tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16505569.post4755353551736558202..comments2024-01-05T05:02:20.353+00:00Comments on CRYPTOZOOLOGY ONLINE: Still on the Track: MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES:IS THERE AN UNKNOWN SPECIES OF FLYING LIZARD IN EAST AFRICA?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16505569.post-53534778899938371442011-04-02T15:50:17.966+01:002011-04-02T15:50:17.966+01:00Hello Richard, we have spoken of this before. IMHO...Hello Richard, we have spoken of this before. IMHO, the creature is one that has been *CALLED* a Kongamato in certain sightings, notably when seen from below as it is flying overhead and measuring in the realm of three feet long with a two-foot wingspan. That is certainly much too small to be a shoebill stork, one of the "Usual suspects" in Kongamato sightings. A pity your correspondant did not include the dimensions. I had heard similar descriptions from some of my own correspondants in South Africa.<br /><br />The two foot wingspan and three foot length (including a long tail) is often stated to be twice that size, four feet across and six feet long. I do not think that is as likely, but it is more nearly the norm of such reports. There are corresponding reports from Southeast Asia as I mentioned to you before,at those dimensions as well, but the descriptions are not usually so detailed as the one you just reported. There is one fairly good drawing made by a witness of one such a creature supposedly seen in Japan.<br /><br />Ivan T. Sanderson called these "Third Class Dragons" and said that they seemed to have a base in The Near East; he suggested that captive ones might have been taken to Europe in Roman times. This is from <b>Investigating the Unexplained</b>, 1972, Chapter 4 "Icarus and Draco." Sanderson says they are the same as Basilisks. He does not specify a certain size for them, but Basilisks might be expected to be a yard or two long. Compounding the problem is the fact that Jenny Hanivers have been sculpted to look like small dragons and are ordinarily just about the right size. Charles Gould even says one place where such Jenny Hanivers used to be made was in Western and Central Africa, when the business was booming in about the 1500s.<br /><br />My own opinion is also that the original Kongamato or "Overturner-of-Canoes" is a WATER monster with wings, hence more likely a kind of stingray, which gets big enough to bump into canoes and upset them. The disc at about six to eight feet across would then be about right. ALL of the sightings of flying creatures would therefore be called "Kongamatos" <b>by mistake</b>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com