canopy, followed by a rattling ‘churr’. He tracked the precise location of this eerie sound, using his binoculars, to a hollow branch, and his native guides excitedly confirmed that this was indeed the upah calling, but the creature itself remained unseen. More recently, however, while walking through Kerinci Seblat National Park with the eminent birdwatcher Frank Lambert during a return trip to Sumatra, Jeremy heard the very same cry – the cat-like yowl, then the rattling churr – once again emanating from the canopy. Sadly, however, the true originator of these sounds, although certainly elusive, proved to be something rather less exotic than a vocalising centipede. Instead, as instantly recognised by his birder companion, the species responsible was none other than the Malaysian honeyguide Indicator archipelagicus, a bird famous in ornithological circles for being much easier to hear than observe. Faced with such an anomaly – a creature often heard but seldom seen - it is understandable, perhaps, that the villagers’ imagination would, down through the ages, ultimately conjure up a truly dramatic yet wholly fictitious monster to explain it. There’s a lesson in here for cryptozoology somewhere! BBC Wildlife Magazine, vol 27, August 2009.

THE TIGER THAT THINKS IT'S AN ANT!

In the March 2009 issue of BBC Wildlife Magazine, TV explorer-presenter Steve Backshall reveals his close encounter with what appears to have been a very remarkable yet previously-undocumented and still scientifically-undescribed insect. While filming the documentary ‘Expedition Borneo’ in 2006, at one stage Steve found himself hanging precariously by his fingers from the edge of a steep vertical cliff face rising out of a remote hitherto-unclimbed canyon called Imbak. And while there, he was startled to see what looked on first sight to be a huge bright red ant, the size of a baby’s finger and the colour of molten lava, scuttling speedily along the rocks around his fingers. Closer observation, however, revealed to his amazement that this 'ant' was in fact an extraordinary, totally novel ant-mimic. Namely, a species of tiger beetle whose abdomen was greatly attenuated in an hour-glass shape, thus deceptively imitating the familiar ‘waist’ of genuine ants. Moreover, this imposter was actually hunting the smaller black ants milling around, seemingly tricked into complacency by their persecutor’s ant-like disguise. Because of his predicament, however, Steve was unable to capture this singular specimen, but when he eventually managed to extricate himself (by which time of course his veritable beetle in ant's cuticle was long gone) and described it back at camp to expedition entomologist George McGavin, George duly confirmed that nothing like it had been described before, and that it was therefore certainly a new species! BBC Wildlife, vol 27, March 2009.

GUESS WHAT THIS IS!!!

Here's a bit of fun - guess what this is!

Clues: it is the skull of a mythological(?) entity from somewhere in South America, and is totally genuine...sort of. You can tell from the pix below of me holding it that it's pretty sizeable, and the dentition may well guide you along the right path, but will it take you to the correct destination? Let me know what you think - and no cheating! (There's an easy way to find out what it is, but I ain't a-gonna tell ya how!)

All pix copyright Dr Karl Shuker

Me and a mystery skull:

Here it is:

Closer:

Even closer:

Close enough!!

COAST OF SKELETONS, DESERT OF DREAMS

Welwitschia mirabilis engraving

Imagine a cold, barren, ghostly desertland whose fog-enshrouded coastline is littered with the sun-bleached wrecks of beached ships and the skeletons of dead sailors, whose sandy dunes not only move stealthily like stalking lions but also roar like them, whose pebbles unexpectedly split apart to reveal bright jewel-like flowers, whose ancient bizarre trees grow not upwards but lengthwise, extending enormous leathery leaves across the ground like alien ribbons, where elephants surf the sand dunes, and where slinking jackals and menacing hyaenas flit like sinister shadows around a long-abandoned oil rig that time and the elements have transformed into a towering edifice of rust and decay. This eerie, surrealistic vista may seem like the bleak landscape of a disturbed dream, but in fact it is an accurate portrayal of one of the world's most amazing regions - the Skeleton Coast, in southwest Africa.

Stretching over 400 km along the edge of northwestern Namibia and occupying more than 1.6 million hectares in area, the Skeleton Coast is bounded to the north by the Kunene River, to the south by the Ugab River, and is bisected horizontally by the Hoanib River. This remote, inhospitable territory was officially proclaimed a National Park in 1971, and in 1998 travel through it by tourists was formally permitted for the first time. Having said that, access to the northern half is still highly restricted, as this area is designated a natural wilderness, and adjoins Kaokoland, home to the nomadic, traditionalist Himba people. However, the southern half has swiftly become a very popular tourist attraction - for good reason. The Skeleton Coast offers strange, sometimes uncanny sights unique in the world.

Sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean and the Namib Desert, it is chilled by the Benguela Current, travelling north from the frozen wastelands of Antarctica. Further cooling is provided by a dense night mist, which rolls 80 km or more inland every 10 days or so and condenses into a thick dew - but whose opaque treachery has lured many an unwary maritime vessel to its doom. Bearing silent testimony to this are the numerous disintegrating hulks of wrecked ships, fishing boats, even a downed bomber aircraft, and the whitened skeletons of their dead crew, resting for all eternity amid the sand - which earned this region its memorable name, coined by a local journalist during the 1930s.

Perhaps the most famous of such sights is the rotting fuel tank of the Dunedin Star, a British cargo vessel that was beached here in November 1942, and whose rescue resulted in a tugboat called the Sir Charles Elliott running onto the rocks and a Ventura bomber that dropped supplies subsequently nose-diving into the sea (its engine can still be seen here too). Other victims of the Skeleton Coast down through the years include the Montrose (wrecked here in 1973), the Suiderkus (beached in 1976), the Benguela Eagle (1975), and the steamer Eduard Bohlen (1909), as well as the fishing vessels Winston, Karimona, and Atlantic Pride. And long before any of these set sail, untold numbers of diamond seekers, anxious to gather the sparkling gems littering the sands of this ghostly terrain, paid with their lives when their boats were wrecked here.

Yet had they succeeded in landing safely, diamonds would not have been the only wonders to dazzle their senses. Had they explored the Hoarusib Canyon, for instance, they would have encountered an array of yellow-white, clay-constituting formations that resemble ethereal fairytale castles or weird exotic temples. They would also have marvelled at the 'living, talking' sand dunes known as barchans. Crescent in shape, and created by southwesterly winds in locations where there is little sand, these geological anomalies can travel up to 3 m a year, and as they move, they emit a rumbling basso-profundo roar.

But however spectacular its geological idiosyncrasies may be, they are no more so than its biological surprises. Bearing in mind that the Skeleton Coast embodies a veritable contradiction in terms, comprising a cold desert, it is little wonder that its wildlife is very definitely weird as well as wonderful. Take, for instance, its flowering 'pebbles'.

Look on the ground here, and you may well see what seem at first to be small, round, greyish-white rocks or stones, virtually covered in sand. A closer inspection, however, will reveal that these 'rocks' are actually pairs of succulent leaves - the water-storing leaves of Lithops, an amazing plant aptly dubbed the living stone. Expertly camouflaged, it escapes the attention of herbivorous animals during the dry season, but when the rainy season comes an incredible transformation occurs. Suddenly, the 'stone' seems to split apart - in reality, a stalk has grown up between its two leaves - and a large, bright, daisy-like flower blossoms. All too soon, however, the rainy season ends, the flower dies, and Lithops once more assumes its alter ego, as a pseudo-pebble amid a barren land of real ones.

Even more extraordinary, however, is the living fossil plant exclusive to this outlandish realm. Known formally as Welwitschia mirabilis, this ancient species is technically a conifer tree, but anything less like a tree yet nonetheless a plant would be difficult to imagine. To offset the harsh, inhospitable nature of this region, Welwitschia does not grow vertically to any extent - its trunk rarely exceeds 1 m. Instead, it sends out two enormous leaves that resemble thick leather ribbons, twisting and writhing across the sands, fraying at their edges but never shed and growing up to 5 cm every year, throughout the plant's life - and Welwitschia can live as long as 2000 years!

Never found more than 50 km inland from the Skeleton Coast's shore, Welwitschia utilises numerous tiny rootlets to absorb water stored in stream gravel after storms, and also obtains water from fog, condensing upon its pore-covered leaves. The plant's water and food supplies are all stored in a single massively thick root, up to 3 m long and resembling a gargantuan woody carrot, which anchors it firmly in the desert's soil.

As for its animal life, the Skeleton Coast can and does offer the eco-tourist an unparalleled spectacle of delights. Its mammals include prowling lions, elegant giraffes, burly black rhinoceroses, playful elephants that have been filmed surfing gleefully down the sand dunes, and graceful antelopes such as gemsbok and springbok that frequent the region's gravelly plains alongside stately ostriches. Equally noteworthy are its vivid diversity of waders and waterfowl, its ospreys, flamingos, ghost crabs scuttling sideways over the beaches, nocturnal gecko lizards that obtain water by licking dew off their eyes, and suitably-named headstander beetles that stand on their heads to catch precious drops of condensed fog, which trickle down their wing cases into their gaping mouths.

Perhaps the spookiest sight, however, are the phantoms that lurk in the shadows of a now-derelict oil-drilling rig, sited between the Huab River and the Koichab River. Some of these phantoms periodically take wing, revealing themselves to be cormorants, flying back and forth with fishes in their long beaks. Other, ground-based spectres prove to be jackals and heavily-maned brown hyaenas, scavenging for food. Most eyecatching of all, however, must surely be the Skeleton's Coast enormous breeding colony of Cape fur seals at Cape Cross, said to be the largest such colony in the world, containing 80,000-100,000 seals.

Bleak and barren it may be, but lifeless and dull the Skeleton Coast is certainly not, as testified by the ever-increasing numbers of tourists anxious to explore a land that is like no other on Earth - a land where the ghosts of the past and the wildlife of the present combine to guarantee a plentiful supply of sightseers in the future.

THE LAST HARPAGORNIS?

Reconstruction of Harpagornis moorei (Markus Bühler)

Weighing 22-33 lb in adult female specimens, Haast’s eagle Harpagornis moorei, formerly native to New Zealand’s South Island, was the largest eagle of all time, and is widely accepted as the origin of traditional Maori legends referring to a monstrous human-killing raptorial bird known variously as the pouakai or hokioi. As it is believed to have preyed upon the very large flightless moas that also once inhabited South Island, it should come as no surprise to learn that this colossal bird of prey’s disappearance seemingly coincided with the demise of the moas (caused in turn by hunting and habitat destruction by humans), with its official extinction date estimated at approximately 1400 AD. Very recently, however, while browsing the Wikipedia entry for this species, I discovered a remarkable snippet of information suggesting that either Harpagornis itself or else another now-extinct but very sizeable bird of prey endemic to New Zealand may have lingered into much more recent times, only to be extinguished in the most demeaning manner:

"A noted explorer, Charles Douglas, claims in his journals that he had an encounter with two raptors of immense size in Landsborough River valley (probably during the 1870s), and that he shot and ate them. These birds might have been a last remnant of the species, but some might argue that there had not been suitable prey for a population of Haast's eagle to maintain itself for about five hundred years before that date, and nineteenth century Maori lore was adamant that the pouakai was a bird not seen in living memory. Still, Douglas'[s] observations on wildlife generally are trustworthy; a more probable explanation, given that the alleged three-metre wingspan described by Douglas is likely to have been a rough estimate, is that the birds were Eyles'[s] harriers [Circus eylesi]. This was the largest known harrier (the size of a small eagle) — and a generalist predator — and although it is also assumed to have become extinct in prehistoric times, its dietary habits alone make it a more likely candidate for late survival."

If, however, these were the last Haast’s eagles, what an ignominious finale for such a spectacular species – slaughtered and served up as dinner by a hungry Westerner, for whom the chilling age-old Maori legends of murderous winged marauders from the ancient skies were nothing more than quaint fables, despite the very substantial evidence to the contrary that his twin kills had presented not only to his eyes but also to his stomach!

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! IT'S MONTYPYTHONOIDES - AND CO.

An oddly-named protist species, Kamera lens.

When Linnaeus introduced his system of binomial nomenclature during the 1730s and 1740s, it revolutionised the naming and formal biological classification of species. Every so often, however, as even scientists are only human, there have been some truly memorable, unexpected deviations from the usual, eminently serious and supposedly strictly accurate, relevant Latin* names bestowed upon the myriad of life forms sharing our planet (*'Latin names' is itself a misnomer, as many are at least partially derived from Greek!). Here, then, in no particular order, are 20 of my all-time favourite - and totally genuine, scientifically accepted - generic, binomial, and trinomial novelties:

Raphus cucullatus - variously translated as 'hooded bustard', 'cuckoo with seams', or (politely!) 'cuckoo's rump', given to the dodo, but why?!!

Polypterus mokelembembe - I kid you not, in 2006, this newly-differentiated species of bichir (an archaic fish lineage currently boasting around 15 modern-day species) was named after cryptozoology's very own Congolese neo-dinosaur, the mokele-mbembe, emphasising the bichirs' own antiquarian affinities.

Agra sasquatch - staying with cryptozoological appellations: in 1982, entomologist Terry Erwin gave this noteworthy name to a new species of carabid (ground beetle) that had big feet; and, clearly a crypto-fan, in the same year he named another new carabid species Agra yeti. Nor can we forget, a year later, Erwin's naming of another new carabid, Agra vation, and yet another, Agra phobia. Honestly!

Draculoides bramstokeri - named in 1995, this is a species of cave-dwelling, light-avoiding schizomid (short-tailed whip scorpion) with fang-like pedipalps, and a positively vampirish proclivity for sucking the body fluids out of its victims, not of course that you'd ever have guessed at any of these characteristics from its binomial!

Dicrotendipes thanatogratus - one for Jon's musical tastes here, as this chironomid (non-biting midge)'s specific name directly and deliberately translates as 'Grateful Dead'. Nor should we forget Zappa, a genus of goby.

Harryhausenia - had I known that the CFZ were going to devote a multi-contributor blog to the amazing Ray Harryhausen a few days ago, I could have blogged about this recently-named genus of fossil sand crab (commemorating Ray's stupendous stop-motion giant crab in the film Mysterious Island), but better late than never! Happy 90th birthday, Ray!

Han solo - not from a galaxy far far away, but rather from a time far far distant, this Chinese species of agnostid trilobite was named in 2005 as a dare, but its Star Wars binomial is perfectly valid.

Godzillius - this monstrously-named genus houses the largest species of Bahamanian remipede - exceedingly small but taxonomically monumental crustaceans first made known to science as recently as the early 1980s.

Pimoa cthulhu - one for Richard Freeman and fellow Lovecraftian devotees, a new spider named in 1994 after the latter writer's sinister fictional deity.

Eeyorius - for lovers of more gentle, inoffensive characters, this genus of Australian fish was named in 1986 after A A Milne's melancholic donkey, because just like him these fishes enjoy living in damp, shadowy, secluded localities.

Phallus daemonicus - I'll leave you to guess what this fungus looks like!

Volva volva volva - ok, Linnaeus, we get the message! Named by the great man himself in 1758, he clearly wanted to emphasise which part of the female anatomy this subspecies of cowry resembles!

Csiromedusa medeopolis - described earlier this year, this new Tasmanian freshwater jellyfish has a generic name that commemorates CSIRO (Australia's eminent Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation), and a specific name that translates as 'city of gonads'. Don't ask me - I only blog these things! (Apparently, its gonads resemble a series of skyscrapers.)

Crikey steveirwini - named after the late, great Steve Irwin in 2009, this new Aussie land snail's genus immortalises Steve's most famous catchphrase.

Heerz lukenatcha - had someone been watching too many Humphey Bogart films when they named this new braconid wasp in 1993?

Kamera lens - a snappy little name given to a protist in 1917.

La cucaracha and La paloma - two musically-inspired moths (pyralids, actually) named in 1966.

Vini vidivici - one for our more classically-educated readers! Named in 1987, this is - or was - the conquered lorikeet, a now-extinct parakeet from the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific.

Ytu brutus - And still with Caesar, this is a genuine species of water beetle from Brazil.

Mustela africana - the South American (yes, American) weasel, go figure!

And finally, a couple of truly wonderful zoological monickers that, tragically, have not survived the test of time, or taxonomy:

Montypythonoides riversleighensis - inspirationally christened in 1985 after the famous British TV comedy show, this giant fossil python from Australia has since been rechristened Morelia riversleighensis as it has been shown to be very closely related to various modern-day species belonging to this latter genus, but was this recognition of affinity really so vital as to warrant the loss of such a uniquely-iconic generic name as Montypythonoides ?

Similarly, the once enchantingly-named clam Abra cadabra has now been reclassified in the genus Theoria, but Theoria cadabra just doesn't have the same ring (magical or otherwise!) to it, does it? Shucks! I take it back - scientists don't have a sense of humour after all!

A GIANT MYSTERY!

As I am presently in the process of completing two major books, I'm sure that you'll understand why my blogging has been somewhat infrequent lately. A few days ago, however, while browsing in my local bric-a-brac market, I made a discovery intriguing enough for me to break off from my books and - after spending quite some time searching vainly for information regarding it - post it here, just in case there is someone out there who can offer any clues concerning this enigma.

The discovery in question was the very old, sepia-tinted postcard reproduced above. The reverse bears the following simple, if somewhat clumsily-worded, caption: "View on the Helmets of the Giants", which is also given in French and in German. No other detail, not even the location of these remarkable-looking exhibits, is present. The postcard had not been used, so there is no writing or stamp to give any clue as to its age or origin either.

So what, precisely, are these colossal-looking, and extremely ornate, helmets, and where were they being exhibited? Any suggestions or information would be very greatly welcomed.

Answers on a postcard - but not this one!


UPDATE: MARCH 2011 - GETTING AHEAD WITH THE GIANT HELMETS!

I've finally solved the mystery of these giant helmets, thanks to some investigations on my behalf by Fortean Times's art director, Etienne Gilfillan - thanks, Etienne! I have documented Etienne's discoveries in my latest Alien Zoo column, in FT #274:

"Etienne conducted some enquiries of his own, which led him to contact Micheline Ruyssinck, a curator at Belgium’s Royal Museum of Art and History. Intrigued by the postcard’s picture, she in turn sent details to Laurent Duibisson, curator of the Museum of the Giants in the city of Ath (housing various huge figures and other exhibits that have been created for folklore-inspired festival processions in Belgium). And sure enough, he knew all about them. It turns out that the postcard depicts the backs of two extremely large, helmeted, manufactured heads that represent a pair of traditional Antwerp giants – Druon Antigonus and Pallas Athena (Laurent sent photographs of other old postcards depicting them from the front and wearing the helmets shown on my postcard).

Laurent's postcards depicting the giants' heads as seen from the front and wearing the helmets in my postcard (Laurent Duibisson)


"These very elaborate heads featured each year in Antwerp’s annual Ommegang (purification) festival’s procession until 1872, when they were replaced by some new heads and were then stored in the Steen, a castle now housing Belgium’s Navy Museum. They were later transferred to Antwerp’s Museum of Ethnology, where they were placed on display. Following some restoration work to recreate their former glory, in 2001 Laurent saw the heads there himself, and in 2002 his Museum of the Giants hosted an exhibition devoted to them. These spectacular heads are currently in the collections of Antwerp’s new Museum aan de Stroom (MAS), due to open in May 2011."

Procession of giants at Ath, Belgium (EDEN/Flickr)