Cryptozoologicon: Volume I

by Darren Naish

  Little is known about the predatory behaviour of these remarkable giant, aquatic cats. It is inferred that they ambush hoofed mammals and other prey that come to the water, though they presumably also prey on large fish. Heuvelmans (1978) was inspired by the possibility that, like the convergently similar walruses, dingonekines might use their hyper-enlarged upper canines in digging, hauling out onto land and so on. However, dingonekine canines are far shorter, more delicate and far less robustly rooted than those of walruses, indicating that they do not use their teeth in the same fashion. Ultimately, detailed behavioural studies or microwear analyses of dingonekine teeth are needed to test these ideas, however. It should also be noted that walrus upper canines are important in acting as 'distance guides' that help these animals feel their way along the seafloor when foraging for benthic molluscs. As yet, there are no indications that dingonekines are similarly specialised for this way of life, though suction-feeding adaptations should be searched for the next time a dingonekine carcass or skull becomes available for study. As it surely will.

  Battersby, S. 1997. Prehistoric monsters. Nature 487, 451.

  Bronson, E. B. 1910. In Closed Territory. A. C. McClurg & Co, Chicago.

  Heuvelmans, B. 1978. Les Derniers Dragons d'Afrique. Plon, Paris.

  Heuvelmans, B. 1982. What is cryptozoology? Cryptozoology 1, 1-12.

  Irwin, S. 1996. Survival of a large Crocodylus porosus despite significant lower jaw loss. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 39, 338.

  Magin, U. 1996. St George without a dragon: Bernard Heuvelmans and the sea serpent. In Moore, S. (ed) Fortean Studies Volume 3. John Brown Publishing (London), pp. 223-234.

  Meurger, M. & Gagnon, C. 1988. Lake Monster Traditions: A Cross-Cultural Analysis. Fortean Times (London), pp. 320.

  Paxton, C. G. M. 2004. Giant squids are red herrings: why Architeuthis is an unlikely source of sea monster sightings. The Cryptozoology Review 4 (2), 10-16.

  Rabbit, J. 2000. Native and eyewitness testimony in cryptozoology. The Cryptozoology Review 4 (1), 11-18.

  Cadborosaurus

  Horse-headed 'mega-serpent' of the North Pacific

  Location: Cadboro Bay and surrounding region in the NE Pacific, British Columbia

  Time: early 1930s to present, but with First Nations legends and accounts supposedly referring to the same creature

  Caddy: the literature and lore

  Giant, serpentine 'sea-serpents' - often described as having horse or camel-like heads - have been reported from waters worldwide, but among the most famous of these alleged mystery marine beasts is Cadborosaurus, so-named due to its association with Cadboro Bay in British Columbia. Sightings of Cadborosaurus - or 'Caddy' - essentially extend back to the 1930s and have been made especially famous by stories about the discovery of a Cadborosaurus corpse, recovered from the stomach of a sperm whale and photographed on the slipway of a whaling station at Naden Harbour in the Queen Charlotte Islands.

  This carcass - long-bodied, with a fluked tail and a vaguely horse-like head - was photographed in 1932 but did not become discussed in public and the literature until the 1990s. Two researchers in particular - Paul LeBlond and Eric Bousfield - have championed the idea that the carcass demonstrates the reality of this creature.

  Numerous sightings made at sea are thought to be of the same species of unknown animal. However, these accounts are really quite discordant. Some describe slender, serpentine objects that form serrated hoops while others refer to bulky, large-eyes creatures, or to giraffe-necked animals with horns. Among the most intriguing of accounts (intriguing because it involves a great amount of anatomical information) is that published by William Hagelund in 1987 and describing an encounter that supposedly happened in 1968. Hagelund described his capture of an alleged baby Cadborosaurus, 40cm long, armour-plated on top and with long, slender jaws. Bousfield and LeBlond have argued in books and articles that the 1932 carcass, the Hagelund 'baby' of 1968, and the Cadborosaurus creatures seen at sea all describe the same animals, and they have been so confident about its existence that they named it as a new species - Cadborosaurus willsi - in 1995 (Bousfield & LeBlond 1995, LeBlond & Bousfield 1995).

  Because the Hagelund 'baby' was obviously swimming independently and taking care of itself, because cadborosaur sightings (sometimes) describe creatures that sound vaguely reptilian, and because there's a long tradition of interpreting sea-serpent accounts as surviving prehistoric marine reptiles, Bousfield and LeBlond make the ridiculous suggestion that their Cadborosaurus is a strongly modified, serpentine plesiosaur (Bousfield & LeBlond 1995, LeBlond & Bousfield 1995).

  Demolishing Cadborosaurus

  As honest sceptics, we aren't about to discard entirely the idea that people have indeed encountered unknown creatures at sea. Maybe some cadborosaur accounts really do describe meetings with real unknown animals. However, a critical reading of the published accounts reveals that most if not all can be explained as (often brief) observations of floating logs, kelp strands, swimming deer, seals or other known phenomena. Indeed, the best accounts - the ones that get redrawn and inadvertently embellished for books on cryptids - almost certainly depict encounters with swimming moose and elephant seals, both of which can be startling, frightening encounters involving surprisingly big animals. The idea promoted by Bousfield and LeBlond (that ' Cadborosaurus' is a serpentine, post-Mesozoic plesiosaur descendant) is flawed nonsense (Ellis 1994, Bauer & Russell 1996, Naish 2001, Woodley et al. 2012).

  The famous 'Cadborosaurus' carcass of 1932 looks like a mangled carcass of some sort, but it is probably that of a shark or other large fish: there is no reason to honestly think that it really represents an otherwise unknown, horse-headed mega-serpent. Furthermore, we know from other cases from the 1930s that people were routinely fabricating and photographing 'Cadborosaurus' carcasses at this time, cobbling them together from kelp stems, rocks and other bits of seaside junk (Naish 1997). As for the Hagelund 'baby', it was most likely a member of a known fish species, most probably a pipefish (Woodley et al. 2011).

  During the 1930s, people were evidently in the habit of collecting assorted beach flotsam and using them to create 'Cadborosaurus carcasses'. These images are drawn from a 'carcass' supposedly discovered at Camp Fircom, British Columbia. It's actually a montage made from kelp, rocks, shells and other objects.

  At the moment, then, there's simply no reason to think that the 'Cadborosaurus' of the cryptozoological literature exists, and there is certainly no reason to take seriously Bousfield and LeBlond's claims that such creature is a radically weird, giant marine reptile. Loxton & Prothero (2013) make the very interesting point that ' Cadborosaurus' and other 'sea serpents' are merely the modern incarnation of the Hippocamp, the horse-headed sea monster depicted since ancient times and never meant to depict a real animal.

  Speculation time

  Given that cadborosaur witnesses describe fur, whiskers and an overall mammalian demeanour, we reject Bousfield and LeBlond's ideas about surviving sauropterygians and feel it more likely that people have actually seen a gigantic, long-bodied mammal of some sort, perhaps a highly unusual pinniped related to some of the other pinnipeds described by astute cryptozoologists but ignored by mainstream biologists. Of course, this means that the technical name Cadborosaurus is a total misnomer, but that's ok: exactly the same thing happened with the fossil whale Basilosaurus (originally misidentified as a reptile).

  Cadborosaurus is enormous and long-bodied, the substantial variation in body size and cranial ornamentation reported by witnesses reflecting substantial ontogenetic and sexual variation. Large adults are fully pelagic and stay away from coastlines whereas juveniles (less than 5m long) will forage in rocky areas at the water's edge and even partially self-beach when foraging for invertebrates in tidal pools. The long, flexible and immensely powerful posterior part of the body means that the animal can pull and push itself back into the water even when near wholly beached.

  The muscular power in the posterior part of the bo
dy (a tail is absent: what looks like a tail are really two partially fused hindlimbs) also allows Cadborosaurus to put on a phenomenal burst of speed and make it one of the fastest creatures of the seas - able to outstrip most vessels when at a sprint. It uses this speed in pursuing agile pelagic fish, its highly acute eyesight, hearing and sensitivity to vibrations and motion also contributing to its success as a predator. Combining stupendous size, an incredible turn of speed, hyper-acute senses and a wit, charm and pluck all its own, it's no wonder that Cadborosaurus continues to evade the tyrannical hand of Scientific Man… except for the Naden Harbour carcass, which really is a dead Cadborosaurus, honest. Bousfield and LeBlond said so.

  Bauer, A. M. & Russell, A. P. 1996. A living plesiosaur?: A critical assessment of the description of Cadborosaurus willsi. Cryptozoology 12, 1-18.

  Bousfield, E. L. & LeBlond, P. H. 1995. An account of Cadborosaurus willsi, new genus, new species, a large

  aquatic reptile from the Pacific coast of North America. Amphipacifica 1 (supplement 1), 1-25.

  Ellis, R. 1994. Monsters of the Sea. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

  Naish, D. 1997. Another Caddy carcass? The Cryptozoology Review 2 (1), 26-29.

  Naish, D. 2001. Sea serpents, seals, and coelacanths: an attempt at a holistic approach to the identity of large aquatic cryptids. Fortean Studies 7, 75-94.

  Woodley, M. A., McCormick, C. A., & Naish, D. 2012. Response to Bousfield & LeBlond: Shooting pipefish in a barrel; or sauropterygian "mega-serpents" and Occam's razor. Journal of Scientific Exploration 26, 151-154.

  Woodley, M. A., Naish, D. & McCormick, C. A. 2011. A baby sea-serpent no more: Reinterpreting Hagelund's juvenile "Cadborosaur" report. Journal of Scientific Exploration 25, 497-514.

  Tizheruk

  Sometimes horned, dragon-like water monster of the Arctic

  Location: coastal waters of the Pacific northwest of North America

  Time: a creature of lore and legend, with no dates specified

  The great northern sea-wolf

  Among the several weird, cold-adapted monsters described by the Inuit people is Tizheruk, a semi-serpentine, horned or crested, predatory sea monster that inhabits the waters around King Island, Alaska and is even claimed to attack and kill people. The Tizheruk is supposedly the same creature as the Palraiyuk, reported from the more southerly island of Nunivak. Various other legendary water beasts from Inuit lore have also been regarded as the 'same animal' as the Tizheruk, including Wasgo, Sisiutl and Sea-Wolf (Swords 1991). Artifacts depicting these creatures show a vaguely wolf-like head with a bulbous nose, massive (sometimes pointed) tongue and large, vertically projecting horns. They are meant to be large, perhaps even bigger than a Killer whale Orcinus orca.

  While the Tizheruk sounds like an extraordinary (read: unlikely) beast, its description and reported behaviour might, some authors suggest, be based on kernels of truth. As a result we see a pattern frequently employed by cryptozoologists: the attempted rationalisation or de-mythification of a fantastic beast whereby writers discard the remarkable and 'tone down' the weirdness of mythical creatures to make them more identifiable. This issue has often been remarked on. Meurger (1988), describing mythical animals as part of a "great tree of indigenous beliefs" poignantly noted that "those who believe in separating 'facts' from 'superstitions' in order to find an unknown zoological creature under the tree's foliage, risk reducing the tree trunk to the dimensions of a tooth pick before they have finished".

  Roy Mackal - the prominent cryptozoologist mentioned several times in this book (and, we have to say, all too frequently associated with over-enthusiastic speculation and poor deduction) - wrote about the Tizheruk in Searching for Hidden Animals (Mackal 1980). Because the creature sounds vaguely seal-like in some accounts (with an emphasis on the vaguely), because it is long-necked, and because (according to accounts) it can be attracted to a boat if the occupants tap on the hull, Mackal suggested that the Tizheruk might be a large, predatory pinniped rather like the Leopard seal Hydrurga leptonyx.

  Hydrurga is part of a mostly Southern Hemisphere phocid seal group called the Lobodontini: if Tizheruk is similar to Hydrurga, it is would either have to be a unique, Northern Hemisphere lobodontine, or a convergently similar member of another seal clade. In any case, for this idea to be true, the more fantastic traits attributed to the creature - including its serpentine form, gigantic size, horns and giant tongue - either have to be ignored or explained away. Mackal (1983) suggested that a reduction or even loss of the forelimbs could explain the more 'snake-like' form of the Tizheruk and also suggested that mobile ears or ear-like protuberances might explain the 'horns'. The presence of ears wouldn't be in keeping with a phocid identification (given that they lack external ears: in fact, they're often called 'earless seals') and would be more consistent with an otariid identification (otariids: sea lions and fur seals). Incidentally, Mackal also suggested that Steller's sea-ape - another marine conundrum - might be a juvenile Tizheruk.

  Tizheruk: alas, probably not real

  In reality, we think that Mackal is guilty of picking and choosing favoured characters attributed to a mythological creature. The Tizheruk's alleged interest in hull-tapping behaviour sounds Hydrurga -like, but none of its other features do, and Mackal essentially had to bend over backwards in order to shoehorn the creature's other features into a pinniped mould. Something not emphasised by Mackal is that the behavioural traits concerned are from age-old folk tales, not modern eyewitness accounts or even friend-of-a-friend stories.

  Indeed, the various sea monster petroglyphs and artefacts supposedly depicting Tizheruk, Sisiutl and Wasgo (Swords 1991) look like a hodge-podge of scary, dragonesque water beasts of the sort imagined by people around the world. Did people depict these beasts because they were reporting genuine observations? Or were they being creative, imaginative, or illustrating or creating images of creature unknown outside of myth and story? We don't know, but it hardly seems obvious that the tales concerned should be accepted at face value as reliable references to a real, and unknown, animal.

  A speculative Tizheruk

  Imagined as a real pinniped, Tizheruk (we urge people to name it Tizheruk suchocephalus) is - like its distant cousins the Long-necked seal and Cadborosaurus - highly unusual compared to other pinniped species, being especially long-bodied, long-snouted and extraordinary in size. Tizheruk is indeed a phocid pinniped like Hydrurga, but it belongs to the same group as the remarkable elephant seals (Mirounga) and Hooded seal Cystophora cristata. Like these related species, it is able to inflate a sac-like organ as its snout tip when displaying to potential mates or rivals. Uniquely, it also possesses two soft, inflatable structures on the top of its head, both of which are concealed when not in use but erect and horn-like during display (they are inflated via tubes connected to the nostrils), and a great red bladder on its palate. This protrudes from the mouth during display, resembling a great lolling tongue. The male Tizheruk is in fact the most elaborate of pinnipeds when it comes to sexual display, an extreme 'end member' of a trend towards increasing showiness. Females lack these display organs and are somewhat smaller.

  The forelimbs have been substantially reduced and are only present as bony splints invisible from the outside. A long, robust rostrum and conical teeth are used in macropredation: the Tizheruk eats smaller marine mammals (explaining artefacts which depict it with small whales in its jaws) as well as fish, and occasionally it will even grab humans from kayaks and piers and so on. It relies on inertial feeding, ripping prey to pieces with the jaws, tossing chunks of food into the mouth in crocodile-like fashion (Taylor 1987). Again, it has done away with the need to regularly bask, moult and breed on land and is now completely aquatic.

  Readers may note the clear correlation between fully aquatic habits in pinnipeds and a propensity to remain undiscovered: this can be explained by their pelagic habits and rarity. In fact, the numbers of such cryptids are dwindling due to climate change, depleting fish stocks and other factors and it
's likely that they will become extinct before discovery. Indeed, by not accepting the bold and plucky claims put forward by innovative cryptozoologists, short-sighted and cowardly biologists and conservationists have doomed an entire guild of gigantic, specialised pinnipeds to extinction. They should be ashamed of themselves. The writings of Mackal and Heuvelmans were good enough for other cryptozoologists, why weren't they good enough for everyone else!?

  Mackal, R. P. 1980. Searching for Hidden Animals. Doubleday, Garden City, New York.

  Meurger, M. & Gagnon, C. 1988. Lake Monster Traditions: A Cross-Cultural Analysis. Fortean Times, London.

  Swords, M. D. 1991. The wasgo or sisiutl: a cryptozoological sea-animal of the Pacific northwest coast of the Americas. Journal of Scientific Exploration 5 (1), 85-101.

  Taylor, M. A. 1987. How tetrapods feed in water: a functional analysis by paradigm. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 91, 171-195.

  Buru

  Confusing swamp-monster with both fishy and reptilian traits

  Location: the region around Ziro, Arunachal Pradash, northern India