February 14, 2009

Chilean Carcass: Non-Mystery

Incredibly, it seems anyone in the world can find a rotting dead body in that borderland between a rural area and civilization or between water and land, take a photo, and declare it “mysterious,” nowadays.

Perhaps this is a result of all those years of finding dead canids and the media labeling them “Chupacabras” and “Maine Mutants,” or of tripping over beached dead raccoons and seals and seeing them sensationalized as the “Montauk Monster” and the “Croyde Carcass”?

Now there is a new case about another local find, which seems as if will turn out to be nothing unusual. Investigator Javier Ortega emails me that he “came across a TV station report from Chile about a mystery carcass that was found washed ashore in Chile.”

Let me state, I only post about this to hopefully nip it in the bud!

Javier Ortega has passed along his translation of the video:

Husband being interviewed: We were hiking for the day with our kids.
Wife: It has hair, wool, hoofs like a goat and fins.
Husband: We found it, and honestly do not know what it is.
Wife: It has hide like a baboon, wool…

Reporter: A better way of describing the strangeness of this creature does not exist. It has hooves like a goat and arms that arm as long as it’s entire body. At the end of the arms it has a type of fin, that resembles that of a duck’s membrane on it’s feet. It has wool, but also has hair. A jaw that would make you cringe. The find was done by tourists form Iquique Chile that were on a camping trip.

Husband: It’s hind legs are like hooves, while it’s front legs are some type of fin like hands at the end.
Wife: It has a long base on the jaw, with a pronounced row of bottom teeth…it’s like a mixture of different animals in one. It has a lot of different and unusual parts, from the top to the bottom.

Reporter: Upon our reporting, members of the National Agriculture service came to our station to try and figure out exactly what we are looking at.

Marcelo Cortes (Agriculture service director): What we need to do before declaring what the creature is, is to go to where the body was found to get better information. We will have to travel to the location to study it and see if what we are dealing with is a carcass of a local animal or that of some type of extinct creature.

Reporter: The apocalyptic look of this creature was not enough for the members of the National Agriculture service to determine exactly what it is, so they will travel to the location to figure it out with certainty the origin of this strange creature.Source.

“Bipedal”? “Hands like fins”? “Some kind of extinct animal”? “Like a baboon”?

Hey, sorry to mention it, but if it looks like it is attached to the feet of a goat, the animal in question is probably a dead goat.

What these people, including the Ag folks demonstrate, once again, is that most members of the general public (especially tourists in areas they are visiting?) don’t know animals, don’t look at the parts of rotting corpses objectively, and just don’t realize that most places have dead animals (usually dogs and domestic stock) that do die around the landscape.

At least Javier was honest. He admitted in his blog that the only animal knowledge he really has is about dogs and “some turtles.” He came openmindedly to the question, looking for answers.

Too bad the agriculture services guys weren’t as forthright in acknowledging their lack of awareness about what dead domestic animals look like. What is the logic behind giving as one of your options that this carcass might be “some type of extinct creature”? Forgive me, but that’s just unbelievable.

Filed under Artifacts, Breaking News, Chupacabras, Cryptotourism, CryptoZoo News, Evidence, Forensic Science, Television, Videos, Weird Animal News