Kangaroo Kryptid Too?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on November 16th, 2007
If the reportedly casual appearance of a reddish orangutan seen in trees in Baker County (see more on the first reports and the update) wasn’t enough excitement in Florida, now there are reports of another kind of cryptid: a kangaroo.
Actually, technically, due to the size stated, it seems to be a wallaby is on the loose in Brandon, Hillsborough County, Florida.
Several residents spied it, especially near the intersection of Bloomingdale and Watson roads, just after 5:00 PM, on Wednesday, November 14, 2007. No one could catch it.
Authorities said they don’t know from whence the animal came, but they know the local zoo is not missing any animals.
The reports on the sightings and the search have been filed by various area television stations, including WFTS-TV (ABC Action News), MyFox News, and Local6 News.
Thanks to S. Lewis for passing along the lead to this story.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Interesting to have two misplaced animal conundrums in the same place around the same time. Again, as I’ve said before, I personally do not see the lack of a zoo missing an animal or the lack of legal licenses to have an animal as solid evidence that these cannot be an escaped exotic. The whole thing, indeed the whole problem behind illegal trade in wildlife is that there ARE NO licenses and there ARE NO records. At least no legitimate paper trail anyway. The illegal pet trade is huge in some places, and if one were to look for any specific licenses or records of the animals, one would come up empty handed. I have no doubt someone could be keeping an illegal orangutan or kangaroo, have it escape (or release it due to problems caring for it), and fail to report it due to legal concerns and fear of prosecution.
You’re right Mystery_Man. People get these weird pets because they think it makes them look cool, then they find out they’re too hard to take care of, and they take them somewhere and dump the poor things.
Illegal pets are usually illegal for a good reason.
Mystery_man:
Maybe, maybe not, but compared to other quasi-frequent reports of mystery Kangaroo/Wallabies floating around the country, I would not be surprised if there may be more to this than just the “escaped illegal animal/zoo escapee” possibility.
I’m not saying this one might not be an illegally imported animal—it might just BE—but overall, one cannot dismiss ALL sightings as that.
That’s my take. shoot me—I guess I’m a “hopeless romantic.”
Cryptidsrus- You are right, and I didn’t mean to write off the sightings as anything. I just like to look at all of the options on the table, and to me, the escaped exotic hypotheses seems reasonable enough considering what we know for sure. Right now, I just think it is the most probable explanation, but that could change with further info. By all accounts, the ape like creature sounds very much like an orangutan, but I do hold open the possibility it is not. If it is an orangutan I cannot think of any other reason (without delving out into paranormal territory) that it would be wandering around the wilds other than that it is an escaped pet or zoo animal.
Concerning the kangaroo reports, that is a very good point. This is not an isolated incident, and they are seen all over the country. These kangaroo reports I just don’t know what to make of. It’s not that I doubt that people are seeing them, it’s that I can’t think of any other rational reason for them to be there other than that they are escaped animals of some kind or a feral population of escaped animals. Why else would they be there?
Are they native? For me, I can allow for an undiscovered ape in North America. Primates are found in many places throughout the world and have evolved into a variety of habitats. They could have crossed a land bridge into North America and wound up here. So finding a new skunk ape is not completely implausible for me. But the idea that kangaroos (and that is exactly what they are described as, not merely kangaroo-like) are only found in Australia and had quite a unique evolution. The idea that they could have also evolved on the North American continent into a form indistinguishable from their Australian counterparts is to me extremely far fetched.
I am not even going to get into some of the more paranormal ideas I have heard at this point. So what are these kangaroos, if not exotics or the descendants of such? I would be interested to hear your opinion on why those kangaroos could be there.
Well, some have suggested that all these Mystery Kangaroo reports are actually a native form of giant monkey, so that lessens the evolutionary unlikelihood somewhat, although I can’t imagine a Simian that looked very Kangaroo-like. I find the theory intriguing, but it seems to me you really have to play with eyewitness accounts to come to such a conclusion (although there are reports of giant monkeys separate from Mystery Kangaroos, so that doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t any). As you said, the witnesses are reporting Kangaroos, not Kangaroo-like creatures, like, say, the Jersey Devil. Oddly enough, there have been several reports of Kangaroos in my native New Jersey, as there have been in Oklahoma (Where I now live).
Considering that Oklahoma is said to have a native population of introduced Mara, and Florida has a whole island of introduced monkeys (Rhesus, I think, but don’t quote me on that), my take is that perhaps the hardships of the Australian Outback have enabled the Kangaroo/Wallaby to be a very hardy survivor, and thus all these reports of Mystery Kangaroos represent an emerging native population of Kangaroos or Wallabies stemming from a few originally introduced predecessors.
Would those paranormal ideas include the notion of teleporting animals? I seem to recall that being employed to explain the worldwide reports of black panthers too. Might as well just say they fell from the sky, if you ask me. Then again, of course, there’s Charles Fort’s Super-Sargasso Sea, or his para-planetoid Genesistrine…
Mnynames- Yes, that was one of the paranormal explanations proposed by some. From what I recall the hypothesis is that they are teleported from their natural habitat into other areas by some sort of portal. Go figure. Interesting that the teleportation only seems to target kangaroos in Australia. This idea has no basis in scientific fact as we know it at this time and is complete conjecture. I am not even ready to entertain it as a possibility at this time. Might as well say they hitched a ride with aliens. There are many other mundane possibilities for the kangaroos to be there.
Yes, I suppose there could be knagaroo-like simians, and I wouldn’t rule out some sort of convergent evolution leading to a creature to adapt similar traits. But the kangaroo reports are very specific. The witnesses are simply reporting a kangaroo, albeit an out of place one. With these reports, I see know reason to try and jump to any conclusion that they could be seeing kangaroo-like simians, as there is no evidence to point to that being what they saw. I think if these were creatures like the Jersey Devil, that would be reflected in the reports. For now, if they say they saw a plain old kangaroo, I’d like to look at that explanation.
I also think that yes, the reports of kangaroo-like simians and just kangaroos should probably be treated as separate at this point. Those types of apes could be out there, but so could kangaroos, which is what some people say they saw. The reports seem to warrant being treated as two separate things.
Feral Macropods (kangaroos,wallabies etc.) are actually quite widespread, with seven species in New Zealand, one or two in Hawai’i and several populations of wallaby(forgot the species) in the British isles.I believe there’s also a feral Grey Kangaroo population just outside of Paris.
Here in the US, there are kangaroo tourist traps all over, with Georgia having the largest captive grey kangaroo population outside of Australia.Texas alone is estimated to have well over 50,000 Red Kangaroos kept on game ranches.
It’s not hard to imagine a few individuals escaping and establishing themselves.