Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.
The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.
Unlike some of our competitors we are not going to try and blackmail you into donating by saying that we won't continue if you don't. That would just be vulgar, but our lives, and those of the animals which we look after, would be a damn sight easier if we receive more donations to our fighting fund. Donate via Paypal today...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y87IJ4-Rw-cThey have three American presenters and a whole bevy of directors, producers and technicians.
And guess who they asked to be special guest? So that is why I (Graham) am doing the blogs today.
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3 comments:
Well, of the video many things can be said, but first and foremost the focus on that camera is absolutely lousy; indeed the autofocus doesn't seem to be enabled as the focus stays lousy throughout.
Secondly, that animal could be many things, but a cat ain't one of them. The beast doesn't flex its back much at all, and seems to have much too much up-down motion for it to be feline, or even canine. At a rough guess this thing is a large wild boar.
Finally, why go looking for the thing now? That video is two years old; why such an interest now, and why start looking just as spring has got going and there's lots of new vegetation to hide the wildlife and finding food just got easy for boar and predators alike?
The time to go looking for boar or big cats is in the depths of winter, just after a nice long hard freeze with a sprinkling of snow on the ground. That gives them time to get hungry enough not to care about leaving tracks or being obvious, plus the snow makes 'em easier to follow. Perishing cold for a film crew, of course but it really depends on whether you're looking for a beastie or looking to make a film about looking for a beastie...
That's the scariest pony I have seen all day!
PS Lidl has a special on camcorders this weekend, this one clearly has a broken focus mechanism.
Having looked at the footage again, I agree with Aaron; that's a startled Dartmoor pony and furthermore it looks for all the world like a put-up job. Modern camcorders have autofocus and generally do a fairly good job of focussing; the camera that took that footage had the autofocus turned off and focus pre-set to "Pretty blurred but not quite lost".
Then out of shot to the left a couple of people have sneaked up on an unsuspecting pony and jumped out on the poor thing, screaming and shouting and waving their arms.
Cue one pony scarpering off down the hill (as you might predict it would do), straight past a carefully defocussed camera.
At least it wasn't some fool in a monkey-suit this time, eh?
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