The Bloop - a deep sea monster

It came from the depths of the South Pacific. Throughout the summer of 1997, a sound never before recorded burst from the abyss. News agencies scrambled; was this some new leviathan, an unknown monster from the deep? Nobody knew, and though this recording has taken its place among the permanent fixtures of the museums of the strange, the Bloop has never been identified.

The Bloop was on the loud side, to be sure. It was picked up on multiple sensors as far as 5,000 kilometers away. By triangulation, we know it came from somewhere right around 50°S, 100°W, which is about 1,750 kilometers west of Chile in the South Pacific. It's about as remote as you can get in any ocean. There are no islands or anything anywhere near it. The water is deep there, very deep, averaging around 4,300 meters. The Bloop was recorded several times during 1997, on the Eastern Equatorial Pacific autonomous hydrophone array, which was deployed in May, 1996 by NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) for long-term monitoring of seismic events on the East Pacific Rise.

Cryptozoologists love the Bloop, because to them it is evidence pointing to the existence of a gigantic unknown creature. Virtually every web page about the Bloop (and there are a lot of them) repeats this same quote, word for word:

Though it matches the audio profile of a living creature, there is no known animal that could have produced the sound. If it is an animal it would have to be huge — much larger than even a Blue whale, according to scientists who have studied the phenomenon.

I've been unable to find the original source of this quote. Only one web site on which I found it gave an attribution, saying it was a quote from NOAA. However this text does not appear on any NOAA web sites, and its wording is inconsistent with NOAA's typical descriptions of unknown sounds. When a sound is unknown, NOAA says it's unknown and leaves it at that; it is not their habit to editorialize or hypothesize about giant cryptids.

So, for now, the identity of these "scientists who have studied the phenomenon" remains a mystery. Many cryptozoologists have written about the Bloop, as is easily shown by a simple Google search; but from what I could tell, few legitimate zoologists have, and none who have concluded the Bloop has a biological origin.

Fortunately, we are not entirely without our own resources to test this suggestion that the Bloop "matches the audio profile of a living creature". There are three basic types of sounds in the oceans: Natural sounds like volcanoes and earthquakes, biological sounds from sea creatures, and man-made sounds from boats or other machinery. Usually you can take your unknown sound and compare it to a selection of known sounds, and get a pretty good idea what it is. Sounds can be represented on colorful graphs called spectrograms. Time is one dimension, and frequency is the other.

The amplitude is represented by the color. An ongoing sound with a certain frequency range, like a boat engine, creates a solid band across the spectrogram. A chirp from a dolphin would make a little streak. This gives us a two-pronged approach to trying to match the Bloop to a known source: We can listen to it to get a subjective feel for it, and we can also compare its spectrogram to known spectrograms to get a firmer, more quantifiable comparison.

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The frequency of the sound meant it had to be much louder than any recognised animal noise, including that produced by the largest whales.

So is it a huge octopus? Although dead giant squid have been washed up on beaches, and tell-tale sucker marks have been seen on whales, there has never been a confirmed sighting of one of the elusive cephalopods in the wild.

The largest dead squid on record measured about 60ft including the length of its tentacles, but no one knows how big the creatures might grow.

For years sailors have told tales of monsters of the deep including the huge, many-tentacled kraken that could reach as high as a ship's mainmast and sink the biggest ships.

However Phil Lobel, a marine biologist at Boston University, Massachusetts, doubts that giant squid are the source of Bloop.

"Cephalopods have no gas-filled sac, so they have no way to make that type of noise," he said. "Though you can never rule anything out completely, I doubt it."

Nevertheless he agrees that the sound is most likely to be biological in origin.

The system picking up Bloop and other strange noises from the deep is a military relic of the Cold War.

In the 1960s the U.S. Navy set up an array of underwater microphones, or hydrophones, around the globe to track Soviet submarines. The network was known as SOSUS, short for Sound Surveillance System.

The listening stations lie hundreds of yards below the ocean surface, at a depth where sound waves become trapped in a layer of water known as the "deep sound channel".

Here temperature and pressure cause sound waves to keep travelling without being scattered by the ocean surface or bottom.

Most of the sounds detected obviously emanate from whales, ships or earthquakes, but some very low frequency noises have proved baffling.

Scientist Christopher Fox of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Acoustic Monitoring Project at Portland, Oregon, has given the signals names such as Train, Whistle, Slowdown, Upsweep and even Gregorian Chant.

He told New Scientist that most can be explained by ocean currents, volcanic activity -- Upsweep was tracked to an undersea South Pacific mountain that had not been identified as "live."

"The sound waves are almost like voice prints. You're able to look at the characteristics of the sound and say: 'There's a blue whale, there's a fin whale, there's a boat, there's a humpback whale and here comes and earchquake," he says.

But some sounds remain a mystery he says. Like Bloop -- monster of the deep?

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Arctodus simus - America's Ice Age super-predator

When the first humans crossed the Bering Strait into North America they encountered a hunter's paradise, with mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths, and a variety of large ungulates for the taking. However, they also came face-to-face with some of the most fearsome predators of all time.

The dire wolf was larger and more heavily built than the present-day gray wolf. The large saber-toothed and scimitar cats had huge canines that could inflict horrendous wounds. The American "lion," which was larger than today's African lion, was related to the present-day puma.

However, the most terrifying predator of them all was Arctodus simus, known as the short-faced bear, which, at an estimated weight of 700 to 800 kilograms (1,543 to 1,763 pounds), was the largest carnivorous mammal that ever lived in North America.

Or was it?

In the 1960s, the late Finnish paleontologist Björn (Swedish for "bear") Kurtén, a leading expert on Ice Age mammals, especially bears, reconstructed Arctodus simus as an active predator. He emphasized the short, broad snout, powerful jaws, well-developed carnassials, and long limbs. A giant bear that could run down its prey would have been the ultimate nightmare for the first human settlers!

Later, a number of paleontologists cast doubts on Kurtén's interpretation. Some noted close similarities between Arctodus simus and its closest living relative, the primarily vegetarian South American spectacled bear, and argued that it also consumed a lot of plant matter.

Others suggested that Arctodus simus was an omnivore that frequently scavenged animal carcasses.

A new study by a team of researchers from the Universidad de Málaga in Spain has reassessed the rival claims concerning the way this extinct giant gots its dinner.

The first step taken by the Spanish team was to determine the body mass of Arctodus simus.

The weight of most mammals can be estimated from measurements of their limb bones. The researchers found a considerable range of weights, from about 300 kilograms (660 pounds) to almost one ton (2,200 pounds).

They also noted geographic variation, with the largest individuals coming from more northern locations. This pattern is still seen in populations of present-day brown bear, with particularly large animals (especially males) occurring in Alaska.


Second, the Spanish team looked at skull and limb proportions of Arctodus simus. The giant bear did not, in fact, have a particularly short snout and its skull proportions were appropriate for a bear of its size.

The researchers also noted that the most carnivorous living bear, the polar bear, has a relatively long snout. The tooth evidence provided no clear indication for either meat-eating or omnivorous habits.

Finally, while the forelegs may have been enlarged the hind legs in the extinct bear were not proportionately longer than in present-day bears. Arctodus simus was not a runner.

No longer short of snout and long of limb, Arctodus simus has been dethroned as America's Ice Age super-predator. However, studies of the carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios of its bones, commonly used to determine the dietary preferences of animals, still indicate the bear consumed some meat.

Presumably a one-ton bear could behave like the proverbial 800-pound gorilla--it could eat anything it wanted to!

Grizzlies consume a lot of vegetable matter yet, from time to time, will augment this diet by taking down an elk or the odd tourist. They will also chase wolves off their kills. The much larger extinct bear could easily have engaged in similar behaviors.

A mature adult Arctodus simus must have been a magnificent sight. Fortunately for Stephen Colbert and his fellow bear-haters, this giant vanished, along with the rest of America's remarkable Ice Age megafauna, some 11,000 years ago.

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Immortal Animal - Turritopsis nutricula

...The Only Immortal Animal on Earth...

Have you ever wondered what would happen if our life cycles were reversed, that is if we were born old and died young? Well, there’s one animal that comes close and has achieved immortality in the process, just to top it off. Meet the Turritopsis nutricula, a small saltwater animal or hydrozoan related to jellyfish and corals.

Like most jellyfish, Turritopsis nutricula undergoes two distinct stages in its life cycle: The polypoid or immature stage, when it’s just a small stalk with feeding tentacles; and the medusa or mature stage when the only 1mm-long polyps asexually produce jellyfish.

A jellyfish’s lifespan usually ranges from somewhere between a few hours for the smallest species to several months and rarely to a few years for the bigger species. How does the only 4-5 mm long Turritopsis nutricula (let’s call it T’nut) manage to beat the system?

Well, T’nut is able to transform between medusa and polyp stage, thereby reverting back from mature to immature stage and escaping death. The cell process is called transdifferentiation, when non-stem cells either transform into a different type of cell or when an already differentiated or specialised stem cell creates cells outside this specialised path.

T’nut requires tissue from both the jellyfish bell surface and the circulatory canal system for its transdifferentiation. This switching of cell roles is not unusual and can be seen in many animals and humans, but usually only when parts of an organ regenerate. In T’nut’s case, reverting back to an immature state is part of its regular life cycle.

In its medusa form, Turritopsis nutricula is bell-shaped and about 4-5 mm in diameter. Young specimens will be only 1 mm in diameter and have eight tentacles to start out with but can have between 80 and 90 as adults.

Turritopsis nutricula most likely originated in the Caribbean but can now be found in the temperate to tropical regions in all of the world’s oceans, spreading further through the ballast water that ships discard in ports. According to Dr. Maria Pia Miglietta from the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute: “We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion.”

Silent invasion? Possibly, but while Turritopsis nutriculae may be biologically immortal, they are surely not invincible. Especially in their immature stage, they are susceptible to predators and diseases and many die before they even reach jellyfish stage. Still, they are to date the only known animal capable of reverting to an earlier, immature stage.

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Oarfish

The strange-looking oarfish is the longest bony fish in the sea. Known scientifically as Regalecus glesne, it is a member of the Regalecidae family of fishes. The name Regalecidae is derived from the latin word regalis, meaning "royal". The origin of the oarfish name is unknown, but may refer to the oar-shaped body or the long, oar-like pelvic fins. Because of its long, thin shape, the oarfish fish is sometimes known as the ribbonfish. It is also commonly referred to as the king of herrings. Even though it is a deep water species, it is not too uncommon to see an oarfish. These unusual creatures have been known to wash ashore on beaches after storms, providing endless hours of fascination for curious onlookers. They also have a habit of floating near the surface of the water when they are sick or dying. Because of this, it is believed that the oarfish may be responsible for many of the legendary sightings of sea monsters and sea serpents by ancient mariners and beach goers. Although it is fished for sport as a game fish, the oarfish is not usually fished commercially because its gelatinous flesh is not considered edible.

The most noticeable feature of the oarfish is its extremely long, ribbon-like body. These fish can reach a length of over 50 feet (15 meters) and weigh as much as 600 pounds (272 kilograms). Its scaleless body is covered with a silver to silvery blue skin and is topped with an ornate, red dorsal fin that resembles a decorative headdress. This dorsal fin runs the entire length of the fish, with a tiny spine projecting above each of over 400 individual fin rays. The pelvic fins of this fish are elongated and similarly colored. The oarfish has a small mouth with no visible teeth. Their diet consists mainly of plankton, small crustaceans, and small squid that they strain from the water using specially formed gill rakes in their mouth. In turn, the oarfish may be a food source for larger ocean carnivores such as sharks.

Almost everything we know about the oarfish has been learned from specimens that have washed ashore on beaches or have been accidentally caught by fishermen. They have been known to come to the surface at night, apparently attracted by the lights of the boats. In 2001 a live oarfish was filmed alive for the first time. It was spotted by a team of US Navy personnel repairing a buoy in the Bahamas. This specimen was observed to be swimming by undulating its long dorsal fin while keeping its body fairly straight. This type of propulsion is known as an amiiform mode of swimming. Oarfish have also been observed swimming in a vertical position. It is believed that this may be one way that the oarfish searches for food. Little is known about the reproductive habits of the oarfish, although they have been observed spawning off the coast of Mexico between July and December. After spawning, the eggs are abandoned by the adults to float on the ocean surface until hatching. Once hatched, the tiny larvae feed mainly on plankton until they mature. Adult oarfish are thought to live solitary lives.

Oarfish are a pelagic species found throughout the deep seas of the eastern Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. They are usually found at a depth of around 600 feet (200 meters), although they have been known to go as deep as 3,000 feet (1,000 meters). They have also been observed at depths as shallow as 20 feet (60 meters). It is possible that they move to shallower waters as they search for food. Though rarely seen in the wild, their numbers are thought to be abundant enough that they are currently not considered to be endangered.

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Mexican Alien Baby

Mexican TV revealed the almost unbelievable story - in 2007, a baby alien was found alive by a farmer in Mexico. He drowned it in a ditch out of fear, and now two years later scientists have finally been able to announce the results of their tests on this sinister-looking carcass.
At the end of last year the farmer, Marao Lopez, handed the corpse over to university scientists who carried out More.. DNA tests and scans. He claimed that it took him three attempts to drown the creature and he had to hold it underwater for hours.
Tests revealed a creature that is unknown to scientists - its skeleton has characteristics of a lizard, its teeth do not have any roots like humans and it can stay underwater for a long time.
But it also has some similar joints to humans. Its brain was huge, particularly the rear section, leading scientists to the conclusion that the odd creature was very intelligent.
But it has seemingly left experts stumped.


And in a further mystery, Lopez has since mysteriously died...
According to American UFO expert Joshua P. Warren (32), the farmer burned to death in a parked car at the side of a road.
The flames apparently had a far higher temperature than in a normal fire!
Now there are rumours that the parents of the creature Lopez drowned were the ones who in turn killed him out of revenge.
There are frequent UFO sightings and reports of crop circles in the area where the creature was found. Perhaps it was left behind deliberately by aliens.
Mexican UFO expert Jaime Maussan (56) was the first to break the story. He claimed it was not a hoax. Farmers also told him that there was a second creature but it ran away when they approached.

The puzzle has caused intrigue amongst BILD's readers. Some say it is a mutant, others wonder why aliens would leave a baby behind - and one reader asked why aliens don't wear clothes...

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Moa, New Zealand giant bird

Flightless giant island-living bird was the New Zealand giant moa (Dinornis giganteus), a member of the ratite family. There were several species of moa, some taller than the elephant bird at 7 ft (2 metres) to the middle of the back and 13 ft (4 metres) to the head (twice the height of a tall man), although their necks probably projected forwards like a kiwi rather than upwards as usually depicted. They were more lightly built than the elephant bird, but still three times the weight of a large man at up to 200 - 275 kg. The Giant Moa's eggs measured 10 inches (24 cm) long and 7 inches (18 cm wide). Females were 1.5 times the size and almost 3 times the weight of males, leading scientists the revise moa classification and the number of moa species. In the past, the males and females had been erroneously considered different species due to this size difference. The moas occupied similar niches to mammalian herbivores elsewhere.

New Zealand was even more isolated than Madagascar and had no land mammals except bats. The first Polynesians arrived in New Zealand around the 10th century, becoming the Maori. The dominant life-forms were the giant land birds that lived in the fringes of the semi-tropical forests and on the grasslands and which the Maoris called 'Moas'. Encountering the huge birds, the Maoris made legends of the giant moa, calling it the Poua-Kai and describing it as a huge bird of terrific size and strength which, in a great battle, destroyed half the warriors of a powerful tribe with its terrible rending talons and thrusting bea.

Moas were huge ratite 'running birds' like the Elephant Bird, but they inhabited the grasslands and forest-fringe in extraordinary numbers and variety. Scientists later gave them the family name Dinornithidae, 'terrible birds'. The aggressive Polynesian invaders became a Moa-hunting culture and for the moa, which had had no predators in 100 million years, the effect was devastating.

By the time Europeans discovered the islands in 1770, the giant moas had been hunted to extinction; their official extinction date is given as 1773. Europeans did not learn of the moa's existence until bones were discovered in the 1830s. The exact number of species is open to debate, the current belief is that there were 11 species contemporary with man and that higher counts were due to the sexual dimorphism. With only one natural predator large enough to tackle them (Haast's Eagle, another extinct giant) they were the dominant terrestrial species on the islands. Although the giant moa is the species that has captured the modern imagination, other members of the moa family were turkey-sized and weighed little over 1 kg. One striking feature of moa anatomy, apart from its height, is the complete lack of humeri (upper arm-bones). This means they had no trace of wings, not even a vestigial wing-structure.

There were several families of moa. Pachyornis and Emeus were hunted to extinction by the Maoris between 1100 and 1500. The powerfully built medium-sized Euryapteryx may have survived until 1700. Pygmy Moas, 3 -4 ft tall (90 - 120 cm) of the genera Anomalopteryx and Megalapteryx died out by 1800, hunted by both Maori and Europeans though there is evidence that one of the pygmy moas may have survived into the 20th century and may possibly still exist in the wilderness of Fiordland. By the time Europeans had realised the significance of the discovery of giant moas, the birds were almost extinct.

In 1838, Englishman John Rule brought back a fragment of a huge leg-bone from New Zealand. It was investigated by palaeontologist Richard Owen in London, but even then many dismissed it as a hoax or myth. It took several more years and many more bones to convince naturalists that the moa existed. A consignment of moa bones was sent in 1843 by geologist and missionary, Revd William Williams. He had studied the birds, and had recorded a sighting by two English whalers near Cloudy Bay, in Cook Straits in 1842: "the natives there had mentioned to an Englishman of a whaling party that there was a bird of extraordinary size to be seen only at night on the side of a hill near there; and that he, with the native and a second Englishman, went to the spot; that after waiting some time they saw the creature at some little distance, which they describe as being fourteen or sixteen feet high. One of the men proposed to go nearer and shoot, but his companion was so exceedingly terrified, or perhaps both of them, that they were satisfied with looking at him, when in a little time he took alarm and strode up the mountain."

In the 1850s, New Zealand resident, John White, interviewed several sealers who claimed to have eaten moas on the South Island, indicating that some birds had survived until as late as 1850. The most detailed account of giant moas came from an old Maori on South Island, who described the birds' appearance, habitat, feeding and nesting habits. He Maori described how fierce, booming male moas, guarded nesting females. He also described how the birds were hunted and eaten. Another Maori moa hunter described how the moa defended itself by kicking. Their eggs were taken as food and as curios by Europeans. In 1865, a moa egg containing an embryo was discovered near Cromwell.

Entry for Moa in Harmsworth Natural History (1910): The fate impending in the case of the kiwis has long since overtaken their gigantic extinct cousins the moas (family Dinornithidae), which had already disappeared from New Zealand when those islands were first colonised from Europe, although there is good reason to believe that they lived on till within the last five hundred or four hundred years, if not to a considerably later date. These birds, of which not only the bones, but in some cases the dried skin, feathers, and egg-shells, as well as the pebbles they were in the habit of swallowing, have been preserved in the superficial deposits of New Zealand, attained a wonderful development in those islands, where they were secure from persecution till man appeared on the scene.

Not only did the larger members of the group far exceed the ostrich in size, but they were extraordinarily numerous in species, as they were also in individuals; such a marvellous exuberance of gigantic bird-life being unknown elsewhere on the face of the globe in such a small area. As regards size, the largest moas could have been but little short of 12 feet in height, the tibia being considerably over a yard in length; while the smallest were not larger than a turkey. In reference to their numbers, it may be mentioned that there are some twenty species, arranged in about six genera; and the surface of many parts of the country, as well as bogs and swamps, literally swarmed with their bones.

Some of the moas had four toes to the foot, and others three, but all differed from kiwis in having a bony ridge over the groove for the extensor tendons of the tibia. They are, therefore, evidently the least specialised members of the order yet mentioned, seeing that this bridge is present in the majority of flying birds, and has evidently been lost in all the existing Ratitae. While agreeing in some parts of their organisation with kiwis, moas are distinguished by the short beak and the presence of after-shafts to the feathers while in the larger forms, at any rate, not only was the wing, but likewise the whole shoulder-girdle, wanting. There is, however, reason to believe that certain pigmy moas - which from their size were evidently the most generalised members of the group - retained some of the bones connected with the wing.

Moas were represented by several very distinct structural modifications; the largest being the long-legged, or true, moas (Dinornis) , characterised by the long and comparatively slender leg-bones, and also the large and depressed skulls. In marked contrast to these were the short-legged, or elephant-footed, moas (Pachyornis), in which the limb-bones are remarkable for their short and massive form; the metatarsus being most especially noteworthy in this respect. In these birds the skull is vaulted and the beak narrow and sharp; but in the somewhat smaller and less stoutly-limbed-broad-billed moas (Emeus) it is broad, blunt, and rounded. The other species, in all of which the beak was sharp and narrow, are of relatively small stature, and include the smallest representatives of the family, some of which were less than a yard in height. The eggs of the moas were of a pale green colour, and probably formed a favourite food of the Maori, by whom these birds wcre evidently exterminated.

Several skeletons are on display in museums in New Zealand and Europe and there are models and reconstructions based on these skeletons, on naturally preserved feathers and on oral tales of the bird and on its smaller relative, the kiwi. It is believed that moas resembled kiwis in several ways, that they were communal living and that the eggs were brooded by the males. With no need to look out for predators, their heads were probably carried forwards, like the kiwi, rather than upwards like an ostrich.

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Giant Lion's Mane Jellyfish

As a species jellies have been around for a very long time. They appeared in the oceans about 650 million years ago, before the dinosaurs. They still populate our oceans today in a profusion of sizes and shapes. Jellyfish are incredible creatures - it's amazing that they are living things. Check it out...their bodies are made up of 95% water, they have no bones or cartilage, no heart or blood, and no brain! (Talk about a real 'no-brainer'). They are one of earth's simpler and more primitive life forms. The picture you see at right is a much smaller specimen of a lion's mane jelly. The world-record holder was found dead, washed up on a beach.

Scientists have determined that some jellies have eyes that can detect light from dark and even some movement of objects in their field of vision. It doesn't seem possible that any living creature could have eyes, but NO BRAIN. The brain is where the processing of visual stimuli happens in most higher-order species. How does the procedure work in jellies with eyes and no brains? Scientists don't really know for sure, but by studying jellies they can learn a lot about how vision works and what role the brain plays in processing visual input.



Silent Predators

The Arctic Lion's Mane, like most jellies, is a predator - it kills and eats other living creatures from the "animal" kingdom. (Even though water buffaloes and hippopatomi eat living things (plants), they are not considered predators.) That means that this giant jelly stalks, pursues, catches, kills and consumes its prey. What does it like to eat? Fish, plankton, and even other jellies. It's pretty hard to picture a jellyfish stalking and killing its prey, but it usually doesn't have to swim to catch a meal. You could say the Arctic Lion's Mane has its meal delivered.

Usually, an unsuspecting fish will swim into the almost invisible tentacles of the jellyfish, which are loaded with millions of nematocysts (stinging capsules contained within cells called cnidocytes located along the tentacles). When the fish contacts the tentacles a paralyzing venom is immediately injected into the victim. Then the jelly can eat its quarry at its leisure. Lion's Mane jellies can also pursue and kill other jellies for food. But then, there are also other creatures in the sea which eat the Lion's Mane.

If a human were to get stung by a Lion's Mane jelly it could be fatal, provided enough poison had been absorbed by the body. The venom can cause paralysis of the breathing muscles so the victim would die from suffocation. Don't expect to go swimming at the beach and see a huge Lion's Mane jelly - this big guy probably lived way out in the open ocean, way down deep. Many of this species of jellyfish are found in frigid, Arctic waters.

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The Michigan Dog Man

In 1987, as an April's Fool's prank, Michigan DJ Jack O'Malley got together with his production director Steve Cook, and made up a song about a half-dog half-man creature that roamed the backwoods of the northern portion of the state.

The creature, which they dubbed the Michigan Dog Man, was created from bits and pieces of creatures from other state legends, including the Bigfoot legend, the legend of the New Jersey Devil, the Boggy Creek Monster, and several other 'cryptids' (animals that appear in legend but heretofore have not been found in nature).

Cook was an avid fan of the paranormal and a student of folklore. The two men came up with a history of the Michigan Dog Man, which included a seven year cycle of appearances. The song played on the radio, the joke was a success, and then the reports started coming in.

But that wasn't the weirdest part.

Turns out there really is an Indian legend unique to the northern part of Michigan about a half-dog, half-man creature that early French explorers claimed to have seen and is referred to in historical texts as the loup garou.The loup garou is a half-man, half-wolf beast that is roughly equivalent to the werewolf of popular fiction and late night horror movies, and was native to the Canadian woodland areas, Michigan, Indiana, and parts of Illinois.

Linda Godfrey, an Elkhart Wisconsin writer, first heard about Dog Man sitings in the greater Chicagoland area, and began to research the phenomenon. Her first book, The Beast of Bray Road, started out as a tongue-in-cheek look at what she assumed would be a totally bogus collection of local lore and dubious anecdotes. However, once Bray got into her research and began interviewing eyewitnesses and collecting evidence, she found herself quickly coverted.

Today, a Dogman blog keeps Dog Man watchers up on the latest sitings, and Bray continues to research and write about what she now believes is an actual creature.

Is there any truth to the legend?

Well, I walk my dog every morning for an hour in a 700 acre nature preserve a mile from my Michigan home. I've never seen the Dog Man there. But I can tell you for sure that the woods in Michigan can be damned spooky, and there have been many mornings when if I had indeed run into a Dog Man, it wouldn't have really surprised me one bit. Seriously.

We are so isolated from nature, most of us, that we really don't 'get it' anymore. So when these legends surface, they become sensational because they are strange to us. For the native peoples of this region, legend and reality were not so sharply separated. They understood that every place also had spirit, and that spirit could change form, or be formless, or invade a human being. Spirit is fluid, shapeshifting. We have no word for that now. We have no concept. 'Legend' is as close as we come, and that's not quite the right word.

Eyewitnesses confirm the shapeshifting quality of the Dog Man, often reporting that at first they thought they were looking at a huge, unnaturally large dog or wolf, but that as they watched, the animal stood on its hind legs and its arms elongated right before their eyes, becoming more humanlike. The Dog Man is often said to have red eyes and a fierce contenance, a detail shared with the New Jersey Devil.

I have a fascination with the paranormal, and the cryptid branch of the paranormal is especially cool. I do believe that there are creatures that inhabit the netherworld between form and spirit, and that can move at will between these worlds.

Is the Michigan Dog Man one of those creatures?

Maybe.

Wanna go for a walk in the woods?


VIDEO

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Bizarre animal in Japan

Here is some provocative video of a mysterious creature encountered by Japanese fishermen on a rocky seashore.

The excitement begins when the three men notice a group of strange animals on the side of a nearby cliff. Curious, they approach for a closer look and eventually manage to corner one. (The close encounter begins at 1:45 into the video.)

The slimy, pulsating beast — like something out of a Cronenberg film — appears to be some sort of amphibious sea animal that ventured ashore. After poking and prodding the creature with a stick and flipping it over to reveal an undulating, sphincter-like orifice, one of the men rashly — and unwisely — decides to give it a swig of his carbonated beverage. You don’t want to miss the explosive conclusion.

Is this a bizarre new species? Alien creature? Spectacular hoax? You be the judge.

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Kongamato

Some 65 million years ago, starting in the Jurassic and lasting into the Cretaceous, there existed a powerful flying reptile known as the Pterosaurs. The majority of fossils found have been in marine deposits, which means they probably were fish eaters and spent most of their time over coastal waters. These Pterosaurs apparently managed to fly with no feathers, their main aerodynamic feature where wings of membrane supported by an enormously elongated fourth finger. They had hollow limb bones and a large keeled breastbone attached to strong wing muscles which where needed for true flight, not just gliding.

The large expenditure of energy required to remain in flight for long periods of time, and the resulting loss of heat caused by the surface of their wings exposed to moving air, means that they must have had some method of regulating body heat, although it is doubtful they were truly warm blooded as mammals are. The majority of the Pterosaurs species where anywhere from the size of a sparrow to the size of an eagle, however some larger species have been discovered. The Pteranodon with a wingspan of 27 ft. and the colossal Quetzalcoatlus, with a wingspan of 50 ft, possibly 60 ft. are two examples of these larger species. Some pterosaurs even had fur, although they are in now way related to mammals. It would seem impossible that these creatures could have survived to the present day. After all, if they existed surely people would see them flying about as they hunted for food. How could a flying population of reptiles remain hidden? There are reports that people have been seeing flying creatures that match the description of pterosaurs for a hundreds of years. People have even been reportedly killed by these ancient flying creatures.

In 1923 a traveler by the name of Frank H. Melland worked for a time in Zambia. He gathered native reports of ferocious flying reptiles. The natives called this creature Kongamato which translated into “overwhelmer of boats". The Kongamato was said to have lived in the Jiundu swamps in the Mwinilunga District of western Zambia, near the border of Congo and Angola. It was described as having no feathers, smooth black or red skin, a wingspan between 4 ft. and 7 ft., and possessing a beak full of teeth.

It had a reputation for capsizing canoes and causing death to anyone who merely looked at it. When showed drawings of pterosaurs the native people present immediately and unhesitatingly picked it out and identified it as a Kongamato. Among the natives who did so was a rather wild and quite unsophisticated headman from the Jiundu country, where the Kongamato is supposed to be most active.

In 1925, a distinguished English newspaper correspondent, G. Ward Price, was with the future Duke of Windsor on an official visit to Rhodesia. He reported a story that a civil servant told them of the wounding of a man who entered a feared swamp in Rhodesia known to be the home of demons. The brave native entered the swamp, determined to explore it in spite of the dangers. When he returned he was on the verge of death from a great wound in his chest. He recounted how a strange huge bird with a long beak attacked him. When the civil servant showed the man a picture of a pterosaur, from a book of prehistoric animals, the man screamed in terror and fled from the servant's home.

In 1942 Colonel C. R. S. Pitman reported stories the natives told him of a large bat - bird like creature that lived the dense swampy regions of Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. Tracks of the creatures were seen, with evidence of a large tail dragging the ground. These reports were not limited to Zambia, but also came from other locations in Africa such as Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya.

Skeptics suggest that these fantastic sounding tales derived from the fanciful imaginations of natives who were hired to work on archeological digs where fossilized pterosaurs were uncovered in Tendagaru, Tanzania, in the years prior to World War I. These digs, however, took place over 900 miles from Zambia. Why did no reports of living pterosaurs come from Tanzania, where these imaginative natives lived?

Perhaps the most striking report of living pterosaurs comes not from natives, but from white explorers in the employment of the British Museum. In 1932 through 1933 the Percy Sladen Expedition ventured deep into West Africa. In charge of the team was Ivan T. Sanderson, a well-known zoologist and writer. While in the Assumbo Mountains in the Cameroons, they made camp in a wooded valley near a steep banked river. They were out hunting near the river when Sanderson shot a large fruit-eating bat. Upon being shot the creature fell into the swift moving river below, as Sanderson was carefully making his way in the fast moving current, he lost his balance and fell in. He had just regained his balance when his companion suddenly shouted "Look out!"

"And I looked. Then I let out a shout also and instantly bobbed down under the water, because, coming straight at me only a few feet above the water was a black thing the size of an eagle. I had only a glimpse of its face, yet that was quite sufficient, for its lower jaw hung open and bore a semicircle of pointed white teeth set about their own width apart from each other. When I emerged, it was gone. George was facing the other way blazing off his second barrel.

I arrived dripping on my rock and we looked at each other. "Will it come back?" we chorused. And just before it became too dark to see, it came again, hurtling back down the river, its teeth chattering, the air "shss-shssing" as it was cleft by the great, black, dracula-like wings. We were both off-guard, my gun was unloaded, and the brute made straight for George. He ducked. The animal soared over him and was at once swallowed up in the night."

When Sanderson and George returned to camp they asked the natives about the creature. Sanderson asked them, spreading his arms, what kind of bat is this large and is all black? "Olitiau!" was the response. The natives asked Sanderson where they had seen this creature, to which Sanderson pointed back at the river. The natives fled in terror in the opposite direction, taking only their guns and leaving their valuables behind.

While it may be suggested that the creature that attacked Sanderson and George was merely the mate of the bat they had shot, it is somewhat unlikely. Fruit bats are not known for attacking humans, and Sanderson, a highly knowledgeable and internationally respected zoologist, clearly indicated that he did not recognize the creature. Fruit bats are a brownish or yellowish color. Sanderson described the creature as all black. He, however, did describe it as a bat and pterosaurs are bat-like.

In 1956 in Zambia along the Luapula River, engineer J.P.F. Brown was driving back to Salisbury from a visit to Kasenga in Zaire. He stopped at a location called Fort Rosebery, just to the west of Lake Bangweulu, for a break. It was about 6:00 p.m. when he saw two creatures flying slowly and silently directly overhead. Bewildered he observed that these creatures looked prehistoric.

He estimated a wingspan of about 3-3 1/2 feet, a long thin tail, and a narrow head, which he likened to an elongated snout of a dog. One of them opened its mouth in which he saw a large number of pointed teeth. He gave the beak to tail length at about 4 1/2 feet. After this report came out, a couple by the name of Mr. and Mrs. D. Gregor reported that they had seen a pair of 2 and a 1/2 ft. long flying lizards in Southern Rhodesia, and a Dr. J. Blake-Thompson reported that natives of the Awemba tribe had told of huge flying creatures resembling rats that would attack humans. They lived in caves in cliffs near the source of the great Zambezi River.

In 1957, at a hospital at Fort Rosebery, the same location J. P. F. Brown had reported seeing strange flying creatures the year before, a patient came in with a severe wound in his chest. The doctor asked him what had happened and the native claimed that a great bird had attacked him in the Bangweulu Swamps. When asked to sketch the bird, the native drew a picture of a creature that resembled a pterosaur.

Soon afterwards the Zambezi valley was flooded as a result of the Kariba Dam Hydroelectric Project. Daily Telegraph correspondent Ian Colvin was at the scene, when he took a controversial photograph of what might be a pterosaur, however, it has recently been discovered that the photo was a hoax.

Reports of prehistoric looking flying creatures are not just limited to dense swampy regions; there are also reports of giant flying lizards from the deserts of Namibia. In 1988 Professor Roy Mackal led an expedition to Namibia where reports of a creature with a wingspan of up to 30 ft were collected. The avian cryptid usually glided through the air, but also was capable of true flight. It was usually seen at dusk, gliding between crevices between two hills about a mile apart. Although the expedition was not successful in getting solid evidence, one team member, James Kosi, reportedly saw the creature from about 1000 ft. away. He described it as a giant glider shape, black with white markings.

But could ancient prehistoric flying reptiles thought to have died out 65 million years ago still be roaming the dense swampy areas and hot desert mountain regions of Africa, or could there be a simpler explanation for these sightings. There are two species of birds that live in the swampy areas of Zambia that could possibly be mistaken for some kind of prehistoric apparition, especially under low light conditions or at nighttime. The shoebill stork is a dark colored bird with an 8 ft. wingspan and a decidedly prehistoric appearance. They have become rare, and can only be found in the deep recesses of swamps in Zambia and neighboring countries. However, there is no evidence of the shoebill behaving aggressively towards humans, and in fact they try to avoid humans as much as possible.

They have large bills, but they are not pointed, and they do not have teeth, in fact no known bird living today has real teeth. Another odd-looking bird that lives in the area is the saddle billed stork. These rather beautiful birds have a wingspan of up to 8½ feet, a long bright red bill with a horizontal black stripe ¾ up from the tip and with a yellow blaze from the eyes down and into the stripe, with additional orange stripes on the sides of the head. Their overall coloration is black and white with a black head, featherless red feet, and a beak that is long and pointed. Although it would be difficult to confuse this bird with a featherless, monotone colored pterosaur, its beak is similar.

It also is not beyond the realm of possibility that perhaps a deranged, sick, threatened, or confused saddle-billed stork could attack a human and plunge its beak into a man's chest. Both of these candidates are rather poor substitutes for pterosaurs, although they probably do account for some of the reports. Many of the natives are very superstitious, and fervently believe in the stories of monsters in the swamps waiting to attack intruders. It is not difficult to imagine that a quick flyby of one of these large birds in the dark could send one running back to camp with a story of a near miss by a flying demon.

Whether the reports are of actual sightings of pterosaur related creatures, or if it they represent some unknown huge sort of bat or bird, perhaps time will tell. Of all the remote, inaccessible locations in the world where unknown creatures could still exist, probably the best candidates would have to be the deep enormous swamps in Africa. These swamps are so overgrown with vines and undergrowth that human travel is next to impossible. In addition, the ground is often so soft that humans could not even stand without sinking, and the many rivers and waterlogged areas block many avenues of penetration. Vicious insects and other critters that can cause sickness from disease or death from venom accompany the hostile terrain.

The area is racked with political instability, patrolled by guerillas and armed bandits with little respect for non-native intruders, which provides a powerful disincentive to would-be explorers. Over flights by aircraft are ineffective since the treetops are so thick in the deep swamps that little or nothing can been seen underneath. Africa is hiding its secrets well. If there are living dinosaurs alive today, these dense over grown swampy areas of Africa are a prime candidate for harboring them.

The Evidence

Despite many sightings by credible eye witnesses the Kongamato has left behind no physical evidence to prove that it actually exists. Natives, close to death after a run in with the creature, do not prove anything other than an attack of some kind did happen. As with the majority of crypid it will take a body, alive or dead, to prove to the world that the Kongamato exists in reality not in just myth and legend.

The Sightings

In 1923 a traveler by the name of Frank H. Melland worked for a time in Zambia. He gathered native reports of ferocious flying reptiles.

In 1925, a distinguished English newspaper correspondent, G. Ward Price, was with the future Duke of Windsor on an official visit to Rhodesia. He reported a story that a civil servant told them of the wounding of a man who entered a feared swamp in Rhodesia known to be the home of demons. The brave native entered the swamp, determined to explore it in spite of the dangers. When he returned he was on the verge of death from a great wound in his chest. He recounted how a strange huge bird with a long beak attacked him. When the civil servant showed the man a picture of a pterosaur, from a book of prehistoric animals, the man screamed in terror and fled from the servant's home.

In 1942 Colonel C. R. S. Pitman reported stories the natives told him of a large bat - bird like creature that lived the dense swampy regions of Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia.

In 1932 through 1933 the Percy Sladen Expedition ventured deep into West Africa. In charge of the team was Ivan T. Sanderson, a well-known zoologist and writer. After shooting a large bat by the river they set camp by, Sanderson was attached by a large unknown bat like bird.

In 1956 in Zambia along the Luapula River, engineer J.P.F. Brown was driving back to Salisbury from a visit to Kasenga in Zaire. He stopped at a location called Fort Rosebery, just to the west of Lake Bangweulu, for a break. It was about 6:00 p.m. when he saw two creatures flying slowly and silently directly overhead. Bewildered he observed that these creatures looked prehistoric. He estimated a wingspan of about 3-3 1/2 feet, a long thin tail, and a narrow head, which he likened to an elongated snout of a dog. One of them opened its mouth in which he saw a large number of pointed teeth. He gave the beak to tail length at about 4 1/2 feet.

In 1957, at a hospital at Fort Rosebery, the same location J. P. F. Brown had reported seeing strange flying creatures the year before, a patient came in with a severe wound in his chest. The doctor asked him what had happened and the native claimed that a great bird had attacked him in the Bangweulu Swamps. When asked to sketch the bird, the native drew a picture of a creature that resembled a pterosaur.

In 1988 Professor Roy Mackal led an expedition to Namibia where reports of a creature with a wingspan of up to 30 ft were collected. The avian cryptid usually glided through the air, but also was capable of true flight. It was usually seen at dusk, gliding between crevices between two hills about a mile apart. Although the expedition was not successful in getting solid evidence, one team member, James Kosi, reportedly saw the creature from about 1000 ft. away. He described it as a giant glider shape, black with white markings.

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Cambodia Dinosaurus

Conventional science has it that the dinosaurs were wiped out many millions of years ago either as the result of climate change or a meteorite hitting earth. Some researchers, however, claim that dinosaurs might have continued to roam remote parts of the earth as recently as a few hundred years ago. A few even claim that there might be some small populations of dinosaurs, otherwise believed to be extinct, surviving in the world’s most isolated forests.

A reader has sent to All News Web these photos of the stunning Ta Prohm Temple (pictured below) deep in the jungles of Cambodia.This temple is the work of the remarkable Khmer civilization which lasted from the 800’s AD until the 1400’s AD.

The temple is covered with the most intricate of carvings. The reader who was visiting the area noticed very distinct and clear images that seem to depict a Stegosaurus (pictured above), indicating that this creature might well have survived up until the Khmer era in the region. One expert on Khmer ruins has told us that it is unlikely that these images are a recent addition to the temple.

The stegosaurus (pictured below) was a spectacular beast best known for the row of kite shaped plates that ran along the length of its back. According to conventional science this species existed in North America and died out around 155 million years ago. Villagers in the vicinity of the temple are said to retain traditions of this animal existing until fairly recent times.

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Yowie

So far as we have studied the mythical and legendary background of the Yowie mystery in ancient Aboriginal Australia, and the available fossil and archaeological evidence demonstrating that the "hairy man" was/is actually more than one race; as demonstrated by the physical descriptions of early European settler's eyewitness accounts, and which is about to be further vindicated in the modern-day reports gathered by the author from around Australia in the following chapters.

As we have seen, there were giant-size as well as modern human size "hairy men", and there were also the "little hairy men", pygmy-size forms found in Aboriginal traditions Australia-wide, all of which were collectively included under the overall title of "hairy man"by our Aboriginal people. While it is certain that many of the "little hairy people" were smallish forest-dwelling Australoids, such as the better known Atherton Tableland 'pygmy' Aboriginals - and it seems certain similar forms of these once inhabited [or still do] the mountainous forestlands further south, even to Tasmania - others have been claimed to exist in Australia's interior.

Yet what of the small, hairy ape-like forms recorded in Aboriginal traditions? These cannot be confused with the young of the larger creatures of this description, for the Aborigines claim they are a definite pygmy-size race on their own; and even here there are both herbivorous, as well as omnivorous tool-making, even fire-making forms. This chapter shall concern itself with these "little hairy people" before we move onto the modern-day evidence of surviving larger relict hominid and hominoid forms of the "hairy man".

The term "hairy man" was applied by the Aborigines to all non-Aboriginal races with whom they shared this continent, whether they were 'hairy' or not, and in the course of attempting to unravel the Yowie mystery I have had to work my way through a maze of hominid and hominoid forms, often linking a number of giant or smaller-size "hairy men" known by many different Aboriginal names scattered across vast distances of Australia under one single race or another. This book presents the reader with a selection of reports and other evidence that primitive survivors from the dawn of human evolution still roam remote regions of our continent, and yet it is but a small portion of the over 3,000 case histories and other evidence gathered by me in the course of a lifetime's dedicated, self-funded research, the results of almost 45 years of my life. I stand by the evidence I have presented.

Time will vindicate me. There is a mystery lurking in the dense rainforests of Queensland's far north, which after generations of European settlement of the region has still not been laid to rest. It concerns traditions of both Aborigines as well as European settlers, of a race of primitive stone-age people often confused with the Yowie in old folklore, called the 'Junjdy' or "little hairy red men", but who call themselves the Birranbindins. They are in effect, the lost pygmy tribes of far north Queensland.

They were described as little black-skinned hairy natives, no taller than 1 to 1.3 metres tall, who inhabited the forests feeding upon vegetable food, forest animals, killing and eating any Aborigines they happened to catch. The Aborigines ruthlessly hunted and killed the Birranbindins at every opportunity. This had the effect of driving them deeper into the mountains. The truth was, the Birranbindins were shy, timid natives who feared the Aborigines, avoiding them at every opportunity.

It was once thought by scientists that these little forest natives were a separate race which had preceded the Aborigines to Australia, for their negroid-like rounded heads and crinkly black hair is deceptive. However, these features and the smallish stature are typical of natives who have lived for generations in a darkened forest environment, existing upon forest foods. The north Queensland pygmy's are in fact Australoid rather than Negroid, and probably related to the former Tasmanian Aborigines whose features were identical, although these people were slightly taller.

Even so, the coastal and inland Aborigines did not regard these smaller Australoids as their own kind. Linking them with the Yowies, they were known as the 'Jundjdy', or "little hairy red men", alluding to their fine body hair, which could sometimes be a reddish colour. The 'Junjdy' traditions cover the length and breadth of the far north Queensland mountain ranges, but as it will also be demonstrated, they were also known to the forests of the Gulf country and Arnhem Land.

Further traditions also place tribal groups in southern Qld, far northern NSW, as far south as the rugged mountain country north of the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. Pygmy-size natives have also been reported seen in the vast Kanangra Boyd National Park, south-west of Katoomba, and on down the south coastal mountain ranges, while others will be met with even in Central Australia in the course of this book.

European settlers first learnt of the 'Junjdy' from coastal Aborigines about 125 years ago, that they had the tribal name of Birranbindin, and that they had a tribal language which the coastal Aborigines understood - Yidigii. It was not long before the Birranbindins began creating a nuisance of themselves, making frequent raids upon lonely farms stealing vegetables and killing stock. This soon led to reprisals by settlers, and a call for police protection.

In "Among Cannibals" by Carl Lumholtz, a Norwegian zoologist who spent 14 months, from 1882-1883 amongst the Aborigines of the Herbert River district, west of Ingham, Qld, it is said that the early settlers of the Atherton rainforest commented on the small stature of the forest tribes and Atherton's first policeman, Constable Hansen was dispatched to supply rations to these natives to reduce the incidence of foraging raids on crops grown by settlers.

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Moa - The Last Big Bird

No animal has had more speculation heaped upon it than the Moa.These birds evolved around 85 million years ago on the southern Super-continent called Gondwanaland. They belonged to a group known as Ratites; the family includes Ostriches, Emus and the extinct Elephant Bird of Madagascar. Once New Zealand separated from Gondwanaland and became isolated it enabled the Moa to survive in a relatively predator free environment, filled with avian fauna, the only mammals present were three species of small bats.Recently discovered fossil evidence further seems to indicate there was a species of both Python and Crocodile which may have included Moa on the menu.This isolation enabled these birds to obtain a wide variety of sizes, from small Turkey sized species such as Euryapteryx curtus to the gigantic Dinoris giganteus which stood 4 meters tall and weighed in at 250 kilograms. All Moa species were herbivorous browsers. They ranged in habitat from the alpine regions to the coastal areas.

The main mysteries surrounding this bird is when did it become extinct, or if it is infact extinct. It has been implied the Moa was already on the decline before the human colonization commenced; evidence from Maori butchering and cooking sites show there must have been an abundance of birds, judging by the wasteful practices engaged in the butchering process. Meat from the thighs were primarily used, the remainder of the carcass was left to perish.This is rather surprising, Maori of old were very conservation conscious to ensure resources were not overtaxed. This was accomplished by oral traditionand folklore; seasons set out for hunting different species guaranteed a recovery period.Even the name Moa is somewhat of a conundrum, it does not appear among theoral traditional legends of the Maori, the term used to widely make reference to this bird was Tarepo.It seems generally accepted that the large species were supposed to have been extinct by the early 1800's, and if not already extinct by then, they had become extremely scarce. However if is plausible that some of the smaller species, neglected as a food source because of their bigger relatives may have persisted longer.The mid to late 1800's produced many reports of large birds witnessed inisolated areas of bush; this was an era of exploration, regions were being opened up for settlement. Many reports focused on the South Island, as gold prospectors and surveyors pushed into the isolated interior areas.One of the most curious reports of this period includes a confrontation between a sheep dog and a Moa, the Moa turned on the dog after being harassed, once the dog backed off, the Moa was witnessed to bob its headup and down in the direction of the dog in what seemed to be a possible threat posture.

1931 and 1960 saw further reports of large birds in the bush of the South Island, in 1989 a pair of birds were observed by trampers, once more in the South Island.All accounts seemed to involve the large species of Moa.In 1990 there were several sightings of large Birds, in the Arthur's Pass district, and tracks were found on two occasions.The most recent sighting caught World Media attention.On January 20th 1993 three companions were tramping the Craigieburn Rangearea, Paddy Freaney, Sam Waby and Rochelle Rafferty. Mr. Waby paused at a secluded stream for a drink; Paddy Freaney's attention was drawn to a large bird which was nearby watching them. Freaney drew the attention of his associates to the bird, which then panicked and fled. Freaney chased the bird, with camera in hand, and at an approximated 35 meters got the now famous photo of the bird; he further discovered and photographed, after loosing sight of it, wet bird footprints on a rock.These pictures were shown to a Department of Conservation Officer who expressed the opinion that the bird seemed very much like Megapteryxdidinus, a sub-alpine species of moa known to have populated the South Island.

Computer analysis was performed on the photo by Canterbury University,specialists at the University expressed the view that the photograph was of a genuine large bird and not some prop stage to look like one. Deer and other four footed animals were further ruled out. To add to the weight of evidence in support of the photograph being genuine,in the following year, 1994, a physician was tramping in exactly the same area the snapshot was taken; he came across browsing damage that was consistent with what is known of Moa feeding habits. In light of the corroborating evidence the Department of Conservation made no attempt to follow up on what certainly would have been the find of thecentury.Is the Moa extinct? Perhaps in some of New Zealand's remote areas, and there are still a few,the species may still hold a tenuous grasp on existence.The sad fact is if it were to be discovered how simple it would be to conclude what was started in those Maori middens hundreds of years ago.

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Megalania

In this day and age, Australia is thought of as desert filled with eucalyptus trees and cotton plantations. The animals usually associated with this continent are koalas, kangaroo, wombats, and crocodiles, some of the largest to be found. There used to be other animals, commonly referred to as megafauna, that roamed this continent before being wiped out by plague or man. These were nightmarish versions of the creatures that we have today. Australia once held 10-foot tall kangaroos that fed on flesh rather than vegetation, and at one time had monitor lizards that dwarfed the Komodo dragon. This was megalania prisca, a reptile reaching 30 feet in length and weighing at least 1,000 pounds or more. The Komodo dragon is roughly the size of a lion, but megalania was bigger than an average dairy cow. Extinct megalania is listed with the many casualties of the Ice Age. Or is it extinct? The creature has been sighted many times in the last century, and some sightings suggest that it lives also in New Guinea.

Also believed to inhabit various parts of New Guinea, Megalania has been spotted many times throughout the years, but an equal number of skeptics maintain that the huge reptilian creature has long been extinct. Sightings have been reported as recently as the late Seventies, in which desert travelers discovered footprints in the sand, leading to apparent plaster casts of the creature's weighty impressions. Is that enough proof? We all know what thousands of plaster casts did to prove the existence of Bigfoot, don't we? Still, despite a lack of conclusive evidence, Bigfoot makes for good television. But when you're dealing with a giant lizard, that's must-see TV.

During the middle of the day, a surveyor returned to his truck. Tired, he wanted nothing more than to go home. He spied what he thought was a fallen tree near his car. Blaming his fatigue for his lack of details he climbed in his car and slammed the door. The "log" suddenly bolted away! It ended up being a lizard of 15 feet in length. Australian cryptozoologist Rex Gilroy is convinced these creatures are still alive and it is only a matter of time before one is captured or killed and brought in.

As recently as the late '70s there have been megalania sightings. In July 1979, Rex Gilroy was informed of footprints of the creature found in a recently plowed field. Across the field were 30 or so tracks from what looked like an enormous lizard. Rain had ruined most of the tracks but Gilroy was able to make a plaster cast of one that had been preserved. The footprint looked surprisingly like something that might have been made by a Megalania.

Also in 1979 a sighting of megalania arose, this time by the best possible witness. Herpetologist Frank Gordon, after conducting some field work in the Wattagan Mountains in New South Wales, returned to his vehicle. After starting his engine he saw, what he at first thought was a log, scampering off. It ended up being a lizard of some 30 feet or more in length.

Another incident includes a farmer who observed a gigantic lizard walking along one of his fields. It walked along a wire fence, so the farmer used a set of fence posts as a guide. His estimate of the beast was a length of twenty to twenty-five feet. The size corresponds with megalania.

Megalania might not be constrained only to Australia--some sightings suggest it may live in New Guinea. A French priest in the 1960's was traveling up river with a native guide in order to reach his mission. During the trip he spotted a large lizard lying on a fallen tree in the sun. He told the native to stop, but being badly frightened, the native continued the journey. The priest returned to the spot the following morning and measured the tree. It was 40 feet long, yet the lizard almost matched it.

As mentioned, the creature is not simply contained to Australia, as further sightings have tracked it to New Guinea where in the Sixties, a French priest witnessed Megalania resting on a downed tree. It was later discovered that the creature's momentary wooded bed was over 40 feet in length, further adding to the mystery that such a gargantuan lizard does indeed exist. What about the hard evidence?

Hard evidence has never stopped the imagination from seeing what we want to, nor has it disproved some of the world's great mysteries. If it did, we'd be able to reconstruct the Great Pyramids by hand. Without conclusive verification like the body of a deceased reptilian behemoth, Megalania will continue to remain the topic of strange Australian folklore. Although Megalania has been spotted many times by farmers and weary travelers, Megalania Prisca is indeed accounted for in the scientific community under the classification of extinct prehistoric species. Until one wanders out of the Australian Outback and into the bustling downtown core of Sydney in search of prey, we may never know what Megalania is truly capable of.

Whether or not megalania is still alive today is uncertain, but until a dead body, or perhaps a living one, is brought in we will forever find it in textbooks as an extinct animal of prehistoric times.

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The search for the Yeti in Russia

The search for the Yeti or Bigfoot of Shoria Mountain in Russia is set to continue as the snows melt and the weather warms in Siberia. The expedition will commence in June 2009 and will be headed by Valery Kimiev and Professor Nikolai Skalon, the head of the department of Zoology at the Kemerovo State University. Local’s are still alleging they have seen the bigfoot type creature in the area surrounding the Azass Caves on many occasions. One local will be joining the expedition, Hunter Michael Kiskarov who claims to have seen a Yeti more than once.

The local head of government Vladimir Tashtagol has received 14 written reports by residents of remote villages around the area of the Azass caves and the nearby Mrassu river claiming to have seen these creatures in recent years. The Cryptids are described as being two meters tall, with reddish black hair that resembles that of a brown bear. The Azass cave is several kilometres deep and it is believed the Yeti or Yeti’s dwell deep in its interior. Some believe that the creature is a lone neanderthal survivor or the sightings have been of one of a number the species, part of a small colony that represents the world’s last Neanderthals.

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The Channel Creature

‘Association of Maritime Research’ was created in 1901 in order to promote a better understanding of deep-sea life and the curious and unknown phenomena that occur in the depth of the oceans and on the sea- bed. Their approach to research is to gather testimonials and question scientists specialising in marine research in an attempt to find a scientific explanation for the various sightings.

The AMR’s intention is to communicate their findings to the general public and enable them to participate interactively in the continuing research.

Sightings

On 20th April 2009 Thierry and Sophie were enjoying a walk at the Boulogne Harbour. They are both passionate about boats and sea-life and intended filming the variety of boats sailing out of the harbour. As Thierry was filming, his eye glued to the lens, he suddenly became aware of a large shape which appeared on the horizon. Intrigued, he zoomed the camera in to focus more clearly and saw a huge, dark, rapidly moving object, which disappeared within a matter of seconds. Something of an amateur expert about the sea and marine life, he knew this was not simply the outline of a whale or any similar creature and was convinced that he had sighted some phenomenon as yet unseen by man. He decided to contact the AMR who are pursuing further investigations.

Subsequently the AMR has collected a substantial number of testimonials from different areas. The strong similarities between the descriptions seem to confirm the existence of a ‘gigantic’ and extremely ‘fast-moving’ creature off our shores.

Calling for Witnesses

The AMR’s success in identifying this marine phenomenon is dependent upon the participation of the general public. As the first report came from Dover they have put in place a multimedia campaign calling for witnesses to come forward. This will include the distribution of flyers, radio, press and online communications.

We are calling for all witnesses of sightings of any strange phenomena in the English Channel to contact the AMR immediately via our website

http://www.thechannelcreature.com/

A reward is being offered for evidence leading directly to proof of this creature’s existence.

www.thechannelcreature.com/what-is-the-amr/

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Ajolote

Say hello to the ajolote of Mexico. As you might expect, given the configuration of the claws and the lack of pigmentation, the ajolote is a subterranean, burrowing creature. The scales are arranged in rings, giving it a wormy appearance. The nubby tail doesn't help either. This is a very confused creature.
But it goes to show that it's hard to find good looking a subterranean animal. But what good are looks if you never see the light? It's easy to be ugly when you can't see yourself in the mirror.

Is it a worm, a snake, a lizard, or something out of a movie? No special effects here; this is a ajolote, a reptile found in Mexico that has only two legs. It lives underground, where front legs for digging are more valuable than hind legs that would only be dragged along.

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Almiqui

The Cuban Solenodon, also known as the Almiqui, is an insect eating rat-like creature that lives in Cuba. As the Wikipedia entry explains these unusual looking creatures were once thought to be extinct.
16-22 inches (40-55 centimeters) long from nose to tail, the Cuban Solenodon resembles a large brown rat with an extremely elongated snout and a long, naked, scaly tail. The Cuban Solenodon was mistakenly believed extinct since the last sighting in 1999 mainly because it is a nocturnal burrower, living underground. It is therefore very rarely seen. Since its discovery in 1861 by the German naturalist Wilhelm Peters, only 36 had ever been caught. The Cuban Solenodon that was found in 2003, named Alejandrito, brought the number to 37. He weighed 24 ounces and was healthy. He was released back into the wild after two days of scientific study were completed.
TimeforKids.com explains why the creature is so difficult to find -- it is nocturnal and lives underground.
It's no wonder so few have been found since then. The furry mammal is nocturnal. It stays underground during the daytime and comes up to eat worms and insects only when the sun goes down. Some scientists thought the almiqui might be extinct because none had been found since 1999.

How does a creature pull off presumed-extinct status? Well, it of course helps to have limited numbers to begin with, and a low birth rate. Add to that residence on an island under international embargo, being nocturnal, and living in burrows, and well, you've got yourself a hard to spot little ugly. I've posted on it before, but it's time to come back for more.
Though of Cuban derivation, the once-thought-extinct almiqui finds its closest relatives in the wilds of Madagascar. Also known as the Cuban Solenodon (sounds more like a dinosaur name to me), this little mammal is shrew-like and only 37 have ever been officially captured (the first one back in the 19th century). But, recent studies have shown that there are still more out there. That's important for Cubans to know, because almiquis are rare among mammals in that they have venomous saliva. Watch out.

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