Posted by: Karl Shuker on December 15th, 2013
Dragons belonging to the wingless but quadrupedal classical category are most closely associated with Europe, but some have been reported far away from that continent.
Read: The Dragons of Oceania »
Posted by: Karl Shuker on December 11th, 2013
In Skåne and Blekinge, the two southernmost provinces of Sweden, a very daunting creature pervades the Season of Goodwill, and its presence is anything but good. Scarcely known outside its Scandinavian provenance, outwardly it resembles a pig, but no ordinary one, for this preternatural entity is in many ways the porcine equivalent of Britain’s phantasmal Black Dogs, and is just as dangerous!
Posted by: Karl Shuker on December 5th, 2013
Sometimes, the most surprising discoveries can be right before our eyes, without even being recognised. Take the remarkable case of the giant pink slugs of remote Mount Kaputar in New South Wales, Australia. (© NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service) Measuring a very sizeable 8 in long, and boasting an extremely bright, fluorescent […]
Posted by: Karl Shuker on December 5th, 2013
Do undiscovered mini-man-beasts inhabit the tiny Indonesian island of Flores? Is a king cheetah depicted in an Indian painting from the Mughal Empire? How can the diversity of lake monsters in Spain be explained? What is the identity of a controversial African ape called the koolookamba?
Posted by: Karl Shuker on November 28th, 2013
Hot on the heels of Mirabilis comes my latest, 20th book – Dragons in Zoology, Cryptozoology, and Culture, newly published by Coachwhip Publications (Greenville, Ohio), just in time for Christmas!
Read: The Dragons Have Landed! My All-New Second Dragons Book is Here! »
Posted by: Karl Shuker on November 22nd, 2013
He was claimed to be the most photographed animal of all time (even appearing on the front cover of dance music duo Basement Jaxx’s album Rooty), and he was indisputably one of the animal kingdom’s greatest, most readily recognisable icons. He died 10 years ago this week. So here is my tribute to Little Snowflake […]
Read: Farewell, Little Snowflake – Ten Years On, My Tribute To The World’s Only White Gorilla »
Posted by: Karl Shuker on November 21st, 2013
One of the world’s most obscure cryptozoological reptiles is the afa – a Middle Eastern mystery lizard briefly reported by explorer Sir Wilfred Thesiger in his book The Marsh Arabs (1964). But what can it be – and does it even still exist today? Further details can be found here on my ShukerNature blog.
Posted by: Karl Shuker on November 7th, 2013
The works of J.R.R. Tolkien contain a number of creatures with some pertinence to cryptozoology, such as giant spiders, dragons, and the dreaded watcher in the water (a monstrous freshwater cephalopod?). Yet perhaps the most unexpected as well as the most fascinating Tolkien reference to a cryptid, which occurs in The Hobbit (1937), is so […]
Posted by: Karl Shuker on October 22nd, 2013
As reported by Heuvelmans, myself, and others, back in 1953 a Tibetan lama called Chemed Rigdzin Dorje Lopu announced that he had personally examined the mummified bodies of two yetis – one at the monastery at Riwoche in the Tibetan province of Kham, the other in the monastery at Sakya, southern Tibet.
According to Heuvelmans’s account of this lama’s very interesting claim:
They were enormous monkeys about 2.40 m high. They had thick flat skulls and their bodies were covered with dark brown hair about 3 to 5 cm long. Their tails were extremely short.Bernard Heuvelmans
Posted by: Karl Shuker on October 10th, 2013
Contrary to the assumption by many aficionados of the Sherlock Holmes stories that it was wholly fictional, there really is a giant rat of Sumatra. But how does this scarcely-known real species compare with its infamous albeit fictitious counterpart? Further details can be found here on my ShukerNature blog.
Read: The Giant Rat of Sumatra – Zoological Fact, Not Sherlock Holmes Fiction »
Posted by: Karl Shuker on October 7th, 2013
Could these cryptozoological creatures possibly be surviving pterosaurs? Read their histories here, and judge for yourself.
Read: I Thought I Saw A Terror Saur! Do Prehistoric Flying Reptiles Still Exist? »
Posted by: Karl Shuker on September 19th, 2013
During the 1920s, Raymond L. Ditmars, Curator of Reptiles at New York’s Bronx Zoo, offered US $1000 to anyone who could provide conclusive evidence for the existence of a snake measuring over 40 ft (12.2 m) long. The prize has never been claimed. Yet there are many extraordinary eyewitness accounts on record asserting that gargantuan […]
Read: Giant Anacondas and Other Super-Sized Cryptozoological Snakes »
Posted by: Karl Shuker on September 15th, 2013
Zoologist, media consultant, and science writer, Dr Karl Shuker, discusses bizarre, anomalous creatures of every conceivable (and inconceivable!) kind– a veritable menagerie of cryptozoological mysteries to dazzle and delight, tantalize and terrify.Coast to Coast AM
Posted by: Karl Shuker on September 5th, 2013
It is well known that one of North America’s most popular legendary icons, the jackalope, originated in traditional lumberjack folklore but was first given a physical reality as recently as the 1930s when the earliest confirmed taxiderm specimen was artfully manufactured from a jack rabbit (technically a species of hare) and some pronghorn antelope horns […]
Read: Horned Hares – A Potted (Or Should That Be Jugged?) History! »
Posted by: Karl Shuker on September 2nd, 2013
The common European adder or viper Vipera berus occasionally produces albinistic and melanistic individuals, due to the expression of certain mutant gene alleles. Of course, these are not separate species, merely genetically-induced morphs of the common adder. As recently as the mid-1800s, however, many natural history tomes were still soberly stating that Britain was also […]
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