WELCOME TO THE CFZ BLOG NETWORK: COME AND JOIN THE FUN

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.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Thursday, August 22, 2013

CRYPTOLINK: Jaws off Cornwall - Is this proof a great white shark has struck in UK?

A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me.




Bloodied: Blue shark on deck after being attacked by giant predator
Bloodied: Blue shark on deck after being attacked by giant predator

Sunday People
A deadly great white shark is feared to be roaming Britain’s coastline – and here the Sunday People publish pictures that could prove it.
Experienced fisherman Nigel Hodge watched in disbelief as a real-life Jaws tore apart a smaller blue shark on the end of his line.
The fearsome beast left devastating machete-like bite marks which an expert last night said could belong to the legendary man-eater.
Nigel, 43, who was fishing off the coast in Cornwall when the monster struck, said: “It was a terrifying sight. In over 30 years of fishing these waters I have never seen anything  like it.”
The incident is now under investigation by experts. One, David Turner, 66, author of The Shark Fisherman, said yesterday: “There is no way this is a shark native to UK waters.”


Blue Shark believed to have been attacked by a Great White
Bite marks show vicious attack
Sunday People

The great white – made notorious by the 1975 blockbuster movie Jaws – is the ultimate marine killing machine with its flesh-ripping razor-sharp teeth.
Read on... 

MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES:MORE HONG KONG CRYPTOZOOLOGY - A LONG EARED WILDMAN

The following has appeared on the Hong Kong history site Gwulo in the last day or two. I`m following it up. Flying Snake is now out.

Hello Richard,

Back in the 1950s, the Colony was still wildlife everywhere except the city districts. We didn't need Hollywood to brighten up our storyline.

Once having Dim Sum lunch with my family elders after a storm, we saw a very large snake swimming in the river by Sha Tin's mudland and everyone were excited and amazed to watch from a safe distant, for a quarter hour, as it seemed to struggle against the angry downstream current rushing to the seawater. It must be more that ten feet long.

Once on a hot day ferrying back to Cheung Chau island from Hong Kong, a school of dolphins were chasing the ferry from behind. Those day, the rear of the ferry's upper deck was like a open balcony and soon all the passengers were aroused to enjoy watching the happy chasers. In minutes the dolphins passed us on the left and made lots of noise and splashings along the course. They surely won the race and screamed wild in victory!!

But the most famous or notorious events were the sighting of South China Tigers in the New Territories. They were being spotted on various parts of the New Territories causing nerveous incidents for not only the Chinese and the British but also the Japanese in WWII. Few were captured or shot dead or unmercifully slaughtered for tasty reason or trophy of selfish glory, near  Kowloon's city outskirt by the Shing Moon Reservoir area or remote hillside forests in Tai Po, Yuen Long or Fan Ling ...etc  area. Yet most of them left the New Territories without a trace, holding the population in fear for long while.

We liked to read the news updates when the Colony's safety was shaken really hard by some lost-minded beasts.

As to jackals, I think on the Lantau island's terrains, folks hunted on a kind of popular small wild dog known as Wong Gann (means Yellow little Jackal). Occasionally the poor unlucky animals were being entrapped and were brought to the street market for the highest bidder as a choicy rarity meat. 
There was also an unexplained sighting of a strange long-eared wild man jointly acknowledged by the children of the CLCY village. In our adulthood, some of us did talk about our own sightings on the same subject as a real  bizaare experience. Will report mine's later.

Real funny!
Tung

SHERI THE CFZ INTERN: Day 11 – Sunday


I’ve slept better every night that I have been in the night, which gives me increasingly bright starts in the mornings. This could have been partially damaged today by the immense queue for the bathroom. Time was ticking on, however, so I hurried about my morning activities and sped down to the hall. I arrived within plenty time. This seemed to rather impress Ronan who expressed it as though I had some form of super blogging power. This is not the case.

The first talk of the day, about orbs, received a notable amount of scepticism from the audience. I was extra excited for the talk about Bigfoot, but was somewhat disappointed with the content. I was also a little under-enthused with the dinner. The food itself was OK, but the portion was smaller than I had as a child. After this, the majority of us stayed in the bar until around 1 a.m. As it was the last - not just for me, but a large number of us - nobody wanted to go to bed. We stayed up, back at the house, long after the alcohol ran out. It was around 5 o’clock by the time I got into bed. I had to be up about 9 to stand a chance at catching my train. Oh dear.

CRYPTOLINK: What The Hell Is This Horned Sea Monster That Washed Ashore in Spain?

A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me.




The decomposing corpse of a bizarre creature that recently washed ashore in Spain has local wondering what the hell it could be: A sea monster? A dragon? Falkor from The Neverending Story?
The horned beast was first spotted last Thursday by a beachgoer in the Andalusian village of Villaricos.
Photos of the "mutant fish," which is said to be about four meters (13 feet) in length, soon surfaced online, and the local Civil Defense was called in to examine the remains.
But so far, nada.
"We have no idea what it could be, but it smells bad," Civil Defense rep María Sánchez told a local news site.
Several theories have been put forth by experts, including the possibility that it is a type of shark, but the Association in Defense of Marine Fauna says further study is needed.
The biologists have their work cut out for them: As the Civil Defense was forced to bury the creature for "health reasons," the association only has photos snapped at the scene to go by.

FORTEAN BIRD NEWS FROM THE WATCHER OF THE SKIES


In an article for the first edition of Cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans wrote that cryptozoology is the study of 'unexpected animals' and following on from that perfectly reasonable assertion, it seems to us that whereas the study of out-of-place birds may not have the glamour of the hunt for bigfoot or lake monsters, it is still a perfectly valid area for the Fortean zoologist to be interested in. So after about six months of regular postings on the main bloggo Corinna took the plunge and started a 'Watcher of the Skies' blog of her own as part of the CFZ Bloggo Network.




DALE DRINNON: Two aquatic monsters

New at the Frontiers of Zoology:

THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN IS INTUITIVE

Today I celebrate having made 54 complete circuits of the sun. Amongst other things I have received many books, a bottle of brandy and a Victorian smoking cap. And (within reason) I can choose what I have for tea. Life doesn't get much better than this. Amongst the aforementioned books are the final items I need to complete my collection of all of P.G.Wodehouse's Blandings Castle stories, so this winter I will have an orgy of Pelican-related reading to which I can look forward to. Yesterday I interviewed the legendary John Ellis, so expect him to turn up soon in the Gonzo Weekly. On a totally different subject, I am listening  to the new album by Phildel, which is really rather good. Check it out peeps. Many thanks and much love to all of you who sent me birthday wishes and cards. Thank you, my dears.
Another visit to our old friend Thom the World Poet.
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/08/thom-world-poet-daily-poem_22.html
A Danish rap "battle" featuring my friend Lars Thomas' son Joachim dressed as a fairy princess...
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/08/one-of-most-peculiar-things-i-have-seen.html


*  The Gonzo Daily is a two-way process. If you have any news or want to write for us, please contact me at  jon@eclipse.co.uk. If you are an artist and want to showcase your work or even just say hello,  please write to me at gonzo@cfz.org.uk. Please copy, paste and spread the word about this magazine as widely as possible. We need people to read us in order to grow, and as soon as it is viable we shall be invading more traditional magaziney areas. Join in the fun, spread the word, and maybe if we all chant loud enough we CAN stop it raining. See you tomorrow....

*  The Gonzo Daily is - as the name implies - a daily online magazine (mostly) about artists connected to the Gonzo Multimedia group of companies. But it also has other stuff as and when the editor feels like it. The same team also do a weekly newsletter called - imaginatively - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about it at this link:
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/11/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit-to-print.html

* We should probably mention here that some of our posts are links to things we have found on the internet that we think are of interest. We are not responsible for spelling or factual errors in other people's websites. Honest guv!

*  Jon Downes, the editor of all these ventures (and several others) is an old hippy of 54 who, together with his orange cat (who is currently on sick leave in Staffordshire) and two very small kittens (one of whom is also orange), puts it all together from a converted potato shed in a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon, which he shares with various fish, and sometimes a small Indian frog. He is ably assisted by his lovely wife Corinna, his bulldog/boxer Prudence, his elderly mother-in-law, and a motley collection of social malcontents. Plus... did we mention the orange cat?

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today


Yesterday’s News Today

On this day in 1959, if memory serves me right, Jonathan Downes was born. Downes is a cryptozoologist of some repute and you may well have heard of him. Also on this day but in 565 Saint Columba claimed to have seen a monster in either Loch Ness or the River Ness, which is widely claimed to have been the first recorded sighting of the Loch Ness Monster.

First sighting of Nessie and Downes on the same day? As Tony Shiels, one-time Wizard of the Western World, would say “There's no such thing as a coincidence...” (or maybe I just got the date of Jon's birthday wrong, which could happen, I guess).
And now the news:


  • New wildlife corridor created from Amboseli to Kil...
  • Caterpillar Can Hop for 3 Days in Leafy 'Sleeping ...
  • New Glue-Spitting Velvet Worm Found in Vietnam
  • Scots red deer 'breeding earlier due to climate ch...
  • Aquatic Life Migrating to Poles as Temperatures Sh...
  • Florida Panther sightings survey
  • New survey reveals more than 700 seals in the Tham...
  • Pennsylvania restaurant owner seeking home for 8-f...

  • A short clip that you might not have seen from long ago when Potters Museum of Curiosities was still open, with Jon talking about deformed creatures: