IDENTIFY THIS LIZARD

I THINK IT IS A EUROPEAN AGAMA

DALE DRINNON: Crypto Iggies

I had mentioned some of these in an earlier posting about Chupacabras. In this case I am not going to continue on about Chupas per se but instead I am going to focus on the more definite cryptid iguanid lizards. These ones are regularly reported but get little press coverage.

When I was going through Ivan Sanderson's files shortly after his death I saw a letter from a woman that claimed to have seen a small dinosaur at the edge of the road while she was driving. She said it came up as high as the hood of her car and had a grinning mouth full of pointed teeth and distinctly red eyes. She attached a tracing of the Charles R. Knight reconstruction for Ornitholestes.

This was in Arkansas. The woman wished to remain anonymous but a later message from the same area described the same sort of creatures as being the size of a turkey but without feathers, with a long tail and running around on the hind legs. I did see subsequent references Sanderson had made to these letters in his later correspondance but he never published an opinion.

I had independantly heard of the creatures being called 'Mountain Boomers' again in Arkansas but also in Texas, and blamed for mutilations of livestock in the Arizona-New Mexico area in the early 1970s. This last I did not put much stock in and Sabina Sanderson pretty much flipped out when I sent the information to her in a letter: I later saw that she had filed my letter in 'Animal Chaos and Confusion' together with a note about me that was pretty libellous. When I saw that she had done that, I had the note removed. I don't know why she was so bothered, because just about all the 'Dinosaur' reports in the Western United States are probably references to this creature.

Some of them are reported at exaggerated sizes, but most are small, about six feet long and three feet tall when standing up.

They are also called by the name 'Mini-Rex', which is a name I do not reccomend using, any more than 'Mountain Boomer' (which is ordinarily used for the common collared lizard. The collared lizard also runs on its hind legs).

Chad Arment has advanced the opinion that these are escaped basilisk lizards imported from South America, but the descriptions do not match closely.

These are larger.

The basilisk lizards are Iguanid lizards (belonging to the iguana family) and it is very likely that these are also Iguanid lizards.

Some reports also include such details as a dewlap, a flap at the back of the head, spines running down the back and sometimes horns on the face.

Standard books such as Jerome Clark's Unexplained! (1993) contain reports of them under the heading 'Dinosaurs, Living'




At the time I was first learning of these reports at the SITU I had also heard independantly of some very large iguana lizards reported in Latin America, about the size of a Komodo dragon or about a dozen feet long; these would not be as heavy as a Komodo dragon since they would have a proportionately longer tail.

I learned about them mostly through Native artistic depictions of them, but around that time there was a mention in Pursuit about 'Dinosaurs' in the 'Lost World' area of Venezuela - big lizards the size of a Komodo dragon. On Heuvelmans's checklist the 'Dinosaurs' are said to be like Iguanodons here and actually they seem more like iguanas than iguanodons.

Artistic representations show distinctive scaly crests that identify them as members of the genus Iguana specifically.

And to round this all out, I had recently been posting a series of messages about monsters reported from Patagonia at the South end of South America at the group Frontiers-of-Zoology... in this case I had drawn attention to the depiction of unusual creatures dated around 1600 and reproduced here. In the middle of it are what look like a large alligator, a large lizard and a smaller alligator; probably a caiman. That roused my interest because this area would ordinarily be too cold for such animals and they are not supposed to be here. In this case the lizard looks something like a New Zealand Tuatara and would be living in about the same climate zone. But after considering the possibility it might be a tuatara, I opted for it being a specialised iguana instead: its head is perhaps more like an iguanid's head than a tuatara's head. It does have a distinctive creat of spines along its back.

The illustration does not name any of the creatures but the lizard seems to be a creature otherwise called a 'Dragon', and local legends have it also that the dragons start out as small land snakes, develop a crest of spines down the back and eventually grow into lake and sea monsters (the Patagonian Plesiosaurs, in fact).

And so this form of 'Spiny Snake' or 'Little Dragon' is one of the necessary intermediate steps of that process, like the Scandinavian Lindorms, at least in the Native mind.

That would probably put its length at three to six feet long, or a metre or two: the Patagonian equivalent of the Tatzelwurm possibly.

MUIRHEAD'S MYSTERIES: LARGE LIZARDS IN EARLY 19TH CENTURY NEW ZEALAND

Today I`m roving around the world again to New Zealand or more specifically, early nineteenth-century New Zealand. I quote extensively from the Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute vol.7 1874. A long time ago an American cryptozoologist sent me this and it has been lying dormant (rather like a mythical beast, no less) in my files until now.

`On the Disappearance of the larger Kinds of Lizard from North Canterbury. By Rev. J. W. Stack.

"The absence of living specimens, coupled with the absence of all traces of recent remains, would render the task of proving that the large lizards existed till quite lately in this part of the country very difficult but for the fact that there are many Maoris still living who have not only seen but handled and even eaten them. To prevent the knowledge of an interesting zoological fact being lost I have written down the statements of such of the natives whose testimony seemed most worthy of credit. They are persons whose names appear in the earliest records of the colony as leading members of the native community,and therefore from their age may be considered competent to give evidence upon matters of fact which occurred under their observation forty or fifty years ago.

'The following is a summary of the statements made by Te Aika,Te Uki,Iwikau, and Te ata o Tu:-

'Unu ngara or ngarara burrows were frequently met with on the plains. They were plentiful in the manuka scrub extending from the banks of the Waimakariri past the present site of Eyreton westwards towards the ranges,and at Waitui,between the Hurunui and Waiau rivers. The ngara was darker in colour than the ruatara. They varied in size from two to three feet in length, and ten to twenty inches in girth; along the back from the nape of the neck to the tail was a serrated crest. The mouth was full of teeth, some grew large and caused the upper lip to project. These when taken from the jaw were three or four inches long, and half an inch at the base; when split in two and polished they were prized as mat pins.

'A ngara known as Te iha was kept a long time at Kaiapoi. It was fed on small birds and prepared fern-root. It was very gentle and liked being stroked,uttering at the time a gutteral sound expressive of pleasure. When it made this noise at any other time it was indicative that it wanted food and water.

'Besides the kind frequenting the manuka scrub their was a smaller ngarara, about eighteen inches long, found in the strams. Horomona Iwaiku was eeling some time before the fall of Kaiapoi at Orawhata, a stream which rises near Riccarton and falls into the Waimakariri. After having caught a great many eels, which he killed with a billet of wood, he was terrified by the cries of one he was in the act of killing; though very frightened, he continued to strike till the sound ceased. On examination he found it was a ngara; becoming emboldened he lit a fire, and cooked and ate it. The natives attribute the disappearance of the large ngara to the introduction of cats and to frequent fires. The Norwegian rat has probably a hand too in the extinction of these reptiles." (1)

1.Rev.J.W.Stack.On the Disappearance of the larger Kinds of Lizard from North Canterbury.Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute.vol.7 1874 pp 295-296.

Richard. Sorry, I forgot about lyrics.Try listening to the Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest by Bob Dylan.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I would go further and recommend that if you have never done so that you listen to the entire John Wesley Harding album. It is my favourite Dylan album, and the song cited by Richard is my favourite track.

LARS THOMAS: The Scales have fallen... or something

Dr Lars Thomas who today joins the bloggo community is one of the CFZ's oldest friends and most longstanding members. He lives in Copenhagen, Denmark and has helped us in the past by having our expedition samples' DNA tested. He is a leading expert in the cryptozoology of Scandinavia and is currently working on a book on these cryptids for the CFZ that we are eagerly anticipating.

Denmark has never been a country to make herpetologists foam at the mouth. Our herpetofauna is distinctly meager – two snakes: the adder and the common grass snake, the slowworm, two lizards, and a tiny handful of frogs and toads. They are fairly unevenly distributed, as Denmark consists mainly of islands – American author Bill Bryson likened the look of Denmark to a plate dropped from a considerable height onto a hard floor – so some parts of Denmark completely lacks species that are extremely common elsewhere. Things have been rather quiet for a considerable number of years, but just during the last few months, everything appears to have gone beserk. Maybe not exactly cryptozoologial, but distinctly weird.


There is always the escapees of course. We get our fair share of those, but this year... The odd python or garter snake gone walk-about is nothing new, but a king cobra in the central square in Copenhagen? And what about the two boys who claimed to have seen a rattle snake on a field outside Roskilde some 30 km’s west of Copenhagen? And then we have the very weird ones – like the couple going home by car from a meeting in Herning in western Denmark. It was late at night in the middle of April, and when they were getting close to their house, they suddenly saw a naked and rather curvy girl standing in the middle of the road, carrying a very large green snake draped over her shoulders. The couple stopped the car, but when they got out to investigate, the girl and the snake had both disappeared.



And even the common species are behaving strangely. All the books on Danish wildlife will tell you that the grass snake are not to be found on the large islands off the southwest coast of Denmark, but nevertheless scores of people now claim to have seen it on the island of Rømø. In places where adders have not been seen in years, they are now suddenly starting to appear in droves, and we even have people claming sightings of 2 and 3 feet long slowworms! None of these have been longer than normal when investigated, but still.



And the lizards – oh wow. Some have cropped up in rather special places – one on the 7th. floor of a block of flats in the outskirts of Copenhagen, and some have been sporting unusual colours – blues, reds and orange, and in one case two tails.

The amphibians have been breeding like mad as well – in some cases tadpole counts have have been off the charts. In tiny ponds where you will normally only find a couple of hundred or maybe a couple of thousand tadpoles the numbers have been up way beyond 50.000 and sometimes even more.

Oh yes – all the other creatures are behaving rather strangely too. The fox for instance was exterminated on the extreme easterly Danish island of Bornholm many years ago, but just this years it has been seen on Bornholm at least 15 times. And the bugs and assorted smal beasties – oh, to be an entomologist! Something like 30 species never seen in Denmark before, has been found during the last year or so, and several rare or fairly rare species have started to crop up in the most unexpected places too.

The stagbeetle hasn’t been seen in Denmark for something like 40 years – lo and behold, suddenly it appeared in a garden just north of Copenhagen. The blue oilbeetle, something rather special in these parts, has suddenly decided to show its fat behind far more than usual. I found my first specimen a few days ago, never having seen one in Denmark before.

Central Copenhagen where I live, is not exactly a zoological haven, but nevertheless I have found 11 species of ladybird beetles in an area, where one would normally only find the common 7-spot variety. I know the climate is changing, but come on! I am sure Charles Fort is laughing himself silly in whatever heavenly libraries he hangs out these days.

THE LAZARUS LIZARD

http://wildlifemysteries.wordpress.com/2009/05/01/the-lazarus-lizards/


Have you ever heard of a “Lazarus” lizard?

No. They aren’t called that because they rose from the dead. There’s nothing really spectacular about them at all.

In fact, they are rather banal. In Europe, they are common enough to call them “wall lizards.” They are often seen basking on stone and concrete walls in the summer sun. However, these particular wall lizards aren’t in Europe at all. They are found in Southwestern Ohio and Northern Kentucky.

What’s a European lizard doing in the Ohio Valley?



Follow the link above, and `retrieverman` will tell you...

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Another crypto memory from Hong Kong in the early 1960s

It is pretty much an open secret that my parents and I did not get on, and that my father and I didn't reconcile until a few months before he died. That is ancient history now, but one of the sad knock-on effects is that I didn't have access to the family photos until after his death.

Pictures like these should really have been included in my 2004 book Monster Hunter but I only discovered them recently. It shows a young me (in about 1965) walking hand in hand with my father along one of the footpaths at Magazine Gap on Hong Kong Island. And the picture below is me, solo, at the same place. They perfectly compliment the following story...

Even the most rosy of rose-colored spectacles cannot detract from the fact that the animal exhibits at Hong-Kong botanical gardens of the 1960s were smelly and rather nasty disgraces. They consisted of three or four aviaries, some semi-wild monkeys (more about them later), and five or six rather shabby cages about the size of my living room and that contained a variety of not particularly spectacular zoo exhibits. The exhibits changed fairly rapidly. At the time, my mother intimated that this was because the animals went on holiday. Now, it seems perfectly obvious that this shabby and tawdry little menagerie had a high turnover of exhibits purely because the cages were so unsuitable that the inhabitants died with monotonous regularity.

The ever-shifting population included, at various times, Celebes crested macaques, an elderly and rather moth eaten Asian black bear, some coatis, an extremely large reticulated python, and a large, greenish-brown monitor lizard. From my earliest years, I have been always been fascinated by reptiles, amphibians and fish. As I write this, I can hear my tree frogs singing away in the corner of my sitting room, there is a Nile Monitor called Roger in an enormous vivarium in my bedroom, and the landing is home to a couple of alligator snapping turtles, a red eared terrapin, and a cane toad named “Little Noodles.” This monitor lizard in Hong Kong, however, was the first one that I had seen. I was familiar with Komodo Dragons from programs on television; but seeing a monitor lizard - albeit only three or four feet in length - in the flesh was a true revelation. I remember squatting on my haunches, outside, and gazing at the miserable reptile in awe. It sat there on the bare concrete floor of its cage, motionless for much of the time; though occasionally it would slither unenthusiastically towards the fetid pool of stagnant, green, scummy water that served both as drinking water and its bath.

Having shared a bedroom with a monitor lizard for several years now, I am more conversant with their mores. Roger likes nothing more than to defecate in his water that has to be changed on a regular basis to avoid it becoming an open sewer. This knowledge may help one realize why this glorious lizard was only resident at the Botanical Gardens for a brief period and before - like so many of its predecessors - going on “holiday.”

The upper part of Victoria Peak was encircled with a number of footpaths that partly, or wholly, circumnavigated the mountain. It was my family's practice to go into the countryside for walks on Sunday afternoons; and on one Sunday afternoon in 1967 or 1968, we were walking along the footpath which heads from Magazine Gap into the forested interior of the island.

One of the defining characteristics of the mind of a small child is the way that it accepts everything at face value. Despite having a patchy, but in places surprisingly deep, knowledge of the fauna of Hong Kong I was not particularly surprised, therefore, when during our Sunday afternoon walk, my family was confronted by the very same - or, so I thought, at the time - monitor lizard who had so recently “gone on holiday” from the Botanical Gardens crossing the footpath in front of us. It was greenish brown in color and stared straight at me accusingly, with little beady black eyes, and disappeared into the undergrowth that flanked the tiny footpath.

This incident would probably have been merely consigned to the flotsam and jetsam of my childhood memories if it had not been for another incident that took place a few years later. In the September of 1970, I left the primary school which I had attended since the age of six and began secondary school. I was a pupil at Island School, which had only been founded four years previously, and was - at the time - based in what had been a military hospital on Bowen Rd in the Mid-Levels. It was a strange place with a peculiar zeitgeist. It was popularly believed to have been haunted and the memoirs of its first headmaster, Geoffrey Speke, include amusing recollections of early pupils who had been fed ghost stories by their amahs, and who were old enough to remember how the hospital had been the site of some of the worst atrocities of the Second World War. The invading Japanese troops had massacred, tortured and raped, patients and nursing staff in the hospital and it was widely believed that their ghosts remained. I can honestly say that I never saw anything even mildly paranormal there, but the shadow of its macabre past enveloped the school like a shroud.

I do remember - during the hot autumn of 1970 - being appalled to find the bodies of dog faced fruit bats that had been crucified on the trunks of the huge palm trees and that surrounded the school grounds. It appeared that this was the work of local Chinese building contractors who were working on new buildings for the school and who believed that these utterly harmless creatures were possessed of evil Spirits. However, on the plus side Island School had a zoo. It wasn't a very big zoo, but it was undoubtedly a zoo. It was presided over by a lady called Mrs. Maylett and it included several Gibbons, at least two of the local species of civet, a rhesus monkey, a long tailed macaque, large numbers of birds, some reptiles and some smaller domestic livestock which was beneath my dignity to take an interest in. Dr. John Romer - the zoologist who took over from Herklots in the early 1950s as the leading authority on Hong Kong animals (especially the Reptiles and Amphibians) - was a frequent visitor, and on at least two occasions he donated beasts from his own collection to the Island School Zoo. One of these was a large Burmese python, and the other was a locally caught Chinese water monitor (Varanus salvator).

I'd been vaguely aware for years that water monitors occasionally were to be found in Hong Kong. If I had thought about it - and I am not going to do a Stalinist rewrite of history and imbue my eight year old alter ego with insights that I certainly didn't have at that time - I probably would have thought that the monitor lizard that my family and I had seen a few years earlier near Magazine Gap had been of the species. However, when I saw Romer's magnificent specimen, it became perfectly obvious that the two species were entirely distinct. The water monitor is a distinctive lizard with a rather beautiful pattern of yellow dots that has given it the alternate name of golden water monitor. It is also a much more delicate creature than the slightly chunky lizard that I had seen both in the botanical gardens and - albeit for a few seconds - in the wild. The Water monitor is the only member of its family in Hong Kong, or indeed in most of China. If the animal that I had seen was not a water- monitor, what on earth was it?

Much to my joy, nearly 30 years after my original sighting, I discovered supporting evidence for the existence of a hitherto unknown species of large monitor lizard in Hong Kong. Over the years I have been collecting bound copies of The Hong Kong Naturalist. Sadly, it has become prohibitively expensive in recent years. A complete set was sold very recently for over £14,000. However, I have been collecting individual volumes as and when I can, and I have photocopies of many of the more interesting articles from the remaining volumes. One of these - amazingly - contains an account of the capture of a lizard that appears to be an unknown species of monitor, from Victoria Peak.

On the 21st January 1930 a lady walking along Lugard Road was frightened when she saw what she thought was a “miniature crocodile.” With the help of a passing policeman, some Chinese coolies, and a “Japanese gentleman who was passing” they cornered the creature. With great presence of mind the un-named Japanese Gentleman took off his coat and threw it over the animal. The lizard later allowed itself to be dumped in a sack and to be taken to a Police Station and ultimately to the Botanic Gardens where it “was placed in a cage.” The creature was examined by Dr Geoffrey Herklots, the most famous naturalist then living in Hong Kong. His description read thus:

Total length - 22 feet 10¼ inches, head: 6 inches, tail: 1 foot 6¼ inches.

Breadth - At neck 2¼ inches, middle of body 6 inches, in front of hind limbs 2½ inches, middle of tail 1 inch.

Depth - Base of tail 2 inches, groove along back and beginning of tail, ridge along rest of tail.

Colour - Above brown-grey, or deep olive, with yellow spots or hands, below a dirty yellow, neck no distinctive bands,

Eyes - Open and close independently, lower lids move upwards. Iris a marbled pale Vandyke brown with a very narrow white or very faintly yellow circle immediately next to pupil.

Herklots noted that this was only one of several records of strange lizards seen both on Hong Kong Island and on the mainland at the time. It was initially identified as Varanus bengalensis, a species that isn't actually found in China. It was also tentatively identified as an African species - Varanus albiguaris. The surviving photographs, however, suggest that it was not either of these species. It is also certain that it was not the indigenous Varanus salvator so what was it?

Today, exotic animals from all over the world are kept as pets, and escapees undoubtedly can and do become established in the wild; however, the international trade in exotic reptiles was almost non-existent seventy years ago. Therefore, the suggestion that the lizard that died soon after capture was an escaped African Varanus bengalensis can, I think, be discounted.

Unfortunately, the originals of the photographs were destroyed during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during the Second World War, as was the preserved body of the unfortunate reptile. Two rather substandard pictures are all that remain. For what it is worth, however, I am convinced that the animal that I saw, and the creature photograph by Herklots, were of the same species. Precisely what it was remains a mystery.

This is not a shameless plug, but Monster Hunter can be purchased from Amazon at the link below:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Monster-Hunter-Jonathan-Downes/dp/0951287273/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239922653&sr=8-1

GUEST BLOGGER JAN EDWARDS: The Italian Job

We have been in contact with Jan for ages, and it is with great pleasure that we welcome her aboard, not only as a guest blogger, but as a Co. Durham representative for the CFZ. With Davy Curtis already at the helm in the country, the two of them will make a dream team par excellence...

I have just got back from a holiday in Italy. When I left, we still had snow here on the hills. I got back to snowdrops in full bloom, daffodils pushing through the turf, hens laying for England... amazing what a difference a week makes.

It’s only a matter of days before the local frogs start spawning – although there are some places in the Northern hills where last year’s tadpoles are still waiting to morph... The spring/summer season is too short and tends to be cold, slowing down the process to two years instead of one.

The toads will wait until the frogs are well into their spawning season before they will start, and their tadpoles are noticeable by being small and jet black, at a time when the frogs are turning mottled and growing legs.

The robin is singing his heart out and staking out his territory, as is the blackbird, but what really caught my eye yesterday was a pair of buzzards riding the thermals in a fantastic courtship display. The sun was shining off their backs and they just took my breath away.

But I blather... What I wanted to tell you about was a Creature from Pisa. We’d stopped off at the Botanic Gardens, close to the wobbly tower. My fella doesn’t notice things unless they are blatantly obvious, so he didn’t notice the THING that was living under the flaked sun-baked plaster peeling away from a building. It was small, black, and it was next-to-silent, and it disappeared into it’s broken plasterwork home when my shadow past it. I just caught a glimpse of a fast moving blackness, so obviously, I stopped walking and watched.

It took about 3 seconds to re-appear – a quick flicker of jet black something, which hid again as soon as it realised I was still there. A few seconds later, and I was rewarded by a similar performance, but I still didn’t know what it was. I’d guessed at a lizard, a gecko perhaps, or a bat maybe... or even a huge mother**cking spider... So I did what ANY self-respecting Beast-Hunter would do... I broke a bit of the plaster off. It had lifted anyway, and wasn’t doing the building any good.

The THING hid deeper in the plasterwork, and so I broke more off. I just wanted to see what it was, you understand.... By this time, my absence had been noticed, and himself had come back to find me. He was horrified to find me “demolishing a building” as soon as his back was turned, and insisted that I stop my destruction immediately.

I said “...but there’s a THING...” but he wasn’t having any of it. I broke one more bit of plaster off, for luck, and realised that the THING was in fact some sort of lizard, before I was lead away to look at plants. I don’t think RyanAir would approve of me smuggling a reptile into Liverpool Airport, so it’s perhaps as well that I was lead away when I was.... But, girls and boys, I ask you – wouldn’t you have done the same?

Jan Edwards, Head of Animal Care
Farplace Animal Rescue - the no-kill animal sanctuary
Farplace, Sidehead, Westgate, County Durham, DL13 1LE
http://www.farplace.org.uk/

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.