On Wednesday, February 20, 2008, beginning at 10:01 EST, 9:01 CST, 8:01 MST, 7:01 p.m. PST, etc., the moon will move completely under the shadow of the Earth in a total lunar eclipse. The eclipse can be seen in the Americas, Europe, and Africa. Hope for good weather because the next total lunar eclipse won’t happen until December 2010. The moon will be completely under Earth’s shadow for about 50 minutes. During this time, the moon won’t be completely obscured because of indirect light coming from the Earth’s atmosphere. But the moon will appear to change colors from light gray [...]
How To Escape A Yeti
I was recently talking to Boing Boing‘s David Pescovitz about the long-held belief that the best way to escape a Yeti is to run downhill. Why might such a plan work, you ask? I’ve been reading about the reason behind why this works for a long time. First, the PG version: One of the earliest records of reported footprints in Western literature appeared in 1889, in Major Lawrence Austine Waddell’s Among the Himalayas. Waddell reported his guide’s description of a large apelike creature that left the prints. Most accounts relate that one of the tales that Waddell heard was of [...]
Search for Thylacines: “A Triumph of Hope…”
The Science Show has published a transcript of their recently broadcast program on “Tasmanian Tigers.” The program description details what is covered: “Catherine Medlock describes the Tasmanian Museum’s collection of young Thylacine, or Tasmanian Tigers. The museum has five of the nine specimens in existence. They were extinct on the mainland 5,000 years ago and were only found in Tasmania until more recent times despite reports that they are sighted from time to time. Nevertheless, there is no evidence they persist. The last Thylacine died in the Tasmanian zoo in 1936.” As their interview concludes, Catherine Medlock, Curator of Vertebrate [...]
Arthurian White Stag Reported
Almost mystical in nature, white animals garner human attention, as this new story demonstrates. There is nothing truly cryptozoological about albino or nearly albino animals, any more than there is about melanistic ones. Neither are hidden, certainly, as their very appearance and finding them makes the news. Actually, their appeal has everything to do with them being very beautiful and visible. In the world of weird animal news, white animals tend to get more than the usual attention from humans, and thus the media. Ghostly, phantomlike, mythical, and legendary are words often associated with albinos and near-albinos (leucistic) specimens of [...]
Never Mind: Komodo Dragon Hunt Called Off
Hoax? Failed hunt? Mistaken identity? An update from PNG appears to have a different point of view that the last report published. Papua New Guinean authorities have called off a four-day “Komodo hunt”, believing reports of an escaped Komodo Dragon could be a hoax. The lizard was reported on the loose in PNG’s second largest city, Lae, on PNG’s west coast, and was said to be terrorising locals after it escaped captivity last week. But after extensive investigations authorities believe it could be a similar looking Salvadori Monitor, common to the Papuan region and not the endangered Indonesian reptile. Police, [...]
Red-Faced Laughing Cryptid Monkeys
Are the reports of a strange new monkey related to Macaca fascicularis, pictured above? Or are they more clearly aligned with Japanese macaques? Are they a new species, as yet undiscovered? Or have exotic pet traders released some rare snow monkeys from Japan in the Philippines? A group of red-faced monkeys that can mimic human laughter has been sighted in the mountain ranges of Sal-dab, a sacred mountain in Northern Mindanao, The STAR learned recently. The monkey that mimics human voice is known to natives as Uma-ay and is believed to bring a curse on whoever sees it. According to [...]
Why Mokele-Mbembe Is Not A Rhino
The Emela-ntouka has been an unknown animal of some confusion in Africa. A few chroniclers have felt it was merely another named cryptid representing the sightings of the Mokele-mbembe. But as revealed by an image seen here exclusively at Cryptomundo in the past, it appears to be a beast unlike the saurapod-like Mokele-mbembe. Click on image for larger size Copyright: Michel Ballot – Mokélé – Mbembé CAMEROUN 2004 On page 219 of one of my field guides, coauthored with Patrick Huyghe, we noted, among several different kinds of alleged “dinosaurs” in Africa, “one animal is called by locals the emela [...]
Robert Rines: “Are They All Liars?”
It reads like an obituary. And after a fashion, it is a pre-obit, a reflection on how it must feel as the end is in sight. The Boston Globe looks at the final and waning days of the Loch Ness Monster hunter Robert Rines. The article carried in today’s New England newspaper is detailed, joyous, and, I must admit, a little sad to read. In 1999, along with my sons (one of whom has a very Scottish name and it’s his birthday today), I came upon Rines and one of his sons in a teahouse on the shores of the [...]
Dragon Hunt Continues
Komodo dragons on display at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City. During the last week, a released, escaped, or very out-of-place giant Komodo dragon has terrorized Papua New Guinea’s second largest city and caused a massive search by law enforcement officers and local officials around Lae city on the north-west coast. The Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) is one of cryptozoology’s “classic animals of discovery,” having only been verified less than a hundred years ago, after a specific search for this new species. Now, it is the source of some excitement far from its known home. “Some people [...]
New Bird Species in Wales?
Is there a new species of oystercatchers being seen in Wales? Certainly startled birdwatchers have been giving very detailed reports of a brightly-colored new visitor. A new species in the UK? How exciting. The new birds, scores of them, appeared to be a yellow-breasted oystercatcher. The oystercatchers are a group of shore waders of the family Haematopodidae, which has a single genus, Haematopus. The known Haematopus from Wales is decidedly white-breasted, as shown below: However, it turns out that the yellow-breasts were only dye painted on over a hundred normally-colored oystercatchers for a tracking project off the Gower coast. The [...]
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