C'MON DOCTOR N

My dear fellow, how long have you known me? My idea of a mean joke is to release radioactive landcrabs into your hotel room, run up your bar bill to astronomical proportions,  or burn your house down, not indulge in poor puns LOL

THE TETZOOCON

Dear all - apologies for cluttering up your inbox. Now that the end of June is so close, just a reminder that tickets are still available for TetZooCon (Saturday 12th July, London Wetland Centre) - if you're interesting in coming, please book now: http://tetzoo.com/convention

The site also includes the final programme. There are talks on pterosaurs (Witton), dinosaurs and neck evolution (Taylor), primatology (Jahme), herpetology (Meredith), the science of mermaids (Viscardi), speculative zoology (Naish) and more... there's also a palaeoart workshop/discussion/event, a quiz, and one or two merchandise stalls. An article advertising the event has also just appeared at Tetrapod Zoology (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/).

We really hope this can become a regular event, so please do consider coming along. Sorry to people who have already emailed me about absences and being out of the country and so on.

Best wishes and we look forward to seeing you there!

Darren

DARREN NAISH: A baby sea-serpent no more: re-interpreting Hagelund’s juvenile Cadborosaurus

Our efforts to get analyses of cryptozoological data into the technical, peer-reviewed literature continue, with the ‘our’ being myself, Michael Woodley and Cameron McCormick (a.k.a. Lord Geekington). I’m referring here to our new paper, titled ‘A baby sea-serpent no more: reinterpreting Hagelund’s juvenile “cadborosaur” report’, published within recent weeks in Journal of Scientific Exploration (Woodley et al. 2011).

What’s the point of this paper? We show, via an analysis of morphological character states, that the ‘baby Cadborosaurus’ encountered by Captain William Hagelund in 1968 was most likely…. a pipefish, not a baby sea serpent. Cadborosaurus, if you’re not familiar with it, is a long-bodied, horse-headed sea monster thought by some to exist in the waters of the north-east Pacific.

Read on...

CFZ PEOPLE: Dr Darren Naish

A very happy birthday, my dear boy....

WEIRD WEEKEND 2011: Max Blake and Dr. Darren Naish

WEIRD WEEKEND 2011: Dr Darren Naish

DARREN NAISH'S CRYPTIC BATS

Over on Tet Zoo, the good doctor writes:

In terms of its zoological diversity, Europe is the best known continent on the planet. Indeed it's generally assumed that just about all of Europe's macrofauna has, by now, been discovered. While that's mostly true, it seems that at least a few species - so called 'cryptic species' - have been missed, mostly because they're extremely similar to their close relatives. read on...

Did the ancient Egyptians know of pygmy mammoths? Well, there is that tomb painting.

A fascinating article by Dr Darren Naish
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2011/01/ancient_egyptian_pygmy_mammoth.php

DALE DRINNON: Napier in BIGFOOT Again

John Napier in Bigfoot: The Yeti and Sasquatch in Myth and Reality, 1973 goes over evidence for the Yeti in Chapter 2, Bigfoot in Asia. His identikit starts on page 59:

The profile of the Yeti based on the features most frequently given in Sherpa tales, goes like this: height varies between 4 ft 6 in [permissable to say 4 ft even] and 16 ft. The head hair is long and sometimes falls foreward over the eyes. The face is partially naked, often white-skinned [or sunburnt-DD]with features reminiscent of an ape or a monkey. Hair, predominantly reddish-brown to dark brown or black in colour but lighter on the chest, covers the entire body. Shoulders are heavy and hunched, arms long enough to extend to the knees or thereabouts. The posture is roughly man-like though slightly stooped. The walk is partly bipedal and partly quadrupedal.

It is particularly interesting that there is such a great variation in size in these accounts. Just over half the reports state that the creatute is over 6 ft in height; rather less than half the reports state that it is under 6 ft. The height most frequently given is between 5 ft and 6 ft and the commonest analogy is that it is the size and the build of a youth. The appearance of a conical-shaped skull, one of the most consistent features in reconstructions of the Yeti, is only mentioned in six out of the eighteen reports....


[Table of Yeti Habits and Habitat from the Sherpa Tales]
ECOLOGY
1. Habitat. The Yeti live in caves high in the mountains* between 13,000 and 20,000 feet. Or they live in the impenetrable thickets of the montane forests at about 10,000 feet (The former belief is by far the more widespread
2. Activity rhythm. Nocturnal*
3. Diet. Carnivorous. The Yeti preys on yaks as well as on smaller mammals such as the pika (Himalayan mouse-hare), which is found at a maximum altitude of 20,000 feet or thereabouts. Characteristically, they discard the intestines before eating these creatures. When hungry the Yeti may raid villages and carry off human beings*

HABITS
1.Vocalization. The repertoire of the Yeti calls includes loud roars, noisy yelps, loud mews [ A sound something like that made by a seagull-DD] and, most characteristically, a high-pitched whistling call.
2. Body Odor. Yetis have a vile, pungent smell*
3. Physical Behaviour. Yetis have tremendous physical strength and can uproot trees and hurl boulders over vast distances.* The breasts of the females are so large they have to throw them over their shoulders when running or when bending down.* In both sexes these creatures are impeded when running down slopes by their long head-hair, which falls over their eyes and thus blinds them.* Yetis are inordinately fond of alcohol (eg, chang) which can be used as a bait to trap a Yeti after it has been intoxicated*
4. Social Behaviour. Unrecorded. Yetis are usually observed as isolates.

(pgs 60-61)* indicates a recognised Folkloric feature known from other parts of the world. I have amended Napier's figure of 14,000 ft under Habitat to 13,000 because that is the figure given in the tradition of the Nyalmo, and that is clearly the tradition Napier is referring to.

Napier also takes pains to note that while such features as the feet allegedly pointing backwards (p 60) and the hair falling before the eyes or a female throwing breasts of their shoulders (p 61) are part of the FOLKLORE, there are no actual reports which allege such things to be observed by witnesses.

Heuvelmans sorts the reports by summing two sorts of Yeti, the Grande Yeti and the Petit Yeti or Big Yeti and Small Yeti. He assumes the Yetis usually repotrd by the Sherpas are the reddish Small Yetis, and these are the ones whose tracks are seen more often.. Heuvelmans says the Big Yetis are darker in colouration, darker brown or black, and they have the tracks that are over a foot long. These are the ones that are likely to be surviving Gigantopithecus and Heuvelmans also specifically links them to the Rimi at seven to nine feet tall and ordinarily roaming between 10,000 and 13,000 feet. The most likey explanation for the Nyalmo is that they are based on the Rimi but with a further extrapolation according to the belief that Yetis get bigger the higher up in the mountains you go.

According to Napier's table of Yeti Tracks (Table 1 in the back of the book) the Big Yeti tracks a foot long or over have been noted a half-dozen times by travellers (excepting Shipton's tracks) and they range up to 18 or to possibly 24 inches long. These would be the equivalent to Sasquatch tracls. The smaller tracks are usually eight to ten inches long and just possibly up to a foot long also. For that reason we cannot be sure of an automatic assortmentbased on absolute size. They have been seen eight, maybe ten times between 1915 and 1970. And the tracks which feature an opposed toe are in this series: the Shipton track is most like the smaller series except for the fact that it is markedly larger than the rest and it has a peculiar second toe also. The Shipton track compares to others of the smaller series at an increase of 150% above the average, and if the average Small Yeti is only a bit over five feet tall, the Shipton Giant beast is presumably over seven and a half feet tall. It is SO much larger that it is almost certainly an individual freak and not typical for the series.

There is also a good deal of difference in position of the big toe in different tracks of the smaller series. That is not an issue I need to discuss in this overview because I deal with it elsewhere.

At this juncture I should add that I agree with Napier as to the involvement of bears in the reports, and as a general cause for confusion. HOWEVER the basic Yeti creature stories cannot ONLY be based on stories of bears because of specifically apelike features. One of these features is the opposed toe seen on some of the tracks and another is the pointed, conical head ascribed to the Yetis in reports. Those features simply cannot be describing bears of any sort.

Now as to the Traditional Yeti, it seems to me that nearly all of the description actually refers to The Big Yeti or the Sasquatch sort. On the other hand when Sherpas actually report Yetis, they are not reporting the Big Yetis of the legends, they are reporting the more familiar Small Yetis of the lowlands, presumably come up to grub for lichens or to nab some mouse-hares as a dietary supplement. They are presumably about as carnivorous as chimpanzees but some of them acquire a sweet tooth for mouse-hares that can be most easily quenched by running them down on the snowfields, and it might be assumed that their hunting technique for nabbing small animal prey is less effective in the deep forests that are usually their homes (Incidentally I do have a specific statement from an Indian woman that when such creatures live more ordinarily at lower levels in places like the Assam, they frequently raid bananna plantations and otherwise behave in a manner to be expected of quite ordinary great apes)

The Big Yeti is the one where the females have large breasts and large human-shaped feet twice the size of usual human feet. They have something like a bang of hair across the forehead and just above the eyes. And they are often said to live high in mountain caves and to drag bodies of dead animals-and allegedly humans-up to private cashes where they can eat them at leisure. They are seen at all levels down to 10000 feet in normal conditions and they can raid the valleys lower down when times are bad. But at the end of summer they go up to higher levels above 13000 feet, according to the stories, and they stay up there where their natural refrigeration works best. And actually, as Heuvelmans notes, that is the complete opposite from what you should expect from bears.

NB: I was just doing further research and I found that Darren Naish's blog says the Shipton yeti print was a hoax. I do not believe we need to go that far, but from what I could tell from its cast, the print has certainly sublimated off to the outside and the outline may well have been 'helped' before recording it. It is certainly atypical otherwise. It would be a matter of taste to equate retouching to actual hoaxing in my opinion, however.

DARREN ON MYSTERY PIGS OF ASIA

http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2010/12/mystery_pigs_of_tropical_asia.php



'Not sure if this is of interest, but I think it's pretty neat...' he wrote to me yesterday. I agree Darren, pretty near indeed...

ONE OF MY FAVOURITE CREATURES...

Giant salamanders are the subject of Darren's latest Tet Zoo post. He even gives a brief account of Sligo's salamander, one of my favourite (probably non-) cryptids.

Very much worth checking out

MAX BLAKE NEEDS TO BE CONGRATULATED ON THIS..

We have been keeping quiet about this because a technical paper by Max and Darren is in the works. However, we have been pipped at the post by the BBC so we can go public. The story is also in the forthcoming A&M and reads:

A recent discovery was made in the archives of the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery by Max Blake, one of the best known of the younger brigade of CFZ members, and as I have said on a number of occasions, someone who together with Dave Braund-Phillips will be managing the circus once I've finally retired or died.

Although there have been reports of unknown cat-like animals in the UK on and off for centuries, there has been a paucity of hard evidence. Until now the only reports of specimens actually being secured are from the last 40 years or so. Max has discovered an animal, which appears to be a Canadian lynx, that was shot over a century ago.

He is currently working on a technical paper with Dr Darren Naish that will contain all the details. He has asked us not to reveal anything more until it is published, and we of course agreed. When we are able to do so we shall have more photographs, and all the technical details that anyone could possibly want. Well done, mate.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00w13p9/Autumnwatch_Unsprung_2010_Episode_6/

It is about seven minutes in.

DARREN NAISH HAS DONE IT AGAIN!

How can you resist a headline like Mystery emo skinks of Tonga! You can't, really.

WHOOPS

OK, I am not perfect; I am the first person to admit this. I am also not trained in anything to do with the publishing industry, but there is really no excuse for the defecatory spelling mistake on the spine of Darren Naish's book.

I have now fixed it and the amended spine can be seen above, but it does mean that the first 100 or so people who bought Tetrapod Zoology will have got a special limited edition collector's item.

That's the spin that I am putting on it anyway.

THE DARREN NAISH PUBLICITY MACHINE GATHERS PACE

http://chasmosaurs.blogspot.com/2010/10/darren-naish-publishes-tetrapod-zoology.html
http://stephenbodio.blogspot.com/2010/10/eevil-eagles.html
http://www.birding.uk.com/forum/best-selling-bird-books/19863-6-tetrapod-zoology-book-one.html
http://superoceras.blogspot.com/2010/10/gearing-up-for-svp-2010.html
http://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/tet-zoo-the-book/

DARREN NAISH HITS THE PUBLICITY TRAIL

Earlier this year (July) my children's book on Mesozoic reptiles - Dinosaurs Life Size - appeared in the shops. People seem to like it (yikes, even if some of the 'life sized' animals are scaled wrong). July also saw the publication of Dorling Kindersley's Know It All (Baines 2010); I didn't write the whole book; just the section on prehistoric animals. Today I'm pleased to announce that my third book for 2010 - Tetrapod Zoology Book One (Naish 2010) - is finally available.

It won't (so far as I know) be available on the shelves of book stores, and (should you want it) you'll have to order it online. We'll get to that in a moment.

Read on »

DARREN NAISH'S NEW BOOK IS ALMOST AVAILABLE

After a delay of almost a month, Darren's first book for CFZ Press will be available in the next few days. In fact (as I am writing this 24 hours before it will be posted), by the time that you read this, it might well be available.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tetrapod-Zoology-Book-Steve-Backshall/dp/190572361X/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1284464697&sr=1-4

SO WHAT ON EARTH IS DR NAISH ON ABOUT?

So, what on earth is Dr N on about?

DALE DRINNON: Possible Identifications for some of Bruce Champagne's Independent Sea-Serpent Classification Categories

Bruce Champagne has had an independant classification for sea-serpent types that has been circulating around the internet for some years. The article is at StrangeArk: Bruce Champagne. A Preliminary Evaluation of a Study of the Morphology, Behavior, Autoecology, and Habitat of Large, Unidentified Marine Animals, Based on Recorded Field Observations. Available at strangeark. Pages 99-118 And I have never been able to get in contact with Bruce despite frequent trying (I tried just before submitting this blog entry, in fact).

No matter. His classification is posted on Wikipedia and at other places. His categories go as follows:

Bruce Champagne Sea-Serpents

1A Long-Necked: A 30-foot sea lion with a long neck and long tail. The neck is the same thickness or smaller than the head. Hair reported. It is capable of travel on land. Cosmopolitan.








1B Long-Necked: Similar to the above type but over 55 feet long and far more robust. The neck is of lesser thickness than the head. Only inhabits water near Great Britain and Denmark.








2A Eel-Like: A 20 to 30-foot-long heavily scaled or armoured reptile. It is distinguished by a small square head with prominent tusks. 'Motorboating' behaviour on surface. Inhabits only the North Atlantic.




2B Eel-Like: A 25 to 30-foot beaked whale. It is distinguished by a tapering head and a dorsal crest. 'Motorboating' behaviour engaged in. Inhabits the Atlantic and Pacific. Possibly extinct.



2C Eel-Like: A 60-70 foot, elongated reptile with no appendages. The head is very large and cow-like or reptilian with teeth similar to a crab-eater seal's. Also shares the 'motorboating' behaviour. Inhabits the Atlantic, Pacific, and South China Sea. Possibly extinct.

3 Multi-Humped: 30-60 feet long. A possible reptile with a dorsal crest and the ability to move in several undulations. The head has a distinctive 'cameloid' appearance. Identical with Cadborosaurus willsi and is behind the Naden Harbor carcass.



4A Sailfin: A 30 to 70-foot beaked whale. It is distinguished by a very small head and a very large dorsal fin. Only found in the North West Atlantic. Possibly extinct.



4B Sailfin: An elongated animal of possible mammalian or reptilian identity reported from 12 to 85 feet long. It has a long neck with a turtle-like head and a long continuous dorsal fin. Cosmopolitan.



5 Carapaced: A large turtle or turtle-like creature (mammal?) reported from 10 to 45 feet long. Carapace is described as jointed, segmented, and plated. May exhibit a dorsal crest of "quills" and a type of oily hair. Cosmopolitan.


6 Saurian: A large and occasionally spotted crocodile or crocodile-like creature up to 65 feet long. Found in the Northern Atlantic and Mediterranean.


7 Segmented/Multi-limbed: An elongated mammalian creature up to 65 feet long with the appearance of segmentation and many fins. Found in the Western Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific.

This matter came up again because of the recent reports of a grey whale seen in the Mediterranean. I had previously identified one of Bruce's categories as the same as the 'Scrag Whale' and hence a grey whale, and I mentioned that was my opinion on Darren Naish's blog the first time the matter was posted. I had first posted about the matter at my group, Frontiers of Zoology, when the group was new, 2006-2007.

L: The Israeli Gray Whale 2010 R: Scrag Whale Drawing From Iceland, ca 1640.jpg

Bruce's long-necked categories 1A and 1B are basically Heuvelmans's long-necked and merhorse categories. They are quite possibly female and male of the same species. The lengths he gives tally well with my average estimates (assuming female and male lengths) worldwide. Nowadays, I would say those estimates are probably on the high side for both series of reports, even though Heuvelmans's estimated lengths are much longer.

The interesting part starts with 2A. This is obviously the same as a 'Tusked Whale' reported in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans, and Gesner has a depiction of it. It is not a reptile at all, and I think some of Bruce's sightings are from the New England area. There is a fossil form that corresponds to the description, Odobenoketops, although the fossil form is much smaller. The fossil form is well known in Cryptozoological circles owing to another matter, which is possibly an overlapping category, Southern Narwhals as discussed by Karl Shuker.







L: odobenoketops R: Gesner's Chybby Whale (tusked whale)

Category 2B is pertinent here because although Bruce Champagne calls it a type of beaked whale, it is obviously a gray whale and the same as the Scrag whale of the Atlantic, up until recently thought to be extinct. (Gray whale is the correct spelling, I understand)

Category 2C is evidently a type of giant eel: I have no idea why BC thought it had the odd teeth he ascribes to it. Perhaps the teeth are due to confused reports of actual seals. The reconstruction is oddly short and stumpy. My reconstruction from Heuvelmans' Super-Eel reports made composites of two quite distinct creatures which I called a Megaconger and a Titanoconger. Heuvelmans was aware of the size difference (Megaconger 20-30 feet average, Titanoconger 50-100 feet long) but did not further subdivide the category. The two are also distinct in colouration and habitat.The freshwater Giant Eel reports generally correspond to the Megaconger and not to the Titanoconger type.

Titanoconger and megaconger

Category 3 is the same as the "Caddycarcass" creature, which I would say was a decayed shark (Pseudoplesiosaur).

It does not help that Bruce Champagne combines this with the Many-Humped reports, which refer to a standing wave action and not to the actual appearance of whatever creature is producing the wave (Several different kinds of things are known to make that type of wave pattern)

4A is interesting because it corresponds to other reports of a type of beaked whale with a large backfin far back, also reported in the Pacific. And 4B is obviously the same as the Valhalla Sea-Serpent. I do not know why BC gives it such a wide size range nor Geographic range, although I was aware of other reports of the type (Heuvelmans calls one a "Marine Dimetrodon"). I actually do not know what it is, but with that head and neck it is presumably related to the Plesiosaurs.

Category 5 is the Rhapsody-type giant turtle, obviously based on reports of a humpback whale turned turtle. Reports specify that the foreflippers are 15 feet long. Humpbacks are the only known animals that have 15-foot-long flippers. The "White Carapace" is the whale's lighter belly.

Category 6 is an interesting subsection of the Marine Saurian reports and what BC has illustrated is a large seagoing crocodile, probavbly what was described as the Tarasque in the Mediterranean, the MedCroc. I append an illustration of a "Great Horned Alligator" made in review of Mark A Hall's article "'Horrors' From the Mesozoic, in PURSUIT. (Artist unknown). The same "60-foot horned Alligator (Crocodile) is spoken of in folklore and illustrated in Thailand, and other possible representations of it are from Indus Valley seals. It is worldwide in the warmer regions and better at swimming at sea than the much smaller C. porosis, which it otherwise resembles.

This is NOT the only kind of "Marine Saurian": there is a type that is like an "Alligator" (including the C. porosis references) and then one or more other types which appear to be Mosasaurs.

Category 7 is obviously the same as Heuvelmans' Many-Finned. It is much thinner than Heuvelmans' version and for comparison I include a reconstruction I once did of the Many-finned as an eel (to go with the St. Olaf sighting and several others). The "Manyfinned" is the most dubious of all of Heuvelmans' categories and all the reports could admittedly be mistaken views of small pods of sharks or toothed whales. The "Pluripinniate Eel" version does however preserve the blunt, turtle-shaped head mentioned in several reports.

I do not attach much significance to the report of the Con Rit carcass, the description was most peculiar and at secondhand (or worse).

So out of these additional categories I see some of the same familiar categories from Heuvelmans' In The Wake of The Sea-Serpents and some other things. The modifications on Heuvelmans' categories are interesting, although I have a different spin on them: and there are a few whales in there, one of a potentially new species but two known. One of the known species is probably the same as the Med Whale, and it has been seen rarely and irregularly for many years past the point when it was thought to be extinct.

DARREN VISITED OUR AMPHIUMAS..

DARREN NAISH WRITES: A few days ago I visited my friends at the Centre for Fortean Zoology (for non-Tet Zoo-related reasons), and I particularly enjoyed looking at their amphiumas. Purely because I want to share the photos I took - well, and because amphiumas are weird, little known and really, really neat - I thought I'd say a little bit about them.

Read on..