Showing posts with label delcourt's day gecko. new zealand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label delcourt's day gecko. new zealand. Show all posts
Thursday, April 30, 2009
THE WEIRDEST PARAKEET OF ALL TIME
From New Zealand the most peculiar mutation any of us have ever seen in a bird..
Thursday, April 23, 2009
THE THIRD TRENCHE OF NEW ZEALAND ARCHIVES
Tony Lucas has been as good as his word. He has sent us an enormous cache of New Zealand press cuttings of cryptozoological interest. I have seen none of these before, and they are a great addition to our archives. You can download them from:here
Our online archive of press cuttings is getting quite sizeable now, and we are desparate for indexers. If you feel like giving us a few hours every week, please get in touch. The CFZ needs you!
Saturday, March 07, 2009
MORE ARCHIVE DOWNLOADS FROM NEW ZEALAND
Tony Lucas has been as good as his word. He has sent us an enormous cache of New Zealand press cuttings of cryptozoological interest. I have seen none of these before, and they are a great addition to our archives. You can download them from:Our online archive of press cuttings is getting quite sizeable now, and we are desparate for an indexer. If you feel like giving us a few hours every week, please get in touch. The CFZ needs you!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
TONY LUCAS HAS GIVEN US ALL A PRESENT...
Tony Lucas has been as good as his word. He has sent us an enormous cache of New Zealand press cuttings of cryptozoological interest. I have seen none of these before, and they are a great addition to our archives. You can download them from:Our online archive of press cuttings is getting quite sizeable now, and we are desparate for an indexer. If you feel like giving us a few hours every week, please get in touch. The CFZ needs you!
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
GUEST BLOGGER TONY LUCAS: Where have all the cryptids gone?
Tony Lucas is one of our New Zealand representatives. We first published his work in the 2008 Yearbook when he wrote us an overview of New Zealand cryptozoology. New Zealand is a particularly fascinating place because of its zoological isolation from the rest of the world. However, Tony argues that although it was once home to many mystery animals, it is now - quite possibly - too late.If we look back on the history of Cryptid sightings, the further back we go the more frequent the sightings seem to be. It seems once an area is colonised sightings appear, instead of as one would expect to increase, to decline sharply.
Is it because these creatures seek retreats further apart from the colonised areas or is a more menacing mechanism at work here?
The New Zealand Moehau and corresponding hominoids used to be plentiful and frequently spoken of by the Maori people. European colonizers made a push to populate the land for farming and instead of sightings and encounters becoming more numerous, as one would expect, what creatures that were encountered had gone from being barbarous, confrontational monsters of the forest to wary, timid creatures which would abscond at the first sign of humans.
Could it be these hominoids associated mankind with death? Sightings declined, and nowadays are virtually unheard-of. Why should these creatures associate us with death? Simple: in a single word.... disease.
We have witnessed it down through history where a less advanced civilization, free from the many pathogenic woes of their discoverers and conquerors, are wiped out of existence, or nearly so, by pathogenic marauders to which the new arrivals are totally immune.
The conquistadors brought smallpox and influenza to the Aztecs. In scarcely 100 years the Aztec population collapsed from 22 million down to a mere 2 million, a 90% loss in population. Easter Island and the Canary Islands also endured the same fate in the 16th century via measles, whooping cough and influenza.
However, this is not just restricted to humans; rats on Australia's Christmas Island were decimated by a hyper disease carried there by other rats that had jumped ship. Nowadays the Tasmanian Devil faces annihilation by a lethal type of introduced facial cancer, the list goes on and on.
Isolated island populations appear the most vulnerable as they are populations already under pressure from habitat loss and often hunting. This tendency clearly shows domestic introductions have had an impact on wild populations, and if they are genetically close it doesn't take much for a pathogen to jump hosts. This has been noticed and is still a concern with the recent H5N1 Bird flu epidemic.
One hypothesis advanced for the extinction of the Mega-Herbivores advocates that it was human introduced diseases that tilted the balance and lead to the mass extinctions which followed. With hunting and climate change it is easy to see how this could occur.
Taking this into account, judging by the absence of sightings here in New Zealand, I fear many of our Cryptid species may already have succumbed and for them, it is now too late. The Moehau is an excellent example. If these hominids were genetically close to humans the smallpox, measles and influenza which colonized the country alongside the colonists may have spelt their death knell.
A species already under pressure by habitat loss due to clearance for farming of the land by both Maori and European colonizers, all it would have taken would have been an outbreak of disease to drive the species to extinction.
Was a headless and partially devoured body of a miner and a woman found with her neck broken and 1882 the result of vengeance by a grief stricken Moehau? Interestingly, Bigfoot tracks in the United States have exhibited foot deformities and witnesses have also reported these creatures hobbling, being assisted and supported by another creature and acting sickly. Could these maladies be from catching some ailment to which they have no resistance?
Back in New Zealand, the Moa, the most famous of New Zealand Cryptids, was also under pressure from hunting and habitat loss.
Was a headless and partially devoured body of a miner and a woman found with her neck broken and 1882 the result of vengeance by a grief stricken Moehau? Interestingly, Bigfoot tracks in the United States have exhibited foot deformities and witnesses have also reported these creatures hobbling, being assisted and supported by another creature and acting sickly. Could these maladies be from catching some ailment to which they have no resistance?
Back in New Zealand, the Moa, the most famous of New Zealand Cryptids, was also under pressure from hunting and habitat loss.
Accounts also became spasmodic with colonization. Could the poultry and species introduced by the Acclimatization Society, such as sparrows, blackbirds, Indian mynah and countless others, have carried disease along with them to which the Moa had no immunity?
A poultry disease like infectious bronchitis which is highly contagious, could easily have wiped out or reduced Moa populations to unfrequented pockets far away from areas of contamination.
I believe the Moehau to be no more.
A poultry disease like infectious bronchitis which is highly contagious, could easily have wiped out or reduced Moa populations to unfrequented pockets far away from areas of contamination.
I believe the Moehau to be no more.
The last possibly dying from something as uncomplicated as the flu. Moas may yet hang on in remote and relatively unexplored areas like Fiordland in the lower South Island. But I'm forced to ask myself how many additional Cryptids worldwide have we doomed by introducing microscopic pathogens that neither known or cared for the rarity of the next victim.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
GUEST BLOGGER RICHARD FREEMAN: Cellar Surprises
Guest Blogger time for Richard Freeman again. It almost seems silly introducing Richard to you all once again when he makes an appearance as guest blogger several times a week. However our viewing audience/readers (whatever you like to call yourselves) is growing so fast that it is certain that some of you missed the last time I introduced him. So, Richard is one of my closest friends, and is the Zoological Director of the CFZ, and this time he is waxing lyrical on a subject dear to both of us - museums.
In any given museum a large proportion of the specimens will be off show. This is especially true of large, old collections that have amassed mind-boggling amounts of material over the years. The Natural History Museum has literally millions of specimens. In collections like this it’s not surprising that some material does not see the light of day in decades.
Occasionally a great zoological discovery will be made, not in some remote jungle or deep ocean, but in a museum. Old, mislabelled, or forgotten exhibits can by a cryptozoological gold mine.
A large stuffed lizard lay unnoticed in the Marseilles Natural History Museum for years. It was on display but no one, scientist or layman, noticed anything unusual. This was odd as the lizard was a gecko two feet long, twice as big as the largest species known to science! It was not until 1979 that it drew the attention of the curator of herpetology Alian Delcourt. Taking measurements and photos, he posted them to herpetologists around the world.
Villanova University herpetologist Aaron M Bauer and Canadian Biologist Dr Anthony P Russell identified it as a gecko, but a giant new species. The specimen was unlabelled but it was identified as belonging to the Hoplodactylus genus of New Zealand and accordingly given the name Hoplodactylus delcourti. It seemed to have been collected in the mid 1800s.
In Maori legend there is a large tree dwelling lizard that sounds remarkably like Delcourt’s giant gecko. Known as the Kawekaeau, such a beast was killed in 1870 by an Urewera Maori chief in the Waimana Valley on North Island. The description exactly fits the museum specimen.
Sightings still occur today. James Mack, assistant Curator of New Zealand’s National Museum, has regular reports from North Island’s east coast forests. A living specimen has yet to be caught, but it seems like this giant gecko is one of the most likely cryptids to exist.
One of the strangest and most bloody stories in the annals of cryptozoology is that of The Beast of Gevaudan. This weird beast was said to be bigger than a wolf with forelegs longer than the hind ones. It had upright ears, a short tail and stripes along its hindquarters. In 1764, a 14-year-old girl tending sheep was killed and eaten by the creature near Langogne. By November 11th, other women and children were devoured by the Beast. An army unit was sent to hunt the creature, but failed.
The killings continued in December with a boy, two girls and a shepherd falling to its jaws. In 1765, the creature was again after man flesh and a team of volunteers killed 100 wolves, as the creature was generally believed to be some form of huge wolf. By mid-September of 1675, 77 people had been killed in a stretch of land covering around 31 miles. On the 20th of September a big wolf was shot and the attacks seemed to cease.
The monster re-appeared in December when two children were eaten near Mont Mouchet. More victims followed in 1766 and continued unabated into 1767. It was obvious that the large wolf shot in 1675 was not the culprit.
Finally, Jean Chastel shot a large creature with a reddish pelt at Nozerolles. After this, the killing ceased totally. The Beast was crudely stuffed then displayed in the region for two weeks. It was no wolf and people did not seem to know quite what the killer was including the naturalist, the Comte de Buffon. The remains were sent to the Museum of Natural History in Paris and forgotten for 52 year until it was finally examined and identified as a striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena).
The striped hyena lives in India and the Middle East, but was at one time common in the Caucasus Mountains. As I discovered on my recent trip there, sightings of these creatures suggest that they are returning to their old haunts. This is still a long way from France but perhaps one had escaped from a travelling circus. Maybe this explained its lack of fear in the presence of humans.
The striped hyena was supposed to have killed children in the Caucasus and in Central Asia. This fits in with the Beast’s nature. In the district of Yereven in the Caucasus in the 1880s, hyenas were thought to be responsible for the disappearance or injuring of 25 children and three adults who slept outdoors. Further incidents in that area of striped hyenas killing children were reported in the 1890s and 1900s, as well as in Azerbaidjan in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1962, nine children were thought to have been taken by hyenas in the town of Bhagalpur in the Bihar State in a six week period. In Kanataka, Bihar state, attacks on children have been reported as recently as 1974 when 19 children up to the age of four years were reported killed at night. On March 13th 2005, a hyena injured 70 persons in six villages of Sonsor Tehsil.
The most amazing thing about the whole case is that it took so long to identify the creature whose remains had been sitting in a museum for half a century.
In an earlier blog about odd animals turning up in travelling zoos, I mentioned the case of the Gurt Dog of Ennerdale. It has some parallels with the Gevaudan case. A massive, dog like animal with a striped hide, the Gurt Dog drank the blood of its victims and bested any dogs sent after it. I postulated that it was a thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) that had escaped from a travelling zoo. It was finally killed after being wakened by gunshot then attacked by a pack of hounds in 1816. Its remains were displayed in Keswick Museum until it was closed in the middle of the 19th Century and its contents summarily thrown on a tip! The modern Keswick Museum has no knowledge of the fate of the beast’s remains. Perhaps someone retrieved the remains from the dump and the skull of the Gurt Dog is gathering dust in someone’s basement to this day.
Debbie Martyr, orang-pendek witness and Indonesian Tiger Conservation group leader told me in 2003 that she was sure that some Dutch Museums held remains of the mystery ape orang-pendek. She believes that they are mislabelled as orang-utans and that a thorough search of skulls brought back from Sumatra in colonial times would prove the orang-pendek’s existence. It would not be as exciting as trekking through the steaming jungles, but if someone with an intimate knowledge of orang-utan skulls were to sift through the Dutch collections, a zoological bombshell might be waiting.
The next time you are in a museum, take a closer look at the things behind the glass. You never know what might turn up.
In any given museum a large proportion of the specimens will be off show. This is especially true of large, old collections that have amassed mind-boggling amounts of material over the years. The Natural History Museum has literally millions of specimens. In collections like this it’s not surprising that some material does not see the light of day in decades.
Occasionally a great zoological discovery will be made, not in some remote jungle or deep ocean, but in a museum. Old, mislabelled, or forgotten exhibits can by a cryptozoological gold mine.
A large stuffed lizard lay unnoticed in the Marseilles Natural History Museum for years. It was on display but no one, scientist or layman, noticed anything unusual. This was odd as the lizard was a gecko two feet long, twice as big as the largest species known to science! It was not until 1979 that it drew the attention of the curator of herpetology Alian Delcourt. Taking measurements and photos, he posted them to herpetologists around the world.
Villanova University herpetologist Aaron M Bauer and Canadian Biologist Dr Anthony P Russell identified it as a gecko, but a giant new species. The specimen was unlabelled but it was identified as belonging to the Hoplodactylus genus of New Zealand and accordingly given the name Hoplodactylus delcourti. It seemed to have been collected in the mid 1800s.
In Maori legend there is a large tree dwelling lizard that sounds remarkably like Delcourt’s giant gecko. Known as the Kawekaeau, such a beast was killed in 1870 by an Urewera Maori chief in the Waimana Valley on North Island. The description exactly fits the museum specimen.Sightings still occur today. James Mack, assistant Curator of New Zealand’s National Museum, has regular reports from North Island’s east coast forests. A living specimen has yet to be caught, but it seems like this giant gecko is one of the most likely cryptids to exist.
One of the strangest and most bloody stories in the annals of cryptozoology is that of The Beast of Gevaudan. This weird beast was said to be bigger than a wolf with forelegs longer than the hind ones. It had upright ears, a short tail and stripes along its hindquarters. In 1764, a 14-year-old girl tending sheep was killed and eaten by the creature near Langogne. By November 11th, other women and children were devoured by the Beast. An army unit was sent to hunt the creature, but failed.
The killings continued in December with a boy, two girls and a shepherd falling to its jaws. In 1765, the creature was again after man flesh and a team of volunteers killed 100 wolves, as the creature was generally believed to be some form of huge wolf. By mid-September of 1675, 77 people had been killed in a stretch of land covering around 31 miles. On the 20th of September a big wolf was shot and the attacks seemed to cease.
The monster re-appeared in December when two children were eaten near Mont Mouchet. More victims followed in 1766 and continued unabated into 1767. It was obvious that the large wolf shot in 1675 was not the culprit.
Finally, Jean Chastel shot a large creature with a reddish pelt at Nozerolles. After this, the killing ceased totally. The Beast was crudely stuffed then displayed in the region for two weeks. It was no wolf and people did not seem to know quite what the killer was including the naturalist, the Comte de Buffon. The remains were sent to the Museum of Natural History in Paris and forgotten for 52 year until it was finally examined and identified as a striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena).
The striped hyena lives in India and the Middle East, but was at one time common in the Caucasus Mountains. As I discovered on my recent trip there, sightings of these creatures suggest that they are returning to their old haunts. This is still a long way from France but perhaps one had escaped from a travelling circus. Maybe this explained its lack of fear in the presence of humans.
The striped hyena was supposed to have killed children in the Caucasus and in Central Asia. This fits in with the Beast’s nature. In the district of Yereven in the Caucasus in the 1880s, hyenas were thought to be responsible for the disappearance or injuring of 25 children and three adults who slept outdoors. Further incidents in that area of striped hyenas killing children were reported in the 1890s and 1900s, as well as in Azerbaidjan in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1962, nine children were thought to have been taken by hyenas in the town of Bhagalpur in the Bihar State in a six week period. In Kanataka, Bihar state, attacks on children have been reported as recently as 1974 when 19 children up to the age of four years were reported killed at night. On March 13th 2005, a hyena injured 70 persons in six villages of Sonsor Tehsil.
The most amazing thing about the whole case is that it took so long to identify the creature whose remains had been sitting in a museum for half a century.
In an earlier blog about odd animals turning up in travelling zoos, I mentioned the case of the Gurt Dog of Ennerdale. It has some parallels with the Gevaudan case. A massive, dog like animal with a striped hide, the Gurt Dog drank the blood of its victims and bested any dogs sent after it. I postulated that it was a thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) that had escaped from a travelling zoo. It was finally killed after being wakened by gunshot then attacked by a pack of hounds in 1816. Its remains were displayed in Keswick Museum until it was closed in the middle of the 19th Century and its contents summarily thrown on a tip! The modern Keswick Museum has no knowledge of the fate of the beast’s remains. Perhaps someone retrieved the remains from the dump and the skull of the Gurt Dog is gathering dust in someone’s basement to this day.
Debbie Martyr, orang-pendek witness and Indonesian Tiger Conservation group leader told me in 2003 that she was sure that some Dutch Museums held remains of the mystery ape orang-pendek. She believes that they are mislabelled as orang-utans and that a thorough search of skulls brought back from Sumatra in colonial times would prove the orang-pendek’s existence. It would not be as exciting as trekking through the steaming jungles, but if someone with an intimate knowledge of orang-utan skulls were to sift through the Dutch collections, a zoological bombshell might be waiting.
The next time you are in a museum, take a closer look at the things behind the glass. You never know what might turn up.
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