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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Tuesday, March 17, 2015

ANDREW MAY: Words from the Wild Frontier

News and stories from the remoter fringes of the CFZ blogosphere...

From CFZ Australia:
From CFZ-USA:
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CRYPTOLINK: No reason to believe yeti legends to be inspired by an unknown type of bear

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. 
Bear species.
Credit: Image courtesy of Pensoft Publishers; CC By 4.0
A Venezuelan evolutionary biologist and a US zoologist state that they have refuted, through mitochondrial DNA sequencing, a recent claim, also based on such sequencing, that unknown type of bear must exist. in the Himalayas and that it may be, at least in part, the source of yeti legends. Their study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.
Last year, B. Sykes and co-authors, in the course of mitochondrial DNA sequencing identification of hair samples that had been attributed to "anomalous primates" (yetis, bigfoots, and others), claimed to have found that two samples said to have come from the Himalayas had a 100% match with DNA recovered from a fossil Polar Bear from over 40,000 years ago. On this basis, they concluded that a currently unknown type of bear must inhabit that portion of Asia.
Later, however, it was shown by C.J. Edwards and R. Barnett that the sample that matched Sykes and co-authors' Himalayan ones, was in fact, from a present-day Polar Bear from Alaska, not from a fossil, and they hypothesized that the genetic material in the samples attributed to an unknown type of bear might have been misleading because of degradation.
Sykes and co-authors, however, have continued to maintain that their Himalayan samples must be from an unknown type of bear -- a claim that has received a good deal of attention from the media.
However, further analysis by Eliécer E. Gutiérrez, currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution, and Ronald H. Pine, affiliated with the Biodiversity Institute & Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas, have concluded that the relevant genetic variation in Brown Bears makes it impossible to assign, with certainty, Sykes and co-authors' samples to either that species or the Polar Bear.
In fact, because of genetic overlap, the samples could have come from either one. Because Brown Bears occur in the Himalayas, Gutiérrez and Pine state that therefore there is no reason to believe that the samples in question came from anything other than ordinary Himalayan Brown Bears.

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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.

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BIGFOOT NEWS IN BRIEF




Sasquatch hunters near Houston say they were attacked by bigfoot
The Sasquatch didn't like it when explorers in the Sam Houston National Forest drew too near him last week, and in his fury he hurled giant logs at the 

Bigfoot Sightings in South Mississippi
Bigfoot sightings in South Mississippi are not as rare as you think. Most people are just scared of humiliation, or just getting called a crazy person

Jonathan Brown explains his daylight bigfoot sighting from April 7, 2013.
Jonathan Brown explains his daylight bigfoot sighting from April 7, 2013. Home › Forums › Sasquatch Chronicles Forum › Jonathan Brown explains his 

Bigfoot (trail) sighting in Southern Oregon
Kauffmann is drumming up support to popularize and provide stewardship for what he's dubbed the Bigfoot Trail, a 360-mile route through the wilds of
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THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN REIMAGINES HIMSELF

The Gonzo Daily - Tuesday
As part of the aftermath of my headcold I am now all bunged up and can't hear a thing. As I have Jessica in the office today, hopefully putting the final touches to a book on Russian manbeasts, then today will be an interesting one.
The Gonzo Weekly #121
www.gonzoweekly.com
Annie Haslam, Renaissance, Gryphon, Daevid Allen, Hawkwind, Jon Anderson, and Yes fans had better look out!
The latest issue of Gonzo Weekly (#121) is another bumper one at 96 pages and IS available to read at www.gonzoweekly.com, and to download at http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/. It has Annie Haslam on the cover, and an exclusive interview with her inside, as well as the Renaissance European Tour Dates. Doug Harr interviews Gryphon, but of course the whole magazine was disrupted totally by the untimely death of Daevid Allen on Friday. There are tributes and his last messages inside. We send cartoonist Mark Raines to a Desert Island. Neil Nixon reports on an even stranger album than usual, Wyrd goes avant garde and there are radio shows from Strange Fruit and from M Destiny at Friday Night Progressive, and the titular submarine dwellers are still lost at sea, although I have been assured that they will hit land again soon. There is also a collection of more news, reviews, views, interviews and pademelons trying to choose (OK, nothing to do with small marsupials having difficulty in making choices, 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!!!
This issue features:
Sandy Denny, John Lennon, Bjork, Muse, Noel Gallagher, Ringo Starr, Steve Strange, Daevid Allen, Strange Fruit, Friday Night Progressive, Terry Pratchett, Jimmy Greenspoon, Sam Simon, Lewis Michael Soloff, Tommy James, Mick Abrahams, Firemerchants, Dee Palmer, Atkins May Project, Wagner, Hawkwind, Karnataka, Paul Buff, Frank Zappa, Charli XCX, Garth Brooks, 5 Seconds of Summer, Ed Sheeran, Annie Haslam, Gryphon, Hawkwind, Yes, Rick Wakeman, Chris Squire, Peter Banks, Trevor Rabin, Bill Bruford,Kanye West, Take That, Beatles, Blues Brothers, 1D,Neil Nixon, Eden Ahbez,Death Dealer, Ecnephias, Edge, Giuntini Project, Aktarum

 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/…/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit…
* 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 55 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?
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NEWS FROM NOWHERE - Tuesday

ON THIS DAY IN 0461 - Bishop Patrick, St. Patrick, died in Saul. Ireland celebrates this day in his honor. (More about St. Patrick's Day) 
And now some more recent news from the CFZ Newsdesk
  • Chinese man wins payout over panda bite
  • British tree surgeons to teach Sumatran orangutan ...
  • Rembrandt's monkey: good news for Africa's newest ...
  • Wildlife officers resuscitate poached sturgeon in ...

  • Bridge to nowhere: Bat bridges are failing to prev...

    • 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)
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