by Darren Naish
But… what if?
Back during the early 1990s - the height of Chupacabras Fever - it was seriously proposed by some cryptozoological investigators that Chupacabras sightings might best be explained by the existence of an unknown, Puerto Rican mystery mammal, perhaps vaguely humanoid in form and perhaps possessing the spines, large hand claws, fangs and other features described in some eyewitness accounts. Weird, spiny sloth-type mammals, predatory primates, and large, semi-bipedal tree porcupines were all hypothesised to life by certain researchers at this time (we have their names on file but will save embarrassing them for now). Here, we would like to propose our own radical and thoroughly compelling explanation for the Chupacabras phenomenon…
Clearly, the Chupacabras is a semi-bipedal, nocturnal, predatory marsupial, the likes of which is unknown to science. Equipped with a long, robust tail, forelimbs proportioned something like those of a primate, and an ability to leap and climb, this sharp-toothed predator (which we name Deinoroo caprophagus) is convergently similar to the Australasian macropods in some respects but is actually a very large opossum. Indeed, the formidable dentition, strong jaws and enlarged upper canines of opossums required little evolutionary modification to produce a large-bodied predator.
Equipped with a thin, dark grey or blackish pelt, forward-pointing eyes, and a svelte, often bony body, Deinoroo is a haunting vision that frequently strikes great fear into those who encounter it. And they may be in danger from it… while mostly visiting human settlements to prey on chickens, rabbits, goats and sheep, it is probably only a matter of time before this predator loses its natural fear of humans and makes its first human kill. Then what will we do?
Radford, B. 2011. HR Giger's reel alien. Fortean Times 271, 30-37.
Newton, M. 2005. Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology: a Global Guide. McFarland & Company, Jefferson, North Carolina, and London.
Waitoreke
Otter-like mystery mammal of New Zealand
Location: South Island, New Zealand
Time: 1773 to early 1970s
Land of the Waitoreke
Ever since the time of Captain Cook's visit to New Zealand in 1773, there has been talk of a mysterious aquatic mammal on New Zealand's South Island, variously likened to a beaver, otter or water-going dog or cat. A bushy-tailed mammal, similar to a domestic cat in size, was supposedly seen at Dusky Sound in the south-west corner of South Island and has sometimes been regarded as the first Waitoreke sighting. These accounts are surprising because New Zealand entirely lacks native terrestrial mammals (except bats).
The name 'Waitoreke' was first reported by Walter Mantell in 1848 who learnt of it from the local Maori. There are several suggested translations for the name, one being "spurred one who dives into water", though quite what the 'spurs' relate to has never been explained (though read on). Another suggested translation is "disappearing demon" and yet another is "the one with wrinkles". According to Mantell, the waitoreke has a head and body length of two feet, possesses a brown coat and bushy tail, has short, stocky limbs, and has a head shape intermediate between that of a dog and a cat. A 1957 sighting reported by a Mrs O. Linscott described small eyes, rounded ears and short whiskers. The famous New Zealand naturalist Julius von Haast reported otter-like footprints in 1861 that he discovered near the Ashburton River. He interpreted them as Waitoreke tracks though there is suspicion that they were a hoax made by a member of his party. Supposed Waitoreke sightings were reported sporadically throughout the 20th century until the early 1970s.
Explaining the Waitoreke
Inevitably, some authors have suggested that the Waitoreke might have been an amphibious member of either of the two mammal groups typically associated with Australasia: the egg-laying monotremes (Heuvelmans 1995) and the frequently (but not ubiquitously) pouched marsupials. Seeing as both groups lack a fossil record on New Zealand, the discovery of a surviving lineage of either on New Zealand would be a major discovery. One unusual feature of monotremes is the presence of a venomous spur on the ankle: is it coincidental that "spurred one" is one of the suggested translations for the name Waitoreke?
Intriguingly, the fossils of terrestrial mammals are now known from New Zealand. These comes from 19-16 million-year-old rocks of the Bathurst region and belong to a lineage of mammals that were neither monotremes, marsupials nor placentals. Rather, they seem to belong to an additional lineage that must have evolved independently from within the Mesozoic mammal radiation (Worthy et al. 2006).
Another suggested explanation for Waitoreke sightings is that they were not merely of otter- like mammals, but of true otters: specifically, of Hairy-nosed otters Lutra sumatrana from Indonesia, taken to New Zealand by seafaring fishermen. This might seem like a sensible proposal, but it's unsupported by evidence (who says that Indonesian fishermen ever travelled to New Zealand?) and is also inconsistent with some of the anatomical features attributed to the Waitoreke, like its bushy tail. However, one Waitoreke account describes bank-sliding behaviour of the sort typical for otters, and otter-like burrows were apparently discovered on the Taieri Plain in 1973.
Yet other suggested explanations for the Waitoreke are that the sightings were actually of introduced beavers, of wayward sea lions, fur seals, or elephant seals, or a previously undocumented population of one of the water rat species otherwise known from Australia or New Guinea. Finally, the most curious suggestion of all is that the Waitoreke might represent a descendant of Procynosuchus, a Permian-age animal vaguely related to mammal ancestors but unrelated to any of modern mammal groups. Its fossils are known from Germany and from several sites in Africa and a few aspects of its anatomy suggest that it might have been amphibious. Needless to say, there are no good reasons for taking this suggestion seriously.
New Zealand: land of mammals
If we assume that the Waitoreke was or is real, and that it really was an amphibious or aquatic mammal, how might it be explained? Hardly anything is known about New Zealand's fauna between the end of the Cretaceous and modern times. The moa and other recently extinct animals are not old at all, and only recently have fossils been described that have any sort of antiquity. Besides the Bathurst mammal, these consist of fossil waterfowl, rails, waders, pigeons and other birds. All of these remains, however, are less than 20 million years old and are thus expected to represent 'modern' groups. It remains the case that the door is still wide open as goes the history of New Zealand's fauna prior to Miocene times.
With this in mind, we conclude that the Waitoreke is evidently a post-Miocene remnant of an endemic mammal group that moved to New Zealand prior to the time when Zealandia - the once enormous landmass that includes New Zealand and various (now mostly submerged) land areas - split away from the rest of eastern Gondwana. That event occurred during the Late Cretaceous, pulling the Waitoreke's ancestry back to this time.
Of the several fossil mammals present in the Cretaceous fossil record of eastern Gondwana, all are part of a group (the Australosphenida) considered to include the monotremes. As well as occurring throughout what is south-eastern Australia, australosphenidans also inhabited Cretaceous Zealandia. It's important to note that they lacked the more recently evolved specialisations of echidnas and platypuses, and instead looked more like scurrying, shrew-like mammals, most of which were less than 30cm long. The Waitoreke - properly named Zealandotherium mantelli - belongs to an australosphenidan group that evolved paddle-like tails, large size and a short, robust snout. While these features are novel (albeit in part convergent with those evolved in platypuses), Zealandotherium retains the ankle spur originally widespread across mammals (Hurum et al. 2006). Distant relatives of Zealandotherium evolved in even more surprising directions (see the Gambo section).
Heuvelmans, B. 1995. On the Track of Unknown Animals. Kegan Paul International, London.
Hurum, J. H., Luo, Z.-X. & Kielan-Jaworowska, Z. 2006. Were mammals originally venomous? Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 51, 1-11.
Worthy, T. H., Tennyson, A. J. D., Archer,
M., Musser, A. M., Hand, S. J., Jones, C., Douglas, B. J., McNamara, J. A. & Beck, R. M. D. 2006. Miocene mammal reveals a Mesozoic ghost lineage on insular New Zealand, southwest Pacific. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103, 19419-19423.
Beast of Gévaudan
Rapacious, wolf-like carnivore that terrorised France
Location: Lozère, south-eastern France
Time: 1764-1767
The amazing history of the Beast
The tale of the Beast of Gévaudan is one of the most interesting and intriguing of cryptozoological mysteries, not least because it involved the deaths of over 70 people. Gévaudan is the old name for a part of south-eastern France that approximately relates to modern Lozère. The events concerned predominantly occurred between 1764 and 1767 when people (mostly children) were attacked and sometimes killed by an enormous, wolf-like beast. Said to kill by knocking people over and taking savage bites from the throat or face, the Beast was variously described as reddish, with black stripes, with a large, long-snouted head, short, pointed ears and with either a long or short tail. Prodigious leaping abilities, bullet-proof skin and a supposed ability to stand bipedally were also described.
A combined military and volunteer effort of 1764, led by Captain Jean-Baptiste Duhamel, failed to kill the beast, as did the employment by King Louis XV of a famous wolf hunter called Denneval.
One beast, several, or many?
Efforts to track down and kill the Beast were not unsuccessful, though none of the things that happened ever 'solved' the mystery. Several large wolves - believed to be responsible for the Beast's attacks - were killed in17 65 and17 67, and a creature identified as a striped hyena Hyaena hyaena was also killed in 1767. Suggestions that trained dogs, wolverines, escaped baboons and human murderers wearing animal skins were responsible for some of the attacks have been made from time to time. The skin of what seems to be the same hyena as the one killed in 1767 was apparently on display in Paris until 1819, seemingly confirming that a wayward (presumably escaped) hyena was indeed roaming the French countryside at this time. A sustained, bloody persecution of Catholics by Protestants - perhaps involving trained, armour-plated dogs - has also been suggested as an explanation for the killings (Eberhart 2002).
In view of all of this, we agree with suggestions that there was no single 'Beast of Gévaudan'. Rather the case involves various different killers, all of which became inadvertently combined to form the legend.
The Beast alive!
Let's now suppose that there was a single Beast of Gévaudan corresponding to the creature hazily described by witnesses, and intimated to exist by some cryptozoologists. Thanks to an excellent illustration of the Beast produced in 17 65, we have a clear idea of what this creature looked like. It was vaguely wolf-like in size and form, but was obviously not a wolf nor any member of the dog family since it had recurved claws on its hands and feet, a far deeper chest and shallower belly, and a long, slender tail with a tufted tip.
Rather than being a singleton, creatures of this sort have in fact been reported throughout European and Russian history: the Girt Dog of Ennerdale in England (reported in 1810) was another example, as was the County Cavan beast of Ireland (reported in 1874), the Trosna creature of the Orel Oblast region of eastern Russia (reported in 1893), and the Plovdiv creature of Bulgaria, report to have killed 16 people in 1993. As proposed by Gable (1997), these giant, carnivorous mammals - Gable termed them 'maulers' - are surely giant mustelids, closely related to martens and wolverines and noted not only for their size but also for their agility, elongate bodies and bloodthirsty behaviour. Gable (1997) proposed that the mauler is an unrecognised subspecies of the Pine marten Martes martes. We feel it far more likely that these creatures in fact represent an entirely new giant of terrestrial, marten-like mustelid - related to wolverines but far more cursorial - which we here name Arenotelicon horribilis.
Eberhart, G. M. 2002. Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology. ABC Clio, Santa Barbara.
Gable, A. D. 1997. The beast of Gévaudan and other "maulers". The Cryptozoology Review 1 (3), 19-22.
Bunyip
Australian water monster of diverse appearance
Location: across much of Australia, including Tasmania
Time: known to Europeans since about 1812 but supposedly known since time immemorial to Aborigines
The vague yet terrifying Bunyip
Australia is (supposedly) home to several fascinating mystery beasts, and among the most famous is the Bunyip, an amorphous water monster reported far and wide across the country. One of the earliest published references to the Bunyip (a pamphlet published in 1812 by James Ives) - in this particular case the name was spelt Bahnuip - refers to it as a black, seal-like creature that has a terrifying voice. Accounts from later in the 1800s likened the creature to a dog-like amphibious animal or, somewhat confusingly, described it as a calf-sized, shaggy-haired or maned quadruped, sometimes seen on land but otherwise amphibious (Healy & Cropper 1994).
Indeed, the concept of the 'Bunyip' soon became so vague and amorphous that nobody today really has a clear idea of what a Bunyip is meant to look like. Several intriguing eyewitness accounts (some from as recently as the 1940s) refer to furry, seal-like amphibious creatures vaguely corresponding to the creature described by Ives. An 1821 account provides the beast with a thick, metre-long neck and dark, hanging flaps (usually imagined to be shaggy ears) on its head while an 1872 description refers to a long-haired, glossy-coated, black 'water dog' that had prominent ears. Long-necked water beasts were also reported and referred to as Bunyips on occasion, and loud booming calls and bellows have also been attributed to it.
There are even a few pieces of Aboriginal art that depict Bunyips. An especially famous one depicted in several books (it was created in 1848 by an artist named Kurruk) shows a fat-bodied, small-headed quadruped that has slender legs and small ears and looks like a hippo-shaped mammal of some sort. While it's extremely interesting, it certainly doesn't look anything like the seal-like animal or 'water dog' type creature referred to above, though it might be taken as a representation of the more robust 'calf-sized' animal mentioned in some accounts and stories.
What, if anything, is a Bunyip?
For whatever reason, there does seem to be a core of reasonably good, anatomically consistent accounts of the Bunyip, all referring to a dark-furred, dog-headed 'seal-dog' (to use the term favoured by Tony Healy and Paul Cropper in their classic 1994 book on Australian cryptids). Could these all be descriptions of out-of-place seals or sea lions, or large platypuses, as some zoologists have proposed? Elsewhere in the world, seals are known to have travelled up-river for 1000s of kilometres (indeed, there are land-locked, lake-dwelling seals in Asia). And we can say with confidence that at least some Bunyip accounts are descriptions of known pinniped species: a 'Bunyip' shot dead in Victoria in 1848 was very clearly a leopard seal Hydrurga leptonyx. However, the shaggy fur, dangling ears and dark pelt described in some Bunyip accounts don't much recall any known seal, or indeed any known animal.
Of course, the possibility exists that all of the accounts are hoaxes, perhaps simply copied from the earlier ones, or that people were seeing known animals draped with water-plants. Other suggested explanations for Bunyip sightings include sightings of big fish, crocodiles and even of the Musk duck (Biziura lobata), a big weird duck that has a huge dewlap hanging from its lower jaw.
Bunyip dreams… a speculative exercise
Assuming that those 'seal-dog' accounts describe a real animal, we find it irresistible to consider the possibility that this creature might be an aquatic, superficially seal-like marsupial - though note that it is not a close relative of another aquatic cryptid from Australasia, the Waitoreke. Given that the Australian marsupial radiation lacks any amphibious or aquatic member, it's always been tempting to wonder if the Bunyip could represent a uniquely aquatic marsupial. If we run with this idea, how far can we go?
Marsupials give birth to tiny, unde
r-developed babies that they retain in a pouch. On its journey from the mother's vulva to the pouch, the baby has to clamber through its mother's fur, and to do this it needs strong, super-developed, grasping forelimbs. Maybe - some experts have proposed - maybe this is a fundamental constraint on the evolution of marsupials, preventing them from developing specialised forelimbs of the sort needed for swimming or flying (Lillegraven 1975).
In view of this, we suggest two possible solutions. One is that the Bunyip was indeed stuck with prehensile, grasping hands but that it evolved sculling forelimbs via a radically novel evolutionary pathway: its hands still possess the grasping anatomy required for the embryo, but unique epidermal or cartilaginous flanges grow from the arms while the animal is still in the pouch, eventually forming flipper-like blades. For this to work, mother Bunyips must have a water-tight pouch, sealed by a sphincter. Such an idea is not outlandish, since such a structure is already present in a South American marsupial, the Yapok or Water opossum Chironectes minimus.
The second solution is to assume that the Bunyip simply doesn't possess a pattern of ontogeny that involves pouches and babies that need to crawl anywhere with their hands: in other words, we imagine that the Bunyip is a pouchless marsupial. And that isn't an unusual or elaborate speculation, because numerous modern marsupial species are pouchless. Of all marsupials, the lineage that perhaps looks most likely to evolve a 'water-dog'-style species is Dasyuromorpha, the group that includes quolls, the so-called marsupial mice, the Tasmanian devil Sarcophilus harrisii and the (almost certainly extinct) Thylacine Thylacinus cynocephalus. These are sharp-toothed, predatory marsupials, potentially with the capacity to evolve into large, dog-like forms like thylacines as well as sturdy, robust-toothed scavengers like the Tasmanian devils. This is the ideal group to give rise to amphibious, otter-like predators and hence to fully aquatic, flippered Bunyips. And, while we generally think of marsupials as pouched, marsupial mice and some close relatives within the dasyuromorph group Dasyuridae have reduced or virtually absent pouches. We might have to think of mother Bunyips giving birth in secluded dens on land, but the idea that the whole pouch-related constraint has been lost in the mists of Bunyip evolution is appealing.