SAMUEL MANASEH: Moments from Brazil

Hello again Jonathan;

It's been a while since I wrote. I am still working on my theme of moments from Brazil, with an general theme of animals. But out of necessity, I have started including pet animals as well.

I have two recent blog postings that might be of interest to your biologists.

The first is a blog posting (with an accompanying video) about a pet crab named Johnny. Johnny is unusual in that it responds with affection to human touch, and will actually 'sleep' when its owner pats its back. And Johnny is by no means a tiny crab - very much the contrary!

The second is a blog posting (with two accompanying videos) that might have a wider appeal than just your biologists who are interested in animal behaviour, and in fact might interest sports fans, in particular, football fans.

Everyone loves watching Brazilian football players because of the way they juggle the ball in the game and so make it entertaining.

It appears that enjoying watching Brazilian football players is not a preserve of human beings, but even pet animals!

One of the videos is about Fred, a chicken that plays football. Fred started playing football by chasing the ball when it went out of bounds when its owner was having a game with his friends. The second video is about a border collie that not only enjoys playing football, it knows how to header footballs.

The general theme of this second blog posting is that it will never ever be easy to select the National Football Team in Brazil when even pets want to play. It might provide some form of humour to your readers who follow the decisions coaches make in selecting their National teams, especially with the World Cup approaching this June, and national coaches have to decide whether to include animals on the team.

The links to the blogs are:
http://momentsfrombrazil.blogspot.com/2010/04/johnny-pet-crab.html

(Johnny The Pet Crab)
http://momentsfrombrazil.blogspot.com/2010/04/selecting-brazilian-national-football.html

(Selecting the Brazilian National Football team will never be easy when even pets want to play.)

Cheers!

'GIANT' ANACONDA PICTURE

Recently Lindsay wrote about this photograph of a supposed giant anaconda from Brazil. Both Richard and I had seen the picture before but never in this quality or with the writing on it. However, as Richard writes: 'It's a green anaconda; you can tell from the belly markings. It does look very big but there is nothing to tell you how far away from the camera it is.'

MORE ON ANDRE ISSI

If one good thing has come out of the ongoing saga of the Peruvian giant snake, it is that we have made friends with Andre Issi and if it had not been for all this stuff about Mike and Greg Warner's expedition to Peru, then none of this would ever have happened.

One of Andre's pictures was taken out of context by a Northern Irish newspaper which implied that it was the 40m snake claimed by ther Warners. It was of course no such thing and the forces of righteousness, led by Dr Dan, said as much. Unfortunately we all jumped to the conclusion that Andre was the bloke claiming that the snake in the pictures, which, as you can see, is dead (or nearly so) and floating in the water, was the one claimed to be 40m. As Andre writes:

"I was traveling alone by kayak from Brasília to Santa Catarina (state of Brazil) in a long journey along 6000 km crossing Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina.

It was so hard and I almost die three times. About a city Guaira (frontier between Brasil and Paraguay) I saw this anaconda floating in the river. I take a lot of pictures and filmed. It has about six meters and his head is under the water arrested in the trees. I had never seen anaconda before and I became very nervous, at the last moment thinking it was alive.

My kayak has 5,20 m and the anaconda has about six meters. Only it. I´ll send you another photo beside the anaconda that i take like a joke because it seems like reference to see the real tale of the snake."

As one can see from the pictures, Andre is clearly an OK dude, who is more than averagely intrepid and is possessed of a silly sense of humour; attributes that would make him an ideal member of the CFZ. Dan writes:

"Convey my apologies to Mr Issi (...) I'll buy him all the beer he fancies; he appears to have achieved a rare feat indeed: he photographed a wild anaconda in its natural habitat without the aid of a team of snake-handlers and he managed to find quite a big one at that. Admittedly, it was dead at the time, which takes a bit of the shine off the achievement but not very much shine;
6m anacondas surely don't die very often and photographing one in the couple of days between death and complete decomposition is quite an achievement (especially seeing as us lot in an overcrowded island have yet to get our hands on even one of the supposedly ubiquitous big cats
that are supposed to be here).

So, apologies to Andre from me and if he's coming to Woolsery at any time, please pre-warn both myself and the landlord of the local pub.... "

And this is the way that disagreements within the Fortean and cryptozoological communities should be managed: like gentlemen, with a handshake and a beer afterwards, and not with endless flame wars and backbiting. There are certain other people within the Crypto community who really should take note of this.

But off my soapbox - over to Andre with a few more pictures....

How can I describe eight months about a journey in one page? I can´t send more images while was traveling by the simple fact was in the forest or in the middle of a poor small cities where a computer was difficult access or days and days without cities. I beginning it in the center of south america and ends it in the south coast of Brasil after the kayak schok in my head while I was returning to the coast between big waves of the Atlantic Ocean, like you can see in the photo with a life guard behind me. I almost was arrested in Uruguay because I was alone without a life boat. I must to do a trailer and buy an old bike to cross Uruguay by land 650 km. In Brasil I return to water and go to the north.I never receive any money cause this or try to receive. I only do my travels by adventure.



CAPTIONS:

(Above left) Tracks of Jaguars where he slept for the night

(Left) "Impossible is only a word. I do it"

(Below Left) Off the Coat of San Catarina

(Bottom) Crossing Uruguay by Bicycle

Dude, it is a pleasure to know you and I hope you remain part of the CFZ family for many years to come!