A Pygmy Tyrannosaurus Rex Is Found.

A Tyrannosaurus rex skull. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0 David Monniaux

A new smaller breed of the world’s best known dinosaur is thought to have once roamed the Arctic.

Dating back 70 million years, this new pygmy tyrannosaur is smaller but otherwise extremely similar to its larger sub-tropic counterpart. Palaeontologists had initially believed that a specimen unearthed in 2006 was simply a juvenile until further research later revealed that it was in fact a fully matured adult of a different species.

While the regular Tyrannosaurus rex can grow up to 40ft in length and weigh 4 tons, this new smaller species, known as Nanuqsaurus hoglundi, measures only 25ft and weighs 1,000lbs.

“The ‘pygmy tyrannosaur’ alone is really cool because it tells us something about what the environment was like in the ancient Arctic,” said study co-author Anthony Fiorillo.

“But what makes this discovery even more exciting is that Nanuqsaurus hoglundi also tells us about the biological richness of the ancient polar world during a time when the Earth was very warm compared to today.”

Source:

Pygmy Tyrannosaurus Rex Discovered

Their Source:

Unexplained Mysteries

And Their Source:

The Register

Ah, the stuff we don’t know… I like it.

Also digging the fact that this fella lived in the Arctic. Can you imagine how warm the Earth was back then? Gosh, think of the Equator! WhooHoo!

I often wonder what it’d be like to venture back to those days in a Tardis… I think I would love it… but at the same time there’s always the nagging fear of opening the door only to greet a 9-foot eurypterid or something… and being dinner is, um, not good!

Peace.

Eight million dog mummies found in Saqqara, Egypt!

Yes sir, that’s eight million dog mummies! That is a heck of a lot of mummies.

Incredible. Imagine what you’d think if you were doing some boring excavatory work near a temple of Anubis and suddenly came upon such a find as this.

Adding to the wow factor is the fact that the dogs were not alone. Accompanying the woofers on their journey to heaven were mummified cats, bulls, cows, baboons, ibises, hawks and others.

My goodness gracious. The things these folks did…

Some weird occult tradition, maybe? I’d been aware, of course, of their high opinion of cats, but being not nearly as up on Egypt as I should be, did not know they dug dogs so much… The ancient Egyptians were very much into following weird traditions, but who knows, really. Perhaps they will chance upon some mention of what was really going on. Perhaps not.

Here is an excerpt from the full article, entitled Eight million dog mummies found in Saqqara at ahramonline:

During routine excavations at the dog catacomb in Saqqara necropolis, an excavation team led by Salima Ikram, professor of Egyptology at The American University in Cairo (AUC), and an international team of researchers led by Paul Nicholson of Cardiff University have uncovered almost 8 million animal mummies at the burial site.

Studies on their bones revealed that those dogs are from different breeds but not accurately identified yet.

“We are recording the animal bones and the mummification techniques used to prepare the animals,” Ikram said.

Studies on the mummies, Ikram explains, revealed that some of them were old while the majority were buried hours after their birth. She said that the mummified animals were not limited to canines but there are cat and mongoose remains in the deposit.

“…the majority were buried hours after their birth.” Pretty creepy.

So very strange!

Peace.

Bigfoot’s DNA: Now We Know.

Miss Patty, stabilized.

Well now… this is certainly interesting!

I found out somewhat inadvertently by checking my twitter feed, which is something I hardly ever do as, being an old hippy I simply can’t keep up with it

So I scrolled down a bit and there was a tweet from Craig Woolheater of Cryptomundo with the title shown below as the text with a link. There I found what appears below…

Wondering if this study is a part of the one that I meant to post about way back when when it was announced which I learned of through SLAYER69’s thread at ATS called Project to examine ‘Yeti’ DNA launched. I don’t think so as it was “A new collaboration between Oxford University and the Lausanne Museum of Zoology will use the latest genetic techniques to investigate organic remains that some have claimed belong to the ‘Yeti’ and other ‘lost’ hominid species.” But, hey, you never know.

As for this Facebook press release, it’s a very exciting result. I must say and not at all what I expected.

Enjoy…

Sasquatch DNA Study Announcement
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on November 23rd, 2012

Igor Burtsev made the following announcement on his facebook page today:

Urgent!

The DNA analysis of the Bigfoot/Sasquatch specimen conducted by Dr. Melba Ketchum the head of DNA Diagnostics, Timpson, TX, USA has been over!

Team of American scientists led by Dr. Melba Ketchum for five years has analyzed 109 purported samples of such creatures. The study has sequenced DNA of a novel North American hominin, commonly called Bigfoot or Sasquatch.

There were a large number of laboratories associated with this study including academic, private and government laboratories in which blind testing was utilized to avoid prejudice in testing. Great time and care was taken in the forensic laboratories to assure no contamination occurred with any of the samples utilized in this study.

After 5 years of this study the scientists can finally answer the question of what Bigfoot/Sasquatch really is. It is human like us only different, a hybrid of a human with unknown species. Early field research shows that the Bigfoot/Sasquatches are massively intelligent which has enabled them to avoid detection to a large extent. They are different than us, however human nonetheless.

The hybridization event could not have occurred more than 15,000 years ago according to the mitochondrial data in some samples. Origin of this Hominin was probably Middle Eastern/Eastern Europe and Europe originally though other geographic areas are not excluded. The manuscript associated with this study has been submitted to a scientific reviewed magazine.

For many years, people have refused to believe they exist. Now that we know that they are real, it is up to us to protect them from those that would hunt or try to capture them for research or for sport. They should be left alone to live as they live now. After all, they are our relatives.

At this time, analysis of the Sasquatch genomes is still ongoing. Further data will be presented in the future following this original study. Additionally, analysis of various hair samples purportedly from Siberian Wildman are being tested in an effort to determine if relatedness exists between the Sasquatch and Russian Wildman.

~ Dr. Igor Burtsev,
Head of International Center of Hominology,
Moscow, Russia +7(916)812-6253
inhomin@yandex.ru

My assistant in the USA, Megan Wheeler: sasquatchdna@gmail.com

Peace.

Edit to Add: Interesting discussion of this topic started 11/24 on ATS by Caver78: ‘BIGFOOT’ DNA SEQUENCED IN UPCOMING GENETICS STUDY. Pretty sure the mods will make the OP get rid of the all-caps. The title (in accordance with ATS rules, (except for the caps)) is from the article ‘Bigfoot’ DNA Sequenced In Upcoming Genetics Study on Yahoo! News.

Beluga whale ‘makes human-like sounds’

At an admittedly odd pitch, but yes, they do mimic human speech. Very unlike the songs whales normally sing in their own language. I wonder about the possibilities for the future… and about how much they could teach us!

Published on Oct 22, 2012 by LiveScienceVideos A US Navy-trained beluga whale named NOC can imitate human speech. Wild belugas have long been informally called “sea canaries.”

And this…

Published on Oct 19, 2012 by NMMFoundation A new paper published by the National Marine Mammal Foundation in the scientific journal Current Biology sheds light on the ability of marine mammals to spontaneously mimic human speech. The study details the case of a white whale named NOC who began to mimic the human voice, presumably a result of vocal learning. “The whale’s vocalizations often sounded as if two people were conversing in the distance,” says Dr. Sam Ridgway, President of the National Marine Mammal Foundation. “These ‘conversations’ were heard several times before the whale was eventually identified as the source. In fact, we discovered it when a diver mistook the whale for a human voice giving him underwater directions.” As soon as the whale was identified as the source, NMMF scientists recorded his speech-like episodes both in air and underwater, studying the physiology behind his ability to mimic. It’s believed that the animals close association with humans played a role in how often he employed his ‘human’ voice, as well as in its quality. Researchers believe NOC’s sonic behavior is an example of vocal learning by a white whale. After about four years, NOC’s speech-like behavior subsided. “When NOC matured, we no longer heard speech-like sounds, but he did remain quite vocal,” Ridgway said. “While it’s been a number of years since we first encountered this spontaneous mimicry, it’s our hope that publishing our observations now will lead to further discoveries about marine mammal learning and vocalization. How this unique ‘mind’ interacts with other animals, humans and the ocean environment is a major challenge of our time.” Ridgway co-authored the paper published this week with Drs. Donald Carder, Michelle Jeffries and Mark Todd. Dr. Ridgway has 48 years of experience in marine mammal medicine and research. Colleagues often call him the “father of marine mammal medicine” because of his development of dolphin anesthesia, medical technology, and discoveries aiding marine mammal care. Dr. Ridgway has served on the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Marine Mammal Commission, on four different committees of National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences, and was elected a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America for his studies on hearing of marine mammals and as a fellow of the American College of Zoological Medicine for his work on marine mammal medicine. How this unique “mind” interacts with other animals and the ocean environment is a major challenge of our time. The National Marine Mammal Foundation has a mission to improve and protect life for all marine mammals, humans, and our shared oceans through science, service, and education. The Foundation’s vision for the future is to revolutionize the way we think about marine mammals. By embracing the partnership created between human and marine mammal, we can create a sea change in our global approach to scientific exploration, ocean conservation, and public education. More about the National Marine Mammal Foundation can be found at www.NMMF.org

Yowza. Simply fascinating.

Sorry I have not been active, there is a life changing situation going on here and there is not a lot of time available. I will try to do more quickies like this one for you all. I appreciate you being there.

Doreen, Alligator Wrangler.

I thought this worthy of inclusion.

We certainly can get along just fine with ancient reptilian lifeforms.

And too much regulation spoils the fun.

Rock on, Doreen!

Peace.

Birds hold ‘funerals’ for their dead friends!

Yep, it is true, my friends…

I am not really all that surprised, actually.

The following is excerpted from an article on the BBC website…

Birds hold ‘funerals’ for dead

By Matt Walker

[…] The revelation comes from a study by Teresa Iglesias and colleagues at the University of California, Davis, US.

They conducted experiments, placing a series of objects into residential back yards and observing how western scrub jays in the area reacted.

The objects included different coloured pieces of wood, dead jays, as well as mounted, stuffed jays and great horned owls, simulating the presence of live jays and predators.

Alarming reaction

The jays reacted indifferently to the wooden objects.

But when they spied a dead bird, they started making alarm calls, warning others long distances away.

The jays then gathered around the dead body, forming large cacophonous aggregations. The calls they made, known as “zeeps”, “scolds” and “zeep-scolds”, encouraged new jays to attend to the dead.

The jays also stopped foraging for food, a change in behaviour that lasted for over a day.

[…]

(the article closes with these lines…)

Other animals are known to take notice of their dead.

Giraffes and elephants, for example, have been recorded loitering around the body of a recently deceased close relative, raising the idea that animals have a mental concept of death, and may even mourn those that have passed.

Birds have clearly shown themselves to be of very high intelligence. They use tools efectively and are able to solve complex conceptual problems with ease. I am of the opinion that all animals and plants are to one degree or another sentient and conscious and are possessed of emotion, also to one degree or another. Just like us. Anyone who has spent time with animals surely must be well aware of this.

What really struck me from the study was that the jays stopped eating for over a day. That is significant. I will repeat it, in bold, even – the jays stopped eating for over a day. Capiche? That is clearly mourning. Got to be.

A lot of people think of animals as just mindless eating machines that do little else. That assumption is just so very wrong. Have they no eyes, no senses, no thought processes or logic? Such a reality makes me have some rather sad feelings regarding my own species. It does! I do not understand it.

It does bother me that scientists are only now starting to ‘get with the program,’ as it were. Sigh. Well, at least they’re starting. A good thing, surely.

To nicely illustrate the point, I’ll present to you now a reply from the ATS thread on this matter, member phroziac posted this very poignant tale:

Ever had a conversation with a bird? Theyre extremely intelligent, and i have no doubt whatsoever they have emotions… and non speaking species are just as intelligent as speaking ones. Small birds are just physically incapable of speaking because of the size of their uhmn…voice box. Ive caught mocking birds attempting to speak though, lol…..

However, its a similar intelligence to a young child. Not an adult human. Do children understand death? not really.

I owned a male and female cockatiel. The female got sick and died with basically no warning at all….very common for birds…they hide that theyre sick. The male cuddled up with her before she died and stayed cuddled up with her for hours after she died.  he got really depressed and quiet and eventually we had to give him away to a friend that had cockatiels to try to help.

He would always whistle the andy griffith song when he was happy lmao….i never heard him do it again after his lady died……

So, birds do have an emotional response to other birds dying. But im not sure they understand death.

And there you go… Reality. Poor bird.

Also available should you desire it is the research paper that was used as BBC“s source, published at Science Direct and titled Western scrub-jay funerals: cacophonous aggregations in response to dead conspecifics. As with most science journals, you can read the abstract, but you have to buy the paper (for $31.50) to read the actual research. Here’s the start of the abstract:

All organisms must contend with the risk of injury or death; many animals reduce this danger by assessing environmental cues to avoid areas of elevated risk. However, little is known about how organisms respond to one of the most salient visual cues of risk: a dead conspecific. Here we show that the sight of a dead conspecific is sufficient to induce alarm calling and subsequent risk-reducing behavioural modification in western scrub-jays, Aphelocoma californica, and is similar to the response to a predator (a great horned owl,Bubo virginianus, model). Discovery of a dead conspecific elicits vocalizations that are effective at attracting conspecifics, which then also vocalize, thereby resulting in a cacophonous aggregation. Presentations of prostrate dead conspecifics and predator mounts elicited aggregations and hundreds of long-range communication vocalizations, while novel objects did not. In contrast to presentations of prostrate dead conspecifics, presentations of a jay skin mounted in an upright, life-like pose elicited aggressive responses, suggesting the mounted scrub-jay was perceived to be alive and the prostrate jay was not. There was a decrease of foraging in the area during presentations of prostrate dead conspecifics and predator mounts, which was still detectable 24 h later. Foraging returned to baseline levels 48 h after presentations. Novel objects and mounted jays did not affect foraging. Our results show that without witnessing the struggle and manner of death, the sight of a dead conspecific is used as public information and that this information is actively shared with conspecifics and used to reduce exposure to risk.

Peace.

Taxonomically Terrific! The Wonder That Is Trogloraptor!

Meet Trogloraptor, fearsomeness incarnate. The creature more than lives up to its name—it is, in fact, an eight-legged showcase for scientific novelty. The spider somewhat resembles the brown recluse, famed for its flesh-necrotizing venom—but at four centimeters, Trogloraptor is about twice as large. In fact, this spider is an entirely new critter—just look at those legs, each ends in a curved, scythelike claw. Citizen scientists and arachnologists have uncovered these spiders in the caves of southwestern Oregon and old-growth redwood forests. As they report in ZooKeys, the discovery of Trogloraptor is a taxonomic wonder that establishes a new family, genus and species in the spider family tree.

Troglo’s story begins with citizen scientists in the Western Cave Conservancy who spotted the strange spider in Oregon’s caves. They sent specimens to researchers at the California Academy of Sciences where entomologist Tracy Audisio, a research fellow at the California Academy of Sciences, puzzled over the new find. After approaching every member of the arachnology lab, she and Charles Griswold, the academy’s curator of arachnology, took the finding to arachnologists around the country. They combed through comparative anatomy, fossil records and genetic analyses in their efforts to place the new spider, only to conclude that the cave dweller has a totally unique lineage. […]

—Daisy Yuhas

learn more, read the rest of it!

Cool, no? Weird, too. Just doesn’t look right… It’s the stance, the way the body is jutting forward from where the legs attach… dunno… just looks quite odd. Then there are those teardrop antennae and of course… the feet, er, claws! Claws?! Yep, eight of ‘em. Yikes. Good thing it’s not all that big.

It is always a treat when creatures are discovered that necessitate the rewriting of established ‘facts.’ It shows that we know so very little about the totality of the world around us. There is so much to find, so much top see, so much to learn, on every level, in every field of study… everywhere.

Let the search continue.

Peace.

Poacher’s snares in Africa disarmed by Gorillas!

Sweet!

I was delighted to learn that this is not a new phenomenon and I am even more satisfied in the knowledge that the kids have learned how to do it. While the traps are not intended for them, gorillas do get maimed and killed by the infernal things, so it is mostly for self-preservation that they do it, but I wonder if their concern extends to other creatures.

Betting it does, as some primates are known to kidnap puppies to raise as pets to guard their families and groups.

Believing that animals are beneath us is simply ignorance at its finest.

The following text and picture is an excerpt from the source article at the GrindTV Blog…

Two days after a young mountain gorilla was killed in a poacher’s snare trap in Rwanda, two juvenile gorillas were observed deactivating two similar snares.

It is the first time since African gorilla field research began more than 50 years ago that juvenile gorillas have ever been witnessed destroying snare traps, which are indiscriminately injuring and killing mountain gorillas.

“We knew that gorillas do this, but all of the reported cases in the past were carried out by adult gorillas, mostly silverbacks,” Veronica Vecellio of The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International wrote on the fund’s blog.

“Today, two juveniles and one blackback from Kuryama’s group worked together to deactivate two snares, and how they did it demonstrated an impressive cognitive skill.”

According to Vecellio, field data coordinator John Ndayambaje of the fund’s Karisoke Research Center spotted a snare in the path of some gorillas and moved to disarm it. But Silverback Yuba “pig-grunted” a warning to him, as if to say, “Stay away, we’ve got it covered.”

At the same time, juveniles Dukore and Rwema, along with blackback Tetero, “ran toward the snare and together pulled the branch used to hold the rope. They saw another snare nearby and as quickly as before, they destroyed the second branch and pulled the rope out of the ground,” Vecellio wrote.

Unfortunately, the gorillas and trackers don’t find all the snares. In her blog, … [read more]

Peace.

Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman, er, Lizard?

Now, then, if you were a Mwanza Flat Headed Agama and wanted to dominate your little group of mates, what would you do? Why, you’d dress up as Spiderman, of course!

Well. wouldn’t you?

And… our hero:

Knows how to strike a pose, doesn’t he?

So, is this art imitating life, or life imitating art?

A remarkable coincidence. Not that I believe in coincidence, but we’ll leave that bit out.

This is not cryptozoology at all… as this fellow, spotted in the Masia Mara National park near the Rongai river by photographer Cassio Lopes is pretty well known it would seem.

Apparently you can even buy them in pet stores. I really need to get out more, I guess.

Yes, I know I’m slow out the gate and I’m quite sure you’ve all seen this on your Facebooks and such. I saw it a couple of days ago myself at this ATS post but my head’s just not torqued down properly these days, as you may recall from my last post.

Maybe someone will see our little buddy for the first time! Or not. Sigh.

You can get some more details at The Daily Fail, er, Mail. They have more details and a pic of the photographer, too. Here’s an excerpt.

What a MARVEL! The blue and red lizard with a striking resemblance to comic book superhero Spiderman

By KERRY MCQUEENEY

PUBLISHED: 14:00 EST, 1 July 2012 | UPDATED: 16:56 EST, 1 July 2012

One has to wonder whether this lizard’s spider-senses are tingling. For the reptile bears more than a passing resemblance to the Marvel comic superhero Spiderman.

The lizard’s amazing red and blue markings are strikingly similar to the suit worn by the crime-fighting, web-weaving daredevil.

And – as the reptile was captured crawling around on his rock – he appeared to strike an identical pose to Spidey’s favoured crouching pose.

[…]

Ha! Will wonders never cease…

I just hope Marvel doesn’t try to sue the little creatures.

Peace.

Dolphins Greet Each Other – By Name!

I think we all had an inkling that things like this are very real. It also carries some deep implications.

The observant will note that most animals are sentient beings. Self aware beings. All it takes is having a cat or a dog and spending any amount of time with them. If you watch birds you will note the same. Even the oft-denigrated rat. It just seems so obvious to me.

Many people feel that dolphins are endowed with a spiritual nature. Of this I have no doubt. It is known, for example, that dolphins have empathy, even for other species… we have all read stories of dolphins rescuing humans who are in great peril.

Humans have been interacting with dolphins for a long time. The US Navy, since the early 60s has been training and using dolphins (and sea lions) to mark and recover mines and assist in other underwater operations through it’s U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program (NMMP). In view of the above realizations from this new research finding and knowing of their empathic nature, I have a lot of reservations about their use (abuse?) by our military in having them participate in any way in humanity’s greed-induced bloodshed. I wonder if they would help us if they knew the real purpose of such activities, because, although marking mines seems legit, I can not imagine the military sends them out solely on benign missions.

All in all, this finding shows dolphins are not only fully self-aware and wholly sentient but able to tell others about it. And probably not just other dolphins, either. Think whales, sea lions, etc. As such, they are quite obviously on par with homo sapiens sapiens; and since they have had 50 million years of evolution under their belts, compared to our 250,000, they must be far in advance of our developmental level.

Noted are some recent rumblings related to giving dolphins the same rights as people. I agree! But governments are unlikely to adopt the measure as it would likely economically and legally affect fishing operations adversely. There’s that greed based culture we all suffer within for ya.

Thousands upon thousands of dolphins die in fishing nets. This is because they can’t see them. Dolphins use sonar and sound to see in a similay way to our use of light to see. The nets do not reflect their sound beams, as they are, well, nets. Hence they get caught unawares. It is tragic.

Perhaps a way around it could be if nets could be re-engineered and redesigned to allow enough reflectance so that the dolphins could see them… things would be alright for all concerned.

Anyway…

Some data on this research…

Via ATS member Nicolas Flamel in this thread:

It looks like dolphins have names for each other and when first meeting other dolphins will introduce themselves and ask them to come play.

When meeting strangers in the wild, dolphins whistle signature tunes that may be the animal equivalent of “Hello, my name is…” stickers.

These introductions include other information as well:

‘I’m so-and-so, and I’m interested in making contact in a friendly way, I’m not attacking,'” said study researcher Vincent Janik, an expert in animal communication at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Janik calls these names “signature whistles” and he claims only humans and dolphins have personal “names” used to identify each other.

Non-human social primates do have identification calls however, so that other primates know who is calling. Janik says this is not the same as having names:

Social primates know each other from the sounds of their voices, but they don’t create signature identification calls. Dolphins, on the other hand, start developing their own whistles at just a few months of age.

Regardless, this does raise the bar on the self-awareness and intelligence of dolphins.

Source: Dolphin’s Unique Whistles Say, ‘Hey! Come Play!’ at livescience.com.

Here’s some information about the author of the study:

Dr. Vincent Janik is a member of the Sea Mammal Research Unit and the Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution (SLACE) at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

Besides getting his PhD, he also did some work with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA (whose members included Robert Ballard, discoverer of the Titanic). He’s also a Royal Society University Research Fellow (like Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking among others).

biology.st-andrews.ac.uk…

His work with dolphins is ongoing:

Janik and his colleagues are now studying how the dolphins develop their personalized whistles. They’re also investigating the hypothesis that the whistles act as a dolphin’s name by recording wild dolphins’ signature whistles and playing them back to the animals.

www.livescience.com…

some dolphins already work for the U.S. Navy to help detect sea mines for example. I wonder how much they get paid?

science.howstuffworks.com…

Bottlenose dolphins have their own undersea weapons. They use echolocation, which is like active sonar, to not only locate or identify fish but also stun them with a sonic boom.

Indeed.

Oh, as a matter of interest, in searching for a picture for this thread, I ran across this fascinating piece: Translation technology may let humans speak with dolphins at a site called Digital Trends. Heres a taste:

Researchers have begun to create a new technology that could soon allow humans and dolphins to talk to each other.

Dolphins have long been considered by scientists to be the most intelligent animals on the planet (aside from humans, of course). But soon, with the help of newly developed underwater translation software, our two species may actually be able to talk to each other.

Armed with a waterproof computer, divers may soon be able to decipher the chirps of dolphins, then create and project an appropriate response, all in real time, reports New Scientist.

Dubbed Cetacean Hearing and Telemetry (CHAT), the project is being undertaken by Denise Herzing, founder of the Wild Dolphin Project, and Thad Starner, an artificial intelligence researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. The end-goal of the CHAT program is to “co-create” a language that uses the natural sounds of wild dolphins, which can then be employed to talk with our finned brethren.

Humans have been able to communicate with dolphins since the 1960′s. Studies have shown that dolphins can learn up to about 100 human words, and be able to decipher the difference between similar commands, like “bring the surfboard to the man” and “bring the man to the surfboard.” […]

What astounding things will they clue us in on? All about USOs, maybe?

Personally, to reiterate what I said above, I am of the opinion that they are, oh, just a tad smarter than us…

Peace.

Sensational Sea Serpent Art

If you go down to the sea today,
You’re sure of a big surprise.
If you go down to the sea today,
You’d better go in disguise.
For ev’ry cryptid ever there was,
… Will gather there for certain, because
Today’s the day the Sea Serpents have their picnic!

And guess who’s on the menu…?!!

– Karl Shuker

(With apologies to The Teddy Bear’s Picnic!)

Cryptozoology is one of the things that gets me heart all a flutter.

This beautiful sea serpent did the trick! This delicious bit of art came by via my friend Karl Shuker who posted it on his Facebook wall recently, along with the accompanying poem he wrote for it.

I wish I knew the artist so I could give proper credit. I’ll have to ask.

I have a few more awesome bits of artwork, (not by me, either), to put up on here. They are very nice. You will surely like them.

This blog looks all screwy on all my browsers. Hopefully WP can figure out whats broken. I’m wondering if posting this will knock some sense into it… There is reason to suspect the Russkies, but who knows.

Anyway,

Peace.

“Mommy, What Happens Inside An Animal Shelter?”

The last thread here concerned the absolutely horrific treatment and misuse of bears by the Chinese for their collective medicinal superstitions.

This thread concerns the absolutely horrific treatment and misuse of dogs and cats by Americans for their collective fantasies of being ‘loving, caring’ pet owners.

The information you are about to read was passed along by one Elf Hellion, a dear friend of mine who is a passionate lover of animals… of all sorts… and a staunch advocate for their well-being, wherever they might be. She is currently not too enamored of certain examples of our species, however.

As I have also been a lifelong lover of our animal brethren in all their varieties and an observer of the society that is decaying all around me, I understand exactly where she’s coming from. So many people within our society are so shallow… so shallow it boggles my mind… constantly. Frank Zappa called them the plastic people. That’s kind of a nice way to put it. They represent the vast majority. They think only of themselves… while telling themselves they actually do care for their children, spouses, pets and neighbors. They cannot. This society, with its controlled “education” and media have removed that ability from their being, starting at their birth. Most effectively it has done so, too… as you see them… every day, everywhere you go. You know you do.

What follows is pretty sobering… the inside story on what exactly does happen behind the doors of an animal “shelter.”

Now that I think of it, it would seem to me that these facilities really should all change their name… as “shelter” is just not at all accurate… in any way, shape or form. Maybe that simple act alone would wake the functional zombies up from their narcissistic fantasy that they are in any way “human beings.” Maybe it wouldn’t.

And now… learn…

Why We Do What We Do

A Letter from a Shelter Manager – anonymous in North Carolina

I think our society needs a huge “Wake-up” call. As a shelter manager, I am going to share a little insight with you all…a view from the inside if you will.

First off, all of you breeders/sellers should be made to work in the “back” of an animal shelter for just one day. Maybe if you saw the life drain from a few sad, lost, confused eyes, you would change your mind about breeding and selling to people you don’t even know.

That puppy you just sold will most likely end up in my shelter when it’s not a cute little puppy anymore. So how would you feel if you knew that there’s about a 90% chance that dog will never walk out of the shelter it is going to be dumped at? Purebred or not! About 50% of all of the dogs that are “owner surrenders” or “strays” that come into my shelter are purebred dogs.

The most common excuses I hear are; “We are moving and we can’t take our dog (or cat).” Really? Where are you moving too that doesn’t allow pets? Or they say “The dog got bigger than we thought it would.” How big did you think a German Shepherd would get? “We don’t have time for her.” Really? I work a 10-12 hour day and still have time for my 6 dogs! “She’s tearing up our yard.” How about making her a part of your family? They always tell me “We just don’t want to have to stress about finding a place for her we know she’ll get adopted, she’s a good dog.”

Odds are your pet won’t get adopted and how stressful do you think being in a shelter is? Well, let me tell you, your pet has 72 hours to find a new family from the moment you drop it off. Sometimes a little longer if the shelter isn’t full and your dog manages to stay completely healthy. If it sniffles, it dies. Your pet will be confined to a small run/kennel in a room with about 25 other barking or crying animals. It will have to relieve itself where it eats and sleeps. It will be depressed and it will cry constantly for the family that abandoned it. If your pet is lucky, I will have enough volunteers in that day to take him/her for a walk. If I don’t, your pet won’t get any attention besides having a bowl of food slid under the kennel door and the waste sprayed out of its pen with a high-powered hose. If your dog is big, black or any of the “Bully” breeds (pit bull, rottie, mastiff, etc) it was pretty much dead when you walked it through the front door.

Those dogs just don’t get adopted. It doesn’t matter how ‘sweet’ or ‘well behaved’ they are.

If your dog doesn’t get adopted within its 72 hours and the shelter is full, it will be destroyed. If the shelter isn’t full and your dog is good enough, and of a desirable enough breed it may get a stay of execution, but not for long . Most dogs get very kennel protective after about a week and are destroyed for showing aggression. Even the sweetest dogs will turn in this environment. If your pet makes it over all of those hurdles chances are it will get kennel cough or an upper respiratory infection and will be destroyed because shelters just don’t have the funds to pay for even a $100 treatment.

Here’s a little euthanasia 101 for those of you that have never witnessed a perfectly healthy, scared animal being “put-down.”

First, your pet will be taken from its kennel on a leash. They always look like they think they are going for a walk happy, wagging their tails. Until they get to “The Room,” every one of them freaks out and puts on the brakes when we get to the door. It must smell like death or they can feel the sad souls that are left in there, it’s strange, but it happens with every one of them. Your dog or cat will be restrained, held down by 1 or 2 vet techs depending on the size and how freaked out they are. Then a euthanasia tech or a vet will start the process. They will find a vein in the front leg and inject a lethal dose of the “pink stuff.” Hopefully your pet doesn’t panic from being restrained and jerk. I’ve seen the needles tear out of a leg and been covered with the resulting blood and been deafened by the yelps and screams. They all don’t just “go to sleep,” sometimes they spasm for a while, gasp for air and defecate on themselves.

When it all ends, your pet’s corpse will be stacked like firewood in a large freezer in the back with all of the other animals that were killed waiting to be picked up like garbage. What happens next? Cremated? Taken to the dump? Rendered into pet food? You’ll never know and it probably won’t even cross your mind. It was just an animal and you can always buy another one, right?

I hope that those of you that have read this are bawling your eyes out and can’t get the pictures out of your head I deal with everyday on the way home from work.

I hate my job, I hate that it exists and I hate that it will always be there unless you people make some changes and realize that the lives you are affecting go much farther than the pets you dump at a shelter.

Between 9 and 11 MILLION animals die every year in shelters and only you can stop it. I do my best to save every life I can but rescues are always full, and there are more animals coming in everyday than there are homes.

My point to all of this DON’T BREED OR BUY WHILE SHELTER PETS DIE!

Hate me if you want to. The truth hurts and reality is what it is. I just hope I maybe changed one person’s mind about breeding their dog, taking their loving pet to a shelter, or buying a dog. I hope that someone will walk into my shelter and say “I saw this and it made me want to adopt.” THAT WOULD MAKE IT WORTH IT.

by: Advocate for Saving Dogs

###

China, Where Bears Are Driven To Suicide.

I had, dear readers, for all these years I have lived, thought that we human beings were the only creatures who committed suicide.

I was wrong.

I learned this sadness of reality through a post at ATS by Predator187, a great contributor, which led to the original source. Yes, I’m always there. I opened the post because the title was shocking and I thought that it couldn’t possibly be real.

It was.

This is the most disturbing thing I have read and learned in a very long time. To think that animals… who I DO believe have intelligence, language and emotion… despite what people say… to think that they for whatever reason can find themselves in a situation so horrible that they think thoughts of suicide… and then actually do it… like we do… is a really bad indication of just how screwed up this planet has become. And in this case, it is the direct fault of human beings.

Specifically, in this instance, the Chinese. And their TCM, or Traditional Chinese Medicine, which uses bits of animals for supposed cures. Including cockroaches. And bears. Many of these treatments are meant to be used for illnesses, as you’d expect. Many of these processed parts are sold to the masses as a sort of stamina booster.

In this particular case, the bears, who are treated just like Tyson treats chickens here at home, have their bile milked, daily, from their gall bladders. To quote ATS member Jordan River, my first thought, like his or hers, was “What the hell is a bile farm?” Well, disgusting is what it is. Being a formerly lower middle class American, the only time I’ve ever been exposed in any way to the bodily substance known as bile was in a scene from The X-Files where Mulder puts his hand in some and asks Scully, as he withholds the urgent need to hurl, what it is. It is disgusting when out of it’s home. And the Chinese apparently worship the stuff and it is prized in Chinese medicine and sells for $1,400 an ounce.

Thousands upon thousands are kept in tiny cages and painfully invaded. Daily. The way they do it is horrific. The following is from the original source of our awareness, AsiaOne…

It was reported that the bears are kept in tiny cages known as ‘crush cages,’ as the bears have no room to manoeuvre and are literally crushed.

The bile is harvested by making a permanent hole or fistula in the bear’s abdomen and gall bladder.

As the hole is never closed, the animals are suspect to various infections and diseases including tumours, cancers and death from peritonitis.

The bears are fitted with an iron vest, as they often try to kill themselves by hitting their stomach as they are unable to bear the pain.

A person who was on the farm in place of a friend witnessed the procedures and told Renminbao.com that they were inhumane.

The witness also claimed that a mother bear broke out its cage when it heard its cub howl in fear before a worker punctured its stomach to milk the bile.

The workers ran away in fear when they saw the mother bear rushing to its cub’s side.

Unable to free the cub from its restraints, the mother hugged the cub and eventually strangled it.

It then dropped the cub and ran head-first into a wall, killing itself.

I mean, seriously, can you even imagine such a thing happening? What the hell is wrong with these people?

I am actually saddened that the mother bear didn’t get a chance to rip some of these disgusting people to shreds.

Some posters at ATS, probably kids, thought that none of it was real and said so, to which another responded with a lot of detailed and morbidly fascinating  information on TCM and added these two videos as proof that this repulsive practice was in fact very real. This one…

And then this one…

And now, dear reader, you know WHY they poach bears in North America. And elsewhere. $3,000 for a gall bladder is why. All for greed, all for servicing the ridiculous and selfishly vain superstitious medicinal fantasies of a clearly sick society.

The situation in general is more than a bit confusing to me, as it has been mentioned that these farms are legal in China. I am not sure if they are or not, really. They are certainly operating undisturbed. And yet several activist groups are engaging the Chinese government in stopping the practice completely, in concert with Chinese citizens. Not sure what to make of it all. Not sure at all.

It is widely known that the substances contained within these products can be synthesized effectively and cheaply, the thing is the deeply ingrained belief by millions of people around the world that taking it from the animal is supposedly better as it will bring a magically triumphant “power” to the mix. Can these beliefs be turned around? I would doubt it. But the government can force the situation. Will they? Time will tell. I don’t personally have too much faith in the Chinese, government or civilians, in matters such as this. We shall see…

On an up note, a very few bears are being rescued by activists, the key words here being “very few,” however. Video of such here:

Sigh. What a great world we live in. China: 5,000 years of Ignorance and Superstition. I can’t write any more without repeating myself as I am emotionally a tad exhausted by it all, plus there is the rekindled North Korean issue I plan to write about and the secret space thread I still owe spynode, so I will sign off for now.

Peace.

A few resources:

• Do visit the thread at ATS.
• Article, in Chinese, at renminbao.com. This site has a translation of the article and includes the video above. Disturbing photos as well.
• Article at World Society for the Protection of Animals.
• Article at This Dish Is Vegetarian, where Pred first saw the story. They received a statement from Animals Asia, who say this report cannot be confirmed. Pfft. Right. Whatever, this is important and I would say the odds of it not being true are pretty damn slim.

Additional info at AsiaOne:

• Bitter way to purify blood
• Severe threat to bears from illegal bile trade
• Bearing down on an illicit trade

As a somewhat off-topic addition, ATS member zbeliever said “I have heard of over worked donkeys in the Grand Canyon taking their lives. They jump off cliffs…I wonder if they know something we don’t and that it is better on the other side…” Hmmm…

ETA: 10pm, added three still images for reader’s visual verification.

Dinochelus ausubeli, A Wicked-Clawed Deep Sea Nasty.

Author: Shapiro, Leo

Compiler: Hammock, Jen

Supplier: EOL Rapid Response Team

License: Some rights reserved

Source URL: View original data object

Indexed: October 01, 2010 Permalink

Dinochelus ausubeli is a new species of deepwater lobster (family Nephropidae) first collected in 2007 from the Philippine Sea off the island of Luzon and was formally described in 2010. The species is so distinct that it was not only described as a new species but placed in a newly erected genus as well (Dinochelus). “Dinochelus” is derived from the Greek dinos, meaning “terrible”, and chela, meaning “claw”, an allusion to the massive, spinose major claw. The specific epithet ausubeli honors Jesse Ausubel, an enthusiastic sponsor of the Census of Marine Life, a major effort to document marine life in the first decade of the 21st century. (Ahyong et al. 2010)

Wow, man, that’s one hell of a claw! I’m diggin’ it. It reminds one of a precision instrument that some technician might wield for maximum tweakage of something obscure and specialized.

And it is obviously extremely specialized. I would imagine it is designed to do one thing really well, whether that’s getting into a seriously narrow nook or similarly configured cranny wherein its main nutrient-filled nodule resides, or, perhaps it somehow conforms to said nutrient-filled nodule’s unique physiognomy.

Shivers, I surely wouldn’t want to be that unfortunate creature!

For additional perusal and introspection into the vastness of life’s catalog:

At AboveTopSecret: Newly Discovered Deep Sea Lobster *pic*

At ScienceDaily (source for the ATS discussion thread): Newly Discovered Deep Sea Lobster

At Encyclopedia of Life (source of the extract above): Dinochelus ausubeli

At WoRMS – World Register of Marine Species: WoRMS Image

Whenever I look at new creatures from the sea I am always, always reminded of the fact that we know more about the Moon and Mars than our own oceans. A LOT more. A situation I find very saddening. Indeed, don’t spend our resources on learning what’s out there… spend them on global acts of corporate criminality and on killing each other in support of the same. Great.

Every time a probe or submersible or anything goes down below, at least one lifeform is seen for the first time. Less than 5% of the world’s oceans have had any sort of exploration.

Interestingly, when humans briefly visited the deepest deepness that there is on this planet, the bottom of the Marianas Trench in the fabulous Trieste… right there on the bottom scurrying away… was a fish.

Absolutely amazing.

“He’s Got The Cutest Little Feet!”

Now then!

Here’s yet another amazing image.

What this actually is caught me by surprise when I read the description below. Always pictured an adhesive pad as, well, an adhesive pad. I would never have imagined that at least this species of beetle is perched on a large array of extremely tiny feet. Wicked! The things we learn…

So, do these tiny little feet move individually and “walk” along together in an orchestrated way, or do they just adhere to the surface and then the beetle picks up the whole group at once as it walks? I want to know. I do!

8th Place: Beetle leg

German researcher Jan Michels’ eighth-place image shows a lateral view of the adhesive pad on the leg of a beetle (Clytus sp.). The view was captured using autofluorescence.

This post’s title, by the way, refers to a line from one of those humorous radio ads for something that I can’t recall (shoes, maybe?) that played in the New York City market a few years ago. For some reason it came to mind and I thought it somehow fit in describing this extraordinary image. And yes, I know my mind is strange.

As this post is obviously a complement to the preceding post featuring the fabulous face of a weevil (and the microscopic minerals post with the added dragonfly face that has a very strange additional “face” on it), the photo is also from the very same Olympus BioScapes International Digital Imaging Competition and you can see many more at this link. And there is that same discussion of the imagery as well.

This stuff rocks.

Well, Hi There!

I love this guy.

Seriously.

What a strange and lovely face.

Damned if he doesn’t just make this web page pop!

I was going to post this picture without comment, but doing that didn’t work too well last time I did it, really, although it gets downloaded a lot… when I had commented, though, the post seemed to do better… not enough to become a thread, but hey.

The info on this extraordinary image is just below. You can see many more at this link. Maybe you’d like to read or even join a discussion of the image and others.

The world we live in is fabulous, isn’t it?

10th Place: Weevil head.

The Olympus BioScapes International Digital Imaging Competition honors the world’s most extraordinary microscope images of life science subjects. This 10th-place picture, by British photographer Laurie Knight, shows the face of a weevil (possibly Curculio nucum or Curculio glandium). The image was captured using a lighting technique known as episcopic illumination.

You may also like the follow up post to this one, called “He’s Got The Cutest Little Feet!”.

Shine A Light On Me

Elysia chlorotica. Credit: Nicholas E. Curtis and Ray Martinez

Well, well now… this creature is certainly unusual… it’s half animal… and it’s half plant… and according to this article in LiveScience describing Sidney Pierce’s paper presented on January 7 at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Seattle, this is apparently the only one known to possess a certain unique quality – making it’s own chlorophyll and it’s own food –  from light! How weird is that?

Pierce is a biologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

“We collect them and we keep them in aquaria for months,” Pierce said. “As long as we shine a light on them for 12 hours a day, they can survive [without food].”

Amazing! Meet the sea slug known as Elysia chlorotica, (although I prefer George in this case), amazingly enough a resident of salt marshes in my own neck of the woods… here in New England and in Canada, too. Who knew?

It is actually able to steal genes from the algae that it eats – specific genes – the very genes that let said algae make chlorophyll; and then incorporate them into it’s own body in a way that they really work.

Even though George can perform that feat as a matter of course, it must rip off the hapless little algae  critters still further –  by taking their little chloroplasts. Chloroplasts are the biodevices within the algal cells that actually convert sunlight into energy, called photosynthesis, using the chlorophyll as fuel.

Eating is just an option for this thing… as long as there’s a bit of light about.

It also has the ability to pass the genes on to the kids, fully functioning, but they too must steal enough chloroplasts for the process to start working for them.

What I find interesting is that the article says that Pierce has been studying these creatures for 20 years… Surely it can’t be that he’s only noticed this ability now? No. Or is it that he’s crying out, so to speak, for others to continue to assist in the research so that the phenomenon can finally be understood? As he says…

“It certainly is possible that DNA from one species can get into another species, as these slugs have clearly shown,” Pierce said. “But the mechanisms are still unknown.”

Hey, here’s a very nice website concerning this little critter, from the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Maine.

Is it not fascinating to think that the mysterious forces of evolution have come together to give this simple creature the ability to so specifically choose to eat a certain organism and to extract from that animal something so small as a gene and then to use it in it’s own body… absolutely amazing! A real ganglia tickler, that! Damn!

Bigfoot in Texas? New At L.O.W.F.I

This just in… here’s an excerpt from a very fine article…

L.O.W.F.I’s Guest Editorial
The League of Western Fortean Intermediatists presents…

Bigfoot in Texas?

by Craig Woolheater
co-founder and chairman of the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy

A common misconception among the general public is that the Bigfoot phenomenon is limited strictly to the Pacific Northwest. Many people think of Texas terrain as being nothing but prairies and deserts filled with “tumbling tumbleweeds” to quote the famous song.

However, in East Texas, which is where the majority of the reported sightings of Bigfoot occur in the state, there are approximately 12 million acres of forest land. There are four national forests and five state forests in Texas, all located in East Texas, the primary and most important forested area in Texas. The East Texas Pine Belt, or “Piney Woods” as it is commonly called, extends over forty-three counties and accounts for almost all of the state’s commercial timber.

There has been a long history of sightings in the state of Texas. Native American legends dating back hundreds of years describe tribes of hair-covered giants that lived in the forests. One of the first in the history books is the strange case of “The Wild Woman Of The Navidad.” This is a story that was recounted in The Legends of Texas published by the Texas Folklore Society in 1924. The creature was described as being extremely fast and covered in short brown hair. She eluded capture because the horses were so afraid of the strange creature that they could not be urged within reach of the lasso. Mysterious, barefoot tracks were seen frequently in the area. These events occurred in 1837 in the Texas settlements of the lower Navidad. […]

Continue reading at the League of Western Fortean Intermediatists… it’s really rather good!

Aftermath Of The Dogman

Michigan’s Dogman is still tearing up the internet and fortunately lots more info is coming to light. I find myself fascinated with this animal. It’s clearly not a bear, as I’ve seen bears, in fact, one calls my Dad’s backyard home. That’d be People’s State Forest in upper Connecticut, mere miles as it happens from the 19th century haunts of the Winsted Wildman. I’ve seen Dad’s neighbor from a distance of perhaps 100 feet for extended periods of time. I don’t think this Dogman chap has anything to do with dogs, as it moves more like a cat to these eyes, but, as I said, it ain’t no bear either.

I tried to bring out as much detail in the creature as I could in the above images, but they’re off of screen captures and in any event, when you start with an image as small as that on 8mm film stock, coupled with the data loss in digitization, there’s just not a lot of information present to enhance. Still, there’s something. Something very, very scary.

In the meantime…

A new video has surfaced, allegedly showing a part of the police investigation of the scene after the attack. Be aware that there is grisly footage of a man who has been eaten from the waist down… completely.

The scene seems to fit in with the Gable film. Truck’s the same, camera’s the same and on the ground properly, the body seems to match the man in the film… Javier Ortega over at Ghost Theory has been investigating this newly found video of the aftermath. The first installment went over the basics with explorations of the body, the camera and the story below as told at YouTube.

QuinlanOUR12
July 17, 2009

I was at my little brother’s house Friday June 10th and my sister-in-law was watching Fox News. (She’s madly in lust with that Sean Hannity guy). A short segment came on about “the Beast of Bray Road”. Hannity then played a clip from a film named…”The Gable Film”.

Sirens went off in my head.

Our only uncle was a film nut in college, back in the seventies. He was always making home movies and beer commercials. He was even hired, (not for pay), to help the Michigan Department of Natural Resources investigate and document a bear attack, just north of Bellaire. (Our Grandmother worked in the Antrim County Courthouse,…. she had a hand in getting him the gig). The victim’s name was Aaron GABLE.

…..GABLE!!!

My mother tells us that after filming the attack scene, our Uncle John was so distraught that he packed up his stuff and moved to Florida, two weeks later!. Mom says his behavior was becoming very psychotic, he couldn’t sleep at night and he kept going on about how “bears have FIVE toes,….. dogs have four”!. Just a week after he left, a DNR officer hand-delivered the film that Uncle John made to my Mother’s house. It’s been in a box in the basement ever since.

Now, I seem to recall that these films usually lasted about five minutes or so, but the film we have is only about a minute long… and the end of it was obviously torn off, not cut clean. I wonder just how much is missing? We almost threw this film away just a couple of years ago, but I wound up buying a vintage projector on eBay, just to see what was on this film. (Boy, was I suprised). NOW,….. I find that there’s this “Gable” film out there?

I wonder if these two films are related. I’ll see if I can get it in better resolution, other than with Wifey’s camera-phone. (It might be expensive,….. but I’m sure it’ll be worth it).

One thing’s for certain, whatever it was on that clip that they played on Fox News,….. it sure didn’t look like no Bear.

Category: Film & Animation

Sounds slightly dodgy, but could well be true. I note with interest that the video is in the Film and Animation category. Odd. Anyway, that scene is a bit harsh for an unsuspecting college age kid not knowing what to expect from an alleged “bear attack,” I don’t know about him going insane, but I know I was traumatized for a good while after finding my cousin’s dead body, so… it’s still a maybe.

There have been two additional posts on Ghost Theory since… the second post continues with further correlations and commenary by Linda Godfrey, author of The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin’s Werewolf… and raises even more questions… and in the third one there’s more points and… more questions. There are some very good concerns raised and items of note uncovered in all three, so be sure to read all the comments.

Hopefully we will at least find out the true origins of these films and the fate of Aaron Gable; and maybe, just maybe, the nature of this animal.

Another enhancement of the original film’s just out on MySpace and is well done. Should I get some work and clear my depression a tad, I’ll do one, too.

There’s a DVD out with Linda Godfrey and others called Hunt the Dogmanthat you might want to check out.

Howling At The Moon, Doggy Style.

I’ve stumbled across the Michigan Dogman via Phantoms and Monsters. This elusive and nearly unheard of creature, is news to me, although I don’t feel as bad as usual as many in Michigan are still unaware of it. It’s basically the old “there’s just too much stuff” thing.

Hemmed and hawed about posting this picture… then I figured I would since I’d spent time adjusting it… so, above we have my enhancement of the Temple photo, snapped just last winter by a teenage girl babysitting in Temple, Michigan – just as our pal’s leaving the building.

Said building being the barn on the right. It’s a straight crop down the middle. A red flag went up and waved seconds after I adjusted the exposure up 1.4 stops. The thing’s like nearly 20 feet tall. This is, to be kind, inconsistent with sighting reports.

Clicking the pic will give you my enhanced full frame. You can also get the original shot in all its dark nighttime glory at the Michigan Dogman site for your own enjoyment.

And you might want to look at it, or not, as the above picture… is a hoax.

I read that on the site’s blog. Checked it out. Quite true. It is. OregonBigfoot.com researcher Scott Davis did a simulation in Photoshop of this, layering in a creature from a Chronicles of Narnia movie, the Prince Caspian one. I just overlayed Scott’s mockup onto the submitted version. They match. Pretty much pixel for pixel, too, just like the “nose-out” CGI multilayer overlay on 9/11.

Well. So much for that…

But all’s not lost, as there’s the Gable footage.

Mindstage Productions, operator of the site above and a film production company, acquired the apparently famous Gable film, seen below on YouTube, at a tag sale as an 8mm Kodachrome home movie reel. It’s not known who shot it, but they had good taste in film stock. Quite faded out now, though. It’s downloadable at the site in full splendor, enhanced even (restored’d be a better word). They’ve made a DVD about this creature which I haven’t seen.

There’s a glimpse at 2:40, but the goods come in at 3:08, where a very odd looking, very real looking and, if you were there, god damn scary creature is seen; and then starts an attack run…

Ya, mon, those were teeth. No one knows who shot that yet, but, from the footage it doesn’t appear that things turned out so well for them.

And here’s a nice piece that’s also at P & M. Gives a good brief background to get you set up.

Now normally the many shots of grass and the ground whizzing by indicate to me that a film is a likely hoax as in most of the fake Bigfoot vids, the thinking being it shows fear but the context of those entire pieces are typically poorly done.

In this film, one can readily see the context as just home movies… and then see that thing… and you know why he’s running… for his life. Very different.

Some say it’s a hyena. Doesn’t look like any I’ve ever seen. Especially the body movements. Some say it shape shifts. I don’t see that. It is indeed something very different, though… and I’d much rather run into a Bigfoot than one of these things… unless I had a Glock 18C with a deGroat Tactical Armaments 100-round mag on it handy!

Lon Strickler at P & M has already got some new sightings in, also to be seen at Cryptomundo. Maybe we can solve this one…

There’s a DVD out with Linda Godfrey and others called Hunt the Dogman you might want to check out.