Monsters and Myths

Kemerovo (Russia), Feb 19: A group of people led by the Russian Orthodox Bishop of Kemerovo and a regional official set out Thursday in search of a bigfoot sighted by hunters in Tashtagol area in Russia, a regional spokesman said.

Earlier this week, the Kemerovo regional administration released a report that local hunters had spotted “some hairy humanoid creatures with a height of 1.5-2 metres near the Azass Cave on Mount Shoriya. The report was illustrated with a photograph from inside the cave showing the track of an unidentified creature.

“From the nearest village of Ust-Kabyrz, the bishop, regional head and a group of others will reach the Azass Cave by the only transportation possible: snowmobiles,” the spokesman told RIA Novosti.

According to the head of the department of anthropology at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology in Moscow, anthropologists have never seen or studied the body of a bigfoot or yeti, although there are numerous reports of their sightings throughout the world.

He also noted that yetis for some reason are always spotted singularly, which is “biological nonsense”, as a large population must exist in order to create generation after generation. According to the anthropologist, Earth has been studied so thoroughly that if a population of yeti existed it would have been confirmed.

The Kemerovo regional spokesman said a scientific expedition is being organized for the summer to investigate the sighting. The financial details of the expedition are being worked out and there are already many enthusiasts, businessmen and hunters ready to help.

newkerala.com/topstory-fullnews-96410.html

I have never been one for having an interest in the unknown or the paranormal, but when someone you trust tells of an experience from their past, sometimes you have to give the benefit of the doubt. I was reading Your True Tales about a month ago and came across a story that took place in New Jersey on or about the area of Doris Dukes Farm. After reading it my jaw dropped because this story gave the one that was told to me some validity. My grandfather told me this story back in 1991, a few years before he passed away… and so it goes.

My grandfather worked from the late 1950s to the early ’70s as a landscaper on the Duke Estate in Somerset, N.J. When he told this story

to my sister and me, he was foggy when giving the exact dates, but he was still very sharp and explained it with incredible detail. My grandfather’s job was to manicure and care for the lawns in the north section of the property (whatever that meant) and other various duties. He said that in the summer of 1972, one August afternoon, he was told by the head groundskeeper that he would be working overtime and that he was needed because a shipment was being delivered from Wisconsin. They needed about eight men to unload a crate and to bring it into the garden area.

That night, the truck arrived and it was getting late. The men who were asked to stay for overtime were eager to get things done and over with and be on their way. When the truck pulled up, my grandfather said that the crate was about 8 feet tall and 5 feet wide. When he asked what was inside it, the one in charge said they were exotic trees.

What happened next was enough to make half of the team get up and walk off the job and not care about the consequences. When the men started pushing the crate off of the flatbed truck, a blood-curdling scream was unleashed from within the box. All of the men let go of their grip and the crate fell to the floor. As everyone jumped back, realizing that this was anything but a tree, the head keep did all he could to save the contents’ real identity and said that there was a black bear inside of it.

While the men were regaining their composure, most of the helpers walked off the job. They said they didn’t want to get hurt or mauled dealing with a wild animal without the proper safety equipment, so off they went, including my grandfather. Only two men stayed to finish what they were asked, and so this is what was told to my grandfather.

The two remaining men managed to get the load onto a dolly and then drag it into the garden compound. While guiding the crate down the main path, balance was lost and the crate came off the wheels. The hard hit was enough to crack the side of the crate and loosen the side panel, which fell off and exposed the contents. What the two remaining men witnessed that night was enough to make them seek employment elsewhere.

What I am telling you was how it was told to me. Inside the crate sat a creature that had the shape of a man, but was anything but a man. They couldn’t give a height measurement since the creature was in a sitting position, but they said it was huge. It had the shape of a man with a very large frame, only it was covered with black hair. The “creature” was strapped down and had shackles on his legs and feet and arms. The face didn’t look like a man, but had some human features. The workers said it looked more like a monkey or a gorilla. The hair was extremely long and dirty. At one point, one of the men said they thought that this “thing” was trying to speak or communicate with words, but all it did was keep on drooling. They were under the impression that this creature was heavily sedated because it couldn’t keep his head up straight; it rested its head on its chest.

A couple of inches away from the creature’s head was an empty water bottle nailed to the wall. On the other side of the creature was an IV stand connected to the wall and stuck to its arm. It might have been used to feed this “creature” during its transport. One of the oddest parts to this story was that my grandfather was told that this creature was sitting on a rocking chair! I could never understand this. After thinking about it, though, I think it was maybe to prevent this “thing” from getting cramps during the move. They also said that the odor was overpowering and enough to make anyone pass out — the combined smells of urine, waste and body odor was rank.

My Grandfather stuck by this story until the very end. About two weeks before he passed away, my sister reminded me to bring it up again and confront him, which I did. There was no need to go over the story again because we both knew how it went. I just asked him, “Papa, remember the crate you had to move in Jersey?” He just looked at me, smiled and said, “Of course.” I said, “Did you embellish at all?” He said, “No, there was no reason to. It happened the way I said it happened.” I said, “Because now would be the time to tell me.”

He looked at me and said, “You want to know if I embellished the story. The truth is that I am guilty of the opposite.” There was so much that I left out… the story was just the beginning. Remember something, I worked there for two more years after that. There are things that a young mind should not hear.” I said, “But I am not a child anymore. I am sure I can handle what it is that you have to say.”

Grandfather said, “Tomorrow I will finish the story. Come back tomorrow.” But there was no tomorrow. Grandfather passed away at 2 a.m. at New York Hospital. This is a true story.

Story Told by :  Stephen Wagner

What is the Devil’s Triangle? The Devil’s Triangle aka The Dragon’s Triangle is located near Miyake Island, somewhat south of Tokyo and one of the corners touches Guam. This area of ocean there are missing ships, missing people, missing airplanes, USOs (Unidentified Submerged Objects), UFOs, thick menacing fog, strange waves, whirlpools, etc. What is really unusual is that on the exact opposite side is the Bermuda Triangle. Japan has declared the area of the Devil’s Triangle a danger zone. Since the Bermuda Triangle is on the opposite side of the Devil’s Triangle, this tells me that both areas, even though they are on the other side of the world are connected.

There is no way that it is a mere coincidence that both areas are on the opposite side of the globe and harbor the same menacing phenomenon. One of the greatest people that disappeared in the Devil’s Triangle is Amelia Earhart. I believe there is a dimensional vortex that connects the Bermuda Triangle and Devil’s Triangle.

It’s quite a mysterious happening that both the myth filled “triangles” are so closely related even being so fat apart.  I found this to be a pretty interesting read and wanted to share it with everyone. Can read the entire article at the link below.

Story Link:   Devil’s Triangle

Could an alien astronomer have detected life on Earth during an ice age? Recent work has calculated how past climate extremes affected the light reflected from vegetation out into space. The results could give hope to our own search for life on distant worlds.

From far away, our planet is a single faint speck of light in the sky. Although we have sent radio messages out to potential extraterrestrial listeners, none of these signals have traveled more than a few tens of light years.

However, Earthlings have been broadcasting their presence to the galaxy for millions of years. Terrestrial plants reflect strongly in the infrared, resulting in a distinctive feature (called the vegetation red edge or VRE) in the light bouncing off the Earth’s surface.

“We know from earlier works that vegetation was detectable in the contemporary spectrum, but was vegetation visible when the Earth was much colder than today?” wonders Luc Arnold from the Observatory of Haute Provence in France.

Arnold and his colleagues have taken climate models from a recent ice age, as well as a recent warm period, and used them to generate the reflection spectrum of the Earth in times past. Their results, to be published in an upcoming issue of the International Journal of Astrobiology, show that the VRE has remained a relatively constant interstellar beacon over the millennia.

Earth from afar

When the Apollo astronauts shone their cameras on Earth, we got a first glimpse of what our planet looks like from space.

But at farther distances, continents and oceans blur together, and all that is left is a pale blue dot. Several spacecraft - most recently the European Space Agency’s Venus Express - have looked back at Earth from different points in the solar system.

These self-portraits are not merely a case of narcissism on the part of us Earthlings.  There is an important scientific question being posed:  How does a planet brimming with life appear from far away?

The data from spacecraft, as well as Earthshine collected from the moon, have shown that there are signatures of life in the spectrum of light reflecting from Earth.

For example, absorption lines from gases, like oxygen and methane, give some hint that biology is at work. Even more telling is a tiny notch in the spectrum at 700 nanometers, where the reflection suddenly becomes stronger towards longer wavelengths.

This edge - occurring right at the boundary between visible light and the infrared - is due to photosynthesizing plants. They absorb the visible part of the spectrum, where most of the energy is found in sunlight. However, they reflect away the infrared - presumably to avoid overheating.

Past climates

Due to vegetation coverage, the Earth reflects 5 percent more infrared light than it would if there were no plants. Arnold and his colleagues were therefore curious if this tiny VRE signal remained observable during one of Earth’s ice ages.

They focused on the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), which occurred 21,000 years ago. Average temperatures were around 4 degrees Celsius lower than now, and ice sheets covered all of Canada and Northern Europe.

For comparison, they also examined a warm period 6,000 years ago, called the Holocene optimum (HO), when temperatures were roughly a half a degree Celsius higher than now, and plant life flourished in the Sahara.

“The [LGM and HO] are two extreme periods for which we have good knowledge of the climate,” Arnold says.

Using paleoclimate models, the researchers determined the biome (e.g. tundra, tropical forest, desert) for every point on Earth during these two extremes.

Each biome reflects a different spectrum of light into space. The European Space Agency’s GOME (Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment) satellite has flown over all of these biomes and recorded the reflection.

By combining the biome map and satellite data with models for cloud cover and sea ice, the team generated a globally-averaged spectrum for the Earth. The results showed that the VRE was a little smaller (about 4 percent) during the LGM, and a bit bigger (6 percent) during the HO.

“The main point is that even in climate extremes the vegetation remained visible,” Arnold says, and this is encouraging for future space missions aimed at detecting and characterizing extrasolar planets similar to Earth.

ET takes root

Astrobiologists have long pondered whether life on other planets might be detectable through spectral signatures. The assumption has been that Plant-Like organisms on worlds that orbit a star similar to our sun will likely have evolved a similar absorption-reflection strategy as our plants.

“If we can detect a sharp feature that cannot be attributed to a mineral or a combination of minerals, it might be a sign of life,” Arnold says.

Arnold and colleagues calculated that a VRE signal from an Earth-clone 30 light-years away could be detected, even if it were experiencing an LGM-type cold spell. (However, a climate much colder than this - with ice caps extending down to China - might snuff out the signal, Arnold says.)

The VRE detection assumes a 6-meter space telescope and 2 to 4 weeks of exposure time. No such telescope currently exists, but the Terrestrial Planet Finder - which is still in the design stage - might be in this size range.

“I think our paper shows that if continents on an Earth-like planet have vegetation, that should remain visible even during a colder than average climate,” Arnold says.

space.com/scienceastronomy/090212-am-iceage-aliens.html

Is it a lion, a fox or even a kangaroo? A strange creature has been spotted roaming the Falmouth coastal path between Maenporth and Swanpool by a Falmouth woman who has contacted the Packet in a bid to find out what it was.

It was between 4pm and 5pm when Sam Bradbury left work and decided to go for a walk along the coastal path.

Halfway around she spotted something moving in the bushes, but was unprepared for what she says she saw.

She said: “I assumed it was a bird or maybe a dog being walked that was rustling the bushes. I stopped as I got nearer, when I realised it was neither.

“It was a little bigger than a dog and had the face of a cat with eyes that were glazed over and luminescent like a lion’s at night. It left when it saw me but appeared to only walk on two hind legs much like a kangaroo would and had behind it a bushy tail like a fox.”

Walking straight home after her “encounter,” Sam immediately drew a picture of the creature so she could remember every detail, in the hope that somebody else may have seen something similar.

falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/fpfalmouth/

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Whether they’re tracking Big Foot, looking for the Loch Ness monster or searching for giant squid, the “MonsterQuest” team is always on the hunt. The brainchild of Blaine producer Doug Hajicek, the show (8 p.m. Wednesdays; History channel) features investigations of unknown animal sightings from around the globe. Through a mix of science, history and eyewitness accounts, the show attempts to shed light on these creatures to see if there’s any truth behind the legends. We caught up with Hajicek and here’s what he had to say about searching for monsters, local monsters and scary monster moments.

On the thought process behind a MonsterQuest expedition: “We’re certainly not out to debunk, we’re out in search of. You can’t discount everything. We go out with an open mind, and we sincerely give major effort and try to think out of the box. We try to capture film evidence of the existence of these things. You have go on the hypothesis that they’re real, or why would you be out there trying to find them?”

On local monsters: “There is stuff that happens within 80 miles of the Twin Cities. We have things like the Cumberland Beast in Cumberland, Wis., right across the border. There are very good, consistent sightings in the spring and fall in the St. Croix area of a Sasquatch or Big Foot creature. We have Peppy, a sea monster that’s been seen in Lake Pepin. Minnesota and Wisconsin are not monster-free.”

On scary monster-searching moments: “I’ve been on some expeditions where I’ve wanted to go home. We were up in Ontario and we had our cabin attacked by something, but we don’t know what. We didn’t get any footage of it, but something was throwing rocks at the cabin. I’ve been on four expeditions to that same place, and three times we’ve had the cabin attacked and big stones thrown at us. It’s quite interesting because it’s in the middle of nowhere and there aren’t any roads. To get there, you have to be flown in and dropped off.”

On capturing footage of a giant squid for Season 1 of “MonsterQuest”: “We went back to an old, simple idea — a squid wouldn’t be afraid of a squid. It worked. We attached one of my camera inventions to a squid, and an hour and a half later we got the footage. So, it’s that out-of-the-box thinking that I try to apply to all these unknown animals because certain ones may very well end up being a totally normal, everyday, accepted animal.”

On his endeavor into reality TV: It’s called “Nowhere Near Vegas” and it’s based on people’s stories at the Black Bear Casino (in Carlton County). We filmed a whole episode up there and my agents are going through the process of selling the series. It’s a reality show based on the lives of ordinary people who live nowhere near Vegas — using the casino as a hub of this vast demographic of different people. You have grandmothers gambling next to lumberjacks.

“There, I also get to use some new filming technologies, too. To peek into another dimension, I developed a slot machine camera because there’s so much going on with a person’s face. It’s fascinating to look at all the facial expressions of these people.”

twincities.com/ci_11673867

In 2000, residents of Sabine reported seeing a gray, ape-like creature in the area’s dense forests. The local newspaper dubbed the creature the “Sabine Thing”.

A similar beast called the “Caddo Critter” is said to have inhabited the bottoms around scenic Caddo Lake in the 1970’s. The Sulphur River along the Texas-Arkansas border has been a source of similar sightings for decades.

As strange as those stories may sound, they are not the only cases of mysterious ape-like animal sightings in Texas, not by a long shot. “Bigfoot” (a.k.a. “Sasquatch”) is a term associated with the US Pacific Northwest, but a handful of investigators are searching for the same (or very similar) animal right here in the Lone Star State.

Bobby Hamilton of Warren is founder of the Gulf Coast Bigfoot Research Organization (GCBRO), a group dedicated to solving these mysteries in Texas and elsewhere. “I know it sounds crazy, but there are Bigfoot creatures right here in Texas,” Hamilton said. “That’s a lot to swallow, but I’ve been researching these creatures in the field for quite some time now. They’re out there.”

Something Hamilton likes to make clear up front is that his organization believes these creatures are real flesh and blood animals, not part of some paranormal government conspiracy. “They’re flesh and blood animals. We don’t believe they are flying around in UFOs or are shapeshifters or anything like that. In fact, we don’t allow anyone into our group who talks about that kind of stuff. We believe these animals to be a primate, a very smart primate that we just haven’t yet proven exists.”

The GCBRO keeps a log of sightings by county in Texas and other states, and according to Hamilton, reports come in on a weekly basis. “Some of them are recent reports while others may be 30 years old,” he said. “But they all tell us something. If an area has a bunch of sightings over a long period of time we know that’s a good area to research.”

Researching an area consists of looking for sign like footprints and twisted limbs and listening for vocalizations. “We have recorded some noises we just can’t place with known animals. Some of these sounds are pretty amazing, even frightening,” Hamilton said.

The group has even found some hair samples. Primatologists who examined the samples said they were from “no known animal.” One came back as matching alleged Bigfoot hair gathered in the Pacific Northwest.

Beyond gathering physical evidence of the creatures’ existence, Hamilton said some in his group have had close encounters. “There are people within our group who have seen these creatures, myself included. Some joined the group because they saw one and others have seen them in the course of research.”

Craig Woolheater is a researcher for the Texas Bigfoot Research Center (TBRC), another group studying the Bigfoot phenomenon. “Several of our members have seen these creatures, and that’s a big part of the reason we’re so passionate about studying them. It’s one thing to read about them, but another to see them,” he said.

Woolheater’s sighting occurred while he and his wife were traveling through Louisiana one night in the early 1990’s. “This big, grayish, hairy creature was on the side of the road. It was dark, but we got a good look at it. The beast was kind of slumped over,” he said.

TBRC members believe the creatures are a subspecies of the ones in the Pacific Northwest. “The basic reports are the same-a large, hairy animal walking upright,” Woolheater said. “But there are some differences, like coloration, hair length and build. Until it’s proven they exist, all of that’s kind of a moot point. This is certainly cryptozoology’s biggest mystery.”

Loren Coleman, considered by many to be the world’s foremost cryptozoologist, notes that there have been several discoveries of large animals in recent years. “A new species of antelope was found in Vietnam a few years ago. Tales of the mountain gorilla used to be greeted with the same kind of disdain as modern day mystery primate sightings. One day we may find out these creatures are real too.”

Coleman, who along with Patrick Hughye wrote “A Field Guide to Bigfoot , Yeti and other Mystery Primates” , said there are plenty of historical references of apelike creatures in the South, both from European and Native American culture. “The Louisiana Choctaw Indian had an animal they called the nalusa fayala, which means ‘long, evil being,” he said.

The most famous Southern Bigfoot sightings came from just across the border on the Arkansas side of the Sulphur River near the tiny community of Fouke. The “Fouke Monster,” as the creature was called by locals, achieved celluloid immortality in the 1973 film, The Legend of Boggy Creek. Smokey Crabtree was a wildlife advisor for the film, and his family accounted for several of the sighting reenactments. He has authored two books, Smokey and the Fouke Monster and Too Close to the Mirror, and believes there are such creatures roaming the southern bottomlands. According to him, the filmmakers did not tell the whole story, or at least did not tell it accurately.

“A lot of people got the impression after watching the movie that the creature was mean and aggressive, but in my experience it wasn’t,” he said. “There were other inaccuracies, which is why I wrote Smokey and the Fouke Monster.”

Being a cryptozoology buff, I jumped on the opportunity to drive up to Fouke and visit with Crabtree. I interviewed him at his home and then went for a walk along the banks of Boggy Creek. I felt like a kid watching The Legend of Boggy Creek for the first time.

One thing I always wondered is why the creature in the film was never referred to as a “Bigfoot,” as most mysterious North American primates seem to get tagged.

“At the time Bigfoot was something that was known of in the Pacific Northwest and in a lot of ways the area of Fouke was sheltered from that part of the world,” Crabtree said. “We never heard of Bigfoot, but we knew something strange was going on around our little community.”

How did Crabtree, a lifelong hunter, fisherman and trapper, react when he first heard of the creature? “My son came home one day saying he saw this big, hairy creature in the woods behind where we lived,” he said. “I could tell he was dead serious too, and this bothered me. I had never known my son to lie, but I just couldn’t believe there might be something like that out in the woods I had hunted and trapped in my whole life.

“After awhile, older members of my family started coming to me and saying my son wasn’t lying. They had seen such a creature in the area in years past but swore to never tell. However, they felt they had to let me know my son was telling the truth.”

After that, even common incidents in the woods took on new significance for Crabtree. “I started looking back to things that happened to me out in the woods and in the bottoms in the past, and wondered if something strange had really occurred,” he said.

One thing most cryptozoologists agree on is that if such a creature existed in the Fouke area, there must have been more than one of them. The natural question, therefore, regards recent sightings.

“We get reports from time to time,” Crabtree said. “In fact, a few years ago I got a report from several different people who reported seeing a large hairy creature off of Highway 71. Three motorists saw this thing on the side of the road at the same time, and on the same night a lady who had no knowledge of the other sightings reported seeing the same thing in the same general area.”

Do a handful of these creatures roam the vast woodlands of the Lone Star State? Well, no one has proven it. Then again, no one has disproven it either.

Think about that the next time you are in the woods alone and that creepy feeling comes over you.

by Chester Moore

anomalist.com/reports/lonestar.html

Last year when a couple of Georgia men claimed to possess a Bigfoot body on ice, a surprising number of news outlets covered the story. CNN and CBS, National Geographic and Scientific American interviewed Bigfoot “experts,” such as members of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization — experts more likely found on “Monsterquests”, a TV show that covers werewolves and vampires. Plenty of readers expressed their outrage on comment boards. “Were you recently purchased by the National Enquirer?” wrote one reader to Scientific American. Another wrote, “This is far beneath what I expect to read about in SciAm.”

Of course, it isdoubtful the reporters believed the story, even before Sasquatch researchers pointed out that the body lacked muscle tone and that its hair samples burned like plastic. (It turned out to be a sloppy hoax involving a gorilla suit.) Sasquatch, of all legendary creatures, has become a cliché of the absurd, and with good reason. The idea of a 7-foot-tall unknown primate skulking around the ever-shrinking wilds of the United States sounds as far-fetched as a
farmer being abducted by aliens in the cornfields of Kansas.

But science journalists entertain the Bigfoot story (even with a wink) because discovering a new and shockingly strange animal in the farthest reaches of the wilderness remains possible. Today, amid the drumbeat of bad news of species being driven to extinction, scientists are discovering more new species — both curious and commonplace — than in any time in history. As recently as November, excited anthropologists found a pygmy tarsier in Indonesia, a spooky gremlinlike primate, the size of a mouse, not seen since 1921.

That means some of the most respected scientists in the world cannot help having an open mind when it comes to the zoological unknown. And a few fringe scientists, known as cryptozoologists, are actively in pursuit of beasts of lore on the outside chance that they may not be figments of our imagination.

Technically, cryptozoology is the study and search for bizarre or legendary creatures, known as cryptids. There are the classics: the Loch Ness Monster, Chupacabra, the Yeti. But there are many that are not as well known and not as unbelievable, like the Buru, a slinky 10-foot-long reptile that the Apatani, a tribal group in India, claim to have seen, or the Orang pendek, an upright gibbonlike creature said to stroll like a human in the forests of Sumatra.

The hunt for cryptids isn’t just quixotic. It’s motivated by the same ambitions that have led to key zoological discoveries. You might even say cryptid hunters keep warm that place in science whereanything is possible. And it’s from that place where some of the most astounding advances in the sciences are derived.

At the turn of the 20th century, for instance, the Mountain Gorilla and theplatypus were thought to be legend or hoax. Pearl fishermen of Indonesia told tales of enormous prehistoric-like creatures on a remote island; the stories turned out to be real and the animals were named Komodo dragons. (An animal, even today, has not been “discovered” until a bonafide scientist says so, no matter how many locals claim its existence.)

More recently, new animals are turning up at a rapid pace. “In the last 25 years, the number of species known to share the world with us has grown by 25 percent,” says Bruce Patterson, a curator of mammals
at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. “This is a remarkable level of discovery, and a remarkable statement of our current ignorance about the other forms of life we share the planet with.”

Most of these animals are much smaller than a Loch Ness Monster; most are plankton, insects, small fish and amphibians. But a few new mammals are discovered every year. While rats and bats are the most common finds, some big surprises have turned up.

“The third largest land mammal in South America, the Chacoan peccary [which looks like a furry boar], was thought to be extinct for tens of thousands of years until it was discovered in 1972,” says Patterson. In 1992, the Saola, a 200-pound deerlike bovine(cow family!), was discovered in Vietnam. “It’s a beautiful little thing,” says Patterson of the Saola. “Maybe 1,100 of them known to exist in the world.”

A few years ago, he adds, “I think the most remarkable new mammal discovered was the Laotian rodent.” The Laotian rock rat, a squirrel-size, bushy-tailed rodent with a football-shaped head, was discovered in 1998. “It was found to belong to a family of animal that was thought to have gone extinct 11 million years ago. It is the only living representative of an otherwise extinct family.”

Animals like the rock rat — once thought to have been extinct — are known to biologists as Lazarus species, and are quarry for both cryptozoologists and run-of-the-mill zoologists. Most people are familiar with the story of the ivory-billed woodpecker, a large and colorful bird thought to have been lost forever that may or may not have been found in 2004 alive and flapping in the swamps of Arkansas. (This now-legendary species comes complete with its own controversial video footage, rather like the famous Patterson-Gimlin Footage of a trudging Bigfoot.) In 1938, the coelacanth, a large fish that tends to dwell in deep-water caves, was found to be alive and flourishing. Ichthyologists had assumed it died out around 65 million years ago.

A find like the ivory-billed woodpecker or the coelacanth propels its discoverer to the top of his or her field, so the search for the oddest of creatures can be a long shot worth pursuing. Ian Harrison, a freshwater fish expert at Conservation International, has been hunting his own mini Loch Ness Monster, a hideous-looking fish called Rhizosomicthys totae, fondly known as the fat catfish.

salon.com/env/feature/2009/02/11/

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