CFZ CANADA: On being a cryptozoologist

It's not rocket science, that's for sure. It isn't pseudoscience either, at least as far as I'm concerned. Lately though, I've been asking myself "What exactly is a cryptozoologist and why do people think I am one?"

http://cfz-canada.blogspot.com/2012/02/on-being-cryptozoologist.html

CRYPTOZOOLOGY: Update on the alleged pygmy elephant specimens from Copenhagen University

Following on from yesterday's post about Matt Salusbury's quest for pygmy elephants, he has sent along another email from our old friend Lars Thomas.

RE: Copenhagen University expedition led by Francois Edmund Blanc to South Cameroon 1955 to collect pygmy elephants
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 20:57:26 +0100
From: Lars Thomas
To: Matt Salusbury

Hi Matt,

I have just received a copy of the original log entry for the two pygmy elephants in the museum's collections. The two specimens (No. 2980 and 2981) were received on Nov. 15 1955. They were shot by Francois Edmond-Blanc in January of that year, and given to the museum by the aforementioned Bøje Benzon.

• 2980 was a fully grown female, as it had milk in its mammary glands. It had a height of 2,02 m and a lenght of 3,05 m. The museum has the complete skeleton of that.


• 2981 was also a female, but a younger an considerably smaller animal. Height 1,85 m and lenght 2,73 m. The museum has the skull of this one.
  

The museum also holds 2 ears, a tale and the sole of one foot, but it is not certain from which of these two animals.

The animals were shot close to the village of Yassonkon, close to the banks of the Nyong River south of Edea. The two animals were from a herd of 12. The 2980 specimen was the biggest of the herd, and Edmond-Blanc apparantly shot it thinking it was a male. The other animal was of medium size in the herd.

There is also a transcript of a letter from Edmond-Blanc where he writes something about the difficulty of hunting in the area, as the visibility is very poor. It is apparantly difficult to separate males and females, as both have fairly small tusks.

I have a pdf of the original log entry which I can send you if you want. It is in Danish, so you won't be able to read a word of it, but at least you can see what it looks like.

As for the photos, it might take a couple of weeks. The various beetle-infested specimens has to be frozen for several days, and there is not enough room for all of them at once. Until that has been taken vare of, none of it is availabe for photographing. But I'll let you know as soon as they become available for me to take some pictures.

best

Lars

If you want to put this on the CFZ website as well - feel free.

CRYPTOZOOLOGY: On the bonny bonny banks of...

Many thanks to Steve Roskin who sent us the Google Earth co-ordinates from where we pinched this picture.

The co-ordinates are 56.246569,-4.701698 and the image is slap bang in the middle of Loch Lomond, a place that has notched up a few anomalous creature sightings over the years.

We seem to remember that a similar image was found recently at Loch Ness. Was a convincing explanation ever published?

Watch this space.

JON'S JOURNAL: Ness than Zero

So it's that time of the year again; the time that the media, prompted possibly by those jolly nice people at the Loch Ness Monster Fan Club remind all and sundry
that there is a prize on offer for the person or persons who made the best 'Nessie' sighting of the year.

There were, apparently, three sightings last year, and two of them were photographed. According to Fox News (and as someone who hardly ever watches television any more, I don't understand nuances of the 'Fox News Jokes' that circulate the web on a regular basis) the contenders for the prize are as follows:

1. While on vacation in May, William and Joan Jobes saw what appeared to be a head peaking above the water 200 to 300 yards off shore in Fort Augustus, Inverness-shire.
2. In June, Jan and Simon Hargreaves caught a glimpse of Nessie in the Loch near the village of Foyers, but didn't manage to get the monster on film.
3. Then in September, fish farm worker Jon Rowe snapped an idyllic photo of a large, dark shape and two humps in the water beneath the arch of a rainbow.

All very well and good, but the pictures themselves are hardly conclusive:

Joan Jobes' picture

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Jon Rowe's picture

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At least both pictures appear to show something. Many pictures from Loch Ness show nothing more than peculiar waves (this picture below was taken by yours truly in December 2005, when Richard and I visited the Loch to make a particularly futile slice of Mickey Mouse television).

I have no idea what either of them show, but I have my doubts that either are of a bona fide unknown species of animal. I would, however, love to be proved wrong.

Whilst on the subject of Loch Ness check this out:

http://news.discovery.com/earth/loch-ness-monsters-home-not-on-the-level-111231.html

A blog post by Tim Wall on Discovery News, claims that: "Just as the bubble in a carpenter's level moves back and forth depending on the surface it rests upon, Scotland's Loch Ness tilts back and forth according to the movement of the ground beneath it caused by the tides on the nearby North Sea. The motion is so subtle GPS couldn't even track it."

What impact this peculiar geophysical enigma has on the cryptozoological life of the Great Glen, I don't know, but it is interesting nonetheless.

JON'S JOURNAL: Be careful of the flowers

Friday night saw what was almost certainly the first frost of the winter.

The mild weather has been good news for our fuel bills (or at least I bloody well hope so), and with rising power prices (and rising everything else prices) we certainly need some good news, but the environmental knock-on effects have been less positive.

Although the mild weather means that there were flowers on one of my rose bushes on Christmas Day and the annual Butterfly Conservation survey of first sightings recorded a Red Admiral on New Year's Day (Richard F. also saw one in his grandperents' garden early in January) it does mean that the passage of the seasons is all to cock.

Usually by now (mid-January) the snowdrops are out in force, and whilst there are snowdrops
(and I sent Graham out armed with camera yesterday lunchtime to prove it) from memory, there are nothing like as many as usual.

But this is where this Nature Diary thingy is going to come in useful. I have been happily watching the progression of the seasons over the last few years but not writing any of it down, so I cannot actually tell you for sure whether these impressions are true.

However, there is a bank at Cranford where there are usually dozens of snowdrops. But this year nada. I said this to Max last week and he suggested that the mild winter might actually be the reason for this. Could the snowdrops need a hard ground frost to trigger their growth?

It's a compelling idea.

But on the other hand, the daffodils, which are usually not up until March/April, were flowering over Christmas and the crocuses (which are not usually up until the end of February) are out already.



And all winter birds have been singing even in the middle of the night. Strange, huh?

With the headline, you expected me to do a link to the god-like John Otway, with or without Wild Willie Barrett singing, 'Be careful of the flowers, cos you know they're gonna get you, yeah', but I did that last year, so I am posting this song - the title at least seems chillingly appropriate (and it has a tune, so Syd will approve).



In 1649
To St. George's Hill,
A ragged band they called the Diggers
Came to show the people's will
They defied the landlords
They defied the laws
They were the dispossessed reclaiming what was theirs

We come in peace they said
To dig and sow
We come to work the lands in common
And to make the waste ground grow
This earth divided
We will make whole
So it will be
A common treasury for all

The sin of property
We do disdain
No man has any right to buy and sell
The earth for private gain
By theft and murder
They took the land
Mow everywhere the walls
Spring up at their command

They make the laws
To chain us well
The clergy dazzle us with heaven
Or they damn us into hell
We will not worship
The God they serve
The God of greed who feed the rich
While poor folk starve

We work we eat together
We need no swords
We will not bow to the masters
Or pay rent to the lords
Still we are free
Though we are poor
You Diggers all stand up for glory
Stand up now

From the men of property
The orders came
They sent the hired men and troopers
To wipe out the Diggers' claim
Tear down their cottages
Destroy their corn
They were dispersed
But still the vision lingers on

You poor take courage
You rich take care
This earth was made a common treasury
For everyone to share
All things in common
All people one
We come in peace
The orders came to cut them down