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TOP CRYPTOZOOLOGICAL STORIES
OF THE YEAR 2001
by Loren Coleman
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The
Year 2001 began quietly in the continued search for hidden or unknown
animals. In the United Kingdom, at 9:20 PM, local time, on the first
day of the year, a puma-like beast was seen crossing the road near
Tiverton. Before the year had finished, extinct rats and a bat had been
rediscovered, remarkable photographs of an apelike creature surfaced in
Florida, new coelacanths were filmed and captured, and India's Monkey
Man sent the media into a frenzy. A few Sasquatch prints were also
found, South Dakota had a giant snake flap, scientists ended their
debates on the third species of elephant and a purple kangaroo, a giant
monkey was seen in New Hampshire, and Mothman were being discussed
again. Finally, the hair of a "Sumatran Yeti" was found, a new beaked
whale was identified, and an exciting new giant squid was discovered.
All in all, it was a rather productive cryptozoological year.
Here is my list of Year 2001's most important and interesting
cryptozoological news events.
1. Rats and Bats
During mid-January, news from two ends of the world, about rats and
bats, gave cheer to premature notices of the extinction of two separate
species of animals. In Australia, an Alice Springs survey of the fauna
of the West MacDonnell National Park trapped more Central rock rats (Zyzomys
pedunculatus), a rodent that had been considered extinct for 40
years until it was rediscovered in 1996. In Bognor Regis, Sussex, UK, a
13-year-old boy spotted a female Greater mouse-eared bat (Myotis
myotis), apparently in need of help. Three days after the animal's
rescue, however it died. Nevertheless, the discovery was hailed as
"incredible" by conservationists, as the bat was a surviving member of
a species not seen in Britain since 1985 and officially declared
extinct in 1991.
2. Myakka Photographs
On February 4, animal welfare specialist David Barkasy and
cryptozoologist Loren Coleman shared with Bigfoot researchers and
cryptozoologists an intriguing pair of new cryptid (unknown animal)
photographs. The pictures appeared to be good graphic evidence for
recent sightings of unknown anthropoids (Skunk Apes) in western
Florida. The Sarasota County Sheriff's Department had received the
photographs, innocently enough, from an unidentified elderly woman who
took them near Myakka State Park around the end of 2000, although they
had not been catalogued until 2001. The photographs clearly show a
large, upright dark orangutan-like animal among the palmettos, showing
eye-shine, and typical anthropoid behavior of fright due to the woman's
flash camera. The woman and her husband had found the creature stealing
fruit off of their back porch over a period of three nights. The woman
decided to take pictures to get law enforcement assistance in dealing
with their "problem." Other residents had told of being bothered by
recent apelike creatures, and Florida, in general, has been the
stalking grounds for some 60 years of the Skunk Apes, which even made
the pages of Sports Illustrated in the 1970s. During the spring
of 2001, newspapers throughout the South (Florida to Texas), various
magazines, including the cover story in Fate, as well as radio
talk shows and online chatter, debated the merits of the Myakka
Photographs. The investigations are ongoing.
3. Coelacanths Again
A population of "living fossils," the coelacanths (Latimerie
chalumnae) thought extinct after supposedly dying out 70 million
years ago until re-discovered in 1938 near the Comoro Islands off
Africa's southeast coast, were unexpectedly re-discovered off South
Africa's coast late in 2000. They were in the news again in 2001. In
February Biologist Philip Heemstra of the JLB Smith Institute of
Ichthyology, with a preliminary budget of $130,000, was looking for
additional funds to study the new population with the help of a small
submersible craft. In May, Pieter Venter headed a private diving
expedition to find the South African coelacanths, and then caught one
of the elusive fish on film, broadcasting the footage on the Internet.
Then, surprisingly, the capture of Madagascar's fourth coelacanth
(nearly 200 had been found near the Comoros) occurred in mid-March, at
a site north of Toliara. The fish was a female of almost five and a
half feet long (about 1.8 meters in length), according to coelacanth
researcher Andrew Cooke.
Later in 2001, coelacanth experts Hans Fricke and Raphaël Plante
published an article declaring that the supposed silver coelacanths
artifacts from Spain, believed to be over two centuries old and
representing a new species of coelacanthiform living in the Gulf of
Mexico, were neither old nor Mexican. New studies published in the
August issue of Environmental Biology of Fishes showed that
these silver figurines were made much more recently, with the Comorian
coelacanth Latimeria chalumnae as a model.
4. Monkey Man
For a two-week period during May, the so-called "Man Monkey" panic
swept throughout India, mostly centered in the township of Ghaziabad,
22 miles north of New Delhi. The attacks of this giant monkey lead to a
major media event, which swept from India through the entire
English-speaking world. Over one hundred different articles about the
phenomena were published during the peak of the activity. More than a
dozen people were hospitalized with fractures and severe injuries as a
result of the attacks that occurred since April 28, many of them from
falls while running away.
In early April, the creature was confined to Vijay Nagar when it
started biting sleeping persons. It was then rumored to be a giant
rogue monkey. These first witnesses said that they were attacked by a
very tall monkey-like creature without a tail. The height of this
creature was around 5 feet and it was hairy with large claws. People
said that this creature attacked them without any provocation at all.
The creature scratched the hands and neck of people mostly asleep late
at night.
One witness, Ganesh Jha, of the Maharana Vihar Residents' Association,
claimed he came face to face with the "huge man-monkey" and saw him
jump 20 feet (six meters) in the air. "We were taking an evening walk
when we walked into this huge man-monkey. The monster sprang up 20 feet
from a crouching position and grabbed the branches of a tree and
vanished before me and my children could even scream," Jha told
reporters.
From this small village the creature seems to have traveled to
neighboring areas of the town of Ghaziabad. As more people grew aware
of the sightings, hoaxes and exaggerations occurred. The original very
tall monkey-like creature became a half-human with elephant like legs,
reddish hands and metallic claws. Later, victims said it was a man with
a monkey face, which soon became a masked man.
Although the Ghaziabad Police claimed that there was nothing like a
Monkey Man, complaints of sightings, scuffles and looting by the Monkey
Man poured into police stations. At least two people died from falls
from buildings (scared while sleeping on roofs) and over fifty people
were injured.
Finally, on May 16th, the Indian Police in New Delphi, showing two
different versions of the Monkey Man, issued a computer-generated
sketch. Police said at the time they were no closer to solving the
mystery of an ape-like creature, and then finally ended all interest in
the reports, saying it was mass hysteria. While the end resulting
panics appear to be related to human psychology, some cryptozoologists
feel that the beginnings of the case, the initial sightings of a large
primate, and may have a zoological basis.
5. Sasquatch Footprints Found
The Year 2000 had its "Summer of the Sasquatch." By comparison, 2001
was subdued, with some rumors and hoaxes of Bigfoot bodies being found,
but with little actual genuine activity.
Early in June, northern Ontario officials were investigating reports of
Bigfoot prowling around and leaving giant footprints. Tracks 35
centimeters long and 12 centimeters wide were found on the Weenusk
First Nation reserve along the south shore of Hudsons Bay, 1,600
kilometers north of Toronto. "It's definitely not a bear," said Abraham
Hunter, chief of the 260-member band. "I looked at them. They were six
feet [two meters] apart, walking." "It's just big, shaped like a human
footprint, and ... further analysis will be required to determine its
origin," said Brett Kelly, a non-believing spokesman in the office of
Ontario's Environment Minister. On June 14, days after the reserve
sighting, a provincial Ministry of Natural Resources officer examining
old radar stations uncovered an unusual track 150 kilometers east, in a
remote area of Polar Bear Provincial Park.
"I was walking through the bush and I looked down and saw this
footprint," said Rick Tapley, an MNR officer with 31 years of
experience. "I couldn't explain what it was. I naturally thought it
might be Bigfoot because of the shape of it."
6. Giant Snake Sighted
Mid-year, cryptozoologists attempted to divide mundane escapee accounts
from lake monster reports, when an upswing in out-place-appearances of
crocodilians caught the public's interest in the midst of a summer of
shark attack stories. The croc captures and sightings were filed from
diverse locations, including, for example, downstate New Hampshire (a
2.5 ft caiman), Central Park, New York City (a 2 ft caiman), upstate
New York (a 3-4 ft alligator), and off an island in the middle of the
Rhine River, Germany (a 5 ft crocodile seen). None were truly
cryptozoological. Perhaps the sighting of a giant snake was.
Sometime between July 24 and July 26, Shirley Nikodym and Chris Heinz
were walking along the creek near the soccer field on Melgaard Road,
Near Aberdeen, South Dakota, at Moccasin Creek, when they saw what
appeared to be a large snake poke its head out of the water. The snake
ducked back under and began swimming toward the shore -- and them.
Nikodym and Heinz ran, not wanting to wait around to see what was
coming. They thought the snake was pretty big, but all they saw was its
head.
Police and animal control officers investigated but could find no
evidence of the giant snake. Lack of findings, however, did not calm
local residents.
There was at least one other report of large snakes in Moccasin Creek.
It came from the 1500 block of South Cochrane Street on July 31 to the
police department. But according to Police Chief Ken Schwab, no snake
was found.
7. Third Elephant Species Revealed
After more than a hundred years of debate, definitive genetic studies
showed in August 2001 that a third elephant species does exist. Jill
Pecon-Slattery, a genetic researcher at the US National Cancer
Institute, said the differences between Africa's forest and grassland
or savannah elephants are "like the difference between the lion and the
tiger. It is that large." The news means, along with the Indian
elephant, there are now three distinct species in the world. The forest
elephant has been viewed as a subspecies of the African variety but was
never considered different enough from the savannah elephant to be
classified as a species in its own right. The forest variety is
slightly smaller, has rounded ears and straighter, pinker tusks. It is
found in the densely wooded areas of central West Africa.
The grassland, or savannah, elephant has large ears, with ragged edges
and curving tusks. The Asian elephant has much smaller ears and is
widely used as a domestic beast of burden in Asia. Wild Asian elephants
are today rare.
Pecon-Slattery's study, published in the journal Science,
recommended an immediate reclassification of the forest type as Loxodonta
cyclotis.
8. The Father of Cryptozoology Dies
Bernard Heuvelmans, a Belgian zoologist who loved jazz, and the
acknowledged Father of Cryptozoology, died on August 22th at the age of
84. Heuvelmans began his interest in the subject in 1948, and within
five years he had amassed so much material that he was ready to write a
large book. That book turned out to be On the Track of Unknown
Animals. Along with his other foundation volume, In the Wake of
Sea Serpents (1968), Heuvelmans would reach a worldwide audience
and have far-reaching influence. His life's work has been donated to
Switzerland's Museum of Zoology of Lausanne.
Other cryptozoologically-related deaths also occurred during the year.
On March 12, S. Dillon Ripley, 87, died from pneumonia, at Washington,
D.C. Ripley headed the Smithsonian Institution for 20 years, was
involved in several cryptozoological episodes in his life, including
the search for the Spiny Babbler (which he discovered), as well as the
search for the Mountain Quail, the Pink-Headed Duck, and the Pygmy Hog
(all of which he did not discover). On April 18, René Dahinden,
70, a Swiss immigrant to British Columbia, who first grew interested in
reports of hairy giants in the woods of Canada in 1953, then went on to
become one of the most colorful Sasquatch hunters of all time, passed
away, from cancer, at Richmond, British Columbia. On August 8, Seldon
"Pat" Mason, 93, a famous rock and roll booking agent who had Roger
Patterson as a client and sang the rockabilly hit "Big Foot Wiggle,"
died from natural causes, at Seaside, Oregon. On August 25, John
Chambers, 78, the original Planet of the Apes' Academy
Award-winning makeup artist, succumbed to diabetes complications, at
Woodland Hills, California. Chambers will always be remembered in
hominological studies as the man who did not construct the
Bigfoot in the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film. Finally, on December 1,
Ronald "Ronnie" Bremner, 60, died suddenly from cancer at Edinburgh,
Scotland. Bremner, the son of a modest hotel owner, was partially
responsible for making Loch Ness into the epicenter of Cryptozoology,
by his efforts as the well-organized, successful cofounder and owner of
the Loch Ness Center and Exhibition of Drumnadrochit, and surrounding
hotel and gift properties.
9. Giant Monkey Sighted
On September 9, in rural Danville, New Hampshire, search parties were
engaged in looking for a giant monkey spotted near Pleasant Street and
Kingston Road. During a period of two weeks, at least ten monkey
sightings were reported to local authorities. Danville Fire Chief David
Kimball was among the first to see the monkey running across Kingston
Road. Others, like Pleasant Street resident Vivian Wicker, 58, said she
heard the monkey hollering outside her home. "It wasn't a sound I had
heard before," she said, describing the noise as a hooting or a strange
howling sound, unlike a dog's. Wicker heard the sound every couple of
minutes. The black monkey reportedly measured about eight feet long
from his tail to his hands, Chief Kimball said. Local residents were
said to be "getting very nervous about the eight feet."
On the Monday after the weekend of the local media attention and giant
monkey searches, NBC-TV News sent a crew to Danville. The camera people
and reporter spent time filming a human-interest story that was
scheduled to air the next morning on The Today Show. But it never
aired. The date for the scheduled screening was Tuesday, September
11th.
10. Australia's Purple Kangaroo Confirmed
Scientists in Australia, in mid-October, said a mysterious purple
kangaroo, thought to be a legend, does actually exist. A biologist
named Le Souf claimed to have discovered the species in 1924, but
experts ignored his claims. Researchers from Macquarie University in
Sydney, however, announced during 2001 that the wallaby does exist and
has purple around its neck and on its face. They have called it the
purple-necked rock wallaby.
It is not yet known how and why the purple pigment is produced, but it
has been found to wash off in rain before reappearing.
Department of Biological Sciences researcher Dr Mark Eldridge said: "No
one believed [Le Souf], everyone just said, 'No, they can't have purple
necks, they must be rubbing themselves on some rock and getting this
funny coloration.' Because it is secreted through the skin, once the
animal is dead the pigment rapidly fades, so by the time Le Souf got
the specimens back to Brisbane or Sydney from North Queensland, the
color had gone. It just looked like a very plain, normal-looking rock
wallaby." Using genetic technology, the Macquarie University team found
the animal was indeed an entirely new species.
11. Orang-Pendek Hair Found
Late in October, a team of British amateur explorers found evidence of
the Orang-Pendek, a creature first mentioned by Marco Polo after he
visited Sumatra in 1292. Early analysis showed that samples of hair and
footprints taken on the team's trip to the Indonesian jungle do not
appear to come from any known primate in the region. Clumps of hair are
undergoing DNA analysis in Oxford, to clarify the genetic affinities of
the orang-pendek, which is reputed to look like an upright, five-foot
tall ape.
The media ran with headline stories of the "Hair of the Sumatran Yeti"
being found.
Adam Davies, an Internet project manager from Manchester, led the
expedition to the mountain rainforest near Gunung Kerinci, in western
Sumatra. "We are getting indications from the scientists that we may be
on to something, and I have no doubt myself that this creature exists,"
he said. "We heard its calls, and we've discovered a trail that can't
be explained by anything else," he told The Times of London.
12. New Ziphiids Discovered
A general understanding of the family of ziphiids, beaked whales, is
virtually unknown, and yet, recent beachings of these sea mammals
continue to alert cryptozoologists and zoologists to new species. The
Year 2001 was no different. At the late fall meeting of the Society for
Marine Mammals in Vancouver, British Columbia, it was announced that a
new species of ziphiid has been identified from four incomplete
specimens stranded on the east coast of the United States. It is to be
named Perrin's beaked whale (Mesoplodon perinii). In early
December, Darren Naish, cryptozoologist and palaeobiologist at the
University of Portsmouth, noted that this discovery, from the eastern
USA, is quite astonishing. British marine biologist Charles Paxton,
writing in 2001, commented that there will be further new species of
ziphiid described in the near future. Also announced at the Vancouver
conference, as many as twenty-six additional new ziphiid species have
been documented by molecular analysis, but as yet they are not
completely known morphologically.
The joke among cryptozoologists during 2001 was that "you can't go to
the beach in the Western Hemisphere without tripping over a new
ziphiid."
13. Large Squid Discovered
On December 21, Michael Vecchione of the National Marine Fisheries
Service and the National Museum of Natural History in Washington,
described in the journal Science, a brand new species of squid
that grows 23 feet long. Instead of having two arms and eight
tentacles, the new squid has 10 appendages that all look alike. The new
animal, which lives more than 3,000 feet under the ocean, has baffled
scientists with its strange looks and weird behavior. The squid have
been spotted all over the world -- in the Gulf of Mexico and the
Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans -- by undersea explorers using
specially designed craft.
"These are a real mystery," commented Vecchione. "They behave strangely
but they also look really weird." Vecchione, who put together
observations from several scientists working in various countries, said
no one has captured a specimen of the odd squid yet, so it has not been
named. "This is well beyond a new species," he said. "New species are a
dime a dozen. This is fundamentally different. The really long skinny
arms are so much longer than the squid's body. We don't know of any
cephalopod that has arms like that." Vecchione said the squid join an
array of unusual creatures being spotted for the first time as improved
technology makes underwater exploration more common. "I think there are
a lot of really strange things down there," he said. "Every time
someone goes down there and looks they find something really strange.
It's Eureka time."
14. Giant Birds Seen and the Return of Mothman
On September 25, 2001, eyewitness Mike Felice saw a giant bird flying
over South Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Later researchers Stan Gordon and
Craig Heinselman noted other local Thunderbird sightings had occurred
in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. Then at dawn on November 5th, a
local resident out walking his dog, saw a giant birdlike creature, the
size of an ultra light plane, flapping away, over a community center in
Bristol, Connecticut.
At about this time, cryptozoologists and journalists began
rediscovering and debating the place in cryptozoology of Mothman, a
giant birdlike creature seen around Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in
1966-1967. Media interest, a new documentary, and mini-expeditions to
Point Pleasant, had people talking about Mothman, which is the subject
of a January 2002 Screen Gems movie, The Mothman Prophecies.
The psychological thriller, starring Richard Gere, takes John Keel's
nonfiction book, and transports the events into a contemporary setting.
New books, action figures, a computer game, a music CD, all coming out
at the end of 2001, had some cryptozoologists (who had earlier ignored
the Mothman sightings as mere legend) taking notice and engaged in new
reexaminations of the underlying authentic cryptid and avian elements
of the thirty-five year old mystery. Looking ahead to 2002, Mothman
appears to be the most likely cryptid set for general public
rediscovery.
©2002 Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman,
of Portland, Maine, has engaged in cryptozoological fieldwork since
1960, and is the author of 14 books, including Mysterious America (NY: Paraview, 2001), and Mothman and Other Curious Encounters (NY: Paraview, 2002). He spent New Year's Eve 2001,
and New Year's Day, 2002, in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. His website
is The
Cryptozoologist. |
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