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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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...




Wednesday, October 08, 2014

TODAY'S BIG CAT NEWS

The hunt for British Big Cats attracts far more newspaper-column inches than any other cryptozoological subject. 

There are so many of them now that we feel they should be archived by us in some way, so we are publishing a regular round-up of the stories as they come in. 

The worldwide mystery cat phenomenon (or group of phenomena, if we are to be more accurate) is not JUST about cryptozoology. At its most basic level it is about the relationship between our species and various species of larger cat. That is why sometimes you will read stories here that appear to have nothing to do with cryptozoology but have everything to do with human/big cat interaction. As committed Forteans, we believe that until we understand the nature of these interactions, we have no hope of understanding the truth that we are seeking.

  • NEWSLINK: Thiruvananthapuram Zoo tightens security...
  • UK SIGHTINGS: The beast of Svendroog castle!
  • NEWSLINK: Leopard, the Big Cat dies of poisoning i...
  • NEWSLINK: Snow leopard cub Sossy thriving at zoo d...
  • NEWSLINK: Calgary-born tiger kills another big cat...

  • NEWSLINK: There's a big cat on campus

  • BIGFOOT NEWS IN BRIEF



    Siberian Bigfoot A Dramatic Series of Photos
    Bigfoot is a familiar word today around the world. Since the middle of the last century it indicates a mysterious giant primate of North America, who is ...

    Bigfoot enthusiasts headed to Yakima this weekend
    Not in the flesh, of course. But photographs, footprints, and other possible evidence collected by bigfoot investigators and enthusiasts will be on ...

    DIMENSIONS: Kansas residents spot white Bigfoot with spiked hair
    By far, the majority of Bigfoot sightings involve an encounter with a large humanoid covered with brown, black or gray hair. Witnesses often make a ...

    THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN PREPARES FOR HIBERNATION

    The Gonzo Daily - Wednesday
     
    Tamara the new intern started yesterday. She is the lastest in a line of charming young ladies who have come to do stuff here. We really have been very lucky - narry an intern has had a bad attitude, drunk my gin or pinched the spoons. Tamara knows her stuff and we are looking forward to a long and mutually fruitful relationship. I will be bullying her into writing for these pages so you will soon get to know her for yourself. Jools the psychic is still asleep in the sitting room and the Japanese newts were mating the other night. Not that these events are at all connected...
     
     
    Counting Crows, Richard Thompson, Hawkwind, Patrick Moraz, Elton John and Prince fans and all sorts of other people, had better look out! The latest issue of Gonzo Weekly (#98) is available to read at www.gonzoweekly.com, and to download at http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/.
     
    It has Matt Malley on the cover, and features an interview with him in which he discusses his work with Counting Crows, Richard Thompson, Patrick Moraz, Emmitt Rhodes and more. Doug Harr goes to see Elton John, and Jon asks why so many people are pissed off with U2 and iTunes. The new albums by Prince, Leonard Cohen and Marianne Faithfull are critiqued and there are exclusive words and pictures from two separate Hawkwind shows. There are also new shows from the multi-talented Neil Nixon at Strange Fruit and from M Destiny at Friday Night Progressive, and the massively talented Jaki and Tim are back with their submarine and Maisie the cow. There is also a collection of more news, reviews, views, interviews and doves making coos (OK, no musical members of the Columbinidae, but I got carried away with things that rhymed with OOOOS) than you can shake a stick at. And the best part is IT's ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!
     
    Read the previous few issues of Gonzo Weekly:
     
     

    All issues from #70 can be downloaded at www.gonzoweekly.com if you prefer. If you have problems downloading, just email me and I will add you to the Gonzo Weekly dropbox. The first 69 issues are archived there as well. Information is power chaps, we have to share it!
     
    You can download the magazine in pdf form HERE:
    http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/
     

    *  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: www.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 an infantile orange cat named after a song by Frank Zappa 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 infantile orange cat?

    CRYPTOLINK: Are There Still Undiscovered Sea Monsters? (Via Richard Freeman)

    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. 

    Are There Still Undiscovered Sea Monsters?EXPAND
    It is time once again for "Hey, Science," our world-renowned feature in which we enlist real live scientific experts to answer humanity's most provocative/ dumb scientific questions. Today: Do unknown sea monsters still lurk in the deep?
    Today's question, more specifically: How likely is it that there are still large (say, giant squid-sized or better) "sea monsters" that have yet to be discovered by science? Is it realistic to believe that huge new creatures from the deep could still be found? Or have we pretty much exhausted the monster mysteries of the oceans?
    Gustav Paulaycurator of marine malacology, Florida Museum of Natural History:
    There is a good chance that some pretty large animals remain undiscovered in deep oceans. A good example of this are the beaked whales, a group of cetaceans that is hard to encounter and new species keep getting discovered. An especially cool example is an undescribed beak whale that is being eaten in the Kiribati islands (see here).
    Large invertebrates are commonly found of course, but few are giant squid sized. I would think that large fish could remain undiscovered; the megamouth shark was a good example of that a couple of decades ago.
    Timothy Essingtonprofessor of aquatic & fishery sciences, University of Washington:
    Given the vastness of the ocean, I would not be at all surprised if someday some intrepid explorer discovered some bizarre new form of sea life that we never thought possible. It might be some creature of enormous size, a radically new body design, or some unique way that it "makes a living."

    Read on... 

    FORTEAN BIRD NEWS FROM THE WATCHER OF THE SKIES

    What has Corinna's column of fortean bird news got to do with Cryptozoology?

    Well, everything actually!

    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.




    NEWS FROM NOWHERE - Wednesday

    ON THIS DAY IN 1945 U.S. President Truman announced that only Britain and Canada would be given the secret to the atomic bomb. 

  • Reality check in race to curb extinction as only f...
  • Killer whales learn to communicate like dolphins
  • 'Copycat' Bearded Dragons Mimic Their Peers
  • Pig-nosed turtle is too cute for its own good, say...
  • Court Could Decide If Chimpanzees Are Legal Person...
  • Around the world in 400,000 years: Journey of the ...
  • South Africa’s Kruger National Park invites bids f...
  • In the Age of Extinction, which species can we lea...

  • Researchers take cells from chrysalis and use them...


  • AND TO WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK (music that may have some relevance to items also on this page, or may just reflect my mood on the day)...