A CRYPTID AT THE ZOO

Graham is currently removing what is left of my stuff from the loft of my erstwhile home in Exeter. Amongst piles of rubbish he found a very tatty and coverless guide book to London Zoo from sometime in the 1930s. It includes this: a reference to the third species of Asian giant salamander that was at that time believed to exist, although these days it is usually considered to be a synonym for the Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus).











The type specimen was found in Hong Kong during the 1920s when a drain in the Royal Botanic Gardens burst....

ANDREW MAY: Words from the Wild Frontier

Jon has asked me to provide a quick digest of news from the CFZ outposts in Australia and the USA. I will try to do this on a daily basis, but to get started, here are some stories from the last seven days...

From CFZ Australia:

It's out! The CFZ Yearbook 2011 New from CFZ Press

Sumatra's Short Man of the Forest

From Crypto Squad USA:

CFZ: The 2011 Yearbook Has Arrived! (I know, but it doesn't hurt to mention it again)

From Nick Redfern's blog:

Lovers Lanes & Cryptids

CFZ AUSTRALIA ON THE NIGHT PARROT

Another video short from CFZ Australia, this time on one of my favourite Antipodean cryptids. They write:

"The Night Parrot (Pezoporos occidentalis) is one of Australia's 'lost' species. It was first discovered in 1845, and named in 1861. But since that time numbers have dwindled and sightings have been so rare that the bird was at one stage thought to be extinct. We hope you enjoy this short presentation. CFZ Australia www.cfzaustralia.blogspot.com"

GUEST BLOGGER LINDSAY SELBY: Here be monsters...or are they?

A browse through the university special collections found some monster stories.

A relation of a terrible monster taken by a fisherman neere Wollage, July the 15. 1642. and is now to be seen in Kings street, Westminster. The shape whereof is like a toad, and may be called a toad-fish, but that which makes it a monster, is, that it hath hands with fingers like a man, and is chested like a man. Being neere five foot long, and three foot over, the thicknesse of an ordinary man. The following discourse will describe him more particularly. Whereunto is added, a relation of a bloudy encounter betwixt the Lord Faulconbridge and Sir John Hotham, wherein the Duke of Richmond is hurt, and the Lord Faulconbridge taken prisoner. With some other misselanies of memory both by sea and land, with some forreigne occurrences. [electronic resource] : Imprint London : Printed for Nath. Butter, 1642.

This sounds to me like some sort of seal or walrus . Others may have some idea. In 1642 I don’t suppose they had much idea about marine creatures .The tale below is obvious to us what it is.

A true and perfect account of the miraculous sea-monster, or, Wonderful fish lately taken in Ireland bigger than ox, yet without legs, bones, fins, or scales, with two heads, and ten horns of 10 or 11 foot long, on eight of which horns there grew knobs about the bigness of a cloak-button, in shape like crowns or coronets, to the number of 100 on each horn, which were all to open, and had rows of teeth within them ... : together with the manner how it first appeared and was taken at a place called Dingel Ichough ... / [electronic resource] : faithfully communicated by an eye witness. Imprint [London?] : Printed for P. Brooksby and W. Whitwood, 1674.

It’s a squid or octopus of course. It got me thinking though about what other misidentified animals could be reported as cryptids. It is easy to see a monster when you are not familiar with it’s appearance.

GUEST BLOGGER TANIA POOLE: PLENTY TO SEE IN CENTRAL VICTORIA

Tania turned up at the Weird Weekend a few years ago having travelled all the way from Australia for the privelige. She is a jolly nice young lady with an enduring interest in things fortean and things zoological, and it is a pleasure to welcome her aboard the good ship bloggo..

While I sometimes think that I live in a boring place, where it seems there are not enough cryptid sightings to warrant an expedition, I really think I just don’t admire it properly. This landscape is so vast I don’t know where to start! Here in Central Victoria, we are declared a Temperate Zone, it does get very dry and as we have seen this past week, fires are the worst threat. Over 200 estimated dead Victorians over one weekend is a very rare thing to see, and this is the worst in white Australian history!

But since my teens I have always wanted to know what lives in MY area? What cryptids skulk through the Golden Plains of west, central and south-east Victoria? Well, the cryptid seen the most is the Big Cat, with the occasional exception of something really strange and rare. We all have some ideas that in this area, Big Cats are possibly here because of the result of circuses ending and animals being released, or the story of US air force army mascot let go after WW2. But still there has not been any real evidence of a deceased one found, and that is why the news will occasionally broadcast a segment on the mysterious out-of-place Big Cats in rural Australia, usually interviewing Mike Williams who discusses the presence of ABC’s, while loyally sporting a CFZ t-shirt. But through my own research over the years, and stories I have heard, there are some very juicy accounts of ABC’s and even thylacines in this fine state of ours. Of course there are Yowies too, but I don’t have many Victorian local stories of Yowies (even though at the Weird Weekend 2006, I hounded Paul Cropper for reported sightings of Yowies in the Otway State Forest, South-West Victoria’s rainforest region already famous for its glow-worms and unique carnivorous black snails (Victaphanta compacta).

But the reports of ABC’s are plentiful in Central Victoria, and where I live, (just outside Ballarat) you hear of many crossing roads in front of motorists, and farmers finding mutilated sheep and cows with strange claw marks on their backs. There are of course plaster casts of paw prints, scat samples, and fur. Most of the articles I collected in the 1990s indicate that it would be rare from anyone in the regions I mentioned above to have NOT seen an ABC of some sort. Shiny eyes in headlights and deep snarling sounds when someone walks on their property at night. From the book of Tony Healy and Paul Cropper, Out of the Shadows comes the tale of a woman, who, when stationed as a Land Army girl during WW2, knew that the Americans kept a mountain lion with four cubs which they had to get rid of. They were released near Hall’s Gap in the Grampians. An account I have heard from a friend since then was of a man who does horse riding tours through the Grampians. One day he took the horses out to find a new track to take tourists on. At one point the horses stopped and would not go any further. Up ahead, the tour guide saw big yellow cats sunning themselves on large boulders.

And then there are the personal accounts I have heard from people over the years with stories from all over Victoria. Often I will be with many friends and acquaintances who tell me stories of sightings. While ABC sightings are common enough, other stories I have include Thylacines and a couple of Yowies.

One is of when I was 12, back in 1989. I was on a primary school camp in Gippsland, and a bus driver took us kiddies down to Wilson’s Promontory. On the way we stopped on the side of the road to approach some kangaroos and emus. While the others busied themselves chasing rather large Eastern Greys, I stood back and heard the driver tell my principal about the time he was driving a bus down Wilson’s Prom one night and a thylacine crossed the road in front of his headlights. I remember his description – ‘dog like and sandy coloured, with the stripes on his lower back and stiff tail at the end.’ It was no mistake. That had to be a Tasmanian Tiger. Wilson’s Promontory is famous for Thylacine sightings. I have an article where a pilot in a light aircraft saw one on one of the Promontories beaches.

Another story comes from Central Vic, near Castlemaine. My very good friends (who are like second parents to me) in Guildford/Tarilta area of the Loddon River have a story to tell about a thylacine sighting sometime in the mid to late 1970’s. They had bought some property in the Box-Ironbark forest on the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, but before their house and sheds were built, their friend spent a night out there his car alone. In the night he heard a noise and turned on his headlights only to see a stripy, sandy dog, with a ‘gape larger than any dogs.’ What amazed my friends was that he was completely unaware of what he had seen, and must not have known anything about the now extinct Tasmanian Tiger. While they sat with their mouths dropped open after the tale, their friend stayed perfectly ignorant and still does today. They decided not to tell him exactly what he’d seen.

My friend Chris told me about his teenage cousin seeing a Yowie of some description in Anakie, just outside my hometown of Geelong. He was playing basketball in his driveway, and saw in the neighbouring field, a large hairy man running towards the forests of the Brisbane Ranges. The boy spent the rest of the day inside, frightened out of his wits, his mother very confused with his behaviour.

I also recall my mother telling me only a few years ago that a Yowie had been seen near the suspension bridge in the Tarra-Bulga National Park.

My housemate and friend told me today about the Talbot/Maryborough sightings. The stories got so popular he remembers in his early teens, in 1989, seeing a ‘Puma crossing’ yellow road sign complete with picture of big cat profile on it on the road between Talbot and Maryborough. It was very well done, as if the council put an official one up, ‘It only lasted 12 months then someone pulled it down.’

But the most recent unreported ABC story I have, happened only a few weeks ago to my friends, again those who live in the Guildford/Tarilta area. My friend was out on his bushland property at night without a torch, with his two fearless basenji dogs with him. He heard the padding of large footprints near him in the dark, and the ‘fearless’ basenji’s who love to chase foxes, took off back to the house very frightened. Whatever it was got closer and began to snarl at my friend and while he had no time to get a torch, he proceeded to cry out and bang on corrugated iron sheets to try to scare the thing off.

With ABC’s, I’ve no doubt that only a third of the sightings out there are being reported, I’ve no doubt that some people who live in the country here see things twice, even three times. But it certainly is not boring out here. There are always new stories to hear and hopefully, one day, something to see!

FROM THE ARCHIVES: The golden frogs of Bovey Tracey

Once upon a time, at least according to an old Devon folk story, a poor woodsman lived with his family on the outskirts of the village of Bovey Tracey. Their child was suffering from an unspecified illness and was not likely to live much longer, One night in the middle of a severe thunderstorm there was a knock on the door and a mysterious lady entered demanding shelter and food.

Despite their many misfortunes the woodsman and his family welcomed the mysterious lady, gave her milk and food (which they could ill afford) and a seat by the fire. She then blessed the ailing infant who was miraculously cured, and before vanishing (up a road called to this day Mary Street) she said that so that her benefactors would know this was not a dream, not only would the child be forever cured but that the next day the family would discover a new spring full of crystal clear water and bright golden frogs which were said to have populated the area for many years.

Another piece of interesting supportive evidence for this story is that, to this day in what is still known as Mary Street there is a Holy Well! It can be found embedded in the stone wall opposite Bovey Tracey hospital. Could this be the site of the spring created by the old woodsman`s mysterious visitor?

Unfortunately, although there is some evidence to suggest that this was not its original location and that it was repositioned there a century or so ago,m a quick trip to the Westcountry Studies Library will reap some useful rewards.

According to even the most early maps of the area there are a number opf wells and springs in the close vicinity of where the holy well now stands. Some of them are marked with a cross, which would imply that they were of some special spiritual significance.

So, assuming the golden frogs exist(ed) what were/are they? The concept of brightly coloured amphibians inhabiting the English countryside is not as unusual as one might suppose. Several small pink frogswere found in Gloucestershire in the early 1990s and others have been recorded over the years from Sussex and The Cotswolds.

But Golden Frogs?

In February 1994 local and national newspapers were full of the story of Jaffa, a three year old frog discovered in a garden in Truro. Jaffa was, as his name implies, bright orange. The Westcountry TV News carried a story about him which said that he, and a similarly coloured mate had been released in a secret location. Mark Nicholson of the Cornwall Trust for Nature Conservation revealed that far from being an isolated occurrence these oddly coloured amphibians are popping up all over the place. Ranging in colour from bright orange, through yellow to pale cream, these creatures have been reported from all over the westcountry and even from elsewhere in the UK although they appear to be much rarer.

They turn up each year, and in the early spring of 2000 we found one hopping around in the mud by the dustbins outside our front door! It was a fully grown female of a bright mustard colour and almost immediately laid copious amounts of spawn which, unfortunately proved to be infertile. We kept her for several months until she escaped into the wilderness behind our conservatory where we keep some of our animal collection during the summer months. We hope that the coming years will supply us with more specimens that will help us determine what exactly these creatures are.

Although I am as aware as everyone about the damage that man is doing to the planet on which we live, there is a distressing tendency in these politically correct days to blame all anomalies of nature on the ubiquitous `global warming` or some other plague of the modern age. Whilst not wishing for a moment to deny that these threats exist and a very serious towards the future of all living creatures on the planet, it is, I think, counter productive to blame everything on man`s stupidity. Various commentators including Internet news groups have suggested that these brightly coloured batrachians are the result of a damaged environment. Whilst not denying that the environment is certainly damaged, we have proved that these animals have been around for at least five hundred years and we are determined to find out what they actually are!

For the present however, it is fairly clear that the charming medieval legend of the Golden Frogs of Bovey Tracey might not he so far fetched after all.

GUEST BLOGGER RICHARD MUIRHEAD: The Ropen - a living pterosaur in Melanesia?

As Regular readers will know, Richard is one of my dearest friends, and furthermore someone I have known since 1970 when we were children together in Hong Kong. He is a natural polymath, and one of the best researchers I have ever met. Today he brings us an overview of a mystery flying dragon from New Guinea and Melanesia..

If there is any possibility of prehistoric survivors on the planet then Melanesia and Papua New Guinea would be the place where they might live. The Ropen (“demon flyer”) a putative pterosaur ,”said to frequent lakes and mountain caverns”according to M.Newton`s Encyclopaedia of Cryptozoology (1) was brought to the attention of the cryptozoological world in late 1999 by Bill Gibbons,(2) It is actually quite suprising that the Ropen is still not particularly well known in the cryptozoological world given that it is ten years since its “discovery” though this is changing with the publication of the 2nd edition of Jonathan Whitcomb`s Searching for Ropens in 2007.

See also http://www.ropens.com/ There are also its parallels elsewhere in the world which should be considered. For example,the giant flying snake of Namibia is said by locals to have a light on its head(3.) Could this flying snake actually be a pterosaur? It is possible. Roy Mackal in his book Searching For Hidden Animals mentions reports of living members of “ extinct” “pterodactyls” in Kenya in March or April 1974 and in a swampy area of Namibia in late 1975, allegedly filmed by an American team but this is nearly all the information Mackal gives. (4.) Large flying creatures are also reported from Mexico and parts of the U.S. In Indonesia,the ahool and the Orang-bati may relate to the Ropen of Umboi Island off Papua New Guinea.

One of the earliest reports of the Ropen was from Perth, Australia,rather than Papua New Guinea. In December 1997,one evening, a couple saw a flying creature with “ a lizard appearance” and a size of “thirty to fifty feet”. Even earlier,in 1944,Duane Hodgkinson, a friend and a native guide witnessed a giant flying pterodactyl emerge from the undergrowth having been startled by a pig. “The creatures` colour was dark,its neck was long, and the head-length…Both the head-crest and beak(or mouth) were long and narrow,parallel to each other,and,in flight,almost parallel to the neck.”(4) In 2003 a man named Abram saw a Ropen glowing red and white flying 100m above Opai Beach on Umboi island. The bioluminescence is said to be related to secretions which fall from the creatures as they fly,which can cause severe burns to human skin. In October (2004?) a David Woetzel saw a golden shimmering light coming from the direction of Mount Barik,on Umboi Island,flying at mountain top height. It has been said that the Ropen light is brighter than the moon. Frighteningly, the Ropen was once said to rob human bodies from graves. It is worshipped by at least some in parts of Papua New Guinea and there are said to be grey-spotted,blue-spotted and dark-spotted Ropens. Critics of the Ropen as pterosaur theory suggest that the Ropen is a flying fox bat. But as Whitcomb points out: “……fruit bats never grow long tails,never eat fish,never glow at night, and never dig up the grave of a recently-deceased human to carry away the body”(5.)


REFERENCES.


M.NEWTON. ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF CRYPTOZOLOGY. p.401
IBID P.401
R.MUIRHEAD. THE FLYING SNAKE OF NAMIBIA: AN INVESTIGATION. IN CENTRE FOR FORTEAN ZOOLOGY YEARBOOK 1996. pp112-123
R.MACKAL. SEARCHING FOR HIDDEN ANIMALS. P.54
J.WHITCOMB SEARCHING FOR ROPENS. 2ND EDITION p.26




Yours sincerely


Richard Muirhead
112 High Street
Macclesfield
SK11 7QQ

Telephone +44 (0) 1625 869048

eMail: richmuirhead@tiscali.co.uk
website: http://www.cryptozoology.net/sabretoothtiger/

THE NEW EPISODE OF `ON THE TRACK` IS ONLINE...

LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE

Cryptid Hunt: The Mothman

The saga of `The beast of the Bay`

The CFZ Illinois project

Bears in Illinois

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.

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.

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.