Photos

Rat-Eating Plant Discovered

Nepenthes tenax Here is another one for your cryptobotany file! It is not a cow-eating tree from India – (as per here, here, and here) – , but a rat-eating pitcher plant from Australia. A rare new species of plant that eats small rats has been discovered at the tip of Cape York. Pitcher plants, otherwise known as flesh-eating plants, grow throughout Cape York but now a new, larger species that grows like a vine has been discovered. The new species has been called “Tenax”. James Cook University ecologist Charles Clarke and a colleague found the new species at a [...]

New Shrub Frog Discovered

The tiny shrub frog (Philautus ochlandrae) lives in bamboo hollows. This new species of shrub frog from the Western Ghats adds its name to the growing list of frogs discovered recently. The latest is a tiny oriental shrub frog, named Philautus ochlandrae, discovered in the cool evergreen forests of the Kakkayam Reserve Forest in Kerala, India. The squat little amphibian does not grow beyond 2.5 cm, has a short rounded snout and protruding eyes with striking golden yellow markings. With this, the number of frog species discovered in the last seven years in India stands at 25. The discovery was [...]

New Mystery Panther Photo

The most frequently and quietly discussed cryptids in America are the mystery cats, the phantom felines, the so-called “Black Panthers” of legend and lore. Many people say they see them, so much so they are taken for granted in many parts of the country. While most photographs of “black cats” taken across fields turn out to be nothing more than long-distance pictures of the neighborhood tom-cats, once in a blue moon I’m shown a photograph that has me wondering. This week one such image came my way. Please see the attached pdf photograph file which shows an apparent black panther. [...]

Classic Yeti Images

With the death of Sir Edmund Hillary and Yeti images of the photographs from that era (1950s and 1960s), insights into the evolution of how the Abominable Snowmen were viewed can be considered through the lenses of time and distance. The first image shared here (click on Perkins Yeti) is the 1960 lifesize drawing shown by then-Lincoln Park Zoo director Marlin Perkins before the World Book expedition to the Himalayas with Sir Edmund Hillary. (This may be different than the large cutout Perkins showed on “Wild Kingdom” in 1963, or it may be the same one.) Below is the slightly [...]

Yeti Hunter Sir Edmund Hillary Dies

Sir Edmund Hillary, one of the first two men to climb the world’s highest mountain, Mount Everest, has died at the age of 88, on January 11, 2008, local New Zealand time. He climbed the 29,035 ft (8,850m) peak with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, reaching the top on May 29, 1953. Hillary’s health had reportedly been in decline since April 2007, after a fall while visiting Nepal. He suffered a heart attack in hospital on Friday morning. Sir Edmund’s fellow climber, Sherpa Tenzing Norgay (right), died in May 1986. Born July 20, 1919, in Auckland, New Zealand, Sir Edmund Hillary began [...]

Yeti At McGill

The Year of the Yeti continues. Amazingly, my last Friday introduction of the classic film The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas and the new hardbound release of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City, is being mirrored (skeptically) with something quite similar occurring tomorrow in Quebec. At McGill University, in Montreal, Quebec, there will be a screening of the same film, preceded by an intriguing lecture. Here’s the announcement from McGill: The Redpath’s ever-popular Freaky Fridays series hits the New Year running, or at least ambling with a [...]