Caterpillar Bears, Bulldog Bears, and God Bears – Ursine Cryptids of Kamchatka
Posted by: Karl Shuker on December 10th, 2014
In spring 1987, amid the far northeastern Kamchatka peninsula region of what was then the Soviet Union but is now Russia, hunter Rodion Sivolobov obtained the skin of a giant white bear. To most eyes, it might simply look like the pelt of an over-sized polar bear, but according to Sivolobov, and the area’s local reindeer breeders, it is something very different – and very special. They believe it to be from a huge and extremely distinctive species of bear still awaiting official scientific discovery – a formidable, highly ferocious creature known as the irkuiem (aka irquiem).
Sivilobov may have good reason for being optimistic that the irkuiem’s eventual discovery will prove to be a major cryptozoological triumph – for according to no less august an authority than internationally-esteemed Russian zoologist Prof. Nikolai K. Vereshchagin (d. 2008), this elusive creature could prove to be a surviving representative of one of the Pleistocene’s most impressive mammalian carnivores, the short-faced bear Arctodus simus.
Further details can be accessed here on my ShukerNature blog.
About Karl Shuker
My name is Dr Karl P.N. Shuker. I am a zoologist (BSc & PhD), media consultant, and the author of 25 books and hundreds of articles, specialising in cryptozoology and animal mythology. I have a BSc (Honours) degree in pure zoology from the University of Leeds (U.K.), and a PhD in zoology and comparative physiology from the University of Birmingham (U.K.).
I have acted jointly as consultant and major contributor to three multi-author volumes on cryptozoology and other mysterious phenomena.
I am the Life Sciences Consultant to The Guinness Book of Records/Guinness World Records (Guinness: London, 1997-present day), and was consultant to Monsters (Lorenz Books: London, 2001), as well as a contributor to Mysteries of the Deep (Llewellyn: St Paul, 1998), Guinness Amazing Future (Guinness: London, 1999), The Earth (Channel 4 Books: London, 2000), and Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained (Chambers: London, 2007).
I appear regularly on television & radio, was a consultant for the Discovery TV series Into the Unknown, and a question setter for the BBC's quiz show Mastermind.
I am a Scientific Fellow of the Zoological Society of London, a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, a Member of the Society of Authors, and the Cryptozoology Consultant for the Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ).
I have written articles for numerous publications, including Fortean Times, The X Factor, Paranormal Magazine, FATE, Strange Magazine, Prediction, Beyond, Uri Geller's Encounters, Phenomena, Alien Encounters, Wild About Animals, All About Cats, All About Dogs, Cat World, etc.
In 2005, I was honoured by the naming of a new species of loriciferan invertebrate after me - Pliciloricus shukeri.
