DIARY OF A MAD CRYPTOZOOLOGIST - Part Two: The Alien Baby

Following on from Part One

So I was back in bed having a lovely dream about chickens when the telephone rang. It was The Daily Sport. Now, I am not gonna be arsey about the tabloid newspapers. I have appeared in them on a number of occasions, and have even been paid for this dubious privilege. They have always been nice to me, and have often treated me with a damn sight more respect than their colleagues in the more well respected journals.

What did I know about the alien baby in Mexico? The journalist (a charming young lady called Clare) asked me. The truth was that I didn't know anything about it and asked her to email me a picture and phone back in half an hour.

This she promptly did.

http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/bild-english/world-news/2009/08/25/alien-baby-or-hoax/bizarre-creature-found-in-mexico-stumps-experts.html

Hmmm, I thought. And when she telephoned back, "Hmmmm" I said. I met Jaime Maussan years ago in Mexico, and he was a nice bloke, but I really would not like to commit myself on the basis of one story in a German tabloid newspaper. Could I have copies of the autopsy and analysis reports?

She said that she would see what she could do, and rang off. I went back to sleep. (BTW there is a youtube video about the case below)

ANOTHER SUPPOSEDLY EXTINCT WOODPECKER

Everyone has heard of the ivory-billed woodpecker, which featured in yesterday's bloggo. But far fewer people know of its close relative from south of the boarder. The imperial woodpecker (Campephilus imperialis) was even bigger than the ivory billed at 23 inches long. It was he world’s biggest woodpecker. It was found only in the Sierra Madre and the Central Volcanic Belt in Mexico.

They were black white feathers on their wings with black crests. The male had red sides to his crest. The crests curled more than those of the ivory bill. The imperial woodpecker fed by ripping up the bark of dead pines to find burrowing insects and there lava. They like old growth montane forest made up of pines like the Durango, Mexican white, Montezuma and the wonderfully named loblolly pine. They would also feed from oaks.

The imperial woodpecker is believed to have become extinct in the 1950s due to deforestation of its home range as well as hunting both adult birds and chicks for food and quack medicines. Since the 1950s there have been only a handful of sightings. The last know individual was shot in 1959. The last sighting was in 2005.

Most of this bird’s original habitat has gone. Chances of its survival do not look good. But then again we thought that about the great ivory bill.

Jaguar Japes and Jollity

So, what exactly is the status of Jaguars in northern Mexico and the southern United States? In the past few weeks there have been a couple of news stories about this beautiful beast.

First of all The National Geographic website carried this story:

February 11, 2009—The largest cat in the Americas is alive and well in the heart of Mexico, scientists say. Three photographs of a male jaguar and exactly 132 poop samples (including the one above, released February 10) are the first known evidence of the predator since the early 1900s. The big cat was snapped by a camera trap in the Sierra Nanchititla Natural Reserve.

I really wish that scientists wouldn't use the word 'poop'. I understand that the words `shit` and `crap` have become swearwords in some echelons of society, but there are still perfectly socially-acceptable synonyms for the process and product of defecation, such as `droppings`, `dung`, or `scat`. However this is just a pet niggle of mine and I digress. Back to the jaguars:

Sierra Nanchititla Natural Reserve is in the south of Estado Mexico, (the State of Mexico), a Mexican state in the central south of the country. Confused? So am I. I will now refer you to Wikipedia, an institution which, though flawed, has its uses.

The State of Mexico is (as the name implies) a state in the middle of Mexico but, again according to Wikipedia , slap bang in the middle of known Jaguar territory. However, the park's website whilst being understandably proud of the presence of jaguars despite the original story (see above) having been splashed all over the world's press.

Now ths story gets more complicated.Take a look at THIS picture. Yup, its another jaguar. And, yup, it is wearing a collar somewhat reminiscnet of that worn by a racing greyhound here in the UK. Does that mean that the CFZ have discovered an illegal jaguar racing cartel? No, of course not.

I will refer you to an article in the L A Times last week which reads:

"A jaguar was captured southwest of Tucson this week during an Arizona Game and Fish Department research study. The study was actually aimed at monitoring black bear and mountain lion habitats.The male cat has been fitted with a satellite tracking collar and released. The collar will provide biologists with location updates every few hours and it is hopeful that this data will provide information on a little-studied population segment of this species. This is the first time in the U.S. that a jaguar has been able to be followed in this manner."

Well, bloody hell that's good news isn't it? You cannae argue with a live jaguar Captain! However, other newspapers and internet commentators have implied that ths evcidence is unique. Well, it is and it isn't. This picture was taken, also outside Tucson, back in 2004, and was accompanied in the original article in the Arizona Daily Star with these quotes:

"This is the most jaguars that have been seen at one time, in one area, since the early 20th century," said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity. "It's certain that at least one jaguar has been able to make a living in Southern Arizona since 2001", said Bill Van Pelt, head of the Game and Fish Department's non-game mammals program. "But a true population would have yielded more photos, and there still is no evidence of female jaguars north of the border", he said.

"When I hear the word 'population,' that implies a breeding population where they're self-sustaining," Van Pelt said. "Until we've documented there are females, we just have dispersing individuals."

Right on Mr Van Pelt (although that is an unfortunate name when one is dealing with the conservation of an animal which has been hunted widely for its coat). But nothing seems to have changed in the last five years. Despite claims in the cryptozoological community that expeditions should be sent out to prove that jaguars were not hunted to extinction in Arizona 110 years ago, there is no evidence that anything untoward has happened. Jaguars are known to live in Central Mexico in the Sierra Nevada which is less than 200 miles south of Arizona. Young male jaguars are regularly wandering from there into the southern United States. Hopefully the Mexico-United States Barrier will not do too much to stop this happening in the future.

What will be really cool will be when a female jaguar crosses the border, and then we can all get excited at the prospect of jaguars returning to the United States as breeding natives for the first time since 1900.