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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Road runner - meet your dinosaur predecessor!

Road runner, meet your dinosaur predecessor, an "extreme" runner unearthed by an international paleontology team in central China.

In the journal Zootaxa, a team led by Xing Xu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reports, Xixianykus zhangi ('SHEE-shya-nye-kus jong-eye') describes a pint-sized, two-legged sprinter from about 85 million years ago. The fossil's legs, hips and backbone adds to growing evidence that the dinosaur's "parvicursorine" kindred, "represent extreme cursors (runners) among non-avian dinosaurs," says the study.

""The limb proportions of Xixianykus are among the most extreme ever recorded for a theropod dinosaur," says study researcher Corwin Sullivan, also of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in a statement. "This doesn't provide a basis for estimating its top speed, but it does show that Xixianykus was a highly efficient runner."

The dinosaur's name derives from Xixia, its region of origin, onyx (Greek for claw) and specific name in honor of paleontologist Zhang Wentang, "who has contributed greatly to the study of paleontology in Henan Province," according to the statement.

The relatively short thigh-bone of the dinosaur, which stood perhaps 20 inches tall, hints that it was a digger, as well as a runner, says the study. Termites dug from the ground with its claws likely made for meals for Xixianykus. "It may sound odd, but digging and running actually work quite well together. Some modern termite eating species travel long distances between colonies of their prey, so as an efficient runner Xixianykus would have been able to follow this pattern," said co-author David Hone of the Chinese academy.

"Wood-nesting termites may have essentially represented a patchy resource for these dinosaurs, forcing them to travel considerable distances between colonies and(or) spend long periods searching for food, as is apparently true of aardvarks and giant anteaters today," concludes the study.

Running would definitely have been a good skill too, Hone adds. Xixianykus lived in the era of Tyrannosaurus Rex and kin, a bad time to be small and slow.

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The "Starchild"

We finally have a recovery of nuclear DNA from the Starchild!

This past weekend I met with the geneticist working on the Starchild's DNA. He explained how he can now prove the Starchild is not entirely human, which has been our position for years. Now it is no longer a question of "if," but of "when" and "how" we spread this astounding new reality beyond the mailing list. First, though, let me bring the list's newcomers up to speed.

In 2003 we had a DNA analysis that used human-only primers to recover the Starchild's mitochondrial DNA, the DNA outside the nucleus, which comes from the mother and her genetic line. That meant its mother was human. But we could not recover its nuclear DNA, which comes from both mother and father, which meant its father was not a human. Unfortunately, with the recovery technology of 2003 we couldn't prove what he was, which left us in scientific limbo. The "no result" from the search for the nuclear DNA clearly meant Dad wasn't human, but we could not prove that fact beyond all possible doubt.

Now, in 2010, there have been many improvements in the recovery process, and those improvements have been applied to the Starchild skull with the stunning result you see below. This is a gel sheet that shows a clear recovery of its nuclear DNA, which could not be done in 2003.



The next two screen shots are taken from the national genetic database at the National Institute of Health, NIH. That public-access database is a centralized repository of all genetic information generated by geneticists all over the world, and now covers essentially all living organisms on Earth, from various kinds of viruses and bacteria, to various kinds of crustaceans and fish, to all kinds of animals and plants, including great apes and humans.

For many species, humans included, there are already nucleotide sequences covering entire genomes. Therefore, sequences from the Starchild's DNA can be directly compared against this vast database to look for any matches. In one such comparison below, you see the text below the blue line at the bottom (if you can read it, sorry it's so fuzzy) that 265 base pairs (a good length) of recovered Starchild nuclear DNA matches perfectly with a gene on human chromosome 1. This verifies beyond any degree of doubt that some of the nuclear DNA seen in the gel sheet is from a human being.



In the one below, and again at the bottom, you see the stunning report that in a string of 342 base pairs (another good length), "No significant similarity (is) found." To recover a stretch of base pairs as long as that with NO reference in the NIH database is astounding because it means there is no known earthly corollary for what has been analyzed! This incredible anomaly will put the Starchild in history books!!!



Please understand that this result has now been verified several times, and a few more different fragments have been identified that cannot be matched in this database to anything known. Despite that fact, mainstream skeptics will be obligated by their positions to try to say it's some kind of gibberish or some kind of mistake because in their world view it simply can't be true.

Luckily, their bleating protests can be easily overcome with continued repetition of the result, finding more and more similar fragments in the library that will be created from the Starchild's DNA, which is what the geneticist is confident will happen over the next weeks and months---nothing but verification that a significant part of the Starchild's genome is not found on Earth.

I should add that I still can't reveal the name of the geneticist or where he works until we are ready to formally present his results to the world. However, trust me, he is a well-established professional and his facility is large and very credible. They don't want to be bombarded by media until they are prepared for it, and neither do I for that matter. Just know that you are a part of the "inner circle" of those who have put your faith in a dream that is now coming true.


Two more issues of importance:

(1) I still don't know where the recent "MonsterQuest" episode "Lizard Monster" can be viewed on the internet by people outside the U.S. If anyone knows how that can be found, please let me know and I'll share with the list. Thanks!

(2) The expenses for materials doing our research has now outstripped the amount donated by the list. It is now coming out of my pocket and I could use some help to bridge that gap. However, look on the bright side. This should be the last time I ever have to ask for your help in this way.

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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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Deinosuchus - an Ancient Reptile Dined on Dinosaurs

An ancient crocodile-like animal, about twice the length of an SUV, probably dined on sea turtles and dinosaurs, suggests bite-mark evidence and dung droppings.

The giant reptile called Deinosuchus was up to 29 feet long (nearly 9 meters), and likely adorned Georgia's shores, in the United States, about 79 million years ago, much as modern crocodiles dot the shores of the West Nile, the researchers say.

While the animals weren't true crocodiles, they were members of the crocodilian group and more closely related to alligators than crocs (alligators and crocodiles are closely related but distinct species). Either way, the new findings show the beast was tough, taking down dinosaurs its own size.

"We're sure (Deinosuchus) ate a lot of sea turtles, but it's evident it liked to prey on dinosaurs too," said David Schwimmer, a Columbus State paleontologist, who recently completed two studies on the giant crocodile with one of his students, Samantha Harrell.

The team analyzed various specimens of dinosaurs and sea turtles, along with the crocodilian's teeth, which were typically broken at the tips. Schwimmer said the breakage suggests a diet that included hard foods, like bone material.

"These things had very thick blunt teeth, built like little hub caps, especially the back teeth," Schwimmer said.

Several dinosaur bones showing the distinctive bite marks, including the tailbones of duck-billed dinosaurs found in the western United States, and the leg bone of a small carnivorous dinosaur, whose remains are stored at a New Jersey museum.

"The [leg] bone was so chewed that it was distorted, and it looked like a chew toy, like a dog had been working on it," Schwimmer told LiveScience. "It was covered with crocodilian bites."

Similar marks were found on turtle shells.

Fossilized feces were also collected along the banks of the Hannahatchee Creek in Stewart County, a major tributary of the Chattahoochee River, in Georgia. Poop analyses provided some support for their predator-prey conclusions. The so-called coprolites were each about a half-foot long (15 centimeters) and 2 to 3 inches (5 to 7.6 cm) in diameter, or "about the size we'd expect to come out of one of these animals," Schwimmer said, referring to the crocodilians.

The feces showed no sign of bones, which is what would be expected even if the animals were chowing on dinosaur bones. "Crocodilians have very strong digestive acids and bones get dissolved," he said.

Within the coprolites, Harrell found sand and lots of shell fragments. The results indicated the ancient crocs lived in a shallow, warm-water environment, perhaps near the mouth of a river where there may have been an abundance of sea turtles.

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Hobbits, a Million-Year History on Island

Newfound stone tools suggest the evolutionary history of the "hobbits" on the Indonesian island of Flores stretches back a million years, a new study says—200,000 years longer than previously thought.

The hobbit mystery was sparked by the 2004 discovery of bones on Flores that belonged to a three-foot-tall (one-meter-tall), 55-pound (25-kilogram) female with a grapefruit-size brain.

The tiny, hobbit-like creature—controversially dubbed a new human species, Homo floresiensis—persisted on the remote island until about 18,000 years ago, even as "modern" humans spread around the world, experts say.

Found in million-year-old volcanic sediments, the newly discovered tools are "simple sharp-edged flakes" like those found at nearby sites on Flores—sites dated to later time periods but also associated with hobbits and their ancestors—said study co-leader Adam Brumm, an archaeologist at the University of Wollongong in Australia, via e-mail.

The finding implies that a culture of stone tool wielding ancient humans, with origins in Africa, survived on the island for much longer than previously believed, according to the new research, published online today by the journal Nature.

"That's exciting," because it suggests that by a million years ago, early humans had covered more ground on their exodus from Africa than previously thought, said paleontologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum of London, who wasn't involved in the new study.

Hobbit Ancestors off the Hook?

The stone-and-bone record had suggested that the hobbits' ancestors—perhaps upright-walking-but-small-brained Homo erectus—left Africa about 1.5 million years ago and reached Flores by 880,000 years ago.

Once there, it's been thought, the hobbit ancestors quickly hunted a pygmy elephant species and a giant tortoise species to extinction.

The date of the newly discovered stone tools, though, suggests elephant and tortoise died off a hundred thousand years after Flores's colonization —indicating that the early Flores colonizers' role in the extinction "must have been minimal," study co-leader Brumm said.

What's more, these early colonizers could have been more primitive than H. erectus—"that is our working hypothesis," he added.

When the bones of the hobbit were first reported in 2004, the discovery team suggested they belonged to a unique species, Homo floresiensis, that had descended from Homo erectus.

Since then, scientists studying the hobbit bones have found features in the wrist, feet, skull, jaw, brain, and shoulders that suggest the little creature descended from something more primitive.

"I think that's looking increasingly likely from its anatomy," said the Natural History Museum's Stringer.

Hobbit Findings Questioned


Not everyone is ready to accept the new date.

"I have no problem with hominins"—human ancestors—"being on Flores at 1.2 million years ago," anthropologist James Phillips said. "After all, they were on Java by around 750,000 [years ago]."

But the fact that the implements were found in million-year-old volcanic sediments doesn't guarantee the artifacts are a million years old, said Phillips, an emeritus professor with the University of Illinois at Chicago, said via email.

"There are many ways"—such as water-driven processes—"in which artifacts can move through sediments," Phillips said.

He's also dismayed that the new study assumes that stone-tool technology changed little on Flores for more than a million years.

"Everywhere else on Earth, change was slow but always—and I emphasize always—occurred."

Controversy is nothing new in hobbit science, with many experts still at odds over whether Homo floresiensis is a separate species at all.

Several scientists have argued, for example, that the hobbits were modern humans with a genetic condition that causes dwarfing and other defects.

Hobbit Ancestors Rafted to Flores?

Regardless of what they were and when they arrived, the question remains: How did primitive humans get to Flores in the first place?

The Natural History Museum's Stringer buys into a theory that they may have migrated from Africa, perhaps on foot, to the island of Sulawesi (map). There, the ancient humans may have been washed to sea by a tsunami—currents off Sulawesi flow southward, toward Flores.

"These creatures most likely got moved on rafts of vegetation," he said.

To help shore up this theory, the team behind the original hobbit discovery is currently looking for evidence on Sulawesi that would prove humans occupied the island even earlier than they did Flores.

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Leedsichthys

Leedsichthys was a giant pachycormid (an extinct group of Mesozoic bony fish) that lived in the oceans of the Middle Jurassic period. The closest living relative of the pachycormids is the bowfin, Amia calva, but this is only very distantly related. The name Leedsichthys means "Leeds' fish", after the fossil collector Alfred Nicholson Leeds, who discovered it before 1886 near Peterborough, England. The fossils found by Leeds gave the fish the species epithet problematicus, because the remains were so fragmented that they were extremely hard to recognize and interpret.

Unfortunately, although the remains of over seventy individuals have been found, these are usually partial and fragmentary. This has made it difficult to estimate its length. Arthur Smith Woodward, who described the specimen in 1889, estimated it to be 30 feet (around 9 metres) long, by comparing the tail of Leedsichthys with another pachycormid, Hypsocormus. In 1986, Martill compared the bones of Leedsichthys to a pachycormid that he had recently discovered, but the unusual proportions of that specimen gave a wide range of possible sizes. More recent estimates, from documentation of historical finds and the excavation of the most complete specimen ever from the Star Pit near Whittlesey, Peterborough, support Smith Woodward's figures of between 30 and 33 feet (9 and 10 meters). Recent work on growth ring structures within the remains of Leedsichthys have also indicated that it would have taken 21-25 years to reach these lengths, and isolated elements from other specimens indicate that a maximum size of just over 53 feet (16 metres) is not unreasonable.

Like the largest fish today, the whale sharks and basking sharks, Leedsichthys problematicus derived its nutrition using an array of specialised gill rakers lining its gill basket to extract zooplankton from the water passing through its mouth and across its gills. There is little direct evidence for predation as opposed to scavenging on Leedsichthys remains, but specimen P.6924 in the Natural History Museum of London shows signs of bites from a Liopleurodon-sized pliosaur. These bites have then healed, indicating that Leedsichthys could even escape the top predator of the Oxford Clay seas, probably as a result of its powerful tail.

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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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Creatures of Dry Fork Canyon

High strangeness and missing time in the Utah wilderness...
Gus B. says he’s had many strange experiences in his life, but nothing comes close to the peculiar encounters he and four friends were met with in the Utah wilderness. This is Gus’s story....

Near the end of May, 2003, my younger brother and I were attending a wedding reception, as a good friend of ours was married that day. The reception was held in Remember The Maine Park, a rural area in Dry Fork Canyon, which is a fifteen-minute drive outside Vernal, Utah.

This canyon has a dark history. There were two suicides in the same year that baffled authorities and the relatives of the deceased. Both men undressed and folded their clothes in a neat stack, then jumped off the cliff side that faces the park. Both men dated the same woman, but at different times, as there was a six-month gap between the "suicides". Even the police were suspicious of this, as the woman in question was a meth dealer, but I remember nothing ever coming of it. Even so, my friends and I often hung out in this park, practicing martial arts and swordplay. Thus, it was the locale for the reception.

We had fun at the reception, eating, laughing, dancing and generally enjoying the day of celebration. However, a few friends of mine, as well as my brother, wanted to go exploring the woods beyond the park boundaries. My friend Cassidy had mentioned that the area was known for "freaky" occurrences, as he described it. So Cassidy, Brian, David, my brother Tony and I began trekking into the woods. We left around 5 p.m., and the sun was still shining bright at this time.

Unsettling feeling

We traveled for about fifteen minutes or so when we came to a fairly wide clearing. By this time, the temperature had dramatically dropped. And we began to experience an odd, unsettling feeling that seemed to pierce my stomach and make it cold. Cassidy made a comment to the effect that this was "the entrance".

As we started walking farther, I was struck with the sharp feeling that somehow the ground itself did not want me treading there. I also noticed that the ground for about a hundred yards was littered with the bones of cattle, which gave me the chills. Brushing this feeling aside, we continued our trek for another ten minutes or so.

Something huge

We came to an area in the woods that was thick and a little too dark for the day. My brother tapped me on the shoulder and quietly said to me, "Do you see that?" About fifteen yards away in the thick woods was a distinguishable dark shape that was huge. It looked like a gorilla sitting on its knuckles, but it was completely black, and far too tall to be a bear, as it was about seven feet tall in this crouching position!

At about this time, everyone else in the group took notice to the huge, dark shape. With some quiet caution and a leery eye, we continued our trek into the woods – in a different direction, I might add. The trees were rustling and swaying, but there was no wind; the air was at a dead standstill. This spooked Tony, so my brother decided he had seen enough, and my friend Cassidy agreed to take him back to the park. That left Brian, David and I behind to wait for him.

By this time, nightfall had already descended upon us. This disturbed me considerably, as we had left at 5 and weren't even an hour into our "journey".

Suddenly, we began to hear odd hooting sounds coming from the trees. Brian called them "Indian hoots," but I suggested that it was an owl. My suggestion proved incorrect, as the hooting sounds intensified and came from places where I knew there was no source, like a spot a few feet away from my head in the air, and the ground next to my feet.

At this point, things were definitely getting weird, but it was about to get worse.

Panic attack

As we continued to wait for Cassidy to return, David seemed to be having an odd sort of panic attack. He could barely speak, almost as if some entity was trying to keep him from speaking, and he seemed genuinely terrified by something. Brian held his hand and tried to talk him down, without much success.

While this was happening, their backs faced the woods, with me facing into it. Out of nowhere, red eyes flashed out of the darkness at me. It was gone before I could ask if anyone else had seen it. Brian was still trying to help David, when a few minutes later eyes flashed at me from the darkness again, only the eyes were ten more yards or so to the right than last time.

I asked Brian if he saw the eyes, and indeed he had caught it out of the corner of his eye. David seemed to be calming down just a bit, when both Brian and I saw the eyes for the third time, another good distance more to the right in the woods. Somehow, we were behind enemy lines, and I had a feeling that if we didn't leave soon, something really bad might happen. The fact that David's fragmented tirade centered around demons didn't help at all.

Finally, Cassidy returned, and I noticed that things were a little brighter. As fate would have it, there was a full moon shining down on us, and I was once again flabbergasted that the moon was out, when we had only been in the woods a little over an hour. Cassidy then asked us if we wanted to continue deeper into the woods. Brian, David and I all agreed that it was best we return to the park.

Humanoid beings

Once again the trees began swaying and rustling, as if there were a strong wind blowing, except there wasn't even the slightest of breezes blowing at all. We started walking back, and my friends began running suddenly. I was about to yell at them for running off, but I got a "twinge" as I call them.

I turned around to see a good number of grayish-white humanoid figures running, blinking and just basically freaking out. The thing that got me running is that they were rapidly heading our way!

It was a miracle I caught up with the guys at all. And it seemed that the wide open clearing we passed through a little over an hour ago had shrunken so drastically. I am confident it was no trick of the eye. The woods were actually closing in.

After running for about fifteen minutes or so, we were back in the park. Fortunately, a few of our friends at the reception remembered that we took off, and had waited around for us. Imagine my shock when I learned it was 11:15 p.m.! I know for a fact that the amount of time we spent in there could not have exceeded an hour and a half at the very most! And yet, six hours had gone by!

We rode home, relating the events to some of our other friends who happen to be Wiccan. All of the Wiccans I spoke to who are familiar with that area agree that some thing very bad happened there, and local legend has it that several years ago 200 head of cattle dropped dead of mysterious circumstances in that place. Whatever the case may be, something intense calls that area home, and I am not eager to return there anytime soon.

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Djinn or Jinn

They are more than just evil beings; they are interesting creatures...

IN THE WESTERN WORLD we have grown up with the concept of demons and devils – the evil beings of the spirit world, according to traditional Christian beliefs. Other religions around the world have their spirit beings, too, of course. In Islam, the djinn are a race of spirit beings that can be good or evil. (Djinn, or jinn, is the origin of the more familiar word "genie" in English.)

As we learned in the recent article "Exorcism is Islam," Muslims believe that evil djinn can sometimes possess human beings, as some Christians believe demons can possess people.

But what are the djinn? Our Muslim contact, who we identify only as M.M., and who provided the video of the exorcism, answers questions about these spirit beings.

How were the djinn created?

Verses of the Koran and the Hadiths show unambiguously that the djinns were created of fire without smoke. According to Ibn ' Abbas, the expression "without smoke" means "end of the flame." Other scientists think that this expression means the purest of fires. What's important to know, quite simply, is that that the djinn were created of fire and therefore have a constitution completely different from ours.

The djinn were created before man. While the djinn were made of fire, man was made of clay and angels created of light.

In this way, the djinn are invisible. So if they are invisible how do we know they exist? Many things exist that our eyes do not see, but their effects are perceptible, such as the air and electrical current.

Also, this word was reported by Allah himself, and Allah does not lie.

Where do the djinn live?

The djinn prefer to live in places not inhabited by man, such as deserts and wastelands. Some among them live in the dirty places (dustbins) and others live among man. The djinn live in these dirty places in order to eat the remainders of foods thrown away by people. Also, certain djinn live in cemeteries and ruins.

Can djinn change form and appearance?


The djinn have the capacity to take many forms and to change appearance. According to the Imam Ibn Taymiya, they can take a human or animal, form such as a cow, a scorpion, a snake, a bird.... The black dog is the devil of the dogs and the djinn often appear in this form. They can also appear in the form of a black cat.

When a djinn takes a human or animal form, it obeys the physical laws of this form; for example, it will be possible to see it or to kill it with a gunshot or to wound it with a knife. For this reason, djinn remain in these forms for only a short time because they are vulnerable. In fact, they benefit from their invisibility to frighten people.

Are djinn both male and female?

Yes, there are males and females among the djinn. According to the Koran, the djinn have the capacity to procreate and can have offspring.

Are djinn responsible for their acts?

Just like humans, the djinn are responsible for their acts. Indeed, Allah will take the day of the last Judgement to them.

According to the Imam Ibn Taymiya, the djinn observe obligations in relation to their specific nature. Being different from the human beings, their duties are inevitably different, too.


They have religious beliefs, too. Like human beings, they can be Christian, Jewish, non-believers or Moslems. The Moslems among them are just like the Moslems among men; some are pious, others are evil.

Are djinn afraid of humans?

The djinn and men feared each other mutually, but the djinn were able to instil fear more intensely than men. The djinns are more fearful beings by nature, but they can also feel such human emotions as anger or sadness. In fact, the djinn benefit from these states, being better able to cause fear in the heart of man. Like bad dogs, when they sense your fear, they will attack.

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5 Monsters You Never Heard Of

From jungle walruses to gigantic worms, these nightmarish creatures are lurking...

BIGFOOT, NESSIE, MOTHMAN, even the dinosaur-like mokele-mbembe have become as familiar to us as wooly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers. The difference is that the first group might still be hanging around out there somewhere.

There are many other crypto-creatures whose names might not be so familiar to you, however. And as we go through our list, you’ll notice that most of them share a trait in common: they have been reported by native tribes in remote, mostly unexplored parts of the world. This fact raises these possibilities as to the reality of their existence:

• They are merely folklore of the tribespeople.
• They are modern-day creatures known to science, but as yet unidentified.
• They are species as yet unknown to science.
• They are species known to science but thought to be extinct, such as creatures from the dinosaur era.

It’s that last possibility that whets our appetite, of course, because it certainly is feasible that a prehistoric animal could have survived in these dense, tropical areas, protected from human civilization.

The only way to find out which of these possibilities is true for any of these creatures is to mount expeditions to these isolated pockets of jungle and swamp and document evidence. Such expeditions have taken place, in some cases, but came up empty-handed. (Naturally, if they were successful, these creatures wouldn’t be listed in 5 Monsters You Never Heard Of – they’d be big news.)

1.BURU

If it existed at all, this swamp-dwelling monster may have only recently died out. Local tribes of the Apa Tani Valley and the Jiro Valley in northern Assam, India, claimed to have seen this large, crocodile-like monster many times over the years. They described it as measuring between 11 and 13 feet long with a long snout, four limbs, and 5-foot-long tail. Unlike a crocodile, however, the buru did not have scales, but rather was smooth with blue and white coloration. Natives testified that it would occasionally lift its head out of the water and let out a bellow that could be heard over great distances.

After many run-ins with the creature, the natives deliberately set out to destroy the creature by draining its swamp habitat. The last one may have died sometime in the early 1940s, although some natives believe it only retreated underground. An expedition sponsored by London’s Daily Mail in 1948 proved fruitless, although it came away convinced that the natives were quite sincere in their belief in its existence.

Cryptozoologist Dr. Karl Shukar, after examining all the available evidence, surmised that the buru might have been a species of giant lungfish.

2.DINGONEK

A walrus-like creature in the heart of Africa? Such is the description of the dingonek by John Alfred Jordan, an explorer who actually shot at this unidentified monster in the River Maggori in Kenya in 1907. Jordan claimed this scale-covered creature was a big as 18 feet long and had reptilian claws, a spotted back, long tail, and a big head out of which grew large, curved, walrus-like tusks.

Natives of the area further described it as having a scorpion-like tail and reported that it would kill any hippos, crocodiles, or human fisherman that dared encroach on its territory.

This sounds like a fantasy creature, but consider this: At the Brackfontein Ridge in South Africa is a cave painting of an unknown creature that fits the description of the dingonek, right down to its walrus-like tusks.

3.EMELA-NTOUKA

Emela-ntouka literally means “elephant killer,” aptly named by natives of the Republic of Congo who have seen this swamp-dwelling monster attack and disembowel elephants that cross its path. The instrument of this disembowelment is a large, ivory or bone horn on the animal’s head, leading to speculation that the emela-ntoouka might be a surviving relative of the triceratops or styracosaurus.

This is a nasty, vicious creature, according to the natives, who further described it as having a red-brown color, massive legs, and the ability to hide totally submerged beneath the water. Interestingly, its attack on elephants seems only to be defensive or territorial, since the monsters don’t eat the elephants. They seem to be plant-eaters.

4.KONGAMATO

Pterodactyl-like flying monsters are said to have been sighted in modern-day Southwestern United States. The kongamato is the African version of this dinosaur-era holdover, reportedly seen in Zambia and Zimbabwe. Although not as large as pterodactyls known from fossils – 4- to 7-foot wingspans compared to as large as 33-foot wingspans – the kongamato resembles the prehistoric creature in virtually every other respect: a long, tapered jaw filled with sharp teeth, bat-like membranous wings, and an overall lizard-like appearance.

Some researchers think the kongamato could in fact be a large species of bat. However, in 1923, explorer Frank Melland heard of this creature while traveling through Zambia. Intrigued, he showed illustrations of a pterodactyl to the locals, and "every native present immediately and unhesitatingly picked out and identified it as a kongamato."

5.MINHOCÃO

Let us leave the African continent now and travel to South America, where there have been reports not of a dinosaur-like creature but (perhaps more disturbingly) of a giant worm. Witnesses in Uruguay and southern Brazil describe the monster as looking like a gigantic armor-plated slug. Imagine a black slug as big as 14 feet long with a snout like a pig’s and two tentacles poking out of its head. Some reports have it as long as 75 feet! Normally living underground, the minhocão occasionally surfaces, leaving deep trenched in its wake.

Most scientists think its length has been exaggerated and suggest that the minhocão could either be: an unknown species of horned viper; a glyptodont, a giant relative of the armadillo, thought to be extinct; or an outsized caecilian, a subterranean worm-like amphibian.

Those are good guesses. But we know what the minhocão really is. Like the other creatures profiled in this article, they are the living, breathing monsters that hide in the damp, dark shadowy corners of our planet.

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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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Panama "Gollum"

A mystery creature reportedly beaten to death by a group of teenagers in Panama has become the subject of intense speculation on internet forums.


Terrified locals in Cerro Azul were running scared after the creature they describe as “Gollum” crawled out of a lake and charged schoolkids, reports The Sun.

It was spotted on Saturday when four 14 to 16-year-olds were playing by the waterfront, according to Panamanian news service Telemetro.

The hairless creature has been described as having rubbery skin and measuring almost 150cm.

The teenagers were said to have feared for their own safety as the creature moved towards them so they picked up rocks and sticks and beat it to death, before throwing its corpse in the water and running away.

The youths tossed the carcass into a nearby lake but later returned to take photographs, the report said.

Experts have yet to examine the images. However, locals told Panama news channels that the water-monster was “Gollum from Lord of the Rings”.

One said: “I have only seen that creature once before - and it was in the Tolkien film.”

The fictional Gollum - originally known as Smeagol - was a hobbit whose later name was derived from the “disgusting gurgling, choking cough he made”.

JRR Tolkien - who wrote the Middle Earth adventures - said of the character: “He had become deformed and twisted in both body and mind by the corruption of the Ring.

“His only desire was to possess the Ring which had enslaved him, and he pursued it for many years after he lost it.”

Internet speculation centres around whether the “monster” is actually a shaved sloth or pit bull terrier.

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