CRYPTOZOOLOGY IN THE VATICAN

A bizarre, still-unidentified mystery beast depicted in Pietro Candido Decembrio's Animal Book (1460)

A few years ago, a friend bought me a wonderful little book entitled And To Every Beast..., one in a series of beautifully-illustrated thematic mini-volumes collectively entitled Treasures of the Vatican Library. All of them combine biblical quotations with illustrations selected from various tomes or manuscripts held in the vast collection of the Vatican's library (which contains over one million printed books, as well as 150,000 manuscripts and some 100,000 prints).

And To Every Beast... (Millennium Books: Alexandria, NSW, Australia, 1994)

And To Every Beast... focused upon animals, real and mythological, but it greatly intrigued me, because although it contained versions of several famous illustrations present in other bestiaries, it also included some eye-opening pictures that I'd never seen before, of creatures that were so extraordinary as to be scarcely identifiable with anything known either to modern-day zoology or to zoomythology. This made all the more frustrating the fact that it did not state anywhere within its pages the original book or manuscript in the Vatican library that was the source of its pictures.

Happily, however, an online investigation via Google soon uncovered that elusive source publication. It was The Animal Book, written by famous Italian humanist and Renaissance author Pietro Candido Decembrio (1399-1477), commissioned by Ludovico Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, and published in 1460, with its illustrations added during the next century. So now, having solved that little mystery, here are some of this early tome's most fascinating if baffling illustrations, together with some commentary by me on what they may, or may not, depict.

TRUNKO LIVES?

And where better to begin than with the totally bewildering, ostensibly aquatic mystery animal featured in the illustration opening this ShukerNature blog post and reproduced again below.

A hoofed, flippered, long-tailed, short-trunked mystery beast

Scouring the Web, I have found that some sites have sought to identify it as a sea lion, but I see little if any resemblance to those particular pinnipeds. More plausible, even if only for the trunk-like proboscis, is an elephant seal, but the depicted beast's long tail and, especially, its hoofed forelegs, swiftly eliminate this from serious consideration – unless the artist was attempting to illustrate such a creature merely from a verbal description (and quite probably a somewhat less than accurate one at that), rather than a physical specimen, because elephant seals weren't known scientifically until the mid-/late 1600s. Similarly, the aardvark Orycteropus afer, another potential identity (albeit greatly distorted), remained scientifically undescribed until 1766; and the platypus Ornithorhynchus anatinus, which has also been suggested by some, remained unknown to Europeans until 1798.

When I first looked at this picture, the identity that came into my mind was that of a desman, especially the Russian desman Desmana moschata - that large aquatic relative of moles, which possesses a proboscis, a long tail, and clawed flipper-like hindfeet. However, this species' forefeet are also clawed and flipper-like, not hoofed (unless, once again, the artist was basing his illustration upon an inaccurate verbal description only?).

A stuffed Russian desman (Didier Descouens/Museum of Toulouse/Wikipedia)

Out of sheer desperation, I might even have considered the dramatic possibility that this was a portrait of the enigmatic Trunko - had I not been personally responsible for the latter entity's conclusive exposure as a non-living globster (click here for the full revelation). Perhaps the most reasonable assumption is that it represents some hoax taxiderm specimen, created via the skilful union of body parts from a variety of different creatures and displayed at sideshows or other public exhibitions, alongside stuffed mermaids, preserved dragons, dried Jenny Hanivers, and other assorted fauna of the fraudulent, fabricated kind.

A SCALY FISH-MAN?

Equally perplexing is this illustration of a humanoid figure completely covered in green scales. One might be forgiven for initially assuming that it was meant to represent a merman. However, it possesses neither a fishtail (sporting instead a normal, fully-formed pair of legs) nor even any webbing between its fingers, in stark contrast to typical mermen – one of which is depicted elsewhere in the same book, thereby emphasising the difference between itself and this weird scaly human.

The scaly fish-man illustration

Conversely, it may constitute an image of a man suffering from ichthyosis – a sometimes-extreme skin disorder in which the sufferer can indeed be covered in thick green scale-like flakes of skin. In the distant past, several unfortunate persons with this unsightly but striking medical condition have been displayed at freak shows and similar exhibitions, usually labelled as 'fish-men'.

The typical merman illustration

OTHER ODDITIES

Much the same problems arise with many of the other creatures depicted in Candido's book, i.e. are they (a) mythical, are they (b) real but sometimes inaccurately represented, or are they (c) potentially cryptozoological?

An oenophilic cynocephalus

Examples clearly belonging to the first of those three categories include a basilisk and a cockatrice, a griffin, an amphisbaena, a manticore, a flying horse, and a pair of onocentaurs; plus a donkey unicorn (or unicorn donkey?); a more typical white unicorn but with a red face and tricoloured horn; a manticore-related, tapir-reminiscent beast of legend known as a leucrocuta; a hairy dog-headed man or cynocephalus scrutinising a goblet of red wine; a peacock-crested, azure-breasted phoenix with crimson wings and rooster-like wattles; and a bat-winged, scaly-bodied, limbless aerial dragon known as an amphiptere.

A many-hued phoenix

Those from the second category, meanwhile, include such familiar beasts as a lion, a lynx, a leopard, an eagle, a lammergeyer, an owl, an elephant, a stag, various hounds and horses, and a pelican, all depicted fairly or very naturally. Also present, but in stark contrast to the above-listed animals in terms of accurate representation, is a brown giraffe patterned only with a light speckling of small white flecks and armed with a pair of long curved antelope-like horns. Nor should (or could!) we overlook a gaudy multicoloured rhinoceros with extraordinary body armour that was clearly based upon the famous rhinoceros engraving of 1515 by Albrecht Dürer.

A sparsely-patterned, antelope-horned giraffe

And creatures from the third (and most intriguing) category not only include the trunked mystery beast and scaly humanoid already discussed here. Also worthy of consideration are such curiosities as a snake bearing a veritable crown of horns around its brow; another one with a pair of lateral cow-like horns; a carnivorous deer (judging from its dentition) with antlers so palmate in shape that they resemble a pair of human hands; an even more mysterious carnivorous mammal with claws but a horse-like mane plus bright red fur mottled with grey and gold patches; and a frog sporting a pair of very long, slender, almost upright horns upon its head.

A lynx and the red mystery carnivore

What could have inspired such zoological oddities? A verbal description of a horned viper may possibly have inspired the bovine snake's depiction, but what of the others?

A frog with horns

Whoever would have guessed that the Vatican was such a rich repository of cryptozoological and zoomythological exotica? And if you can obtain a copy of And To Every Beast..., please do so, because it's a thoroughly delightful, beautiful little book – highly recommended!!!

The multicoloured rhino and red-faced unicorn

XENOTHRIX - A MYSTERY MONKEY FROM JAMAICA

Prince Bernhard's titi Callicebus bernhardi – a relative of Xenothrix? (Dr Marc van Roosmalen)

Down through the centuries, several remarkable, unique species of mammal have become extinct on various West Indian islands in the Caribbean. In two ShukerNature blog posts on this subject, I shall be examining certain controversial examples that conceivably survived into much more recent times than officially accepted – and may even be still alive today. And I begin, via this first blog post, with a truly mysterious monkey.

Today, some monkey species inhabit Jamaica, but none of them is native; they are all South American or African species that have eventually established themselves following the escape or release of pets or other captive specimens here during the 18th Century or later.

However, there is at least one enigmatic report of monkeys existing on Jamaica prior to this time scale. In Hans Sloane's two-volume tome, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica (the two volumes were published in 1707 and 1725 respectively), when documenting the fauna of Jamaica he included a brief but tantalising mention of monkeys "found wild in this island". What could these have been?

On 17 January 1919, a remarkable discovery was made that may have provided the long-awaited answer to that question. That was the day when palaeontologist Harold Anthony from New York's American Museum of Natural History disinterred a mandibular (lower jaw) fragment and femur of a monkey in the yellow limestone detritus of Long Mile Cave in Jamaica's Cockpit Country. As these were discovered not too far away from some human remains, Anthony wondered whether they were from an introduced monkey specimen (the pet of a seafarer, perhaps?).

After they were collected, these bones remained undescribed and forgotten for many years, until, in 1952, two graduate students, Karl F. Koopman and Ernest E. Williams, discovered them in a drawer at the American Museum of Natural History. And when finally examined, they surprised everyone, because they combined features from several different types of New World monkey. The mandible's dental formula, for instance, differed from that of all New World monkeys except for the marmosets and tamarins, but its size was much bigger than the mandible of these latter species. Further studies emphasised similarities between the Jamaican monkey and South America's titis and douroucoulis (night monkeys). Consequently, when formally described, this anomalous species was placed within a new genus, all to itself, and was christened Xenothrix mcgregori.

A pair of douroucoulis or night monkeys (birdphotosDOTcom/Wikipedia)

During the 1920s, Anthony uncovered some additional material from this species, including post-cranial remains such as an os coxae (a bone from the pelvic girdle), and two tibiae. As for the femur from 1919, this was not included in the 1952 description of Xenothrix mcgregori, remaining unstudied until 1991. When its specific form was closely assessed, however, scientists concluded that Xenothrix mcgregori habitually moved and climbed in a slow quadrupedal manner, while hanging upside-down from branches (and even feeding in this inverted position), closely analogous therefore to a tree sloth, and thus very different from any living species of New World monkey.

Further remains, including part of the lower face from one specimen, were unearthed by various expeditions to Jamaican caves between 1994 and 1996, and these supported the notion that X. mcgregori was most closely related to the titis, although one researcher believes it to be a Jamaican species of douroucouli. Moreover, the precise nature of its dentition indicated that it was primarily frugivorous (a fruit-eater), and estimates of its size have proposed that it probably weighed 2-4 kg.

In short, X. mcgregori was clearly a very distinct, valid species in its own right, and certainly not merely based upon specimens of introduced, non-native species. But when did it die out? A partial skull and palate of X. mcgregori found in Lloyd's Cave near Jackson's Bay, Jamaica, were discovered in surface debris together with remains of various domestic animals and also introduced black rats Rattus rattus, and just like those they were unmineralised and unencrusted. This suggested that X. mcgregori was still alive at the time when Western explorers such as Christopher Columbus first reached the West Indies (i.e. the late 15th Century). But could it have survived even later? The Sloane reference in the early 18th Century to monkeys in Jamaica provides one intriguing indication of this, but there is another, even more baffling piece of evidence to consider too.

1860s engraving of the mystifying poto

During the 1860s, a strange creature referred to in the publicity literature as "a poto from the mountains of Jamaica" was exhibited in London. However, the accompanying engraving of this animal depicts a creature wholly unlike any species known to exist in Jamaica today. Consequently, some researchers have speculated that it may have been a living specimen of X. mcgregori. However, to my eyes it looks nothing like any type of monkey – on the contrary, what it does look very like is a kinkajou Potos flavus. However, even if it was a kinkajou, that only adds to the confusion, because this small raccoon-related species of carnivore is not native to Jamaica either – only to mainland Central and South America. The same is also true of its superficially similar relatives, the olingos. Moreover, it is nothing if not worthy of note that the name 'poto' is very similar to 'Potos', the kinkajou's taxonomic genus.

And as a further, final twist to this already much-tangled tale: when the original femur of X. mcgregori that had been obtained back in 1919 by Anthony was finally examined during the 1990s, it was closely likened not to that of any species of monkey, but instead to that of...the kinkajou!

1849 colour engraving of a kinkajou

Incidentally, two other endemic Antillean monkeys, both of which were related to X. mcgregori, have been described from disinterred remains. These are the Hispaniolan monkey Antillothrix bernensis and the Cuban monkey Paralouatta varonai. The latter died out during the late Pleistocene epoch (and a second Paralouatta species died out even earlier, during the Miocene). The Hispaniolan monkey, conversely, whose remains have been found in the Dominican Republic, may have persisted until the 16th Century, its demise precipitated by the island's settlement in 1492 following Columbus's arrival there. In July 2009, a skull of this vanished species was discovered by Walter Pickel while diving in one of Hispaniola's underwater caves.

Reconstruction of the Cuban monkey Paralouatta varonai (© American Museum of Natural History)

 

 

A SURPRISE OF SERVICALS

A delightfully cute servical (serval x caracal hybrid) kitten (Dr Warren D. Thomas)

Many different hybrids between the smaller species of wild cat have been recorded over the years, but I would like to mention one particular interspecific (indeed, intergeneric) cross featuring smaller cats here - because, as far as I am aware, when I originally included details of it in the article of mine (Wild About Animals, February 1996) on which this ShukerNature blog post is based, it was the first time that a successful mating between these two species had ever been documented.

A serval, left; and a caracal, right (both public domain)

In 1993, Dr Warren D. Thomas informed me that a few years earlier, while he was director there, a litter of four feline hybrids was born at Los Angeles Zoo, sired by a serval Leptailurus serval and born to a caracal Caracal caracal. This very unusual mating took place quite by accident, while the two cats were participating in an educational programme.

Servical kittens have BIG ears! (Dr Warren D. Thomas)

Two of the four cubs died in the first 10 days after their birth; the other two survived, but at the age of 8 months they were given away to a local animal sanctuary. As cubs, these 'servicals' resembled sandy-brown balls of fur, with two enormously broad ears like those of their serval father yet bearing distinctive tufts at their tips like their caracal mother's. When adult, they would probably have been fox-sized, bearing in mind the adult size of servals and caracals.

A playful servical kitten (Dr Warren D. Thomas)

Since then, the reverse cross, between a male caracal and a female serval, has also been recorded with captive specimens. The resulting hybrids are known as caravals.

Providing further evidence that the serval is not as reproductively isolated from other cats as was once thought, a new ‘domestic’ breed of cat has been developed by crossing the serval with domestic cats F. catus. The result of this unexpected hybridisation is a very eyecatching breed termed the savannah, which is now popular in the USA. As might be expected from such a cross, the savannah is a very sizeable animal. One such specimen, a female called Mecca, was 18 in tall when sitting. Similarly, a male called Harley, kept as a pet in America during the late 1990s, weighed over 20 lb when only 9 months old, and could leap over a decent-sized settee in a single bound.

A savannah cat (public domain)

Savannahs look very like servals, sporting their characteristic pelage of blotches and polka dots, but are said to be very affectionate pets, playing with normal domestic kittens, enjoying human company, and purring like a normal domestic cat.

 

This ShukerNature blog is excerpted from my book Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery: A Feline Phantasmagoria (CFZ Press: Bideford, 2012).

 

 

A HITHERTO-UNSEEN PHOTOGRAPH OF RANGER - SCOTLAND'S (NEARLY) BLACK LION

Ranger as an adult lion at Glasgow Zoo, cropped version (Peter Adamson)

With almost 900,000 hits since I uploaded it on 12 June 2012, by far the most popular of all of my 300+ ShukerNature posts is my exposure of three online black lion photographs as computer-modified fakes (click here). In that same post, I also included some information concerning various alleged sightings in the wild of genuine black lions, plus a very interesting lion cub called Ranger, born at Glasgow (formerly Calderpark) Zoo in Scotland during 1975.

What made Ranger so interesting is that he possessed a black chest and a large patch of black pigment on one leg, possibly the result of a rare pigmentation phenomenon known as mozaicism. I learnt from the zoo's then director, the late Richard O'Grady, that in an attempt to create an entirely black lion, Ranger was mated with his mother, Kara, on several occasions when he reached adulthood, and also with other lionesses, but no offspring ever resulted. Consequently, it was suspected that Ranger was sterile, though he was in excellent overall health and lived to the ripe old age of 22.

Ranger and his mother Kara (Richard O'Grady/Zoological Society of Glasgow & West of Scotland)

Until very recently, the only photo of Ranger that I had ever seen was the above b/w photograph, which was kindly supplied to me by Richard O'Grady back in the late 1980s for use in my writings. It depicts Ranger as a cub held by Kara, and clearly reveals his black chest and the large patch of black pigment on his right foreleg.

On 28 March 2013, however, I received a short email from Mr Peter Adamson of St Andrews, Scotland, who, to my great excitement, not only mentioned that on 28 July 1984 he had seen Ranger as an adult lion at Glasgow Zoo but also attached with his email a colour photograph that he had snapped of him there, showing Ranger to have matured into a very impressive individual with a handsome black-tipped mane.

Ranger as an adult lion at Glasgow Zoo, uncropped version (Peter Adamson)

Reproduced here by kind permission of Peter, it clearly displays the patch of black pigment on Ranger's right foreleg, and, as pointed out by Peter in his email to me, it also reveals that he possessed another large, though slightly paler patch of black pigment on the rear upper portion of his left hind leg, which I hadn't previously known about, and which provides further support for the prospect that Ranger was exhibiting mozaicism.

My grateful thanks once again to Peter Adamson for bringing to my attention his extremely interesting yet hitherto-unpublished colour photograph of the adult Ranger, and for very generously allowing me to document it publicly for the first time - yet another ShukerNature exclusive!

Ranger as an adult lion at Glasgow Zoo, with increased contrast (Peter Adamson)

For more information concerning black lions and other melanistic mystery cats, check out my latest book, Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery: A Feline Phantasmagoria (CFZ Press: Bideford, 2012).



A KINTAIL KAPYBARA?? - I DON'T THINK SO!!

A capybara Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris (public domain)

Things are rarely what they seem in cryptozoology, as epitomised by the following case investigated by me.

Reading through some correspondence tonight reminded me of the time when I received an interesting letter from one longstanding correspondent, Miss Lorna Lloyd of Worcester, England, describing the head of a strange animal mounted as a trophy on a shield, and seen in an antique shop in London's famous Portobello Road. My correspondent likened the head to that of a gigantic guinea pig with greyish rabbit-like colouring, mentioned that the shield was engraved "Kintail 1894" , and stated that Kintail is one of the wilder areas of Inverness-shire. What could this creature possibly be?

Needless to say, the prospect of a unknown species of gargantuan guinea pig scampering over the heather on the hills of northern Scotland seemed about as likely as an undiscovered species of okapi browsing in the New Forest. However, I did concede the possibility that it was an absconded inmate from the type of travelling menagerie-cum-circus that was still common in Victorian times, and which often exhibited many unusual non-native animals.

Capybaras (public domain)

Perhaps the Kintail mystery beast was a capybara, which not only resembles a gigantic guinea pig but is also closely related to guinea pigs. In 1990, an errant capybara named Bert went awol from Porfell Animal Land, near Lanreath, Cornwall, and thrived for 17 months in a man-made fishery close by before being recaptured alive. Bearing in mind, conversely, that its head was a mounted trophy, one can only assume that the Kintail specimen's period of freedom had been curtailed in a rather more terminal manner.

Resolving to unmask this cryptic creature, I tracked down the shop in question, and learnt that the animal was - of all things - a wombat! True, a wombat's head does look a little like that of an outsized guinea pig - but who would ever have imagined that a specimen of so exotic a species as this had been brought to Scotland a century ago (especially when even in modern times wombats have rarely been exhibited in British zoos)?

A common wombat Vombatus ursinus (public domain)

In fact, as I was soon to learn from the shop's owner, this particular wombat had died long before it had ever reached our shores - because it had been killed not in Kintail, Scotland, but in Kintail, Australia, where this marsupial mammal is of course native.

Many years ago, a cartoon in Life Magazine featured a New Jersey farmer visiting a circus where he sees a dromedary for the first time. "There ain't no such animal," exclaims the astonished farmer. Sometimes, I know just how he feels.

A wombat, the marsupial answer to a woodchuck (public domain)      

MY BOOK 'DINOSAURS AND OTHER PREHISTORIC ANIMALS ON STAMPS' WINS AN AWARD!

Today I received a most unexpected but very welcome, pleasant surprise. At the 13th New Zealand National Philatelic Literature Exhibition, held on 16 March 2013 at the Manawatu Philatelic Society in Palmerston North, my book Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals on Stamps: A Worldwide Catalogue (CFZ Press: Bideford, 2008) was awarded a certificate in the highly-prized Large Silver category, in recognition of its significant contribution to philatelic literature. And today I received the certificate in the post from the Society. Here it is:

My book's awarded certificate in the Large Silver category (Manawatu Philatelic Society)

True, they did spell my name incorrectly, but hey, it's the thought that counts! So, many thanks indeed to the judges for deeming my book worthy of such recognition - I am exceedingly grateful.

For full details concerning my book, which also contains an appendix devoted to cryptozoology-themed stamps, click here.

A selection of stamps from my book (Dr Karl Shuker)

 

 

 

THE NEW GUINEA THYLACINE - CRYING WOLF IN IRIAN JAYA?

Captive thylacine

The official extinction in 1936 on Tasmania of the remarkable thylacine (aka Tasmanian tiger and Tasmanian wolf - Tassie for short) Thylacinus cynocephalus, that tiger-striped canine marsupial mammal as big as a wolf but which could hop like a kangaroo and had a pouch like one too, is well-documented, as is its much earlier disappearance a couple of millennia ago on the Australian mainland. Less familiar, conversely, is the fact that during the Pleistocene epoch, ending a mere 11,700 years ago, the thylacine also existed on New Guinea. Similarly, whereas the chronicles of cryptozoology are fairly bulging with unconfirmed post-1936 thylacine sightings both on Tasmania and in mainland Australia, it is not so well known that modern-day reports of suspiciously thylacine-like beasts have also emerged from New Guinea, specifically Irian Jaya (New Guinea's less-explored western, Indonesian half), where such creatures are referred to by local people as the dobsegna.

A video of living thylacines in captivity (click here)

During the early 1990s, grazier Ned Terry visited Irian Jaya and procured the following details from local testimony. Rarely seen in daylight, the dobsegna generally emerges from its den in rocks or caves at dawn or dusk, to hunt for small prey animals. Its head and shoulders are dog-like, but its mouth is huge and strong, and its tail is very long and thin. Villagers claim that from its ribs to its hips it has no intestines (but this merely suggests that it is very thin in this particular body region), and that in this region it is striped.

Dorsal view of a living thylacine, showing its impressive striping

Needless to say, this is a remarkably accurate verbal portrait of a thylacine, from the canine head and exceptionally powerful jaws to the slender stripe-adorned hindquarters and lengthy tail. Moreover, in 2003 veteran Irian Jaya explorer Ralf Kiesel confirmed to me that since 1995 there have been persistent rumours of thylacines existing in at least two sections of Irian Jaya's Baliem Valley - the Yali area in the valley's northeast region, and the NP Carstenz in its southwest. The latter area is of particular significance because back in the early 1970s Jan Sarakang, a Papuan friend of Kiesel, had a most startling experience while working with a colleague in the mountains just west of NP Carstenz.

Taxiderm thylacine and mounted skeleton at Tring Natural History Museum, formerly owned by Lord Walter Rothschild (Dr Karl Shuker)

They had built a camp for some geologists near Puncac Jaya at an altitude of roughly 1.5 miles and were sitting by their tents that evening, eating their meal, when two unfamiliar dog-like animals emerged from the bush. One was an adult, the other a cub, and both appeared pale in colour, but most striking of all was their stiff, inflexible tails, and the incredible gape of their jaws when they yawned spasmodically. Clearly drawn by the smell of the food, the two animals walked nervously from side to side, eyeing the men and their food supplies, and approaching to within 20 yards. Eventually the cub became bold enough to walk up to the men, who tried to feed it, but when one of them also tried to catch it, the cub bit his hand and both animals then ran back into the bush and were not seen again.

Thylacines (Henry Constantine Richter, 1845)

Except for their seemingly unstriped form, which may well have been a trick of the moonlight, once again these animals recalled thylacines, especially with respect to their stiff tails (a thylacine characteristic) and huge gapes. Worth noting is that the thylacine could open its mouth beyond an amazing 120 degrees - far more than any true dog or wolf can do.

Captive thylacine, revealing its jaws' extraordinarily wide gape

Searches for the thylacine on Tasmania and in mainland Australia continue on a frequent, but habitually unsuccessful, basis. Perhaps it is time for Tassie seekers to turn their attention elsewhere - to the verdant, shadowy mountain forests and caves of Irian Jaya.

In my study alongside a framed print of an original thylacine painting by Rod Scott, commissioned by Australian Geographic (Dr Karl Shuker)