decryptozoology

[decryptozoology]

The man sitting, studying a map of Loch Ness, is none other than Marmaduke Wetherell. While you may not know Wetherell by name, you will know him for being the man behind the greatest Loch Ness Monster hoax in history:

[decryptozoology]

This is an image out of Joris Hoefnagel’s 1575/1580 Animalia Qvadrvpedia et Reptilia (Terra). It’s a drawing of a group of rabbits, including a hored hare - now assumed to be rabbits infected with Shope Papilloma Virus. It is thought that rabbits that had contracted SPV is what caused the original sightings of Jackalopes.

[decryptozoology]

So the Zanzibar leopard has been possibly rediscovered!

A trail camera set up for the new Animal Planet program ‘Extinct or Alive’ (which premiers on June 10th), captured footage of what could very well be a Zanzibar leopard! This subspecies of African leopard has been thought to be extinct for almost three decades, it was hunted mercilessly due to local superstition that the leopards were sent by witches to harass and harm people.

Now, it is possible that this is a mainland leopard that somehow got to the island but the small stature and cheetah-like spots (instead of the usual rosettes), both traits of the Zanzibar subspecies, mean this could indeed be a Zanzibar leopard.

Further study (e.g. genetic testing) will need to be performed before anything can be said for sure, but here’s hoping this unique big cat is indeed back!

[decryptozoology]

[decryptozoology]

@simple-pianist @emptyheartsonfire

The Oxford Dictionary defines a cryptid as “An animal whose existence or survival is disputed or unsubstantiated”.

The last confirmed thylacine was the one, commonly known nowadays as Benjamin, who died at the Hobart Zoo in 1936. Though the species wasn’t officially declared extinct until the 1980s, it’s more than likely it was long gone far before then. However, since Benjamin’s death there have been thousands of supposed sightings of the thylacine, making its official status as “Extinct” hotly disputed.

[decryptozoology]

this is unequivocally the funniest pre-internet alleged bigfoot photo

[decryptozoology]

Dragon Skeleton Filmed in China???

Well here’s something interesting. Residents in the remote village of Zhangjiakou, China [a remote village of 4.3 million people] report finding a 60-foot-long skeleton of a dragon. It’s got an elongated body, small arms, small legs, and a canine-like head with horns. The tabloid media took this story and ran with it.

Users of Chinese social media sites immediately started saying the skeleton was hoaxed and placed there, perhaps as a prank or a filming prop. Some witnesses mentioned a lot of the bones look like cow bones. The witnesses didn’t seem to be that concerned or awestruck about it:

Dragonriders of Zhangjiakou, coming to a bookstore near you

Let’s take a look at the osteology of this. It’s hard to get much detail from the low-quality video, but we can get a few things out of it. The single nasal opening would be indicative of a mammal, but synapsids tend to not have homodont teeth. The “horns” (which are textured more like deer antlers) extend to the base of the skull, so we can exclude muntjac - which is what they most resemble. The overall skull shape and prominent zygomatic arches resembles a canine but the closed orbit is more reptilian... or deerlike. So this skull wasn’t taken from a living animal.

Upper left: the Zhangjiakou dragon. Upper right: a reconstruction of general skull anatomy in lateral view. Note the short, circular coronoid process, enclosed orbit, and apparent lack of a jaw joint. Below: coyote and muntjac slulls for comparison, borrowed from Will’s skull page.

It’s faked. Small details of the skull don’t jive with what’s known in nature. The mammal-looking coronoid process is almost joystick-shaped, unlike the flat, elongate process in actual mammals. The skull overall seems to lack the amount of pits and texturing that give real skulls their character. And most importantly, the mandible doesn’t articulate with the skull. In actual skulls, the mandible has a clear articulation with the quadrate - this is where the jaw hinges. Going off the canine-like skull shape, that would be where the zygomatic arches end. But nothing is there. The mandible doesn’t go that far back. Where is the jaw hinge?

The cervical and dorsal vertebrae could plausibly be from sheep, cows or pigs. Interestingly, with the prominent quadrangular deltopectoral crest, the humeri resemble those of pterosaurs, and the bending makes them look like short, chunky versions of archaeopterodactyloid humeri. Problem is, both of them are backwards. In pterosaurs the DPC faces toward the front of the arm and the curvature should bend backwards, whereas here it’s reversed. And given DPCs are muscle attachment sites, you’d wonder what a short-armed wingless dragon would need an expanded DPC for.

The dragon’s humeri compared to that of a pterosaur, oriented the way it’s supposed to go.

Not to mention, if houses are as close as the ones in the background imply, you’d think someone would have seen or smelled a 60-foot-long corpse long before the skin, flesh and organs rotted away this much.

So this is a fake. It’s unsurprising, really. China is known for faking bones, especially fossils, and previous claims of dragon skeletons have been debunked in the past.

[decryptozoology]

Speculative depictions by Oberon Zell of the Loch Ness Monster as a giant mollusc.  Read the rationale behind the theory.

[decryptozoology]

we need a better mothman statue. as hilarious as this buff insectoid with a huge ass is, it’s very disappointing and not even slightly accurate to the lore it represents. like literally nothing about this correlates to any of the reports or eyewitness sketches, aside from it having red eyes. 

i will not accept artistic license. we need a mothman statue like this:

[decryptozoology]

Biggfoot bare ass

[decryptozoology]

The one who “carries off dogs”

In 1886, Mormon settler Israel Ammon Hutchins raised his G.W. Morse rifle at a strange creature that had roamed onto his ranch, and fearing for his livestock, he shot it. Ever since that day, the identity of this creature, dubbed the “Ringdocus”, has remained not truly known.

The Shunka Warakin (sometimes written as Shunka Warak’in) gets its name from the Ioway term “shhuhnkha Warahwalkin”, which means “carries/carrying off dogs”. The beast, said to resemble something between a wolf and a hyena, is reported to have long fur that can range from pure black to reddish in color, and a hunched back. As its name implies, it would sneak into the camps of Native Americans at night and steal their dogs, along with later hunting and killing the livestock of white settlers.

The “Ringdocus” shot by Israel A. Hutchins and mounted by taxidermist Joseph Sherwood (who also gave the animal its name) has long been said to be a legendary Shunka Warakin, if this is true, then that would mean this cryptid has actual physical evidence of its existence.

But things aren’t that simple.

“Rocky Mountain Hyena. Killed by IA. Hutchins 1886″

The mount originally resided at the store of Joseph Sherwood, near Henry’s Lake in the state of Idaho, but for one reason or another went missing for over 100 years. It wasn’t until December of 2007 that Jack Kirby, the grandson of the man who’d shot the beast, tracked it down to the Idaho Museum of Natural History. It has since then found a new home at the Madison Valley History Association Museum, where it is on display for public viewing.

So, is the “Ringdocus” a specimen of the Shunka Warakin? I wouldn’t be so sure.

To begin with, the Shunka Warakin itself is a very vaguely described animal, the accounts of it could honestly be chalked up to an overly daring and hungry wolf. Then you’ve got the mount itself, an old piece that for a mix of reasons (one of the main ones being to keep the mystery and therefore allure of it alive) has never had a DNA test done on it. So all we’ve got to go on is visuals (poor visuals at that).

And going off of that, I personally think the “Ringdocus” is an aging and somewhat poorly taxidermied canine hybrid. One interesting possibility that I lean towards is it being a coydog:

(Head’s up, images of dead critters ahead)

Coydogs share several characteristics with the mount, two of the most obvious being the long dark fur and being larger than your average ‘yote. Take this individual for instance, a coyote that (going by the unique markings) has some domestic dog ancestry:

Long black fur? ✓ Fluffy tail? ✓ Thin legs? ✓ Long snout? ✓

Now of course, until a DNA test is done and we have conclusive evidence of what this mystery monster mount really is, this is all just speculation ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

- Mod Gef

(Image sources: X X X X)

[decryptozoology]

[decryptozoology]

Mysterious thing during 2011 tsunami?

In 2014, a video emerged of what was alleged to be a “strange creature” that appeared during the 2011 Tohoku tsunami in Japan. It allegedly appears in the water, climbs up a building, and then vanishes… It’s visible multiple times in the video, with the “big moment” at 2:28.

This doesn’t look like any living thing. I think there was a fire extinguisher or a similar container of gas/foam in the rubble that, due to being in rubble, was probably struck by something and depressurized/fired. Note how the subject of the video always emanates from a single point in the water. This would also explain how it simply fades away in the air, coincidentally near the top of the building.

~ Mod Lizard Man

[decryptozoology]

Living dodo? If only

Back in 2015, a video purporting to show a dodo caught on a trail cam in Costa Rica (note: dodos only ever lived on Mauritius) briefly went viral among the paranormal and cryptozoological communities.

Watching the full video very easily clears up whether it’s real or not:

[decryptozoology]

Don’t trust Top 5 videos on YouTube

In looking for fuel for this blog I found this video: 5 Dinosaurs Caught on Camera & Spotted In Real Life! (as if dinosaurs are fictional). It was uploaded by Top 5s Finest, who seems to have a lot of fun uploading clickbait-y Top 5 videos, on SHOCKING topics like UFOs, cryptids, and Things You Won’t Believe About X.

These videos are garbage. They’re very poorly researched, include a lot of demonstrable hoaxes, and include errors a third grader could correct. We’re probably gonna end up looking at a lot of these videos, because it’ll be funny. For now let’ s look at this one.

“Many believe that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a cosmic collision [ed. note: there’s evidence for that],” the narrator begins, “or even that the creatures’ yucky stomach air shrouded the atmosphere [lolwut?]. Others think that surviving species of birds [over an image of The Isle’s Quetzalcoatlus] have evolved out of dino genetics as the small harmless animals we know [does this guy know of ratites?], but could some dinosaurs have survived to be with us here and now?”

5. The WikiLeaks Dinosaur

This trashed closeup of a Jurassic Park Gallimimus has been passed around certain corners of YouTube for years. I don’t know why it hasn’t been rejected as an obvious hoax, but here it has a bs story attached to it about WikiLeaks and the Russian government.

I’m glad I got this piece of crap out of the way early.

The narrator calls it “unusually large and menacing” [Gallimimus is toothless, primarily herbivorous and is the size of a large horse] and in the next sentence calls it small. Apparently, it’s a “modern-day avian dinosaur [we have plenty of those already] called an Ornithomimosu [sic]”. For those not watching the video, he puts the stress on the second-to-last syllable. Clearly, this person knows what he’s talking about!

4. Mokele-Mbembe

Ah yes, the Mokele-Mbembe. We’ll probably make a longer post about the Mokele-Mbembe, an alleged living African sauropod, later. Preliminary guess for the video given: a misidentified elephant.

3. “Megalodons”

The narrator calls it “more prehistoric reptile than fish”. Buddy. Not everything that’s big and dead is a prehistoric reptile. C. megalodon was a shark. Sharks… are not dinosaurs. They’re not reptiles. They’re cartilaginous fish. This should be obvious.

As the video shows some photoshopped image, the narrator claims Megalodon was the inspiration behind Moby Dick and Jaws. They were actually based on the sinking of the Essex by a sperm whale and the author’s interest in regular sharks, respectively. He lists the “megatooth shark” (image of a Megalodon tooth shown, yet the description more matches the megamouth), the coelacanth (called a “giant prehistoric reptile fish”), the giant squid, and the colossal squid… for no reason, this isn’t tied into Megalodon at all. Other than “sightings of massive marine predators aren’t slowing down” no reason is given to believe Megalodon isn’t extinct.

2. Mbielu-Mbielu-Mbielu

Another dinosaur allegedly from the African jungle. Like the Mokele-Mbembe, we’ll probably expound more on this one later. Preliminary guess for the photo given: an inanimate object in a deceptively shallow lake.

1. The Loch Ness Monster

Ofcourse. I think my intestine ruptured the moment he called it a “dinosaur from the plesiosaur species”. Other than that, not much is really to be said. There have been a lot of words about Nessie’s implausibility already.

This video is a trainwreck. The stats of the video do not instill hope for humanity.

Be warned. Don’t watch clickbait like this.

[decryptozoology]

Friendly reminder that when an old medieval European dude refers to a dragon, it doesn’t mean that dragons, or dinosaurs, or other prehistoric reptiles, were around

I hate to break it to you but old medieval European dudes were wrong.

And if they’re right, then these are all snakes:

Many early modern bestiaries also count for this. These are whales:

- Mod Lizard Man