DALE DRINNON: Mackal's Searching For Hidden Animals Errata

In a couple of cases, information from Roy Mackal's book appears to have led a lot of people in the cryptozoological community astray.

In checking back with a standard reference on the subject - Mallory's Rock Art of The American Indians - it turns out that Mackal has a mistaken copy of a 'Naiataka' claimed to be from Lake Okanagon. It is not; it is from Vancouver Island.

The original rock has a crack running through it and the version that Mackal has (by way of Costello, probably) has misaligned the parts on either side of the crack.

Putting the pieces together that way makes the rest of the petrogyphs on the same rock come out wrong. I offer an alternative reconstruction here.























Mallory had said that the petroglyphs indicated that an artist was making repeated attempts to represent a visual image he had strongly in mind, which is about the same thing as saying he had a sighting. It may be more permissable to call it a Cadborosaurus than a Naiataka, and I do not know of any authoritative depictions of Na'ha'a'itikh from Lake Okanagon itself. My impression is that the name refers to a big fish, possibly a sturgeon, which is known to swallow swimmers and swimming dogs according to local legend.

The second cryptid is equally garbled, it is the Alaskan Pal-Rai-Yuk, which Mackal makes out to represent his hypothetical longnecked-shortnecked-eared-earless and flipperless seal. The actual cryptid is a pretty much straightforward sea-serpent wth a longish neck and short limbs (flippers), usually with two humps (assuming four limbs) but often with three humps (assuming six limbs) and occasionally "Many-humped (counting the wake).

One of the Pal-Rai-Yuks here is also from Mallory and another is from the standard reference A Fantastic Bestiary by Ernst and Johanna Lehner. And it is nothing exceptional for garbled accounts of little-known animals to acquire such offbeat characteristics as six limbs or variable numbers of limbs: I just so happen to also have a bestiary depiction of a sixlegged crocodile handy.