Awash In Yowies Aplenty, Mates!
Posted by: Loren Coleman on January 19th, 2010
This is a recent eyewitness drawing of a Yowie from Australia.
It seems like I’m hearing about a lot of Yowie activity ~ just today.
Darren Naish has a new posting about Yowies.
Various YouTube interviews by Dean Harrison are popping up of Yowie eyewitnesses:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0trl3lexqK0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cajSXVTiB1Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC_6MlYD12c
And, of course, the best reading on the subject continues to be the new classic, The Yowie by Paul Cropper and Tony Healy.
Click on the image above to make the Yowie larger, as seen here on the cover of The Yowie: In Search of Australia’s Bigfoot.
What kind of hominoid is the Yowie?
The creature above is a variety of the Yowie seen with a club, as viewed in Harry Trumbore’s drawing from The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates.
Thanks to news tips from Beth Miller, Darren Naish, Paul Cropper, and others.
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.
Maybe we’re seeing the beiginning of a “Flap” regarding Yowies, Loren??? Maybe??? Would be great if it WAS that…
Stay tuned, I guess…
Enjoyed that. Mr Opit’s video, in particular, is most informative and strikes me as a fairly realistic assessment of the presumed natural history of a very plausible creature and a very good explanation why we shouldn’t really expect them, if they are there, to be easy to find or willing to sit still so that we might observe them at length. We know that primitive people who live in the jungles can make themselves impossible for expeditions to find intentionally, deliberately and dependably unless they want us to. Would we expect a wild H. erectus, if it were to be alive still in some refugia, to be much less capable at applying itself to remaining unseen from ‘others’ who are sort of like it and therefore very dangerous, considering that being a successful hunter living on its physical strenght and what in ourselves we’d call “wits” or “situational awareness” is what it must be all about for a creature such as it might have been for archaic humans. Keeping in mind H. erectus brains from the fossil record show them to be almost as large as humans’ are, and are inturn several times larger than the brain of other presumed intelligent hunting animals famous for their stealth and/or cunning, such as cougars, or tigers, wolves, bears or foxes.
Also enjoyed Darren Naish’s perspectives at the link for Tetrapod Zoology. The comments section there on this subject is characteristically spirited and informative. Cheers
So the Yowies are up to ten feet tall? If they’re ever fully discovered and brought into the mainstream of 21st century life, basketball coaches the world over will be fighting to the death to sign them up.
Would this be a good thing?
Graybear:
That sounds like one of those semi-good Disney Movies of the Week that most of us used to see ages ago. Cool, though I never cared for them myself. Don’t think they play well to day. I can just imagine the title: “Air Yowie,” or something like that. 🙂
“As a result I still think that investigation of subjects like the Yowie is worthwhile, and within the remit of science. Please remember this as you read the following: I’m nowhere near happy with the idea that the Yowie might be real, but – whatever the phenomenon represents – it’s interesting.” – Darren Naish
Could Darren explain what he means by “I’m nowhere near happy with the idea that the Yowie might be real”? Why are you “nowhere near happy”?
Graybear- Should we be asking for a DNA test on Shaq?
I disagree with the assessment that yowie is carnivorous. For the simple fact that there would be a human or two missing at times. And when humans are attacked, we find, categorize, and erase that animal …It would have been discovered by now.
I think the large primates of the world would be herbi-or omnivirous. Sasquatch in the Pac Northwest are now said to follow the berry harvest south-to-north. Surely they would be able to support themselves better, like bears, as an omni-eater.
I’m definitely not a scientist of any kind, but common scents can smell a rat. And a carnivorous (Group name?) sasquatch, yeti, yowie…whatever has Denmark writ large.
I wouldn’t say a flap cryptidsrus…
These aren’t recent videos and most are up to ten years old or more. I guess that should be mentioned so people don’t think there is a sudden rash of yowie sightings and reports.
Those ones with people sharing actual real experiences on video are interesting to watch though.
“This is a recent eyewitness drawing of a Yowie from Australia.” – Loren Coleman
This drawing is from a 1994/95 sighting from Eden, NSW. Hardly recent.
“I’m nowhere near happy with the idea that the Yowie might be real” – Darren Naish
I suspect it is because of the high number of bogus reported encounters and almost complete lack of phsysical evidence. What little evidence there is is suspect or fabricated – like the yowie footprint cast from Harrison’s 2009’s alleged “yowie attack” whose toe impressions match Harrison’s own.
That is why Harrison is desperately releasing material via YouTube but all of it is largely out of context and with few, if any, supporting details. Alas, the damage to his reputation has already been done.
Do people who hoax yowie encounters and evidence have legitimate yowie experiences? Can hoaxers be trusted to accurately record the details of other people’s alleged encounters?
Don’t be fooled, people – some prominent yowie researchers are among the most prolific hoaxers.
“I disagree with the assessment that yowie is carnivorous. For the simple fact that there would be a human or two missing at times. And when humans are attacked, we find, categorize, and erase that animal …It would have been discovered by now.”
I’m confused that this kind of assumption keeps finding its way into the cryptid discussion, as simple logic clearly disputes it.
How can something “have been discovered by now” when every observation is discounted, without even cursory review, as a mistake? A human or two DOES go missing at times, every place in this world that is wild. In many if not most cases, no trace is ever found…and everything BUT a cryptid is postulated as the cause, whether or not there is any evidence.
Here, try this on. Someone is missing; no trace is found for weeks. Here’s the speculation: maybe he drowned. Maybe he starved to death, well off trail. Maybe a croc got him. Maybe a yowie …
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How in the WORLD are you going to trace a predator that no one will entertain the possibility even exists?
Answer: YOU WILL NOT.
You will simply say something else did it…EVEN IF THE EVIDENCE POINTS AWAY FROM THAT SOMETHING.
No, you WILL. Large humanlike footprints? Oh, that must be a bear. In Oz???? Well, maybe it’s a bear that escaped from a circus. No circus missing a bear? They’re obviously lying. Or maybe this guy was killed by a huge, barefooted vagrant. Days away from a road.
This is what has always happened with cryptid evidence. Loony explanations are accepted out of hand, as long as the agent is something mundane. (See: conga lines of otters.) If a predatory primate is a possibility at all – and the evidence says it is – than it is EQUALLY likely as an answer to any unanswered disappearance for which no evidence points to a cause.
If you dispute this, re-take Logic 101.
We erase animals when we have evidence for what did it. And we frequently erase animals just to feel good that we did something, when we have no idea what did it. And we have been – times beyond counting – wrong, demonstrably, in the animal(s) we erased.
“Recent” is a term that must be taken in relative context to the broad-based historical accounts that exist for Yowie sightings. Of course, I meant “recent” versus some 18th or 19th century rendering. In my span of 50 years of investigating cryptozoology, ha ha, something that happened in the mid-1990s is pretty recent to me, mate.
Seriously, DWA – The yowie did it? That would surely revolutionalise the way police search for missing persons.
The question has to be raised – What yowie evidence?
There is plenty of fabricated and suspect evidence but still nothing concrete on our Hairy Man. Sticks in formation, sticks leaning against trees, broken foliage, bark missing from trees, rock cairns, feelings of being watched, indistinct footfalls in a forest – these are things which pass for evidence within “yowie research”. In the absence of actual physical evidence people are encouraged to grasp at straws. It is simply promoting self-delusion.
Logic 101 indeed!
I would suggest OzCrypto you are mixing up poof and evidence. The type of evidence you probably need is of the conclusive physical type. It either has not been found with the yowie or has not been identified. The type of evidence which would give the yowie a latin name and could be put in a case in a museum having been signed sealed and certified and respected anywhere in the world.
Eyewitness experience is not quite in that category usually having more localised validity and related to local experience and knowledge. Eyewitness accounts are still valuable and at the least mean there is a good case for research into the yowie phenomenom with some confidence it is a real creature and at somepoint absolute physical evidence could be obtained.
Apart from eyewitness accounts there is a whole matrix of imformation and context of different sorts which support the reality of the yowie. It still remains a hugh and interesting mystery and one which conventional scientists have some difficulty in dealing with until they are forced to!
I think if the evidence for the yowie is looked at objectively it would be a form of self delusion not to appreciate that there is a significant probability a real creature is involved and a real opportunity to find something wonderful!
The stick business you mentioned is an area that may well have some basis in fact and would be pretty clear to someone like a bushman or traditional aboriginee but naturally could be wishfull thinking on the part of non-experts and easily ridiculed ,like a lot of this type of evidence discretion is needed and value given to it when it seems appropriate.
In my opinion yowies may well be resposible for human disappearances and I think there are historical reports. Clearly however as you perhaps infer the police are not likely to put any disappearance down to this cause whatever a bushwise policeman may think.
proof!
Norman-UK – you seem to be overlooking the long tradition of story-telling and pranking in relation to the yowie. How is it possible to differentiate between the testimony of a potentially authentic sighting with that of someone who is engaged in some leg-pulling? Both can be equally convincing. As for evidence – there is much more evidence of hoaxing than of an actual biological creature yet most seem to ignore that inconvenient detail.
Could you explain further about “whole matrix of information and context of different sorts which support the reality of the yowie”. Why is it that yowie-suspicious events like rock throwing, wood knocking, and rock clacking have only recently been reported (within the last 10-15 years), only after becoming a popular feature in many North American Bigfoot reports, and are only reported by “yowie researchers”? If such events are genuinely occurring then they should also be mentioned in the forums of scouts, bush-walkers, prospectors, campers, etc. Such people spend a lot of time in the bush, would be curious about what could be causing it, and who would not necessarily associate such things with yowies yet there is no mention.
It should be noted that quite a few “yowie researchers” have more of an interest in perpetuating the yowie folklore (and their own place within it) than of collecting and analysing potential evidence and data. Hence the vagueness and lack of detail in many reports and in their own alleged (and often dramatic) encounters.
Could you also provide any information about any historical reports that link the yowie to human disappearances. The ones which I have seen are, at best, from 3rd hand sources with details that vary depending on who is doing the retelling, and have no means of being independently verified.
I agree that the question as to whether the yowie actually exists is an interesting one. Yet the ever-elusive answer is well obscured by the mountains of fiction which surrounds it. This needs to be adequately acknowledged and remedied if we are to make any actual progress.