Cryptozoology

Hunting Utah’s Giant Beavers and Loch Ness Otters

Okay, you can’t watch wall-to-wall pre-game coverage of the Super Bowl, can you? You shouldn’t take in too many replays of every debate spark that flew last week, should you? Tired of the nonstop football and election articles, internet highlights, and television analysis ~ not to mention what’s up with Britney lately? Take some time to revisit the lake monsters, folks. They miss you. There is a brand new review of The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep (NY: Tarcher/Penguin, 2003) published by epinions. It is always encouraging to read intelligent critiques [...]

Beckjord’s Cancer Advances

Almost exactly one year ago, Jon-Erik Beckjord reported he had cancer. He’s broadcasting an update. Jon-Erik Beckjord has posted the following on his forum: My enemies will rejoice. It comes to us all. To some earlier; to some later. Like Rene Dahinden, I have advanced prostate cancer and it has advanced to the bones. I was warned on the Lummi Indian Reservation that if you see Bigfoot/Sasquatch too often, it is a sign they are taking you to them, to join them…Roger Patterson got the best Bigfoot movie of all time, 58 sec, and within four years passed on with [...]

Water Horse Invades Japan

I have a feeling that the promotion of Water Horse in Japan is being handled much differently than it was in the USA, where the creature was treated as if it could be your bathtub pet. Here is video of the amazing hologram that was recently created off Tokyo to acknowledge the release of the film in Japan. Sources: Odaiba; Endgadget; The Anomalist.

Fiji Lordomyrma Discovered

Lordomyrma vanua Lucky & Sarnat 2008: Fiji image by A. Lucky & E. Sarnat The discovery of new insects are a dime a dozen, so to speak. I tend to agree with Bernard Heuvelmans that an animal has to be large enough to have an impact on humans, visibly, to be a cryptid. The cryptids we deal with daily are usually domestic cat-sized and bigger. However, I was struck by the attractive nature of the above new ant discovery and felt it was worth sharing its photograph here. As the Myrmecos blog (link below) mentions, Zootaxa contained a short paper [...]

New Giant: First Elephant-Shrew In 126 Years

Grey-faced sengi, Rhynchocyon udzungwensis. Photo credit: Francesco Rovero. “This is one of the most exciting discoveries of my career,” said Galen Rathbun of the California Academy of Sciences. Rathbun’s and Museum of Natural Sciences in Trento, Italy, Francesco Rovero’s discovery is published in the February issue of the British-based Journal of Zoology. Although there is unquestionably much left to be discovered about life on Earth, charismatic animals like mammals are usually well documented, and it is rare to find a new species today—especially from a group as intriguing as the elephant-shrews, monogamous mammals found only in Africa with a colorful [...]