MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES: INTERESTING INVERTEBRATES PART FOUR

Hello again,

Here is another collection of stories of a Fortean nature concerning invertebrates; both spiders and insects. The first story is from The Guardian of May 30th 1987 `Death in Venice for marauding gnats.`

The article begins by mentioning the forthcoming summit of world leaders in Venice. Then, 'But for the leaders` Venetian hosts,one less publicised problem is multiplying daily by the million; the gnats of the Lagoon are beginning to swarm. Last summer, dense aerial formations twice shut down Venice airport; frequently, the waterbuses chug to a halt in the face of the ubiquitous insects. The fear is that the summit, to take place on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, could be blotted out, hidden from sight and even worse,from television cameras…Venetians insist that the gnats do not bite, just get in the way. But even so, no chances are being taken with the leaders. At Venice city hospital, two private rooms are being made ready for any illustrious patient – and all staff leave has been cancelled.'(1)

Now moving on to spiders; a rich source of lore. Unknown paper (possibly The Daily Telegraph) August 6th 1991:

`Blind spiders are a sight for sore eyes`: A colony of blind spiders previously thought to be extinct has been found in a remote cave on the Nullarbor Plain in South Australia. Known as Troglodiplura Lowryi, the spiders are related to the trapdoor and funnelweb species. Only two other types of eyeless spider are believed to exist. Their straw-coloured bodies are about one inch across. They lost their pigment and their eyes thousands of years ago when the species moved hundreds of feet underground and more than a mile from the cave entrance. A research team from the Australian Museum`s arachnology department did not find any adult spiders but the evidence that the colony was doing well. Only carcases of the species had been found in the past. (2)

The second spider story, coincidentally also connected to Australia, dates from September 12th 1991, also in The Daily Telegraph. `Killer spiders gassed in Norfolk barn.` :

'A barn in which killer spiders were found was sealed off while health officials destroyed the insects with poison gas. The Australian spiders were discovered in the barn in Seething, Norfolk, where a couple had stored furniture from Adelaide. For 66 hours, health workers pumped gas into the barn to destroy the small and mainly black redbacks, which can kill humans. The venom paralyses the respiratory system after two to three days of pain and nausea…Fumigation specialists pumped methyl bromide inside and around the furniture and health officers recovered two dead redbacks…Mr Paul Hillyard, a spider expert at the Natural History Museum, London,said redbacks posed a greater danger to children and the elderly than to healthy young adults. “Deaths from redbacks were common in Australia until about 30 years ago when an anti-venom vaccine was introduced widely,” he said.' (3)

Moving on to ants, or rather giant ants, this again from The Daily Telegraph, (I`ve not suddenly turned Conservative by the way, I still intend to keep the Red Flag flying over this corner of Macclesfield some of you will be glad to hear, until that is banished by right-wing hordes, it`s just that for a while at least this particular broadsheet was strong on off beat stories) of October 4th 1991: `Man dies as giant ants swarm into motel room`. A man died after being attacked by a swarm of the world`s largest ants, it was claimed yesterday. Mrs Hazel Murphey said she woke to find hundreds of Brazilian fire ants, each as big as a thumbnail, crawling over their bed in a motel room in Houston, Texas. Mrs Murphy, whose husband died later, is suing the motel owners…They are currently threatening construction of the world`s biggest scientific instrument, a 17-mile wide atom smashing machine near Waxahachie, Texas [ ah - is this the same thing that has been trying to smash atoms in Europe over the last few months with repeated failure that some commentators are quite seriously putting down to Divine intervention? R] Attempts to kill the ants off have failed because,unlike many insect species, they have several queens per mound, and scientists now fear they will attack thousands of miles of electric cables that will service the machine`s twin 53 mile underground tunnels, where atomic particles will smash into each other at almost the speed of light”.' (4)

So we have two stories here - ants kill human. God (?) uses ants, …to kill machine!

Finally, the humble wart-biter cricket and I assure you it didn`t stop a new runway or shopping centre being built. This from National Trust Magazine Autumn 1995: 'The almost extinct wart-biter cricket has been rediscovered at a National Trust property in Wiltshire. Thirteen wart-biters were found at the site which has recently been transformed by a downland restoration programme. The wart biter is very particular about where it lives and, with the help of English Nature, the National Trust is now managing the estate to safeguard its future. It gets its name from the old Swedish custom of allowing insects to Bite off warts' (5). [My own emphasis in italics. This is an interesting bit of folklore. Any one care to investigate?]

1 G.Armstrong and S.Tisdall. Death in Venice for marauding gnats. The Guardian May 30th 1987
2 Sydney Correspondent. Blind spiders are a sight for sore eyes. The Daily Telegraph (?) August 6th 1991
3 G.Bartlett. Killer Spiders gassed in Norfolk barn. The Daily Telegraph September 12th 1991
4 A.Berry. Man dies as giant ants swarm into motel room. The Daily Telegraph. October 4th 1991
5 Anon. Warts and all. National Trust Magazine. Autumn. Autumn 1995.

Its nice here with a view of the trees
Eating with a spoon?
They don`t give you knives?
`Spect you watch those trees
Blowing in the breeze
We want to see you lead a normal life.

Peter Gabriel-Lead A Normal Life.

COMING VERY SOON TO CFZ PRESS

FROM THE BACK COVER:

Throughout human history gladiators have fought in various arenas for the enjoyment of others. Yet even the greatest of human champions would last mere seconds against some of nature’s nightmares.

Few people would fail to recognise the killing capability of a great white shark. However, is it without peer? Does it have anything to fear from any of the ocean’s other predators?

Similarly, few people would doubt the killing capability of the legendary Tyrannosaurus rex, but could it eat any dinosaur it came across? If it had lived in another place and at another time, would T. Rex have ended up being lunch for something else?

Predator Deathmatch is the first book ever to study apex predators and actually pose the question of who is/was the ultimate predator by pitting them against each other. The author has carefully profiled each contender with a mixture of historical data, information from the fossil record and current observations of wild animal behaviour. He whets our appetites with a big fight build-up prior to a fictional description of the clash itself between two apex predators.

Clashes include Great White Shark vs. Killer Whale, Polar Bear vs. Siberian Tiger and T. Rex vs. the prehistoric Supercroc, to name but a few. Each chapter presents the available facts and then opines to settle the score.

Informative, educational and thoroughly entertaining, Predator Deathmatch presents the reader with the facts, the myths, and the conjecture on these mighty predators. Forget Muhammad Ali; open the page and find out who really is the greatest of all time!

Nick Molloy is a non-conformist failed athlete who spent a few years working as a rat, wearing a suit for a FTSE 250 company. He saw the light, sacrificed the six-figure salary, discarded the suit (literally), and now earns a modest stipend as a male stripper. He has been known to answer to the name Sexecute.

WEIRD WEEKEND 2009: Neil Arnold

CFZ PEOPLE: Lindsay Selby

One of the things that CFZ members all seem to have in common is a close relationship with their pets. Even though I masquerade as a scientist in public I am ridiculously anthropomorphic towards my animals (especially dogs and cats), and have even been known to talk baby talk to my caecilians.

Therefore I understand perfectly what dear Lindsay Selby is going through. Her cat Baggins was put to sleep yesterday.

"He was 14 and had been with us since he was 6 weeks old. His liver and kidneys were failing. Just collected his remains and buried him in the garden. I needed to bring him home, you know? He was a truly cryptid cat having moved to Scotland with me the year I lived up there on the Black Isle so I could be near Loch Ness. I am devastated as it was unexpected and sudden. Probably poison from eating a poisoned mouse."

Our thoughts and prayers are with you, my dear....

FOR YOUR INFORMATION - We shall (of course) be reviewing it when it arrives...

Dear Jonathan,

Bigfoot in Georgia will be available in December.

I want to let you know that Pine Winds Press is publishing a new series about Bigfoot, looking at the Bigfoot phenomena in individual states. Jeffery Wells, with his new book Bigfoot in Georgia, provides a great start to the series.

Jeff explores the mystery of Bigfoot in Georgia from the earliest Native American legends through the latest Bigfoot hoax. He reports on encounters throughout history, the Elkins Creek cast, and the fascinating people who are searching in Georgia today for clues about the elusive creature.

We are hoping that you will review the book on your website and/or newsletter. If you are interested, we will be happy to send you a review copy.

We are also looking for authors who would be interested in writing the story of their state or province. If you or anyone you know is interested, please email me with contact information. Some states seem so full of activity that they may deserve more than one book. We welcome writers who want to write about a particular region, too.

All the best,
Tom Blaschko
President, Pine Winds Press, a division of Idyll Arbor
Tom@IdyllArbor.com
phone: 360-825-7797
fax: 360-825-5670

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday’s News Today

http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

Did you know that on this day in 1912 the bodies of Scott, Wilson and Bowers of the ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition were discovered along with Scott’s diary.

And now for the news:

Photo of 55ft snake shocks China

Spanish officers shoot dead dog they think is lion

Hungry dog starts chip pan fire

Wasps help spread the festive cheer

Sharp-toothed shark acts as midwife

Villagers confine rare turtle, say it is God

China's Hu arrives in Singapore with panda offer

Wonder if he gets annoyed by people asking “Who is the President of China”.

DALE DRINNON: Looking at the Mapinguari

Dale started at IUPUI hoping for a degree in Biology before changing to Anthropology and as a result, has a very diverse background in Geology, Zoology, Paleontology, Anatomy, Archaeology, Psychology, Sociology, Literature, Latin, Popular Culture, Film criticism, Mythology and Folklore, and various individual human cultures especially mentioning those of the Pacific and the Americas. He has a working knowledge of every human fossil find up until his graduation and every important Cryptozoological sighting up to that point. He has been an amateur along on archaeological excavations in Indiana as well as doing some local tracking of Bigfoot there. Now he is on the CFZ bloggo....

My personal contributions to the matter stem from a 1971 letter sent to SAGA magazine after a cover story on the discovery of tracks attributed to the orang dalam. The letter described a creature seen in parts of Brazil and called Capelobo [= Pelobo], basically a version of the Mapinguari and describing it as looking like an upright tailless howler monkey the size of a man (height of a short man, but weighing about 250 pounds). I immediately recognised this as a version of the Mapinguari or Pe-de-Garrafa as described in Bernard Heuvelmans's book On the Track of Unknown Animals. Heuvelmans mentions that it is said to leave a track like the bottom of a bottle and later on mentions this is something like the shape of an orangutan's track [this begins from the oldest editions of the book, from 1955]

The same description is mentioned as the characteristic description of the mono rei or king monkey in the 2001 book The Monster of the Madidi by Simon Chapman. From this it seems the mono rei and the mono grande (big monkey) are two distinctly different things. That would seem to correspond to the reported footprints since the mono grande's 'Hand-like' tracks do not agree with the 'Bottle foot.' Something like the 'Bottle foot' tracks were also reported from Honduras and British Honduras at least as far back as the 1930s, and Eberhart mentions this.

There has been much discussion of the theory that the Mapinguari represents a surviving ground sloth in more recent years. The giant ground sloth does seem to correspond to a cryptid reported in those same areas, but the key difference is that the Mapinguari types are described as being tailless monkeys or apes, often walking upright. The part about them being tailless probably invalidates the suspected ground sloth candidacy. On the other hand, the clawed yehos or yahos ('Devils') of the West Indies could possibly be smallish surviving ground sloths, about chimp-sized.

Going back to the theory that the Mapinguaris are usually arboreal apes that leave ring-shaped (orangutan-like) footprints on the ground, it is noteworthy to look at some traditional depictions of them as posted on the internet (the photos come from internet sources and no attempt to defraud the owners is intended. The reproduction of the photos as educational materials is protected under international copyright law).

It seems that the Mapinguari is regularly depicted as a cyclops and furthermore that the head is barely distinct from the body. Furthermore, the mouth is large and fanged but does not seem to bear any direct placement on the head. It arises from below the level of the shoulders. Some acounts also say that the mouth is protruberant, like the nose end of a horse's snout and shows round nostrils pointing forwards. This does not say that the face is horse-like, the mouth part is described as being distinct from the indistinct head. Furthermore, the entire body is covered with a long and coarse coat of hair. The hair is usually reddish but may be darker.

Looking at an orangutan's head it is possible to see how some of these descriptions might come about. First of all the head of an orangutan is rather bizzare and in some cases barely presents any aspect that would normally register as a face. The mouth area is distinct from the rest of the face and a beard sometimes accentuates the distinction. The eyes are set very close together and the eyelids can be lighter than the rest of the face. In several higher primates this is a warning sign; the mouth is opened and the eyelids dropped as a threat. Looking at the close-set eyes with pale lids and the darker strip between them, it is possible to see how that might look like a single eye from a distance. And the stances and limb proportions are shown as being pretty much like an orangutan as well.

I also include Ivan Sanderson's reproduction of the orangutan foot extended and the track, and the adjoining footprint by contrast would be more like the 'Hand-like' track of the mono grande (as opposed to the mono rei).

So this brings us to the map that explains the hypothesis. Most apes do not have much of an identifiable fossil ancestry. Orangutans are an exception, 'pongo' (orangutan) fossils are well known from mainland Asia, especially in China. But this brings up another problem. The fossils clearly belong to larger ground-living apes and modern orangutans of the proper genus pongo have a large number of very specific and very peculiar adaptations to life in the trees. They cannot be the same. Therefore I had proposed the name 'protopongo' for the fossil ground-living ancestors to the modern tree-living pongo. There follows the suggestion (including by Heuvelmans) that the classical abominable snowman or yeti represents a survival of these fossil apes, and a further suggestion implied by Coleman and others that the apes crossed the Behring land bridge and remnants had been reported in modern times (the name 'Hesperopithecus' [?] is on the map because there remains the possibility that some alleged dental fossils and alleged associated 'cultural' bone-cracking remains unaccounted for by the decision that all of the later fossils ascribed to this genus were pig's teeth).

And so there remains the possibility as indicated on the chart that the South American forms described as Mapinguari are parallel-evolved arboreal apes descended from the same generalised ground-living ancestors. At the time in question there was very much demonstrable faunal exchange between East Asia, North America and then South America in turn. And in order to indicate the possibility that the South American apes are separate parallel-evolved arboreal forms out of the same ground-living ancestors, I have given them the tenative name 'parapongo' ('Like an orangutan'). I do not insist that this name necessarily become official if this is proven to be the case; what I am doing is simply showing how these forms must be related to while also being distinct from one another. The actual honour of naming the creatures should go to their official discoverers, whomever they turn out to be.

And of course any professional anthropologists or primatologists can feel free to say that the whole idea is daft up until such a time that actually happens.

In part this material was submitted to the SITU for publication in 1990-91, together with several other articles of a similar nature. Unfortunately, the journal PURSUIT folded shortly after that point.