GIANT EARTHWORM REDUX

The other day we posted this story about giant earthworms, and Richard F. (who originally sourced the website) pointed out that we hadn't included this link to the pages about the deahworm including "loads of photos of giant earthworms that they are trying to pass off as deathworms!"

Never mind - it gives me an excuse to post another giant earthworm picture. Wayhay!

DALE DRINNON: Looking at the tatzelwurm

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....


The last issue of Pursuit that I ever received had part 1 of a two-part article on Tatzelwurms. It was Volume 22, whole number 85, date not listed, and despite repeated requests to the then editor I was never able to learn if the part 2 was ever published. It had an illustration of an Austrian tombstone allegedly depicting a pair of Tatzelwurms that had struck a farmer down by poison. The Tatzelwurms are shown as fairly ordinary lizard-shaped creatures of large size; perhaps human size. The original was lost and I have a suspicion that the farmer died of fright rather than of any poison. It was from this tombstone (or "votive stela from some shrine") that Ulrich Magin formed the opinion that the Tatzelwurm was the same size and shape as the Japanese giant salamander, but of more terrestrial habits. This was published in an earlier issue of PURSUIT.

I follow a similar theory, but not all Tatzelwurm reports are alike. Apparantly two legs or four legs are regularly reported, but the four legs are in majority. If it is something like a giant salamander, then the rear legs can be positioned in such a way that they are not apparent (see drawing after Young, Life of the Vertebrates, a standard reference work)

The proper genus name of the giant salamanders is Andrias, by the way. The name was first given after a famous fossil example was named "Homo Diluvi Testis" (Man who Witnessed the Flood)

The article in PURSUIT no. 85 was by Luis Schonherr and includes a reference to the "Allergorhai-Horai" on page 9, as information given to Roy Chapman Andrews on his expedition to the Gobi desert in the 1920s. Schonherr considered the story to be much the same as the European stories of the dreadfully poisonous Stollenwurm or Tatzelwurm. More recently, further information has made that identification seem less likely. However, there is still some indication for some sort of a Tatzelwurm-like creature being reported in the Altai mountains region.

While I was on the same search that turned up the Altai petroglyphs which resembled Irish elk, I found a depiction of another tombstone that seems to show two Tatzelwurms on it. This was from a site in the Russian language.

Similar creatures are depicted on Siberian shamanic equipment.

I had also mentioned on another occasion that certain "Pictish" monuments depict what appears to be a similar lizard-shaped "Dragon" from Scotland and Ireland in the Dark Ages. I consider certain of the Water-monsters in that area to be of the same type.

During the middle to late part of the Age of Mammals, the giant salamanders seem to have inhabited a large territory of Europe, Asia and North America: and although reports of the type are in much more spotty distribution in the modern age, they still occur from time to time all over that same general area.

Furthermore, their skeletons can be entirely cartiliginous, which means that their remains "Melt away without any trace" as some of the traditional stories have it. And it is also possible that as salamanders their skin does indeed secrete a noxious toxin (That would be Ulrich Magin's statement and not mine)

MONGOLIAN DEATHWORM

http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20090810-mongolian-death-worm-fact-or-fantasy



Richard Freeman (who is currently asleep in the next room, as I am the only member of the household not languishing in the arms of Morpheus) told me about this nicely laid-out French website, which has an article about the Mongolian deathworm, including a brief interview with him.


Worth checking out.

SERIOUS CULTURAL REFERENCES TO THE MONGOLIAN DEATHWORM

Max, God bless 'im, is presently at Glastonbury, preparing to follow in Uncle J's hippy footsteps. He has promised to try and bootleg Spinal Tap for me, and to gaze in awe at the programme, which features both Neil Young and Crosby, Stills and Nash, and hope (on J's behalf) that the rumours of a CSNY reunion are true. In the meantime, here is something rather excellent:

http://www.onemorelevel.com/game/death_worm

THE BIG THREE: Michael Woodley

A FEW WEEKS AGO WE ASKED VARIOUS BLOGGO REGULARS TO TELL US WHAT WERE THEIR TOP THREE FAVOURITE MYSTERY ANIMALS... AND WHY

This evening it is the turn of Michael Woodley, CFZ Press author, star of last year's Weird Weekend, and all round good egg...

My favorite cryptid has to be the merhorse, or if you will 'Cadborosaurus'. If ever there were such a thing as a 'model' cryptid this would have to be it. It perfectly represents the nexus between all of the distinct strands of evidence that should ideally combine to inform cryptozoological research. The historical literature on this cryptid dates back to the 16th century writings of the Swedish ecclesiastic Olas Magnus (after whom its tentative binomial 'Halshipus
olai-magni' was coined by Bernard Heuvelmans), and folk-knowledge of this cryptid appears to be both ancient and culturally diverse. It has to its credit an impressive pedigree of sightings between the 1600's and the 1960's, of which 37 were considered to be 'certain' by Heuvelmans, and then of course there is the Naden Harbor 'Caddy' carcass photograph unearthed by Bill Hagelund in the 80's and made famous by the writings of Paul LeBlond and Edward Bousfield in the 90's, which may well show the remains of a genuine merhorse. Such are the compelling qualities of the data on this cryptid, that Darren Naish, Hugh Shanahan and myself recently published the first 'mainstream' peer-reviewed technical appraisal of it along with its crypto-pinniped cousins the long-necked sea-serpent and the Tizheruk in the pages of the journal Historical Biology. The merhorse may be the catalyst for a far more serious and nuanced scientific interest in cryptozoology than that which has come before.

The Almas are another cryptid kind that fascinates me. Again here we see the enmeshing of various distinct kinds of evidences which combine in this instance to paint an intriguing portrait of a currently unaccounted for hirsute hominid at large in central Asia. Heuvelmans and his colleague Boris Porshnev considered the Almas and their ilk to be 'Neanderthaloid wildmen' and coined a veritable thesaurus of binomial synonyms for them. The theory that they might be relict Neanderthals or Homo erectus is interesting of course, but perhaps the most tantalizing possibility is that they might turn out to be a new species in the genus Homo, the scientific and normative (ethical) implications of which would obviously be enormous.

Finally we come to the Mongolian death worm, a cryptid of such extraordinary characteristics than it can't possibly fail to excite the imagination. Here we have a venom spewing, electro-shock discharging, blood red colored 3-5 foot long 'worm' resembling a piece of cow's intestine which sounds like it belongs in the sort of bad B movies that always ended up getting riffed to pieces on Mystery Science Theatre 3000 back in the 90's. Despite its unlikely combination of traits,
reports of this cryptid (which didn't really enter the cryptozoological limelight until the early to mid 90's) are remarkably consistent at least as far as the deadliness of the cryptid is concerned, and span a respectable stretch of time. Although sightings are few and far between, the witnesses are eclectic and even include a Mongolian premier. It is my belief that many of the characteristics of this cryptid have been either blown out of all proportion or made up entirely. I once suggested some years ago in an article written for the CFZ Yearbook that it might be a new legless caudata (Salamander) species which breeds in the moister, southerly regions of the Mongolian desert and migrates north. Of course I know that Richard Freeman disagrees with me on this one! Ultimately however, only time will tell what is behind the legend of the Mongolian Death Worm.