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I found this story at a great blog: Wierd Events
THE ARTS / Sea serpent inspires master woodcarver Tom D'Onofrio sits next to the dragon table that he carved for Grace Slick and Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Airplane. Chronicle photo by Liz Mangelsdorf |
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curious
Fishermen catch giant catfish
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A 293-kg (646-lb) Mekong giant catfish, netted in Thailand recently, may be the largest freshwater fish ever found. The fish was documented as part of a World Wildlife Fund-National Geographic project to identify and study and conserve freshwater fish around the world that exceed two metres in length. (CP PHOTO/HO/National Geographic) |
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Thai fishermen caught a catfish weighing 293 kilograms - 646 pounds - which is believed to be the world's largest freshwater fish ever recorded, a researcher said Thursday.
The 2.7-metre (8.9-foot) Mekong giant catfish was netted May 1 by villagers in Chiang Khong, a remote district in northern Thailand, and weighed by Thai fisheries department officials, said Zeb Hogan, who leads an international project to locate and study the world's largest freshwater fish species.
The fishermen had hoped to sell the massive fish to environmental groups, which planned to release it to spawn upriver, but it died before it could be handed over, and was later chopped up and sold in pieces to villagers to be eaten.
"This is the largest individual fish of the species that's listed as the biggest in the Guinness Book of World Records," Hogan told The Associated Press by telephone.
Hogan, whose work is funded by the World Wildlife Fund and the National Geographic Society, said he is planning to write a paper about the catch to be published in a scientific journal. "That's the best way to document this kind of thing," he said.
The Mekong giant catfish - which shares the title of largest freshwater fish with a close relative, the dog-eating catfish - was listed as critically endangered in 2003 after research showed its numbers had fallen by at least 80 per cent over the past 13 years.
Fishermen believe the catfish species has been declining largely because of dams and environmental damage along the Mekong River - home to more species of giant fish than any other river, said a statement released earlier by the WWF and National Geographic Society. curious| Manitoba man lands massive fish | ||
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Updated Jun 29 2005 03:14 PM CDT CBC News |
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A Manitoba angler could land his name in the record books for catching a two-metre sturgeon near Kenora.
Cam Coleman was fishing Black Sturgeon
Lake, north of Kenora, when he spotted a big fish in the distance,
sunning itself. His girlfriend, Jayme Grey, brought the boat closer to
the beast and Coleman started casting on eight pound-test line with a
jig and a minnow.
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excitedBy David A. Fahrenthold, Washington Post Staff Writer Sun May 29, 1:00 AM ET
This is the summer of the snakehead, Part II. A year after 20 of the toothy Asian fish were found in the Potomac, the creatures are growing in size, number and legend.
They are far from the river's only invaders. Over time, the Potomac has been so altered by man that it has become the underwater equivalent of the "Star Wars" alien bar. There are carpets of Asian clams and thickets of grass originally from Southeast Asia. Largemouth bass and channel catfish, transplants from other parts of the United States, share the Potomac with carp native to Asia.
Feral goldfish have been spotted -- bigger and browner than usual after being liberated from their fishbowls -- along with the occasional piranha. And scientists estimate that 35 percent of the Potomac's fish species were not there 200 years ago.
So why worry now about a few dozen snakeheads? Because all the previous nonnative species found a niche without throwing the river's ecosystem out of whack. Some scientists said they believe the same might not be true of snakeheads, which are known for their voracious appetites and rapid reproduction.
"It might change the balance, and that's not something you want to happen," said Thomas Orrell, a Smithsonian Institution researcher.
Jim Cummins, a scientist for the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, compared it to Russian roulette. "We've been lucky in the roulette game of introduced species," he said. "We might be pulling a loaded chamber" with the snakehead.
The northern snakehead, a native of China and Korea that was brought to the United States as food and as aquarium fish, first appeared in the area in 2002. That was when six adults and about 1,000 babies were found in a pond in Crofton. Authorities poisoned the pond to kill those snakeheads.
Last year, however, the fish appeared again -- in the Potomac and some of its tributaries. No one is certain who put the snakeheads in the river, though genetic tests have eliminated any connection to the Crofton fish.
Fifteen more have been caught this year, including one by fisherman Tom Woo that measured more than two feet long. Woo, of Fort Belvoir, said he cast an artificial worm lure at the Mount Vernon Yacht Club's marina, then felt something hit the bait "like a freight train." A torpedo-shaped fish jumped a foot and a half out of the water, he said.
"I was like, 'Whoa, that's a snakehead,' " he said, recognizing the fish because he had caught three.
The other snakeheads caught this year included some as small as 11 inches long. Scientists have said the size differences probably mean that several generations are living in the river. They also said it's a sign that the fish are breeding.
For the Potomac, this is a very old story.
Nonnative species, many of them brought in for the benefit of anglers, are so prevalent that a Potomac snakehead might swim through thickets of such Asian plants as hydrilla and Eurasian watermilfoil. They might go past thousands of Corbicula clams, also from Asia, which first appeared in the river about 1980.
The Potomac's bass and carp were put there in the 19th century. Other aliens are clearly former aquarium fish, such as the goldfish and the piranha. (A piranha, by the way, does not fare well against a mid-Atlantic winter.)
In other cases, mysteries persist. How to explain that the blue catfish can grow several feet long in the Potomac? The clear presumption is that they didn't get to this area on their own.
Among some scientists, the concern over the snakehead is on behalf of the river's native species. American shad, for instance, could be hurt if snakeheads gobble up baby fish migrating downstream.
Yet in an irony of modern environmentalism, much of the concern is about what the snakehead will do to a previous invader: largemouth bass.
Like the snakeheads, the bass are ambush predators, lurking under plants or below docks and snapping up prey as it passes.
If the snakehead displaced them, it would ruin a fishing industry that brings hundreds of anglers and millions of dollars to the region annually.
"It's really on the minds of the bass fisherman now," said Steve Chaconas, a bass-fishing guide based in Alexandria.
For now, however, the bass population doesn't seem to have changed. So scientists are left with few solid conclusions about the snakehead's potential.
On Thursday, two Virginia state biologists motored into a creek off the Potomac, steering what amounted to a gigantic fish taser. They turned on the juice. Their "electrofishing" boat sent 1,061 volts into the water through an array of wires, and twitching fish began floating to the surface.
Their catch provided a quick lesson in the Potomac's recent history, in which human experiments and mistakes have turned the river into a kind of open-water aquarium. Up popped largemouth bass, common carp, a couple of goldfish.
But the biologists were looking for something else.
"I think I saw one, John," said Steve Owens at one point, calling to his partner from the bow of their flat-bottomed boat.
The boat surged, and Owens stabbed his dip net into the water. He came up holding a mottled-green monster, with a mouth big enough to fit around a soft-drink can.
"There's a snakehead!" said his partner, John Odenkirk of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
Later in the day, Owens and Odenkirk stood on a dock and measured the two snakeheads they caught. The crew of a Fairfax County fireboat walked over and marveled at the fish, each nearly two feet long.
"It's another mouth to feed," Owens said to them.
impressedWed May 18,10:10 AM ET
OTTAWA (AFP) - The world's oldest, largest and arguably ugliest freshwater
fish, already on the brink of extinction in North America, is now facing a new
and highly unexpected threat to its survival in Canada -- the international
Kyoto accord on the environment.
The agreement, to which Canada is a signatory, recently sparked a massive planning effort in this country to build more than 100 new hydro-electric dams in central and western parts of the country to generate cleaner energy and replace aging fossil-fuel-burning plants to meet Canada's reduced greenhouse gas emissions target (six percent below 1990 levels) under Kyoto.
But, these structures will cut off the armour-plated lake sturgeon that once swam in nearly every river and lake in North America, survived predation by dinosaurs and was a staple for local aboriginals for centuries, from its breeding grounds as well as destroy its habitat, said environmentalists.
"It's a bizarre turn of events that this species is now connected to Kyoto," said University of Manitoba zoologist Terry Dick. He has been trying in earnest to reintroduce the lake sturgeon into local rivers.
"It's a big problem because hydro-electric dams are primarily built on good spawning sites or nursery areas where the fish feed. It's going to be an issue in (the provinces of) Manitoba and Ontario where they're now looking at rivers where before they weren't going to have hydro-electric dams," he said.
These so-called living fossils can live to more than 100 years, weigh as much as 100 kilograms and grow to more than two metres long. With elongated, cone-shaped snouts and rows of bony plates on their backside, the freaky fish are prized for their meat, eggs (caviar) and oil. But, their numbers in western Canada have steadily declined during the past 150 years since the arrival of European settlers due to overfishing.
A century ago, Canadian fishermen netted millions of kilograms of lake sturgeon each year, stacking them like logs on lakeshores. But, sightings of them nowadays are rare enough to make newspaper headlines and scientists estimate fewer than 1,000 are left in western Canadian rivers and lakes -- equal to the remaining number of plains bison that were once a symbol of Canada's vast prairies.
Now, plans to build three massive hydroelectric dams in the province of Manitoba and 100 or more smaller dams in Ontario over the next decade, according to government officials, all connected to a new east-west power grid to feed Canada's industrial base in Ontario, will quicken the fish's demise, observers fear.
The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, tackling the issue a year ahead of originally planned after sensing some urgency, has declared the species endangered in western Canada and at risk in eastern Canada. This follows similar actions in the United States.
Its recommendations will be forwarded to Canada's environment minister, then face public scrutiny at a series of meetings meant to measure the economic and social implications of protecting the species. However, it may take up to 18 months before the minister decides whether to list the species as endangered and come up with a recovery plan.
On Monday, Environment Minister Stephane Dion chose not to protect the wild plains bison, which once numbered tens of millions.
Some experts still believe the species could bounce back, but most are unequivical in their belief that the fish is doomed because it reproduces so slowly, spawning only once every four to six years, and there are not enough left to sustain a breeding population.
cynical
Photograph of what some believe to be of the Loch Ness Monster taken in 1961. (AP Photo)
Huevelmans book " In Search of Unknown Animals" included other animal oddities such as giant squid and
octupus that I have documented here in my Cuthulu Talesand which the
CBC article refers to as Kraken. The Kraken or giant squid is a sea tale that has impacted
Canadian folk legends based more on Atlantic sightings than Pacific.
And it is the Gulf Stream that seems to be where these findings in the
last century have been most predominant. Again truth is stranger than
friction, and dead bodies of giant squid and octopus keep washing
ashore every few years just to confuse the doubters and skeptics.
THE MONSTER IN NORTH AMERICAN FRESH WATER LAKES IS AN ANCIENT FOSSIL FISH
We have a great deal of very deep glacial lakes in Western Canada and the adjoining American States, whether it is the Okanagan Lake in B.C. or Flathead Lake which borderd Montana and Idaho. And here we have a long history of sightings of fresh water monsters like Nessie in Scotland. And while Nessie has not been discovered, the real story behind the Ogopogo or the Flathead Lake monster or those in Manitoba and the Great Lakes must be treated with a deal more seriousness. I would contend that the sightings are a really living existing ancient dinosaur fish.
It is the sturgeon the ancient fossil fish. Now most folks think of
caviar when they think of sturgeon, but these fresh water fish are
pominant in Alberta and across the region. And they are elusive and
long lived and can way up to 200 lbs. These are big , ugly fish, with
teeth, and eyes deep as the abyss.
Most of the descriptions of the fresh water monsters seen in North
America match the sturgeon. And they do have a horse like face, with
teeth, and when covered in moss, freshwater polps and seaweed, they
would look pretty frightening.
And the Alberta Fresh Water Sturgeon are now on the Endangered Species list for Canada which shows how rare they are.
That this fish can live for 100 TO 200 years is awesome and fascinating, that
it lives at the bottom rarely to surface is the reason they are
hard to find and live long. They also are hard to catch and when you do
in some cases fishermen have had to use trucks and winches to hall them
ashore, and not without significant struggle.
This fish is a fresh water monster, and is seen so rarely that
vacationers may only spot the serpert like wake it leaves on the
surface giving rise to the lake monster legends.
Is this the solution to these fresh water sightings? Scientists early
on dismissed these sightings as being 'just the common sturgeon". There
is nothing common about the sturgeon and to dismiss the fact their may
be really old large, monster sturgeon in our fresh water lakes is
enough to give credence to what people have seen. Check out the section
below on sturgeon.
Another theory has it that the fresh lake monsters are long necked seals, itself a whole other catagory of cryptozological creature. And while an interesting hypothesis, I will stick to my theory that what people have seen is the rare occasional sighting of an ancient dinosaur fish, the sturgeon.
Finally dragons of course were considered non existant until the
discovery of fossils, and now we equate them with dinosaurs. In fact
like the legend of the Kraken, now known as the Giant Squid, dragons may
have been the remnants of some yet undetermined 'great lizard'. Or as one
wag has written; crocodiles, in England.
CONCLUSION
Cryptozoology is a science founded by dissident, or heretic if you like, scientists, who deal with these legends on an empirical basis.
Heuvelmans and Velikovsky both came from the Free Univeristy of Berlin, a unique university that early on based their teaching of science on a humanistic philosophy of interdepartemental studies. Thus the creative thinking in science, radical science if you like, is not the scientism of the skeptic or the techologist, but the little heresies of Cryptozoology and Catastrophism of Heuvelmans and Velikovsky.
They hope to track the path of the 40-year-old: a rare sturgeon found washed up Friday.
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| [Times photo: Lara Cerri] Monday’s necropsy did not reveal the cause of the sturgeon’s death, but scientists hope tissue samples will help determine its origin. |
By LEANORA MINAI, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 19, 2002
ST. PETERSBURG -- To the untrained eye, it is a large and strange-looking fish.
To scientists, it is a gem.
Marine biologists and others are dazzled over the discovery of the largest sturgeon found in the Tampa Bay area since 1897, and one of only a handful found here in the last century.
"It's truly a living relic," said Daniel Roberts, a research scientist at the Florida Marine Research Institute in St. Petersburg, where a necropsy was performed Monday on the sturgeon. "Most people have never seen any of these fish. They're very rare."
Now researchers are trying to learn how the fish got here. Did it take an incredibly bad turn, or are the prehistoric-looking creatures making a comeback in this region?
Biologists do not know what killed the sturgeon, which washed up Friday in a Shore Acres neighborhood.
The fish, a 40-year-old female, was plump with 10 pounds of ripe, black eggs -- high-quality caviar, which would have brought an estimated $6,500.
Marine biologists are curious about the origin of this particular fish. They have long believed the sturgeon, plentiful in the Gulf of Mexico before 1900, disappeared from the Tampa Bay area.
"We have been assuming that the Tampa Bay stocks are gone," said Roberts, 52, also director of a sturgeon habitat study by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "We just thought there weren't any more, that they couldn't live here anymore, and to find one, especially a big ripe female, is exciting."
In the late 1800s, more flesh and caviar from sturgeon was harvested in Tampa Bay than any other fishery port in the Gulf of Mexico, including New Orleans. Since then, the sturgeon has been threatened with extinction, killed off by overfishing, dams and pollution.
Sturgeon are known to migrate from January to April and spawn in freshwater -- the Mississippi, Pearl, Escambia, Yellow, Choctawhatchee, Apalachicola and Suwannee rivers.
Biologists have tagged and monitored sturgeon to determine where the fish go when they leave freshwater spawning grounds.
"We've never found a spawner in a river that flows into Tampa Bay," Roberts said.
That makes Roberts wonder whether this fish was headed to reproduce at a river that feeds Tampa Bay -- the Alafia or Hillsborough. That would be a first.
"I think it would add a renewed significance and be a measure of sorts of environmental protection," Roberts said. "It would give us some hope that the things we're doing to protect our environment may actually be working to some small degree."
Roberts also said this particular fish might have strayed, taken a wrong turn and gotten lost on her way to spawn in the Suwannee River, where a healthy population of sturgeon exists. Sturgeon are docile and swim and feed on the bottom in water 3-feet to hundreds of feet deep.
After Monday's necropsy, Roberts still does not know why the fish died but hopes that after studying tissue samples, he will be able to determine whether it is from the Suwannee River species.
"We would like to know the history of this fish," Roberts said. "Where did it come from? And why is it in Tampa Bay during the spawning season?"
Part of an old monitoring tag was found on the 40-year-old fish, suggesting it was being tracked by scientists at one time. The fish also had a small hole under its belly. "It could have been a spear," Roberts said.
Still, Roberts does not believe a fisherman tried to kill the sturgeon for its flesh and caviar.
"Maybe it got hooked up or tied up in a fish net," Roberts said. "It didn't look like it had been hit by a boat. It didn't have any shark bites on it. . . . It's a fish tale."
Sturgeon are the oldest living species of fish, dating back more than 250-million years. They existed at the same time as the dinosaurs and have been described as "living fossils."
The Society of Vertebrate
Paleontology
Founded in 1940 by thirty-four paleontologists, the Society
now has almost 2,000 members representing professionals, students, artists,
preparators, and others interested in VP. It is organized exclusively
for educational and scientific purposes, with the object of advancing
the science of vertebrate paleontology.
Strangers in a Strange LandA Not-Quite-Official Flathead Monster
Sighting Data-Collection Project
Monster Body of Water Landmark State Country Manipogo Lk Manitoba Manitoba Canada Caddy (cadborosaurus) Cadboro Bay Vancouver Island British Columbia Canada Cape Bonavista Newfoundland Canada Ogopogo Lk Okanagan British Columbia Canada Charlie Lk Charleston Kingston Ontario Canada Old Ned Lk Utopia New Brunswick Canada Cressie (cressiteras agnulouida) Crescent Lake Newfoundland Canada Memphre Lk Memphremagog Vermont/Quebec USA/Can Tizherak (Pal Rai Yuk) Key Island Alaska USA Paint River Michigan USA Ponik Lk Pohenegamock Quebec/Maine Can/USA Lk Leelanau Michigan USA Gloucester Massachusetts USA Flathead Monster Flathead Lake Montana USA Champ Lk Champlain New York/Vermont USA Altamaha-Ha Darien Georgia USA South Bay Bessie Lk Erie Ohio USA White River Monster White River Newport Arkansas USA Illie Illamna Lake Alaska USA Tessie Lk Tahoe California USA Capital Lake* Olympia Washington USA San Francisco Bay Stinson Beach California USA Kessingland Sea Serpent Lowestoft, Norfolk England GB Morag Loch Morar Scotland GB Nessie Loch Ness Scotland GB Nahuelito Nahuel Huapi Lake Bariloche Argentina Selma Lk Seljordsvatnet Norway Nyami Lk Kariba/Zambezi River Africa Vancanavar Lk Van Turkey Trunko Margate South Africa Incanyamba Umgeni River Kwazulu-Natal South Africa Storsie Lk Storsjon Sweden Gryttie Lk Gryttjen Sweden * The Capital Lake monster was purported a large fish
er
Cryptozoology
(Lost Worlds Exhibition)
Lake Monsters of North America
Strange things in the water.
Loch Ness isn't the only lake with a reputation for a Monster. In North America many large, deep, cold water lakes have stories about monsters that go back to before the arrival of Europeans:
"Champ" of Lake Champlain - Lake Champlain is a large lake that defines much of the border between the State of Vermont and the State of New York. This body of water is over a hundred miles long and at times thirteen miles wide offering excellent cover for a monster. .
The most interesting modern report of Champ was in 1977 by Sandra Mansi. Using her Kodak Instamatic she snapped a picture of a long necked creature emerging from the water. While the photo appears to be authentic the negative was lost limiting the amount of analysis that can be done.
For more information on this phenomena, check out our "Champ of Lake Champlain" page..
"Ogopogo" of Okanagan Lake - Stories of Ogopogo go back to before white men settled this section of British Columbia, Canada. The Native Americans called it "Natiaka" meaning "The Lake Monster." The current name comes form a song parody written in 1926.
Modern reports of the monster seem to have surged in the 1920's. One, in November 1926, involved 50 to 60 people viewing the monster when they'd come to the lake edge for a baptism ceremony.
In addition to scores of reports, there have been alleged photos of the monster, but most of them were of poor quality. No scientific investigation of the monster has been made. The lake, itself, is very much like Loch Ness. Cold, deep water (800 feet) some 79 miles long and 2 1/2 miles wide.
"Manipogo" of Lake Manitoba - The name here is a derivative of the better known "Ogopogo." As with Ogopogo there were early Native American sightings and some reports by settlers. Then in 1962 two men in a boat got a picture. Looking like a snake in the water the picture isn't clear enough to prove the existence of the monster. The appearance does match up with other eye-witness reports of the creature: A long tubular body at least a foot in diameter.
In the early 60's Professor James A. McLeod of Manitoba University investigated the creature by trying to locate it's remains. If there is a breeding population in the lake they should be leaving carcasses and bones when they die. McLeod found none.
There have been occasional sightings of monsters at other lakes and rivers in North America including Flathead Lake, Montana and the White River in Arkansas. (Some authorities believe the Arkansas sighting was a lost elephant seal.) A monster reported in the late 1800's in Silver Lake, New York, turned out to be a hoax perpetrated by a local hotel owner who profited from the resulting tourist dollar.
What Are Your Chances of Sighting the Monster?
By Laney Hanzel
From the Flathead Lake Monitor, July, 1995
Sighting Data-Collection Project
SURREAL SEAL CAMPAIGN
A web site dedicated to the possible existence of a Seal with a long neck.......
INTRODUCTION
The theory of a Seal with a long neck was proposed in its modern form by Dr Bernard Heuvelmans, a zoologist, in the late 1950s as an attempt to explain sightings of long necked `Sea Serpents` that typically described some mammalian and very seal like characteristics. These included descriptions of hair, fur and even whiskers, accounts which could have been describing seals except for the fact that these creatures appeared to have longer necks than presently known Pinnipeds.
weird
For over forty years I have been an enthusiast of fossils, dinosaurs, rock
hounding, and paleontolgy, that and of course Famous Monsters of
Movieland, Dracula, Edgar Allan Poe, Sherlock Holmes, Sci-Fi, Pulp
Fiction and strange tales.
Which leads naturally to my interest in strange animals now called the
study of cryptozoology; Fact meets Fiction or as Sherlock Holmes said;
"Once you have eliminated the impossible, what ever remains no matter
how improbable is the truth."
For instance during the 18th and 19th century there had been tales from
Africa of semi human creatures, who are covered in hair and live deep
in the jungle. These manlike creatures were orignally described in the
same way Big Foot and Yeti have been talked about today. One hundred
years ago, one of these strange African legends was discovered. It was
a Great Ape.
More
than 1/2 BILLION years old, the fossils of the Burgess Shale fauna preserve
for us an intriguing glimpse of early animal life on Earth. These fossils
are named after a Cambrian rock formation (the Burgess Shale) that is
located in the western Canadian Rockies. They were first discovered there
in 1909 by Charles D. Walcott, then Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
The vaults of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History currently
house over 65,000 specimens, the largest collection of these fossils in
the world. The Museum also has a permanent exhibit of the Burgess Shale
fauna in the Dinosaur Hall. Since Walcott's original discovery, fossil
deposits like these have been found in such widely dispersed areas as
China, Greenland, Siberia, Australia, Europe, and the USA.
Bernard Heuvelmans was born in Le Havre, France, in 1916 and received his doctorate in zoology from the Free University in Brussels in 1939.
Scientific fellow and correspondent of numerous natural history societies around the world, author of more than a dozen books and numerous articles on cryptozoology, Dr. Heuvelmans presently lives in Paris but travels extensively throughout the world, photographing what remains of wildlife and endeavouring to substantiate rumors and legends about animals know to local people but still unknown to science.
Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans, the father of cryptozoology and President of the International Society of Cryptozoology (ISC), passed way in April 2001.
GO TO CRYPTOZOLOGY PART 2 FOR MY SOLUTION TO THE MYSTERY OF NORTH AMERICAN FRESH WATER LAKE MONSTERS
Cryptid: Any unknown living animal that is not currently recognized in the international zoological catalogues
Cryptozoology: The study of hidden animals
Some
believe this to be a female Sasquatch in northern California, seen in
this frame, taken from footage by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin in
1967. (AP Photo/Sasquatch Research Project, Roger Patterson and Bob
Gimlin )
This
is a frame from a video shot April 16, 2005, by a ferry operator in
northern Manitoba. (CP Photo/Winnipeg Sun/A Current Affair)In the introductory chapters of the book I have briefly addressed some of the problems of belief and knowledge to help us understand the widespread resistance to accepting the sasquatch as a real animal. I continued on to challenge two commonly held ideas that sasquatch sightings can be accounted for by (1) hoaxes, or (2) misidentified bears. My main goal in the book is to provide readers with a more complete picture of sasquatch appearance, anatomy, food habits, and ecology based on existing, but not readily available, reports. Most of the book is devoted to bringing us up to date on what is "known," or at least reported, for the sasquatch regarding its appearance, anatomical details, gait, sign, food habits, and behavior. The last few chapters develop the hypothesis, first suggested by the appearance and anatomy reported for the animal, that the sasquatch is a great ape, similar in many ways to the great apes of Africa (chimpanzees and gorillas) and Asia (orangutans). The most significant differences from these better-known great apes are, of course, (1) the habitual bipedal (two-footed) gait of the sasquatch, compared with the normal quadrupedal (four-footed) gait of other apes, and, (2) the humanlike foot of the sasquatch in which all five toes are aligned alongside each other rather than having an opposable big-toe as in the more arboreal African and Asian apes.
It should be acknowledged that author John Green has been referring to the sasquatch as an ape since the 1960s, based on the many descriptions of "gorillalike", and "apelike" animals he has accumulated (see his book: The Apes Among Us). And Grover Krantz (in his book Big Footprints) discusses details of ape anatomy which help us understand several details of reported sasquatch anatomy. In my own case it was the writing of these two men and the presentatons of Dr. Henner Fahrenbach, Beaverton, Oregon, and Dr. Jeff Meldrum, Idaho State University, at the 1996 Sasquatch Forum held in Harrison Hot Springs, B. C., that provided the impetus for following up this avenue of research. My studies led me into what I consider the most interesting aspect of sasquatch biology-- its behavior, and especially its behavior in reponse to human presence.
For years we have had reports of truly bizarre behavior being attributed to sasquatches. This has ranged from relatively benign responses to humans, such as the throwing of small stones, to more aggressive behavior in the form of shaking vehicles, slapping and shoving dwellings, throwing large rocks and chunks of wood, and chasing people. Loud, resonant calls and overwhelming (even "eye-watering") odor has also been reported.
To find other examples of this behavior in the animal world, we must go to the primates: monkeys, apes, and humans. In the writing of Jane Goodall and her co-workers and colleagues (The Chimpanzees of Gombe) we find numerous examples of chimpanzees throwing rocks both large and small. From Dian Fossey (Gorillas in the Mist) we learn that gorillas occasionally produce a "gagging" odor. From John MacKinnon (In Search of the Red Ape) and Birute Galdikas (Reflections of Eden) we learn of orangutans dropping branches on people and pushing snags toward them. And from George Schaller (The Mountain Gorilla) we learn about primate displays in which apes and humans release tension by throwing things, beating on things, stamping their feet, etc. Essentially all the remarkable behavior we have heard about in sasquatches is present in the better-studied great apes of Africa and Asia. But whereas we accept the reports made by well-known primatologists concerning animals in exotic places, we have been much more reluctant to accept reports of an apelike animal which occasionally behaves in a similar way closer to home. Readers with an open mind willing to accompany me as I review the highlights of some 150 sasquatch reports and compare them with similar reports from Africa and Asia, may conclude, as I have, that the sasquatch is indeed North America's great ape.Ancient Ape Discovered—Last Ape-Human Ancestor?
Original' great ape discovered
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By Paul Rincon
BBC News science reporter |
 Could this be the last common ancestor of humans and great apes?
 |
The partial skeleton of this 13-million-year-old "missing link" was found by palaeontologists working at a dig site near Barcelona in Spain.
Details of the sensational discovery appear in Science magazine.
The new specimen was probably male, a fruit-eater and was slightly smaller than a chimpanzee, researchers say.
Palaeontologists were just getting started at the dig when a bulldozer churned up a tooth.
It's very impressive because of its completeness
David Begun, University of Toronto
Further investigation yielded one of the most complete ape skeletons known from the Miocene Epoch (about 22 to 5.5 million years ago).
Salvador Moyà-Solà of the Miquel Crusafont Institute of Palaeontology in Barcelona and colleagues subsequently found parts of the skull, ribcage, spine, hands and feet, along with other bones.
They have assigned it to an entirely new genus and species: Pierolapithecus catalaunicus.
Monkey business
Great apes are thought - on the basis of genetic and other evidence - to have separated from another primate group known as the lesser apes some time between 11 and 16 million years ago (The lesser apes include gibbons and siamang).
It is fascinating, therefore, for a specimen like Pierolapithecus to turn up right in this window.
Scientists think the creature lived after the lesser apes went their own evolutionary way, but before the great apes began their own diversification into different forms such as orang-utans, gorillas, chimps and, of course, humans.
"Pierolapithecus probably is, or is very close to, the last common ancestor of great apes and humans," said Professor Moyà-Solà.
The new ape's ribcage, lower spine and wrist display
signs of specialised climbing abilities that link it with modern great
apes, say the researchers.
The fossil has been described as a "missing link"
The overall orthograde - or upright - body design of this animal and modern-day great apes is thought to be an adaptation to vertical climbing and suspending the body from branches.
The Miocene ape fossil record is patchy; so finding such a complete fossil from this time period is unprecedented.
"It's very impressive because of its completeness," David Begun, professor of palaeoanthropology at the University of Toronto, Canada, told the BBC News website.
"I think the authors are right that it fills a gap between the first apes to arrive in Europe and the fossil apes that more closely resemble those living today."
Planet of the apes
Other scientists working on fossil apes were delighted by the discovery. But not all were convinced by the conclusions drawn by the Spanish researchers.
Professor Begun considers it unlikely that Pierolapithecus was ancestral to orang-utans.
"I haven't seen the original fossils. But there are four or five important features of the face, in particular, that seem to be closer to African apes," he explained.
"To me the possibility exists that it is already on the evolutionary line to African apes and humans."
Professor David Pilbeam, director of the Peadbody Museum in Cambridge, US, was even more sceptical about the relationship of Pierolapithecus to modern great apes: "To me it's a very long stretch to link this to any of the living apes," he told the BBC News website.
The animal would not have looked much like any present-day apes
"I think it's unlikely that you would find relatives of the apes that live today in equatorial Africa and Asia up in Europe.
"But it's interesting in that it appears to show some adaptations towards having a trunk that's upright because it's suspending itself [from branches].
"It also has some features that show quadrupedal (four-legged) behaviour. Not quadrupedal in the way chimps or gorillas are, but more in the way that monkeys are - putting their fingers down flat," he explained.
During the Miocene, Earth really was the planet of the apes.
As many as 100 different ape species roamed the Old World, from France to China in Eurasia and from Kenya to Namibia in Africa.
curious
mischievous|
Thu Mar 24, 6:40 PM ET
|
WASHINGTON (AP) - Octopuses, known for using camouflage to avoid predators, have been observed apparently trying to sneak away by walking on two arms while pretending to be a bunch of algae.
Two kinds of octopus were seen to use different ways of walking along the sea floor, researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
The movements were discovered by Christine Huffard of the University of California, Berkeley, who was studying underwater video-camera tapes of the animals.
Berkeley professor Robert Full said Huffard was studying octopus movement as part of a robotics project. He said the researchers use examples from nature in designing robots; one project is to build a soft robot.
Octopuses trying to avoid being eaten usually hold still to camouflage themselves. But by walking on two arms, these two types were able to move quickly while using their other arms to disguise themselves.
Two individuals of O. marginatus from Indonesia wrapped six arms around themselves, looking like a coconut on the sea floor. They then used the two rear arms to move backward.
In Australia, O. aculeatus was seen raising two arms above its head before lifting four more and moving backward on the two remaining arms. The researchers described it as looking like "a clump of algae tiptoeing away."
The researchers believe the octopuses were trying to flee from predators, though they cannot be sure until they have seen more examples of the behaviour.
The research was funded by the American Malacological Society and the National Science Foundation (news - web sites).
Octopuses sense of touch is acute in it's suckers. The rim of the cups are particularly sensitive. A blindfolded octopus can differentiate between objects of various shapes and sizes as well as a sighted octopus.
Octopuses have highly complex eyes which compare to human visual acuity.
Focusing is done by moving the lens in and out rather than by changing
its shape as the human eye dose.
Being such highly intelligent creatures, octopuses are also master escape artists, and can be hard to keep in an aquarium if they want out. I've known a couple of people who've gotten a small octopod for their home saltwater aquarium, only to find the creature dead and dried-up on the floor after it pried off the tank lid and crawled out in the night. One acquaintance of mine found his little octopod dead of electrocution after it escaped from its tank and made the mistake of probing a socket on a nearby power strip with one of its damp tentacles.
My marine biology professor from my undergrad college once had a laboratory job where they often kept octopuses. He learned a simple technique for convincing the new octopus that, yes, it really wanted to stay put in the aquarium.
He'd put the new octopus in the tank, do some odds and ends in the lab for a few minutes, then leave the room and turn out the lights. He'd wait outside until he heard the telltale, sodden slap that mean the octopus had staged a jailbreak and had hit the floor. He'd wait one minute, then go back into the lab and put the octopus back in the tank.
He'd repeat the process, the next time waiting three minutes. And on the third time, he waited a whole five minutes before rescuing the miserable, sticky, dust-bunny-covered octopus from the lab floor, rinsing it off, and placing it back in the aquarium.
After that third time, he told me, an octopus wouldn't try to escape again. In fact, he sometimes had to work hard to get it out if it needed to be examined or transferred to a new tank so the old one could be cleaned.
NATURE presents "The Octopus Show."
A new age of ocean exploration is lifting the veil of mystery shrouding
a creature of legend -- the octopus. Dreaded by sailors through the
ages, this other-worldly looking denizen of the seas is surrendering
the astonishing secrets that have brought it almost mythical status.
With footage of octopus species rarely, if ever, seen before
-- including one with giant eyes and another with antennae in place of
suction cups -- NATURE takes viewers into the deepest realms of the
ocean for a front-row
On a moonless January night in 2003, Olivier de Kersauson, the French yachtsman, was racing across the Atlantic Ocean, trying to break the record for the fastest sailing voyage around the world, when his boat mysteriously came to a halt. There was no land for hundreds of miles, yet the mast rattled and the hull shuddered, as if the vessel had run aground. Kersauson turned the wheel one way, then the other; still, the gunwales shook inexplicably in the darkness. Kersauson ordered his crew, all of whom were now running up and down the deck, to investigate. Some of the crew took out spotlights and shone them on the water, as the massive trimaran—a three-hulled, hundred-and-ten-foot boat that was the largest racing machine of its kind, and was named Geronimo, for the Apache warrior—pitched in the waves.
Meanwhile, the first mate, Didier Ragot, descended from the deck into the cabin, opened a trapdoor in the floor, and peered through a porthole into the ocean, using a flashlight. He glimpsed something by the rudder. “It was bigger than a human leg,” Ragot recently told me. “It was a tentacle.” He looked again. “It was starting to move,” he recalled.
He beckoned Kersauson, who came down and crouched over the opening. “I think it’s some sort of animal,” Ragot said.
Kersauson took the flashlight, and inspected for himself. “I had never seen anything like it,” he told me. “There were two giant tentacles right beneath us, lashing at the rudder.”
The creature seemed to be wrapping itself around the boat, which rocked violently. The floorboards creaked, and the rudder started to bend. Then, just as the stern seemed ready to snap, everything went still. “As it unhooked itself from the boat, I could see its tentacles,” Ragot recalled. “The whole animal must have been nearly thirty feet long.”
The creature had glistening skin and long arms with suckers, which left impressions on the hull. “It was enormous,” Kersauson recalled. “I’ve been sailing for forty years and I’ve always had an answer for everything—for hurricanes and icebergs. But I didn’t have an answer for this. It was terrifying.”
What they claimed they saw—a claim that many regarded as a tall tale—was a giant squid, an animal that has long occupied a central place in sea lore; it has been said to be larger than a whale and stronger than an elephant, with a beak that can sever steel cables. In a famous scene in “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” Jules Verne depicts a battle between a submarine and a giant squid that is twenty-five feet long, with eight arms and blue-green eyes—“a terrible monster worthy of all the legends about such creatures.” More recently, Peter Benchley, in his thriller “Beast,” describes a giant squid that “killed without need, as if Nature, in a fit of perverse malevolence, had programmed it to that end.”
Such fictional accounts, coupled with scores of unconfirmed sightings by sailors over the years, have elevated the giant squid into the fabled realm of the fire-breathing dragon and the Loch Ness monster. Though the giant squid is no myth, the species, designated in scientific literature as Architeuthis, is so little understood that it sometimes seems like one. A fully grown giant squid is classified as the largest invertebrate on Earth, with tentacles sometimes as long as a city bus and eyes about the size of human heads. Yet no scientist has ever examined a live specimen—or seen one swimming in the sea. Researchers have studied only carcasses, which have occasionally washed ashore or floated to the surface. (One corpse, found in 1887 in the South Pacific, was said to be nearly sixty feet long.) Other evidence of the giant squid is even more indirect: sucker marks have been spotted on the bodies of sperm whales, as if burned into them; presumably, the two creatures battle each other hundreds of feet beneath the ocean’s surface.
The giant squid has
consumed the imaginations of many oceanographers. How could something
so big and powerful remain unseen for so long—or be less understood
than dinosaurs, which died out millions of years ago? The search for a
living specimen has inspired a fevered competition. For decades, teams
of scientists have prowled the high seas in the hope of glimpsing one.
These “squid squads” have in recent years invested millions of dollars
and deployed scores of submarines and underwater cameras, in a struggle
to be first.
The bodies of dead giant squid have been found in nearly every ocean:
in the Pacific, near California; in the Atlantic, off the coasts of
Newfoundland and Norway; and in the Indian, south of South Africa. But
no place is considered better for hunting giant squid than the waters
around New Zealand. It is here that currents from the tropics and
Antarctica converge, and the resulting diversity of marine life creates
an abundance of plankton for squid to feed on. And it is here that, in
recent years, more dead giant squid have been recovered than anywhere
else. (click on link above to read the whole article it is quite fascinating)
Gee that's awfully close to where Cthulu is supposed to Live!
There are some who are of the opinion that Lovecraft borrowed the name “Cthulhu” from Sumerian mythology. This is a hoax perpetrated by the “Simon” hoax edition of the Necronomicon which combines elements of Sumerian mythology and the Lovecraft myths. The name “Cthulhu” was purely an invention of Lovecraft’s. His sketch of Cthulhu may be seen at Robert Arellano’s “The Lovecraft Web”.
Oddly, much debate surrounds the pronunciation of “Cthulhu.” The pronunciation used by most is perpetuated by the “Call of Cthulhu” roleplaying game by Chaosium, Inc., whose books have “Can you say kuh-THOO-loo?” printed on their backs. Several Lovecraftian scholars prefer to pronounce it “Cloo-loo” based on references in Lovecraft’s revision tales. I choose to take a middle ground and aspirate both hs, with a result similar to “kt’hoo-lhoo.” Here are a couple of excerpts from Lovecraft’s letters where he discusses the pronunciation of this word:
The actual sound—as nearly as human organs could imitate it or human letters record it—may be taken as something like Khlûl’-hloo, with the first syllable pronounced gutturally and very thickly. The u is about like that in full; and the first syllable is not unlike klul in sound, since the h represents the guttural thickness. The second syllable is not very well rendered—the l sound being unrepresented. (to Duane Rimel, 23 July 1934)
The best approximation one can make is to grunt, bark, or cough the imperfectly-formed syllables Cluh-Luh with the tip of the tongue firmly affixed to the roof of the mouth. (to Willis Conover, 29 August 1936)
In “Lovecraft in Providence,” Donald Wandrei claims that Lovecraft
pronounced it “K-Lütl-Lütl,” yet in the above-mentioned letter
to Duane Rimel, Lovecraft claims that Wandrei’s comments on the
pronunciation of the term are “largely fictitious.” Robert H. Barlow, in
On Lovecraft and Life, claimed that Lovecraft pronounced it
“Koot-u-lew.” One can’t help but think that Lovecraft was toying with his
friends, since everyone’s pronunciations differ, including his own.
Ultimately, does it really matter?
Welcome to The Cthulhu Lexicon, a living encyclopedia of the places, people,
artifacts,
and creatures which populate the world of H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos.
I'd hate to play under R'leyh
in big Cthulhu's garden in a cave.
H know where we'd been
in his big Cthulhu garden in a cave.
I'd hate my friends to come and see big ol'
Cthulhu's garden with me.
I'd hate to play under R'leyh
in big Cthulhu's garden in a cave.
He'd keep us whole, just eat our soul
in his monstrous hideaway beneath the waves.
Keeping us loose, hanged in a noose
in big Cthulhu's garden in a cave.
We would scream and shout out loud,
'cause we know we'll never be found.
I'd hate to play under R'leyh
in big Cthulhu's garden in a cave.
We would shout and flounder about
the tentacles beneath the ocean waves.
Oh what fear for every little dear,
knowing their minds are gone away.
We would be there to tell us what to do.
I'd hate to play under R'leyh
in big Cthulhu's garden with you.
I CTHULHU:
or What’s A Tentacle-Faced
Thing Like Me Doing In A Sunken City Like This (Latitude 47 ° 9’
S, Longitude 126 ° 43’ W)? By Neil Gaiman
Toy Vault’s line
of Plush Cthulhu's
Straight from the pages of noted horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, Toy
Vault proudly presents the monstrous, shambling “old one,” Cthulhu.
Currently available in several diffrent version, Toy Vault’s line
of Plush Cthulhu's are a fan favorite. “Cthulhu Rising,” a beautifully
detailed cold-cast resin statue, is currently in development and
should be released in the near future.
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