AOL News: Mongolian Death Worm

AOL News picked Easter Sunday to publish their Mongolian Death Worm article. I can’t bear to do that to Cryptomundians, so here it is on Monday morning, for breakfast.

I’m going to pass along the quotation they used from me:

The MDW is dubious enough that cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine, displays a vintage model of Japanese kaiju movie hero Mothra in the larval stage, but labels it as the Mongolian Death Worm. Young kids often ask what the label is doing on Mothra.

Mongo-D “is not a celebrity cryptid like the Loch Ness Monster or Yeti,” Coleman told AOL News. It’s more of a second-tier creature, he said, “not like a unicorn or a centaur, but it’s very much a shadowy folklore creature.”

So why is the worm enjoying a sudden cultural renaissance among couch explorers?

“You could go to Lake Champlain and look for Champ, or you could go look for Bigfoot, but that’s not so exotic,” Coleman said. “These documentary film companies are looking to sell concepts and sell advertising.”

The fact that Genghis Khan Beer is plentiful and costs about $1.15 a large can, or 1,412 Mongolian togrog, probably doesn’t hurt either. Unlike, say, Burton and Speke’s nearly year-long Victorian-era expedition searching for the Nile’s source, reality docu-junkets last a couple of days — hardly time for serious scientific investigation.

Plus, Coleman says, “People are getting bored, and so they like different kinds of cryptids.”

For more, the link to read the rest of the article is here.

Loren Coleman 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.

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