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...
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1 comment:
I'm kind of shocked at the media coverage on the study on the thylacine's hunting behavior.
I mean anyone who has examined the literature on the species knows that it was pretty much an ambush predator that stayed in the dense forested areas. I even remember reading-- as early as ten years ago-- that the thylacine behaved more like a clouded leopard than a dingo.
This isn't big news at all.
It doesn't mean that there is no convergent evolution involved. The main part that is convergent is the skull shape. Thylacines and many species of Canidae have almost exactly the same head. Yes. That's convergent evolution. It is a straw man argument to say that the thylacine and the dogs aren't examples of convergent evolution because they didn't behave exactly alike.
No one says that all. Convergent evolution is merely the evolution of very similar adaptation in unrelated taxa that generally have the same purpose.
For example koalas have fingerprints that are similar to those of primates, but I don't think anyone calls a koala a marsupial monkey. But the convergence clearly is there.
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