Big Foot
What's the story?
Since beyond the memory of the oldest storyteller, the Indians of the Pacific coast have told of- and feared- giant, hairy, bad-smelling, manlike creatures that live in the dense wilderness of the western slope of the Cascade Range, especially from northern California to British Columbia. Every tribe has a name for them, best known being the Salish Indian Sasquatch, the Yurok Indian Toki-mussi and the Hoopa Indian Oh-mah. People in the United States usually call them Bigfoot.
As the white man penetrated the Pacific coast area, they began to report Bigfoot and his spoor occasionally, beginning with a report made by Alexander Anderson of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1864. Hundreds of sightings, including a couple of dozen pretty believable ones, reinforced by fairly common discovery of tracks, nests, droppings, and other evidence, have been reported since.
In the late 1950's, the California Bureau of Public Roads began pushing a timber access road into the unmapped wilderness of the Bluff Creek area north of Eureka- and Bigfoot sightings began to increase. First to report signs were the road-building crew. Then loggers, hikers, hunters and visitors began to report sightings, tracks, and droppings with increasing frequency.
The recreational boom of the Fifties pushed more and more campers, hikers, hunters and fishermen into the eastern slope of the Cascades at the same time, and other sightings and evidences began to gather. Reports became more and more frequent, especially in reports by a few interested newspapers: The San Francisco Chronicle; the Humboldt Times of Eureka, California; the Portland Oregon Journal; the Longview, Washington Times, and the Agassiz-Harrison Advance, in British Columbia.
The sightings were concentrated in a few areas, though scattered additional reports came in as well. Most consistent have been from the Fraser River Valley, Vancouver Island, and the mainland coast of the Strait of Georgia, in British Columbia; the "Ape Canyon" area near Mount Saint Helens in southwestern Washington; the Three Sisters Wilderness west of Bend, in west central Oregon; and the area around the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation northeast of Eureka, California, especially the Bluff Creek watershed.
One other site of a long series of very mysterious happenings - and perhaps as many as a dozen unsolved killings - is the valley at the confluence of the Liard and South Nahanni Rivers, at the south end of the Mackenzie Range, near Fort Simpson in the Canadian Northwest Territories. Though far to the north of Bigfoot's usual haunts, the valley is heated by warm springs- so warm that missionaries have grown banana palms there.
Increasing reports of new evidence brought in the one student and chronicler of "Abominable Snowmen" around the world, Ivan T. Sanderson. A Cambridge-educated Englishman well versed in botany, zoology, geology and anthropology, Sanderson is internationally known as a writer and television personality, and has gathered "snowman" material since 1930.
After several extended trips into sighting areas, hundreds of interviews and a great deal of research, Sanderson produced feature articles in 1959 and 1961 for True magazine, then in 1961 published an enormous collection from his research, interviews, investigations and personal experiences. The book, Abominable Snowman: Legend Come to Life was published by Chilton Books, Inc., of Philadelphia. Even at $7.50, it has gone through three printings, and is a whopping good buy for anyone interested in the subject. (Patterson himself has published a book, a 172-page collection of newspaper clippings, interviews, photographs and drawings from his investigations through 1966. It serves best to update Sanderson's 1961 book for interested readers. It was published by the Northwest Research association of Yakima, and sold for three dollars.)
Largely as a result of Sanderson's work, Roger Patterson launched his stubborn search. When he got his pictures last fall, he and Sanderson collaborated on an article -first of a proposed series- for Argosy magazine of, February 1968. The issue sold out completely in the first week it was on the newsstands.
But because of the publicity from Argosy and his national television appearances, Patterson has been able to plan another expedition to Bluff Creek, a year-long project beginning in May of this year. It will be one of the largest and best-run search expeditions to date with every participant carrying a camera, and the capture plan built around a new tranquilizer gun reportedly rifle-accurate to a range of several hundred feet.
Patterson, in organizing and financing his expedition, has formed a non-profit organization called the Northwest Research Association. Interested readers can get the details free by writing Post Office Box 1101, Yakima, Washington 98901. They'll be invited to join the Association, too, which involves a chance to apply to go along on next summer's search. While only the exceptionally well qualified will get to go along, all the members will be kept posted on developments regularly.
That's the basic background story. Now, except for details, you know about as much about bigfoot as I did when I started working on the story. Here are the answers to some of the questions I asked along the way:
Why is there so little evidence?
In the first place, the terrain of that western slope is so rugged and densely overgrown that it has not even been mapped except by aerial survey. Anyone who has not seen it will have a hard time understanding its impenetrability, but it takes just one flight up the Coast Range to see why
it is almost impassable, even by horseback and even on foot.
Why have no remains or fossils ever been found? Why not, indeed? Two explanations come to mind: First is that nature does not leave organic materials lying around the forest. Even the bones and antlers of large animals are quickly eaten or dispersed by the little forest scavengers. A second explanation, put forth by Sanderson, is that a sub-human race may well gather the remains of its dead for burial in a cave or burying ground.
Why hasn't someone shot one?
Well, reports of two shootings exist. First was by a group of prospectors who shot at one large creature and missed, then shot a second that fell into Ape Canyon and wasn't recovered. The prospectors were later driven out of their cabin by an unexplained but violent attack, supposedly by a vengeful tribe of the creatures, throwing rocks.
Second report was by a bear hunter, who wounded a young one in a tree by mistake. He was horrified to see that he had shot a "human'', and left precipitously when a bigger creature came out of the forest to rescue the wounded youngster.
Several hunters have reported having a bigfoot in their sights. Each one has reported later that he could not pull the trigger on such a human target, or that he feared a manslaughter charge ff he did.
A number of other people claim to have had actual contact with Bigfoot. One, Albert Ostman, of Chilliwack, British Columbia claimed to have been "kidnapped" and held for six days by a family of them near Toba Inlet on the Strait of Georgia. He escaped unharmed. Several mysterious killings have been blamed on Bigfoot, most convincing being the death by slamming to the ground of two guards posted to watch a mining camp on the Chetco River, near the Oregon-California border, in 1890.
Are they so human?
Apparently. Certainly they are not apelike or bear like. Apes do not have buttocks or breasts, which the creature in Patterson's pictures certainly has. Apes do not leave flat-footed human footprints, either. Nor have there ever been any apes on North America, or any fossil evidence of them.
Bears do not walk erect for more than a few steps, nor do they leave human footprints, even when their feet have been scarred in forest fires.
Having seen several showings of Patterson's movie film, I can say without fear of contradiction that, whatever the creature in the picture is, it is neither an ape nor a bear. And if it was a "man in an ape suit", it was a very big man with a very strange stride in a very good ape suit.
Then what could it be?
The most interesting and plausible solution was expressed in the recent Argosy article. Bigfoot could be a sub-human creature, not unlike lava or Peking man, which like the American Indians migrated to this continent over the land bridge that has existed between Siberia and Alaska several times over the past few million years.
Presumably, they may have found the benign climate of the Pacific coast to their liking. Presumably they were driven back from the coast later, when the smaller but better-armed Indians claimed the coastal areas for themselves. That could be the foundation of the Indian legend of Sasquatch.
What do the experts think?
In the Argosy article, the editors interviewed three well-known scientists on that subject:
Dr. John R. Napier, Director of the Primate Biology Program of the Smithsonian Institution, said that he saw nothing in the film that, on scientific grounds, would point conclusively to a hoax. He expressed some reservations about the exaggerated fluidity of movement of the creature in Patterson's film, and suggested that despite the apparent breasts, he would tend to think the creature a male because of the crest on its head, which occurs only in male primates.
Dr. Joseph Wraight, Chief Geographer for the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, confirmed that a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska has existed several times in the past million years, and at those times, the climate in the bridge area was relatively mild. A migration from Asia, then, would have been logically possible.
Dr. Osman Hill, Director of Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center at Emory University, confirmed that the creature in the film must be hominid- manlike- rather than pongid - apelike.
He went on to say that this opinion does not eliminate the chance of a masquerade, but added that if such was the case, it was extremely well done. Dr. Hill expressed the thoughts of dozens of hopeful men as well: Whatever was shown in the film, it should stimulate the formation of a truly scientific expedition to the area, to seek really concrete evidence one way or the other:
Argosy's experts didn't commit themselves as, either believers or disbelievers. Being scientists, they can t make conclusions without hard evidence. At least they were willing to talk about Bigfoot; most scientists will not.
One thing everyone involved agrees on: Somebody should get into the bush on a large scale and find out if Bigfoot is really there. I can't take the time to go along on this summer's expedition, but I'd give anything for the chance to go along. Wouldn't you?
What's the story?
Since beyond the memory of the oldest storyteller, the Indians of the Pacific coast have told of- and feared- giant, hairy, bad-smelling, manlike creatures that live in the dense wilderness of the western slope of the Cascade Range, especially from northern California to British Columbia. Every tribe has a name for them, best known being the Salish Indian Sasquatch, the Yurok Indian Toki-mussi and the Hoopa Indian Oh-mah. People in the United States usually call them Bigfoot.As the white man penetrated the Pacific coast area, they began to report Bigfoot and his spoor occasionally, beginning with a report made by Alexander Anderson of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1864. Hundreds of sightings, including a couple of dozen pretty believable ones, reinforced by fairly common discovery of tracks, nests, droppings, and other evidence, have been reported since.
In the late 1950's, the California Bureau of Public Roads began pushing a timber access road into the unmapped wilderness of the Bluff Creek area north of Eureka- and Bigfoot sightings began to increase. First to report signs were the road-building crew. Then loggers, hikers, hunters and visitors began to report sightings, tracks, and droppings with increasing frequency.
The recreational boom of the Fifties pushed more and more campers, hikers, hunters and fishermen into the eastern slope of the Cascades at the same time, and other sightings and evidences began to gather. Reports became more and more frequent, especially in reports by a few interested newspapers: The San Francisco Chronicle; the Humboldt Times of Eureka, California; the Portland Oregon Journal; the Longview, Washington Times, and the Agassiz-Harrison Advance, in British Columbia.The sightings were concentrated in a few areas, though scattered additional reports came in as well. Most consistent have been from the Fraser River Valley, Vancouver Island, and the mainland coast of the Strait of Georgia, in British Columbia; the "Ape Canyon" area near Mount Saint Helens in southwestern Washington; the Three Sisters Wilderness west of Bend, in west central Oregon; and the area around the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation northeast of Eureka, California, especially the Bluff Creek watershed.
One other site of a long series of very mysterious happenings - and perhaps as many as a dozen unsolved killings - is the valley at the confluence of the Liard and South Nahanni Rivers, at the south end of the Mackenzie Range, near Fort Simpson in the Canadian Northwest Territories. Though far to the north of Bigfoot's usual haunts, the valley is heated by warm springs- so warm that missionaries have grown banana palms there.
Increasing reports of new evidence brought in the one student and chronicler of "Abominable Snowmen" around the world, Ivan T. Sanderson. A Cambridge-educated Englishman well versed in botany, zoology, geology and anthropology, Sanderson is internationally known as a writer and television personality, and has gathered "snowman" material since 1930.
After several extended trips into sighting areas, hundreds of interviews and a great deal of research, Sanderson produced feature articles in 1959 and 1961 for True magazine, then in 1961 published an enormous collection from his research, interviews, investigations and personal experiences. The book, Abominable Snowman: Legend Come to Life was published by Chilton Books, Inc., of Philadelphia. Even at $7.50, it has gone through three printings, and is a whopping good buy for anyone interested in the subject. (Patterson himself has published a book, a 172-page collection of newspaper clippings, interviews, photographs and drawings from his investigations through 1966. It serves best to update Sanderson's 1961 book for interested readers. It was published by the Northwest Research association of Yakima, and sold for three dollars.)Largely as a result of Sanderson's work, Roger Patterson launched his stubborn search. When he got his pictures last fall, he and Sanderson collaborated on an article -first of a proposed series- for Argosy magazine of, February 1968. The issue sold out completely in the first week it was on the newsstands.
But because of the publicity from Argosy and his national television appearances, Patterson has been able to plan another expedition to Bluff Creek, a year-long project beginning in May of this year. It will be one of the largest and best-run search expeditions to date with every participant carrying a camera, and the capture plan built around a new tranquilizer gun reportedly rifle-accurate to a range of several hundred feet.Patterson, in organizing and financing his expedition, has formed a non-profit organization called the Northwest Research Association. Interested readers can get the details free by writing Post Office Box 1101, Yakima, Washington 98901. They'll be invited to join the Association, too, which involves a chance to apply to go along on next summer's search. While only the exceptionally well qualified will get to go along, all the members will be kept posted on developments regularly.
That's the basic background story. Now, except for details, you know about as much about bigfoot as I did when I started working on the story. Here are the answers to some of the questions I asked along the way:
Why is there so little evidence?
In the first place, the terrain of that western slope is so rugged and densely overgrown that it has not even been mapped except by aerial survey. Anyone who has not seen it will have a hard time understanding its impenetrability, but it takes just one flight up the Coast Range to see why
it is almost impassable, even by horseback and even on foot.Why have no remains or fossils ever been found? Why not, indeed? Two explanations come to mind: First is that nature does not leave organic materials lying around the forest. Even the bones and antlers of large animals are quickly eaten or dispersed by the little forest scavengers. A second explanation, put forth by Sanderson, is that a sub-human race may well gather the remains of its dead for burial in a cave or burying ground.
Why hasn't someone shot one?
Well, reports of two shootings exist. First was by a group of prospectors who shot at one large creature and missed, then shot a second that fell into Ape Canyon and wasn't recovered. The prospectors were later driven out of their cabin by an unexplained but violent attack, supposedly by a vengeful tribe of the creatures, throwing rocks.
Second report was by a bear hunter, who wounded a young one in a tree by mistake. He was horrified to see that he had shot a "human'', and left precipitously when a bigger creature came out of the forest to rescue the wounded youngster.
Several hunters have reported having a bigfoot in their sights. Each one has reported later that he could not pull the trigger on such a human target, or that he feared a manslaughter charge ff he did.
A number of other people claim to have had actual contact with Bigfoot. One, Albert Ostman, of Chilliwack, British Columbia claimed to have been "kidnapped" and held for six days by a family of them near Toba Inlet on the Strait of Georgia. He escaped unharmed. Several mysterious killings have been blamed on Bigfoot, most convincing being the death by slamming to the ground of two guards posted to watch a mining camp on the Chetco River, near the Oregon-California border, in 1890.
Are they so human?
Apparently. Certainly they are not apelike or bear like. Apes do not have buttocks or breasts, which the creature in Patterson's pictures certainly has. Apes do not leave flat-footed human footprints, either. Nor have there ever been any apes on North America, or any fossil evidence of them.
Bears do not walk erect for more than a few steps, nor do they leave human footprints, even when their feet have been scarred in forest fires.Having seen several showings of Patterson's movie film, I can say without fear of contradiction that, whatever the creature in the picture is, it is neither an ape nor a bear. And if it was a "man in an ape suit", it was a very big man with a very strange stride in a very good ape suit.
Then what could it be?
The most interesting and plausible solution was expressed in the recent Argosy article. Bigfoot could be a sub-human creature, not unlike lava or Peking man, which like the American Indians migrated to this continent over the land bridge that has existed between Siberia and Alaska several times over the past few million years.
Presumably, they may have found the benign climate of the Pacific coast to their liking. Presumably they were driven back from the coast later, when the smaller but better-armed Indians claimed the coastal areas for themselves. That could be the foundation of the Indian legend of Sasquatch.
What do the experts think?
In the Argosy article, the editors interviewed three well-known scientists on that subject:
Dr. John R. Napier, Director of the Primate Biology Program of the Smithsonian Institution, said that he saw nothing in the film that, on scientific grounds, would point conclusively to a hoax. He expressed some reservations about the exaggerated fluidity of movement of the creature in Patterson's film, and suggested that despite the apparent breasts, he would tend to think the creature a male because of the crest on its head, which occurs only in male primates.
Dr. Joseph Wraight, Chief Geographer for the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, confirmed that a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska has existed several times in the past million years, and at those times, the climate in the bridge area was relatively mild. A migration from Asia, then, would have been logically possible.
Dr. Osman Hill, Director of Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center at Emory University, confirmed that the creature in the film must be hominid- manlike- rather than pongid - apelike.
He went on to say that this opinion does not eliminate the chance of a masquerade, but added that if such was the case, it was extremely well done. Dr. Hill expressed the thoughts of dozens of hopeful men as well: Whatever was shown in the film, it should stimulate the formation of a truly scientific expedition to the area, to seek really concrete evidence one way or the other:Argosy's experts didn't commit themselves as, either believers or disbelievers. Being scientists, they can t make conclusions without hard evidence. At least they were willing to talk about Bigfoot; most scientists will not.
One thing everyone involved agrees on: Somebody should get into the bush on a large scale and find out if Bigfoot is really there. I can't take the time to go along on this summer's expedition, but I'd give anything for the chance to go along. Wouldn't you?
Ware wolf
Many European countries and cultures have stories of werewolves, including France (loup-garou), Greece (lycanthropos), Spain (hombre lobo), Bulgaria (varkolak, vulkodlak), Czech Republic (vlkodlak), Serbia (vukodlak), Russia (oboroten’ , vurdalak), Ukraine (vovkulak(a),vovkun, pereverten’ ), Croatia (vukodlak), Poland (wilkolak), Romania (varcolac), Scotland (werewolf, wulver), England (werwolf), Ireland (faoladh or conriocht), Germany (Werwolf), Denmark/Sweden (Varulv), Galicia(lobisÛn),, Portugal(( lobisomem)) Lithuania (vilkolakis and vilkatlakis), Latvia (vilkatis and vilkacis), Andorra (home llop), Estonia (libahunt), Argentina (lobizon, hombre lobo) and Italy (lupo mannaro). In northern Europe, there are also tales about people changing into animals including bears and wolves.
In Norse mythology, the legends of Ulfhednar (an Old Norse term for a warrior with attributes parallel to those of a berserker, but with a lupine aspect rather than ursine; both terms refer to a special type of warrior capable of performing feats far beyond the abilities of normal people. Historically, this was attributed to possession by the spirit of an animal) mentioned in Haraldskvaeoi and the Volsunga saga may be a source of the werewolf myths. These were vicious fighters analogous to the better known berserker, dressed in wolf hides and said to channel the spirits of these animals, enhancing their own power and ferocity in battle; they were immune to pain and killed viciously in battle, like a wild animal. They are both closely associated with Odin.
In Latvian mythology, the Vilkacis was a person changed into a wolf-like monster, though the Vilkacis was occasionally beneficial.
A closely related set of myths are the skin-walkers. These myths probably have a common base in Proto-Indo-European society, where the class of young, unwed warriors were apparently associated with wolves.
Shape-shifters similar to werewolves are common in myths from all over the world, though most of them involve animal forms other than wolves.
In Greek mythology the story of Lycaon supplies one of the earliest examples of a werewolf legend. According to one form of it Lycaon was transformed into a wolf as a result of eating human flesh; one of those who were present at periodical sacrifice on Mount Lycaon was said to suffer a similar fate.
The Roman Pliny the Elder, quoting Euanthes, says that a man of Anthus’ family was selected by lot and brought to a lake in Arcadia, where he hung his clothing on an ash tree and swam across. This resulted in his being transformed into a wolf, and he wandered in this shape nine years. Then, if he had attacked no human being, he was at liberty to swim back and resume his former shape. Probably the two stories are identical, though we hear nothing of participation in the Lycaean sacrifice by the descendant of Antaeus.
Herodotus in his Histories tells us that the Neuri, a tribe he places to the north-east of Scythia were annually transformed for a few days, and Virgil is familiar with transformation of human beings into wolves. In the novel Satyricon, written about year 60 by Gaius Petronius, one of the characters recites a story about a man who turns into a wolf during a full moon.
There are women, so the Armenian belief runs, who in consequence of deadly sins are condemned to pass seven years in the form of a wolf. A spirit comes to such a woman and brings her a wolf’s skin. He orders her to put it on, and no sooner has she done this than the most frightful wolfish cravings make their appearance and soon get the upper hand. Her better nature conquered, she makes a meal of her own children, one by one, then of her relatives’ children according to the degree of relationship, and finally the children of strangers begin to fall as prey to her. She wanders forth only at night, and doors and locks spring open at her approach. When morning draws near she returns to human form and removes her wolf skin. In these cases the transformation was involuntary or virtually so. But side by side with this belief in involuntary metamorphosis, we find the belief that human beings can change themselves into animals at will and then resume their own form.
France in particular seems to have been infested with werewolves during the 16th century, and the consequent trials were very numerous. In some of the cases - e.g. those of the Gandillon family in the Jura, the tailor of Chalons and Roulet in Angers, all occurring in the year 1598 - there was clear evidence against the accused of murder and cannibalism, but none of association with wolves; in other cases, as that of Gilles Garnier in Dole in 1573, there was clear evidence against some wolf, but none against the accused.
Yet while this lycanthropy fever, both of suspectors and of suspected, was at its height, it was decided in the case of Jean Grenier at Bordeaux in 1603 that lycanthropy was nothing more than an insane delusion. From this time the loup-garou gradually ceased to be regarded as a dangerous heretic, and fell back into his pre-Christian position of being simply a “man-wolf-fiend”.
The lubins or lupins of France were usually female and shy in contrast to the aggressive loup-garous.
In Prussia, Livonia and Lithuania, according to the bishops Olaus Magnus and Majolus, the werwolves were in the 16th century far more destructive than “true and natural wolves”, and their heterodoxy appears from the Catholic bishops’ assertion that they formed “an accursed college” of those “desirous of innovations contrary to the divine law”.
The wolf was still extant in England in 1600, but had become extinct by 1680. At the beginning of the 17th century the punishment of witchcraft was still zealously prosecuted by James I of England, and that pious monarch regarded “warwoolfes” as victims of delusion induced by “a natural superabundance of melancholic”.
Many of the werewolves in European tradition were most innocent and God-fearing persons, who suffered through the witchcraft of others, or simply from an unhappy fate, and who as wolves behaved in a truly touching fashion, fawning upon and protecting their benefactors. In Marie de France’s poem Bisclaveret (c. 1200), the nobleman Bisclavret, for reasons not described in the lai, had to transform into a wolf every week. When his treacherous wife stole his clothing, needed to restore his human form, he escaped the king’s wolf hunt by imploring the king for mercy, and accompanied the king thereafter. His behavior at court was so gentle and harmless than when his wife and her new husband appeared at court, his attack on them was taken as evidence of reason to hate them, and the truth was revealed. Others of this sort were the hero of William and the Werewolf (translated from French into English about 1350), and the numerous princes and princesses, knights and ladies, who appear temporarily in beast form in the German fairy tales, or Marchen.
Indeed, the power of transforming others into wild beasts was attributed not only to malignant sorcerers, but also to Christian saints. Omnes angeli, boni et mali, ex virtute naturali habent potestatem transmutandi corpora nostra (”All angels, good and bad have the power of transmutating our bodies”) was the dictum of St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Patrick transformed Vereticus, a king in Wales, into a wolf; and St. Natalis cursed an illustrious Irish family with the result that each member of it was doomed to be a wolf for seven years. In other tales the divine agency is still more direct, while in Russia, again, men are supposed to become werewolves through incurring the wrath of the devil.
Some werewolf lore is based on documented events. The Beast of Gévaudan was a creature that reportedly terrorized the general area of the former province of Gévaudan, in today’s Lozère département, in the Margeride Mountains in south-central France, in the general timeframe of 1764 to 1767. It was often described as a giant wolf and was said to attack livestock and humans indiscriminately.
In the late 1990s, a string of man-eating wolf attacks were reported in Uttar Pradesh, India. Frightened people claimed, among other things, that the wolves were werewolves.
Many European countries and cultures have stories of werewolves, including France (loup-garou), Greece (lycanthropos), Spain (hombre lobo), Bulgaria (varkolak, vulkodlak), Czech Republic (vlkodlak), Serbia (vukodlak), Russia (oboroten’ , vurdalak), Ukraine (vovkulak(a),vovkun, pereverten’ ), Croatia (vukodlak), Poland (wilkolak), Romania (varcolac), Scotland (werewolf, wulver), England (werwolf), Ireland (faoladh or conriocht), Germany (Werwolf), Denmark/Sweden (Varulv), Galicia(lobisÛn),, Portugal(( lobisomem)) Lithuania (vilkolakis and vilkatlakis), Latvia (vilkatis and vilkacis), Andorra (home llop), Estonia (libahunt), Argentina (lobizon, hombre lobo) and Italy (lupo mannaro). In northern Europe, there are also tales about people changing into animals including bears and wolves.
In Norse mythology, the legends of Ulfhednar (an Old Norse term for a warrior with attributes parallel to those of a berserker, but with a lupine aspect rather than ursine; both terms refer to a special type of warrior capable of performing feats far beyond the abilities of normal people. Historically, this was attributed to possession by the spirit of an animal) mentioned in Haraldskvaeoi and the Volsunga saga may be a source of the werewolf myths. These were vicious fighters analogous to the better known berserker, dressed in wolf hides and said to channel the spirits of these animals, enhancing their own power and ferocity in battle; they were immune to pain and killed viciously in battle, like a wild animal. They are both closely associated with Odin.In Latvian mythology, the Vilkacis was a person changed into a wolf-like monster, though the Vilkacis was occasionally beneficial.
A closely related set of myths are the skin-walkers. These myths probably have a common base in Proto-Indo-European society, where the class of young, unwed warriors were apparently associated with wolves.
Shape-shifters similar to werewolves are common in myths from all over the world, though most of them involve animal forms other than wolves.
In Greek mythology the story of Lycaon supplies one of the earliest examples of a werewolf legend. According to one form of it Lycaon was transformed into a wolf as a result of eating human flesh; one of those who were present at periodical sacrifice on Mount Lycaon was said to suffer a similar fate.
The Roman Pliny the Elder, quoting Euanthes, says that a man of Anthus’ family was selected by lot and brought to a lake in Arcadia, where he hung his clothing on an ash tree and swam across. This resulted in his being transformed into a wolf, and he wandered in this shape nine years. Then, if he had attacked no human being, he was at liberty to swim back and resume his former shape. Probably the two stories are identical, though we hear nothing of participation in the Lycaean sacrifice by the descendant of Antaeus.
Herodotus in his Histories tells us that the Neuri, a tribe he places to the north-east of Scythia were annually transformed for a few days, and Virgil is familiar with transformation of human beings into wolves. In the novel Satyricon, written about year 60 by Gaius Petronius, one of the characters recites a story about a man who turns into a wolf during a full moon.
There are women, so the Armenian belief runs, who in consequence of deadly sins are condemned to pass seven years in the form of a wolf. A spirit comes to such a woman and brings her a wolf’s skin. He orders her to put it on, and no sooner has she done this than the most frightful wolfish cravings make their appearance and soon get the upper hand. Her better nature conquered, she makes a meal of her own children, one by one, then of her relatives’ children according to the degree of relationship, and finally the children of strangers begin to fall as prey to her. She wanders forth only at night, and doors and locks spring open at her approach. When morning draws near she returns to human form and removes her wolf skin. In these cases the transformation was involuntary or virtually so. But side by side with this belief in involuntary metamorphosis, we find the belief that human beings can change themselves into animals at will and then resume their own form.
France in particular seems to have been infested with werewolves during the 16th century, and the consequent trials were very numerous. In some of the cases - e.g. those of the Gandillon family in the Jura, the tailor of Chalons and Roulet in Angers, all occurring in the year 1598 - there was clear evidence against the accused of murder and cannibalism, but none of association with wolves; in other cases, as that of Gilles Garnier in Dole in 1573, there was clear evidence against some wolf, but none against the accused.Yet while this lycanthropy fever, both of suspectors and of suspected, was at its height, it was decided in the case of Jean Grenier at Bordeaux in 1603 that lycanthropy was nothing more than an insane delusion. From this time the loup-garou gradually ceased to be regarded as a dangerous heretic, and fell back into his pre-Christian position of being simply a “man-wolf-fiend”.
The lubins or lupins of France were usually female and shy in contrast to the aggressive loup-garous.
In Prussia, Livonia and Lithuania, according to the bishops Olaus Magnus and Majolus, the werwolves were in the 16th century far more destructive than “true and natural wolves”, and their heterodoxy appears from the Catholic bishops’ assertion that they formed “an accursed college” of those “desirous of innovations contrary to the divine law”.
The wolf was still extant in England in 1600, but had become extinct by 1680. At the beginning of the 17th century the punishment of witchcraft was still zealously prosecuted by James I of England, and that pious monarch regarded “warwoolfes” as victims of delusion induced by “a natural superabundance of melancholic”.
Many of the werewolves in European tradition were most innocent and God-fearing persons, who suffered through the witchcraft of others, or simply from an unhappy fate, and who as wolves behaved in a truly touching fashion, fawning upon and protecting their benefactors. In Marie de France’s poem Bisclaveret (c. 1200), the nobleman Bisclavret, for reasons not described in the lai, had to transform into a wolf every week. When his treacherous wife stole his clothing, needed to restore his human form, he escaped the king’s wolf hunt by imploring the king for mercy, and accompanied the king thereafter. His behavior at court was so gentle and harmless than when his wife and her new husband appeared at court, his attack on them was taken as evidence of reason to hate them, and the truth was revealed. Others of this sort were the hero of William and the Werewolf (translated from French into English about 1350), and the numerous princes and princesses, knights and ladies, who appear temporarily in beast form in the German fairy tales, or Marchen.
Indeed, the power of transforming others into wild beasts was attributed not only to malignant sorcerers, but also to Christian saints. Omnes angeli, boni et mali, ex virtute naturali habent potestatem transmutandi corpora nostra (”All angels, good and bad have the power of transmutating our bodies”) was the dictum of St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Patrick transformed Vereticus, a king in Wales, into a wolf; and St. Natalis cursed an illustrious Irish family with the result that each member of it was doomed to be a wolf for seven years. In other tales the divine agency is still more direct, while in Russia, again, men are supposed to become werewolves through incurring the wrath of the devil.Some werewolf lore is based on documented events. The Beast of Gévaudan was a creature that reportedly terrorized the general area of the former province of Gévaudan, in today’s Lozère département, in the Margeride Mountains in south-central France, in the general timeframe of 1764 to 1767. It was often described as a giant wolf and was said to attack livestock and humans indiscriminately.
In the late 1990s, a string of man-eating wolf attacks were reported in Uttar Pradesh, India. Frightened people claimed, among other things, that the wolves were werewolves.
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.
Fossil amphibian roamed Pennsylvania 300 million years ago
A meat-eating amphibian roamed the badlands of Pennsylvania some 300 million years, paleontologists reported this week.
A team led by David Berman of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh describes Fedexia striegeli in the current Annals of Carnegie Museum journal. The creature's name is a thank-you to Federal Express, which owns the road-cut land on which the fossil skull of the creature was found, and its amateur finder, Adam Striegel.
Based on its five-inch-long skull, Fedexia, "record(s) the earliest occurrences of vertebrates adapted to a terrestrial existence," says the study, "primarily living and feeding on land." The creature, which lived about 70 million years before the first dinosaurs, likely only returned to the water to lay eggs.
Dating of the fossil comes from chemical comparison of the skull to the rock layers of the western Pennsylvania road-cut from which it tumbled in 2004. It was then discovered by Striegel, then a senior at the University of Pittsburgh. "What is particularly amazing about this discovery is that it was made by an amateur who had no prior experience in recognizing vertebrate fossils in the rock, a talent that usually takes years to develop," said Berman, in a statement.
Then near the equator, the geology of western Pennsylvania indicates that North America enjoyed a dry climate at the time when Fedexis roamed, following a wetter period that saw the emergence of some of the first land animals tens of millions of years earlier. "Yet,aquatic amphibians continued to dominate the Pennsylvanian vertebrate assemblages during this episode," says the study, which follows earlier suggestions that the drying-out of swampy terrain spurred the evolution of land-dwelling creatures whose ancestors mostly lived in the water.
A team led by David Berman of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh describes Fedexia striegeli in the current Annals of Carnegie Museum journal. The creature's name is a thank-you to Federal Express, which owns the road-cut land on which the fossil skull of the creature was found, and its amateur finder, Adam Striegel.Based on its five-inch-long skull, Fedexia, "record(s) the earliest occurrences of vertebrates adapted to a terrestrial existence," says the study, "primarily living and feeding on land." The creature, which lived about 70 million years before the first dinosaurs, likely only returned to the water to lay eggs.
Dating of the fossil comes from chemical comparison of the skull to the rock layers of the western Pennsylvania road-cut from which it tumbled in 2004. It was then discovered by Striegel, then a senior at the University of Pittsburgh. "What is particularly amazing about this discovery is that it was made by an amateur who had no prior experience in recognizing vertebrate fossils in the rock, a talent that usually takes years to develop," said Berman, in a statement.
Then near the equator, the geology of western Pennsylvania indicates that North America enjoyed a dry climate at the time when Fedexis roamed, following a wetter period that saw the emergence of some of the first land animals tens of millions of years earlier. "Yet,
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
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
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.
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
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.
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 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 alizard , 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, 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 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...
At the end of last year the farmer, Marao Lopez, handed the corpse over to university scientists who carried out 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
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, 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 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...
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
Moa, New Zealand giant bird
Flightless giant island-living bird was the New Zealand was even more isolated than Madagascar and had no land mammals except bats. The first Polynesians arrived in New Zealand around the 10th century, becoming the Maori. The dominant life-forms were the giant land birds that lived in the fringes of the semi-tropical forests and on the grasslands and which the Maoris called 'Moas'. Encountering the huge birds, the 
Maoris made legends of the giant moa, calling it the Poua-Kai and describing it as a huge bird of terrific size and strength which, in a great battle, destroyed half the warriors of a powerful tribe with its terrible rending talons and thrusting bea.
Maoris made legends of the giant moa, calling it the Poua-Kai and describing it as a huge bird of terrific size and strength which, in a great battle, destroyed half the warriors of a powerful tribe with its terrible rending talons and thrusting bea.Moas were huge ratite 'running birds' like the Elephant Bird, but they inhabited the grasslands and forest-fringe in extraordinary numbers and variety. Scientists later gave them the family name Dinornithidae, 'terrible birds'. The aggressive Polynesian invaders became a Moa-hunting culture and for the moa, which had had no predators in 100 million years, the effect was devastating.
By the time Europeans discovered the islands in 1770, the giant moas had been hunted to extinction; their official extinction date is given as 1773. Europeans did not learn of the moa's existence until bones were discovered in the 1830s. The exact number of species is open to debate, the current belief is that there were 11 species contemporary with man and that higher counts were due to the sexual dimorphism. With only one natural predator large enough to tackle them (Haast's Eagle, another extinct giant) they were the dominant terrestrial species on the islands. Although the giant moa is the species that has captured the modern imagination, other members of the moa family were turkey-sized and weighed little over 1 kg. 
One striking feature of moa anatomy, apart from its height, is the complete lack of humeri (upper arm-bones). This means they had no trace of wings, not even a vestigial wing-structure.
One striking feature of moa anatomy, apart from its height, is the complete lack of humeri (upper arm-bones). This means they had no trace of wings, not even a vestigial wing-structure.There were several families of moa. Pachyornis and Emeus were hunted to extinction by the Maoris between 1100 and 1500. The powerfully built medium-sized Euryapteryx may have survived until 1700. Pygmy Moas, 3 -4 ft tall (90 - 120 cm) of the genera Anomalopteryx and Megalapteryx died out by 1800, hunted by both Maori and Europeans though there is evidence that one of the pygmy moas may have survived into the 20th century and may possibly still exist in the wilderness of Fiordland. By the time Europeans had realised the significance of the discovery of giant moas, the birds were almost extinct.
In 1838, Englishman John Rule brought back a fragment of a huge leg-bone from New Zealand. It was investigated by palaeontologist Richard Owen in London, but even then many dismissed it as a hoax or myth. It took several more years and many more bones to convince naturalists that the moa existed. A consignment of moa bones was sent in 1843 by geologist and missionary, Revd William Williams. He had studied the birds, and had recorded a sighting by two English whalers near Cloudy Bay, in Cook Straits in 1842: "the natives there had mentioned to an Englishman of a whaling party that there was a bird of extraordinary size to be seen only at night on the side of a hill near there; and that he, with the native and a second Englishman, went to the spot; that after waiting some time they saw the creature at some little distance, which they describe as being fourteen or sixteen feet high. One of the men proposed to go nearer and shoot, but his companion was so exceedingly terrified, or perhaps both of them, that they were satisfied with looking at him, when in a little time he took alarm and strode up the mountain."
In the 1850s, New Zealand resident, John White, interviewed several sealers who claimed to have eaten moas on the South Island, indicating that some birds had survived until as late as 1850. The most detailed account of giant moas came from an old Maori on South Island, who described the birds' appearance, habitat, feeding and nesting habits. He Maori described how fierce, booming male moas, guarded nesting females. He also described how the birds were hunted and eaten. Another Maori moa hunter described how the moa defended itself by kicking. Their eggs were taken as food and as curios by Europeans. In 1865, a moa egg containing an embryo was discovered near Cromwell.Entry for Moa in Harmsworth Natural History (1910): The fate impending in the case of the kiwis has long since overtaken their gigantic extinct cousins the moas (family Dinornithidae), which had already disappeared from New Zealand when those islands were first colonised from Europe, although there is good reason to believe that they lived on till within the last five hundred or four hundred years, if not to a considerably later date. These birds, of which not only the bones, but in some cases the dried skin, feathers, and egg-shells, as well as the pebbles they were in the habit of swallowing, have been preserved in the superficial deposits of New Zealand, attained a wonderful development in those islands, where they were secure from persecution till man appeared on the scene.
Not only did the larger members of the group far exceed the ostrich in size, but they were extraordinarily numerous in species, as they were also in individuals; such a marvellous exuberance of gigantic bird-life being unknown elsewhere on the face of the globe in such a small area. As regards size, the largest moas could have been but little short of 12 feet in height, the tibia being considerably over a yard in length; while the smallest were not larger than a turkey. In reference to their numbers, it may be mentioned that there are some twenty species, arranged in about six genera; and the surface of many parts of the country, as well as bogs and swamps, literally swarmed with their bones.Some of the moas had four toes to the foot, and others three, but all differed from kiwis in having a bony ridge over the groove for the extensor tendons of the tibia. They are, therefore, evidently the least specialised members of the order yet mentioned, seeing that this bridge is present in the majority of flying birds, and has evidently been lost in all the existing Ratitae. While agreeing in some parts of their organisation with kiwis, moas are distinguished by the short beak and the presence of after-shafts to the feathers while in the larger forms, at any rate, not only was the wing, but likewise the whole shoulder-girdle, wanting. There is, however, reason to believe that certain pigmy moas - which from their size were evidently the most generalised members of the group - retained some of the bones connected with the wing.
Moas were represented by several very distinct structural modifications; the largest being the long-legged, or true, moas (Dinornis) , characterised by the long and comparatively slender leg-bones, and also the large and depressed skulls. In marked contrast to these were the short-legged, or elephant-footed, moas (Pachyornis), in which the limb-bones are remarkable for their short and massive form; the metatarsus being most especially noteworthy in this respect. In these birds the skull is vaulted and the beak narrow and sharp; but in the somewhat smaller and less stoutly-limbed-broad-billed moas (Emeus) it is broad, blunt, and rounded. The other species, in all of which the beak was sharp and narrow, are of relatively small stature, and include the smallest representatives of the family, some of which were less than a yard in height. The eggs of the moas were of a pale green colour, and probably formed a favourite food of the Maori, by whom these birds wcre evidently exterminated.Several skeletons are on display in museums in New Zealand and Europe and there are models and reconstructions based on these skeletons, on naturally preserved feathers and on oral tales of the bird and on its smaller relative, the kiwi. It is believed that moas resembled kiwis in several ways, that they were communal living and that the eggs were brooded by the males. With no need to look out for predators, their heads were probably carried forwards, like the kiwi, rather than upwards like an ostrich.
Giant Lion's Mane Jellyfish
As a species jellies have been around for a very long time. They appeared in the oceans about 650 million years ago, before the dinosaurs. They still populate our oceans today in a profusion of sizes and shapes. Jellyfish are incredible 
creatures - it's amazing that they are living things. Check it out...their bodies are made up of 95% water, they have no bones or cartilage, no heart or blood, and nobrain! (Talk about a real 'no-brainer'). They are one of earth's simpler and more primitive life forms. The picture you see at right is a much smaller specimen of a lion's mane jelly. The world-record holder was found dead, washed up on a beach.
Scientists have determined that some jellies have eyes that can detect light from dark and even some movement of objects in their field of vision. It doesn't seem possible that any living creature could have eyes, but NO BRAIN. The brain is where the processing of visual stimuli happens in most higher-order species. How does the procedure work in jellies with eyes and no brains? Scientists don't really know for sure, but by studying jellies they can learn a lot about how vision works and what role the brain plays in processing visual input.
The Arctic Lion's Mane, like most jellies, is a predator - it kills and eats other living creatures from the "animal" kingdom. (Even though water buffaloes and hippopatomi eat living things (plants), they are not considered predators.) That means that this giant jelly stalks, pursues, catches, kills and consumes its prey. What does it like to eat? Fish, plankton, and even other jellies. It's pretty hard to picture a jellyfish stalking and killing its prey, but it usually doesn't have to swim to catch a meal. You could say the Arctic Lion's Mane has its meal delivered.
Usually, an unsuspecting fish will swim into the almost invisible tentacles of the jellyfish, which are loaded with millions of nematocysts (stinging capsules contained within cells called cnidocytes located along the tentacles). When the fish contacts the tentacles a paralyzing venom is immediately injected into the victim. Then the jelly can eat its quarry at its leisure. Lion's Mane jellies can also pursue and kill other jellies for food. But then, there are also other creatures in the sea which eat the Lion's 
Mane.If a human were to get stung by a Lion's Mane jelly it could be fatal, provided enough poison had been absorbed by the body. The venom can cause paralysis of the breathing muscles so the victim would die from suffocation. Don't expect to go swimming at the beach and see a huge Lion's Mane jelly - this big guy probably lived way out in the open ocean, way down deep. Many of this species of jellyfish are found in frigid, Arctic waters.
The Michigan Dog Man
In 1987, as an April's Fool's prank, Michigan DJ Jack O'Malley got together with his production director Steve Cook, and made up a song about a half-dog half-man creature that roamed the backwoods of the northern portion of the state.The creature, which they dubbed the Michigan Dog Man, was created from bits and pieces of creatures from other state legends, including the Bigfoot legend, the legend of the New Jersey Devil, the Boggy Creek Monster, and several other 'cryptids' (animals that appear in legend but heretofore have not been found in nature).
Cook was an avid fan of the paranormal and a student of folklore. The two men came up with a history of the Michigan Dog Man, which included a seven year cycle of appearances. The song played on the radio, the joke was a success, and then the reports started coming in.
But that wasn't the weirdest part.
Turns out there really is an Indian legend unique to the northern part of Michigan about a half-dog, half-man creature that early French explorers claimed to have seen and is referred to in historical texts as the loup garou.The loup garou is a half-man, half-wolf beast that is roughly equivalent to the werewolf of popular fiction and late night horror movies, and was native to the Canadian woodland areas, Michigan, Indiana, and parts of Illinois.Linda Godfrey, an Elkhart Wisconsin writer, first heard about Dog Man sitings in the greater Chicagoland area, and began to research the phenomenon. Her first book, The Beast of Bray Road, started out as a tongue-in-cheek look at what she assumed would be a totally bogus collection of local lore and dubious anecdotes. However, once Bray got into her research and began interviewing eyewitnesses and collecting evidence, she found herself quickly coverted.
Today, a Dogman blog keeps Dog Man watchers up on the latest sitings, and Bray continues to research and write about what she now believes is an actual creature.
Is there any truth to the legend?
Well, I walk my dog every morning for an hour in a 700 acre nature preserve a mile from my Michigan home. I've never seen the Dog Man there. But I can tell you for sure that the woods in Michigan can be damned spooky, and there have been many mornings when if I had indeed run into a Dog Man, it wouldn't have really surprised me one bit. Seriously.
We are so isolated from nature, most of us, that we really don't 'get it' anymore. So when these legends surface, they become sensational because they are strange to us. For the native peoples of this region, legend and reality were not so sharply separated. They understood that every place also had spirit, and that spirit could change form, or be formless, or invade a human being. Spirit is fluid, shapeshifting. We have no word for that now. We have no concept. 'Legend' is as close as we come, and that's not quite the right word.Eyewitnesses confirm the shapeshifting quality of the Dog Man, often reporting that at first they thought they were looking at a huge, unnaturally large dog or wolf, but that as they watched, the animal stood on its hind legs and its arms elongated right before their eyes, becoming more humanlike. The Dog Man is often said to have red eyes and a fierce contenance, a detail shared with the New Jersey Devil.
I have a fascination with the paranormal, and the cryptid branch of the paranormal is especially cool. I do believe that there are creatures that inhabit the netherworld between form and spirit, and that can move at will between these worlds.
Is the Michigan Dog Man one of those creatures?
Maybe.
Wanna go for a walk in the woods?
Bizarre animal in Japan
A mysterious creature encountered by Japanese fishermen on a rocky seashore.The excitement begins when the three men notice a group of strange animals on the side of a nearby cliff. Curious, they approach for a closer look and eventually manage to corner one. (The close encounter begins at 1:45 into the video.)
The slimy, pulsating beast — like something out of a Cronenberg film — appears to be some sort of amphibious sea animal that ventured ashore. After poking and prodding the creature with a stick and flipping it over to reveal an undulating, sphincter-like orifice, one of the men rashly —
and unwisely — decides to give it a swig of his carbonated beverage. You don’t want to miss the explosive conclusion.Is this a bizarre new species? Alien creature? Spectacular hoax? You be the judge.
Man Bat
Imagine driving down a dark country road and having the above, man-sized creature fly at your windshield, stare in at you and then swoop upwards into the night sky. This actually happened to a 53-year old LaCrosse man who prefers to be known only by his Cherokee name, Wohali, and the man's 25-year old son. Their reaction? Immediate illness. In seconds, both became physically ill, and the son, who was driving, swerved and then pulled the truck over into the ditch so he could vomit. The son, who wishes his identity kept private, vomited six or seven times. Wohali retched, as well, and both remained sick for an entire week. The son was so frightened by the encounter that he refuses to discuss it. But Wohali told me he feels it's important for people to "know what is out there," and wants the story to be told.The Man Bat. This sighting happened Tuesday, Sept. 26, on Briggs Road near LaCrosse between 9:15 and 9:30 pm. The creature almost flew into their windshield, was an estimated 6-7 feet tall, sported batlike, leathery wings with a span of 10-12 feet, long claws on its feet and "hands" and a snarling expression on the face. They both somehow felt it was angry it had been seen. "When we turned onto Briggs Road," wrote Wohali in his hand-written account, "our little 4-wheel drive truck's headlights caught (in mid-air) a bat-like, man-like creature (we almost smacked it with our windshield) that was six or seven feet tall with abouta ten or twelve foot wingspan." The large muzzle featured rows of sharp teeth, and the creature "screamed" at them before sailing straight up into the air. The encounter made both men physically ill, sick to their stomachs and vomiting the rest of the night. Wohali stated that he did not know whether the creature had been on the road and then bounced up at them, or if it had been flying at the time it came at their car. He was sure the thing was a physical, actual creature, he said, but like nothing he had ever seen before. The drawing above includes more details than he actually saw during the few seconds of the encounter, he said, but "the face was hard to see clearly because the mouth and teeth were so prominent. It looked hungry.""Sorry about the cartoonish drawing," he wrote, "but it was so unreal that all I really remember is what you see." Wohali further described it as having "distended ribs, long sort of human legs with claws, huge bat-like wings with 'arms' sort of attached, I remember the teeth and the scream we heard was terrifying." Wohali added, "I've been living in this valley all my life and have seen some strange things, after all the Mississippi Upper Wildlife Refuge is the largest in the country and right out my back door. It hides lots of strange creatures. But I've NEVER seen anything like this. Rent the movie Bram Stoker, Dracula, the Dracula creature looks like it or better yet like the one in Van Helsing."Briggs Road is a short stretch about a mile long just west of Holmen, which is north of LaCrosse. Briggs Rd. runs north and south between Cty. Hwys. XX and V, intersected by Hwy. 53 about midway. Immediately to the west is a large marsh, to the east is Halfway Creek. A mile north is the Van Loon State Wildlife area, and the road itself lies along the Amsterdam Prairie. The south end of the road sits about a mile and a half north of the Upper Mississippi River Natioanl Wildlife and Fish Refuge and Lake Onalaska. The road makes an immediate rise as you head north, and it was near the crest of the hill, less than a quarter mile from the road's south entrance, that the creature was seen. On the west side of the road, just before the sighting area, is a fenced off area that appeared to be some type of utility location, and on the east side was a shooting range and club. The west side of the sighting area features a row of bramble-type, dense vegetation.
INVESTIGATION:
I was able to visit the site in person with Wohali and a friend of his who is a veteran deer hunter and butcher. It was on October 14, eighteen days after the sighting (best I could do due to previous commitments). We drove there in the daytime first, and examined the area for footprints, but the surface was either asphalt roadbed or covered with tough, marshy grass or vegetation. However, we did notice something white on the west side of the road at the exact point the sighting occurred. We paced it to be twenty-five feet from the roadside. It was a strangely mutilated deer carcass, which appeared to have been deposited in a woodsy spot covered by brambles. There were no visible drag marks and a complete absence of blood on the ground. The deer carcass lay on its right side with its back facing the road, and the white area we
saw was its exposed layer of winter fat, the skin having been peeled back from the midsection toward the forelimbs, which remained intact along with the head. No bullet wounds or bite marks were visible. There was no odor, probably because temperatures had ranged near freezing at night and only in the 50s daytime. The hunter with us estimated the carcass to be no older than three days, and its weight at about 60 pounds. The low weight estimate was due to the fact that the entire haunch section, lower abdomen and rear limbs WERE GONE! The spine still protruded from the midsection, which by the way still retained the prized ribs and tenderloin that a hunter would certainly have taken, but the haunches appeared to have been ripped off. The remains did not appear to have been cut with a knife, said Wohali's Native American hunter friend. And the fact that the carcass was nearly bloodless and that there was no blood on the road or in the vicinity would indicate that the haunches were ripped off in another place where the carcass immediately bled out, and then it was carried to this spot and deposited. There were no APPARENTLY VISIBLE tooth or bite marks that would have been left by something carrying it in its mouth. We were not in a position to conduct a complete forensic examination of the animal. Oddly, an unused, unopened dark garbage bag lay adjacent to the carcass, toward the road. It's possible the deer was a "clean" road kill and someone had decided to butcher it and somehow lifted the fairly small deer and carried it back to the brambles for safekeeping, leaving the garbage bag with it. But why take the back legs and leave the good meat? And where did the blood go? Or the garbage bag could have blown against the deer from the road during recent storms. Wohali revisited the spot last week, which would have been about ten days after we discovered the carcass, and found absolutely no trace or remains of the carcass, not even a bone. I have to play devil's advocate and point out that the carcass could have been placed there no more than fifteen days (if the carcass was 3 days old) after Wohali's initial sighting of the creature. Therefore a
connection to the creature is hard to prove. Also, because it was across the road from a gun club, one could easily imagine someone plugging an illegal deer and then going to some lengths to hide the evidence. But the fact that it was at the exact same point on the road as the sighting coupled with the curious physical condition of the remains still makes it worthy of note. We did return that evening about the same time of the initial sighting. Wohali, his friend, and I were passengers in a car driven by my friend and book reviewer Terri Schlichenmeyer. The carcass was still there and in the same condition we had found it earlier in the day. We parked in the ditch where Wohali and his son had pulled over, and watched in the darkness for about an hour. Wohali reported that he saw something shadowy in the treetops, and at one point, all three of them saw something large, black and slinky cross the road at the top of the hill. They said it looked like an inky ribbon unfurling. I saw nothing but perhaps was just not looking at the right place. Terri, I should add, was coming into the situation fairly uninformed, she happened to be my host for the weekend and was of a skeptical frame of mind about the situation. Finally, everyone felt quite unnerved and Wohali's friend, especially, urged us to leave the area immediately so we did.Correlations:
I can't help but link this sighting to the mid-90s encounter another man and his son had by the riverbank in LaCrosse while hunting for a lost dog. They saw what they described as a "lizard man," covered in brownish scales and very reptilian-looking. It did not have its mouth open or arms extended Around the same time, a state DNR warden and separately, a group of highway workers saw what they described as a "reptile man" on Hwy. 13 near Medford. It also possessed wings and was able to fly out of their view (see Hunting the American Werewolf, p. 240-245) As I noted in "Hunting," the Medford spot was very near the Black River which winds up from LaCrosse! Could a creature be aerial and aquatic at the same time? Well, there are many water birds that manage the feat. Aquatic bats? Not so sure about that one.I can't imagine batlike wings being too great for swimming. And the feet Wohali saw were clawed, not webbed for paddling. Still, it seems odd that LaCrosse would be the locus of all these odd, man-sized creatures.Another item that bears mentioning is that LaCrosse is also the unfortunate site known for many drownings of college-aged males over the past couple of decades. The latest happened three days after Wohali's sighting. The last "rash," of which this drowning was the 7th, might be said to have started in 1997, the same approximate time as the sightings of the Reptile and Lizard man. Are these creatures some sort of death harbingers? Or totally unrelated? Your guess is as good as mine. On a more cryptozoological note, I have also found one other interesting "coincidence." On October 23, 2006, Biofort Blogger Scott Maruda reported that a William
McManus claimed to have seen a huge bird near Stillwater, MN, that may have been a "Washington Eagle," a gigantic eagle species documented by John James Audubon in 1840. The Washington Eagle was dark, reddish brown and had a wingspan of ten feet, the same as the creature Wohali and his son saw, and a body length of three and one half feet. It would not, however, have displayed teeth or batlike wings with claws. Stillwater is only about 70 miles north of the Wohali sighting, along the same river. McManus saw the eagle-creature in winter of 2004. Does this mean that what Wohali really saw was the Washington Eagle (sometimes known as a sea eagle)? Well, the description just doesn't fit for the most part. But intriguingly, a similar pattern emerged with the sightings of another unknown flyer, Mothman of Point Pleasant, W. Virginia. Other very large birds...that were definitely birds....were observed by many witnesses at the same time the winged Mothman began terrorizing the area. Speaking of Mothman, could it have moved westward to the LaCrosse area, and is that what made Wohali and his son physically ill? Well, again the main similarity is size, along with the disturbing ability of both entitites to shoot straight up into the air. But what Wohali saw had a definite head, ears and fangs,with yellowish eyes, whereas Mothman was usually described as having no separate head, but with very large eyes that shined red when illuminated. And I didn't find any references to immediate nausea on the part of witnesses of Mothman in a quick glimpse at a few reference books on my shelf. So I don't think we can assume Mothman has migrated. And considering the other legacy of Mothman, the alleged curse that has caused so many deaths, I rather hope no other association with Mothey can be shown.Giant Skeletons
The mystery surrounding reports of “giant skeletons” has always intrigued and fascinated me. Specifically, how it seemed to be a common ocurrence that human-like bone remains, often of giant proportions, were known for popping up everywhere in the mid-to-late 1800s, as featured in reports like these:During an 1879 excavation of an Indian mound near Brewersville, Indiana, a nine-foot eight inch skeleton was found buried within. Around the same time, George W. Hill, M.D., also unearthed a skeleton said to be “of unusual size” while excavating a mound in Ashland County, Ohio. In 1880, American Antiquarian, volume three, reported that a Doctor Everhart allegedly found another large skeleton “reported to have been of enormous dimensions” in a strange clay coffin along with a sandstone slab marked with unidentified hieroglyphics near Zanesville Ohio. In 1881 in Medina County, Ohio, a succession of nine bodies were found below the cellar of a house, buried as though the corpses had been “dumped into a ditch.” Albert Harris, one of the residents, was twenty years old at the time of
the grave’s discovery, and removing one of the large skeletons, said that he could literally fit the piece over his entire head and allow it to rest on his shoulders like a large helmet, even while wearing a cap underneath! Still, we’ve all heard of how even well known authors of the era, including Mark Twain, contributed to the telling of “whoppers” in their day; that is, many writers who got their feet wet as newspaper writers for dailies would occasionally cook up tall tales when local news just wasn’t doing it (see a great example of this here). Eventually, I decided to try and find out if there might be any reports that could be verified with more certainty, and after some digging around in public domain archives, I found a couple.In their 1894 report to the secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, Cyrus Thomas and Thomas Powell of the Bureau of Ethnology wrote of several discoveries where large human skeletal remains were found, the first ocurring in Roane County, Tennessee:
“Underneath the layer of shells the earth was very dark and appeared to be mixed with vegetable mold to the depth of 1 foot. At the bottom of this, resting on the original surface of the ground, was a very large skeleton lying horizontally at full length. Although very soft, the bones were sufficiently distinct to allow of careful measurement before attempting to remove them. The length from the base of the skull to the bones of the toes was found to be 7 feet 3 inches. It is probable, therefore, that this individual when living was fully 7½ feet high.”
And yet another instance, this time in presumed Indian burial mounds at Dunlieth, Illinois:“Near the original surface, 10 or 12 feet from the center, on the lower side, lying at full length on its back, was one of the largest skeletons discovered by the Bureau agents, the length as proved by actual measurement being between 7 and 8 feet. It was clearly traceable, but crumbled to pieces immediately after removal from the hard earth in which it was encased….”
Indeed, it seems that the Smithsonian at one time reported oddities like these which they uncovered, especially during the “giant boom” of the late nineteenth century. Still, I can’t help but ask; if these kinds of discoveries were ever at all commonplace, why aren’t skeletons and other anomalies like this found more frequently in modern times… or are they?
During an email exchange I had last year with my good friend and mentor, Brad Steiger, we began discussing a few similar reports which he had included in his book Worlds Before Our Own, where a few such skeletons were said to exist in private museums. ”After the book was published, I learned of even more and included photos of them in my lectures,” he told me. ”Soon, individuals beseeched me to cease; the private museums were mysteriously suffering unexplained fires.” One is left to ask; what about anomalous relics of this (or any) sort could be so worthy of censorship on such a level?
Further complicating the mystery of missing giant bones is the following exerpt from an article I wrote which included the inquiries of the late zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson, best known for his interest in the legends regarding America’s Bigfoot and the Abominable Snowmen alleged to reside in the Himalayas:
“Sometime in the 1960s, Sanderson wrote about an odd letter he received regarding an engineer who, during World War II, had been stationed on the Aleutian island of Shemya. While building an airstrip, the bulldozing of a group of hills in the area led the engineer and his crew to unearth several sedimentary layers of human remains. They noted the extraordinary length of the crania and leg bones at the site, having apparently belonged to people of gigantic proportions. The skulls were said to have measured up to 24 inches from base to crown, far greater than the length of an average human skull. Also 
of interest was that each was said to have been trepanned, the strange process of drilling or cutting a hole and removing a top center portion of the skull, thought by some ancient cultures to enable a variety of alleged “benefits”, including psychic abilities, etc. Sanderson actively began to search for more proof of this incident, and later was able to contact another member of the unit who also confirmed the bizarre story. By all accounts, the remains were said to have been gathered by the Smithsonian Institution, but no record of where they were taken was ever issued. Sanderson seemed convinced that the institute did indeed retrieve them however, going so far as to ask ‘is it that these people cannot face rewriting all the textbooks?’ “Do I honestly think that there are MIBs out there spiriting away giant skeletons into an unmarked warehouse someplace? Not at all… but I think it’s safe to suppose (at least for the sake of a good pun) that someone may have a few “skeletons in their closet” that they just aren’t talking about!
