Strange ‘Oriental Yeti’ creature found in China’s Sichuan province

Hunters in the Sichuan province of China are reported to have trapped the strange animal in the picture above, but no one seems to know what it might be. The news has dubbed the creature an “Oriental Yeti”.

Hunter Lu Chin spoke about the “yeti’s” behavior to press:

“It looks a bit like a bear but it doesn’t have any fur and it has a tail like a kangaroo.”

“It also does not sound like a bear – it has a voice more like a cat and it is calling all the time – perhaps it is looking for the rest of its kind or maybe it’s the last one?

“There are local legends of a bear that used to be a man and some people think that’s what we caught.”

The Oriental Yeti is now en route to Beijing so scientists can DNA test it and try to determine its origin.

Are there giant cats roaming the Australian bush?

 One of the great mysteries of the Australian bush concerns the reported sightings of big cats usually described as pumas or black panthers. In north-eastern NSW stories of the "Tyagarah Lion" have been passed down over the years. Local resident David saw one bounding along the side of the road and reported "This was along the Old Tyagarah Straight in about 1979, and I' ve never forgotten it."

Neil saw an animal that he could not identify in June 2003 while driving to Rosebank from Clunes at 8.30 pm. Two km to the south-west of the general store he and a friend saw in the car headlights an unusual animal cross the road 6 to 12 metres in front of them. It had a feline-like face and a long body and tail, from snout to tail tip at least one and a half metre in length, covered with yellow tawney fur.

There have been over one thousand reports of sightings in every state received by researchers, several have been photographed or videoed and at least two have been shot. Retired businessman Dale O'Sullivan unveiled to the media a stuffed puma in October 2003, which he said was shot by his father at their Woodend cattle stud property in Victoria the 1960s. The puma was stuffed and stored in a back room and forgotten about for nearly half a century.

Many of the forestry workers, working around the Grampian mountain range in Victoria, the Hamilton Mayor, the Superintendent and some of the staff of the Hamilton Water Trust had all had close encounters with brown and black pumas. Farmers have photos of sheep carcases hanging in gum trees or lying on the ground stripped of flesh. The only problem is that black pumas are unknown as specimens in museums or zoos. However, there have been many unconfirmed sightings of black pumas in North America. It is possible that if pumas are reduced to very few individuals then the inbreeding will produce a melanistic colour phase.

Reports have been received from Australian military personal at bases across the nation during WWII that pumas were kept at several bases and that US airmen used a compartment in Vultee Vengeance dive bombers to smuggle the cats into Australia. Brown and black pumas have been regularly sighted at Cordering in south-west Western Australia, Darwin, Cape York, the New England Tablelands, the Blue Mountains near Sydney and in Gippsland.





Mr Kurt Engel, a 67-year-old retired engineer of Noble Park, Victoria shot a panther-sized black cat while hunting deer in rugged terrain near Sale, Gippsland in June 2003. "He came straight towards me. I saw his teeth and white eyes. I was only about 80 yards away. I pulled up the rifle and at that moment it turned to the left. He was making long jumps. On about the third jump I shot him. The bullet entered behind the cat's shoulder and blew its head off," he said.

unidentified tracks

In November 2003 a NSW State Government inquiry found it is "more likely than not" a colony of "big cats" is roaming Sydney's outskirts and beyond. The revelations were the result of a four-month investigation into the "black panther phenomenon" which for years has plagued residents across Sydney's west, north-west, Richmond, the Blue Mountains and Lithgow. While National Parks and Wildlife officials are yet to implement a positive course of action, a senior source confirmed a big cat expert had been contacted with a view to future work.

unidentified tracks 2

In May 2001, a successful Freedom of Information request revealed the NSW Government had been maintaining a secret file on the creature. It also revealed wildlife hierarchy were so concerned about the potential threat to humans that they commissioned big cat expert Dr Johannes Bauer to evaluate what had previously been deemed unthinkable. He concluded: "Difficult as it seems to accept, the most likely explanation of the evidence... is the presence of a large feline predator."



The Black Panther of Emmaville and Torrington

Emmaville & Torrington are located in the Tablelands 39 km north of Glen Innes, 662 km north-north-east of Sydney .

One sighting was by a local resident and his wife while driving into town. It was on the road, right in front of them. They described it as being "brown/ black, almost 3 or 4 feet high with a huge head and thick legs and with tapered off hindquarters, like something a child would draw, slightly out of proportion"

Some residents in the area north of Torrington, when camping in an old shearing shed during 1969, heard terrible growling and "pig squealing" noises at night. Large cat footprints in the sand and the remains of kangaroos freshly killed and eaten, with the bones having been crushed with remarkable force, were found the next morning.

kangaroo carcass lodged in a tree

During the same year another couple in this area heard terrible growling noises outside their house. Their little dog was normally very keen on going hunting, but this night, "she had the wind up and all her bristles up, but she wouldn't go outside".

Sheep have been reported being killed and one report was of a horse that had died after having its neck ripped open. Another incident was of a domestic dog that had been killed while chained in its kennel.

When Kenthurst teenager Luke Walker suffered deep cuts in March 2003 and said they were the result of a terrifying struggle with a panther-like cat, the NSW Government reopened the case. A report compiled by NSW Agriculture included a review of sightings and extensive interviews with residents of Grose Vale, where the creature has frequently been sighted. It found that recent witnesses to big cat activity in NSW were highly credible.

Also taken into consideration was a previous report by Dr Keith Hart, district veterinarian of the Moss Vale Rural Lands Protection Board, who, after testing scat samples, concluded a large cat was living in the Grose Vale area. The report said, "Nothing found in this review conclusively proves the presence of free-ranging exotic large cats in NSW, but this cannot be discounted and seems more likely than not on available evidence."

One theory the report refused to dismiss was that "historically, sightings in Eastern Australia occur in old gold mining areas and that anecdotal evidence suggests pumas (Puma concolor) were brought to Australia by American goldminers in the 1850s. The report added, "These animals may have subsequently escaped or were released, causing numerous sightings over many years."

It seems unlikely that any of these animals are black panthers, which are a melanistic colour phase of the leopard. It is more likely that we have American mountain lions running wild and perhaps giant black feral cats as well. It looks like there really is a breeding population of big cats now stalking the Australian bush.


Another large predator?

The above video was taken by Mr. Steve Rushton in 1994 in the Charleville region. It appears to be of a creature which is neither cat nor dog.

You can see in the second photograph that the creature has a stiff marsupial type tail. There is absolutely no curve to the tail and no lateral flexibility, which would tend to indicate that it may well be an Australian Marsupial.

The Thylacine or 'Tasmanian Tiger' - Native Australian marsupial dog

The Thylacine (binomial name: Thylacinus cynocephalus; Greek for "dog-headed pouched one") was the largest known carnivorous marsupial of modern times. It is commonly known as the Tasmanian Tiger (because of its striped back), the Tasmanian Wolf, and colloquially the Tassie (or Tazzy) Tiger or simply the Tiger.

Native to continental Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea, it is thought to have become extinct in the 20th century. It was the last extant member of its genus, Thylacinus, although several related species have been found in the fossil record dating back to the early Miocene.

The Thylacine had largely become extremely rare or extinct on the Australian mainland before European settlement of the continent, but it survived on the island state of Tasmania along with several other endemic species, including the Tasmanian Devil.

Intensive hunting encouraged by bounties is generally blamed for its extinction, but other contributory factors may have been disease, the introduction of dogs, and human encroachment into its habitat. Despite its official classification as extinct, sightings are still reported, though none proven.



Like the tigers and wolves of the Northern Hemisphere, from which it obtained two of its common names, the Thylacine was an apex predator. As a marsupial, it was not closely related to these placental mammals, but because of convergent evolution it displayed the same general form and adaptations. Its closest living relative is thought to be either the Tasmanian Devil or Numbat.

The Thylacine was one of only two marsupials to have a pouch in both sexes (the other being the Water Opossum). The male Thylacine had a pouch that acted as a protective sheath, protecting the male's external reproductive organs while running through thick brush.





Extinction in Tasmania

Although the Thylacine had been close to extinction on mainland Australia by the time of European settlement, and went extinct some time in the nineteenth century, it survived into the 1930s on the island state of Tasmania. At the time of the first settlement, the heaviest distributions were in the northeast, northwest and north-midland regions of the state.

They were rarely sighted during this time but slowly began to be credited with numerous attacks on sheep. This led to the establishment of bounty schemes in an attempt to control their numbers. The Van Diemen's Land Company introduced bounties on the Thylacine from as early as 1830, and between 1888 and 1909 the Tasmanian government paid £1 per head for dead adult Thylacines and ten shillings for pups. In all they paid out 2,184 bounties, but it is thought that many more Thylacines were killed than were claimed for.

Its extinction is popularly attributed to these relentless efforts by farmers and bounty hunters. However, it is likely that multiple factors led to its decline and eventual extinction, including competition with wild dogs introduced by European settlers, erosion of its habitat, the concurrent extinction of prey species, and a distemper-like disease that also affected many captive specimens at the time.



Whatever the reason, the animal had become extremely rare in the wild by the late 1920s. Despite the fact that the Thylacine was believed by many to be responsible for attacks on sheep, several efforts were made to save the species from extinction. Records of the Wilsons Promontory management committee dating to 1908 included recommendations for Thylacines to be reintroduced to several suitable locations on the Victorian mainland.

In 1928, the Tasmanian Advisory Committee for Native Fauna had recommended a reserve to protect any remaining Thylacines, with potential sites of suitable habitat including the Arthur-Pieman area of western Tasmania.

In 1930 Wilf Batty, a farmer, killed the last known wild Thylacine in Mawbanna, in the northeast of the state. The animal, believed to have been a male, had been seen around Batty's house for several weeks.


"Benjamin" and searches

The last known Thylacine photographed at Hobart (formerly Beaumaris) Zoo in 1933. A scrotal sac is not visible in this or any other of the photos or film taken, leading to the supposition that "Benjamin" was a female, but the existence of a scrotal pouch in the Thylacine makes it impossible to be certain.

The last captive Thylacine, later referred to as "Benjamin" (although its sex has never been confirmed) was captured in 1933 and sent to the Hobart Zoo where it lived for three years. Frank Darby, who claimed to have been a keeper at Hobart Zoo, suggested "Benjamin" as having been the animal's pet name in a newspaper article of May 1968.

However, no documentation exists to suggest that it ever had a pet name, and Alison Reid (de facto curator at the zoo) and Michael Sharland (publicist for the zoo) denied that Frank Darby had ever worked at the zoo or that the name Benjamin was ever used for the animal. Darby also appears to be the source for the claim that the last Thylacine was a male; photographic evidence suggests it was female. This Thylacine died on 7 September 1936.

It is believed to have died as the result of neglect—locked out of its sheltered sleeping quarters, it was exposed to a rare occurrence of extreme Tasmanian weather: extreme heat during the day and freezing temperatures at night. This Thylacine features in the last known motion picture footage of a living specimen: 62 seconds of black-and-white footage showing it pacing backwards and forwards in its enclosure in a clip taken in 1933 by naturalist David Fleay.

National Threatened Species Day has been held annually since 1996 on 7 September in Australia, to commemorate the death of the last officially recorded Thylacine.

Although there had been a conservation movement pressing for the Thylacine's protection since 1901, driven in part by the increasing difficulty in obtaining specimens for overseas collections, political difficulties prevented any form of protection coming into force until 1936. Official protection of the species by the Tasmanian government was introduced on 10 July 1936, 59 days before the last known specimen died in captivity.

The results of subsequent searches indicated a strong possibility of the survival of the species in Tasmania into the 1960s. Searches by Dr. Eric Guiler and David Fleay in the northwest of Tasmania found footprints and scats that may have belonged to the animal, heard vocalisations matching the description of those of the Thylacine, and collected anecdotal evidence from people reported to have sighted the animal. Despite the searches, no conclusive evidence was found to point to its continued existence in the wild.

The Thylacine held the status of endangered species until 1986. International standards state that any animal for which no specimens have been recorded for 50 years is to be declared extinct. Since no definitive proof of the Thylacine's existence had been found since "Benjamin" died in 1936, it met that official criterion and was declared officially extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is more cautious, listing it as "possibly extinct".

Unconfirmed sightings

The Australian Rare Fauna Research Association reports having 3,800 sightings on file from mainland Australia since the 1936 extinction date, while the Mystery Animal Research Centre of Australia recorded 138 up to 1998, and the Department of Conservation and Land Management recorded 65 in Western Australia over the same period.

Independent Thylacine researchers Buck and Joan Emburg of Tasmania report 360 Tasmanian and 269 mainland post-extinction 20th century sightings, figures compiled from a number of sources. On the mainland, sightings are most frequently reported in Southern Victoria.

Some sightings have generated a large amount of publicity. In 1973, Gary and Liz Doyle shot ten seconds of 8mm film showing an unidentified animal running across a South Australia road. However, attempts to positively identify the creature as a thylacine have been impossible due to the poor quality of the film.

In 1982 a researcher with the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service, Hans Naarding, observed what he believed to be a Thylacine for three minutes during the night at a site near Arthur River in northwestern Tasmania. The sighting led to an extensive year-long government-funded search.

In January 1995, a Parks and Wildlife officer reported observing a Thylacine in the Pyengana region of northeastern Tasmania in the early hours of the morning. Later searches revealed no trace of the animal.

In 1997, it was reported that locals and missionaries near Mount Carstensz in Western New Guinea had sighted Thylacines. The locals had apparently known about them for many years but had not made an official report. In February 2005 Klaus Emmerichs, a German tourist, claimed to have taken digital photographs of a Thylacine he saw near the Lake St Clair National Park, but the authenticity of the photographs has not been established.

The photos were not published until April 2006, fourteen months after the sighting. The photographs, which showed only the back of the animal, were said by those who studied them to be inconclusive as evidence of the Thylacine's continued existence.




In late 2002 researchers had some success in extracting replicable DNA from the specimens. On February 15 2005, the museum announced that it was stopping the project after tests showed the DNA retrieved from the specimens had been too badly degraded to be usable. In May 2005, Professor Michael Archer, the University of New South Wales Dean of Science, announced that the project was being restarted by a group of interested universities and a research institute.

In what they describe as a world first, researchers from Australian and U.S. universities extracted a gene from a preserved specimen of the doglike marsupial, and revived it in a mouse embryo.

In 2008 researchers Andrew J. Pask and Marilyn B. Renfree from the University of Melbourne and Richard R. Behringer from the University of Texas reported that they managed to restore functionality of a gene Col2A1 enhancer obtained from 100 year-old ethanol-fixed thylacine tissues from museum collections. The research enhanced hopes to eventually restore the population of thylacines.

That same year, another group of researchers successfully sequenced the complete thylacine mitochondrial genome from 2 museum specimens. Their success suggests that it is feasible to sequence the complete thylacine nuclear genome from museum specimens, and their results were published in the journal Genome Research in 2009.

The International Thylacine Specimen Database was completed in April 2005 and is the culmination of a 4-year research project to catalog and digitally photograph all known surviving Thylacine specimen material held within museum, university and private collections.

 Above and below, a Thylacine family

 Stuffed specimen at National Museum of Australia in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory.

 Possible Aboriginal cave painting of a Thylacine and its cub in the Pilbara region of Western Australia dating back 6,000 years.

 One of only 2 known photos of a Thylacine with a distended pouch, bearing young, Adelaide Zoo, 1889.

Thylacine stripes

 

Mexican police ask spirits to guard them in drug war

In secret meetings that draw on elements of Haitian Voodoo, Cuban Santeria and Mexican witchcraft, priests are slaughtering chickens on full moon nights on beaches, smearing police with the blood and using prayers to evoke spirits to guard them as drug cartels battle over smuggling routes into California.

Other police in the city of Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, tattoo their bodies with Voodoo symbols, believing they can repel bullets.

"Sometimes a man needs another type of faith," said former Tijuana policeman Marcos, who left the city force a year ago after surviving a drug gang attack. "I was saved when they killed two of my mates. I know why I didn't die."

Violence has exploded along the U.S. border since President Felipe Calderon set the army on drug cartels in late 2006. Turf wars have killed 19,000 people across Mexico over three years.

Badly-paid Mexican police have long prayed to Christian saints before going out on patrol in Mexico, the world's second-most populous Roman Catholic country after Brazil.

Cops are part of a messy war between rival trafficking gangs and the army as cartels infiltrate police forces, offering officers cash to work and even murder for them or a bullet if they say no. More than 150 police are among those killed in Tijuana and the surrounding Baja California state since 2007.

Army raids on homes of police working for cartels have found ornately adorned Santeria-type altars covered with statues and skulls stuffed with money paying homage to gods and spirits.

"We all know that guns and body armor are useless against the cartels because they are well-armed and can attack any time. But this is something we can believe in, that really works," said a Tijuana-based policeman called Daniel.


BLACK MAGIC

A battle between top drug lord fugitive Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman and the local Arellano Felix drug clan has wrecked tourism in Tijuana and shuttered manufacturing businesses.

Small groups of police in the city started turning to strange rituals about 18 months ago, a practice spotted when municipal cleaners found a trail of dead chickens on beaches.

Priests and police say the animal sacrifices release life to rejuvenate spirits that will shield officers against hitmen. They believe the effects are intensified on full moon nights.

Many police see a need to shield themselves from witchcraft used by drug gangs who mix Caribbean black magic and occultism from southern Mexico using things like human bones, dead bats and snake fangs to curse enemies and unleash evil spirits.

Others worship the Mexican cult of "Saint Death", a skeletal grim reaper draped in white and carrying a scythe.

The rituals are carried out by sometimes shadowy Mexicans who have menial day jobs and are priests by night. They claim to be trained in Voodoo, Santeria and other religions from time spent in the Caribbean and in Mexican towns like Catemaco, a center for witchcraft on the Gulf of Mexico.

Police have the quiet support of their superiors.

"We know some agents use charms, saints and other methods for their protection," said Baja California federal police chief Elias Alvarez. "They look for something to believe in."

Mexico's often poorly armed police are intimidated by hitmen with automatic rifles, grenades and rocket launchers and despite low wages of around $300 a month some pay up to $160 for a tattoo of a Voodoo spirit like the three-horned Bosou Koblamin who protects his followers when they travel at night.

On the trail of the Skunk Ape, mystery ape of the Everglades

The Skunk Ape is a hominid cryptid said to inhabit the Southeastern United States, from places such as Oklahoma, North Carolina and Arkansas, although reports from the Florida Everglades are particularly common. It is named for its appearance and for the unpleasant odor that is said to accompany it.

According to the United States National Park Service, the skunk ape exists only as a local myth. Reports of the Skunk ape were particularly common in the 1960s and 1970s. In the fall of 1974, numerous sightings were reported in suburban neighborhoods of Dade County, Florida, of a large, foul-smelling, hairy, ape-like creature, which ran upright on two legs.

In 2000, two photographs of an alleged ape, said to be the Skunk Ape, were taken anonymously and mailed to the Sarasota Sheriff's Department in Florida. They were accompanied by a letter from a woman claiming to have photographed it on the edge of her backyard.

The photographer claimed that on three different nights the ape had entered her yard to take apples from a bushel basket on her porch. She was convinced it was an escaped orangutan. The police were dispatched to the house numerous times but when they arrived the Skunk Ape, also known as the stink ape was gone. The pictures have become known to Bigfoot enthusiasts as the "skunk ape photos".

The photographer still has not been identified. So although the photos are compelling and Coleman does not think they are part of a hoax, they still are not proof positive.

Loren Coleman is the primary researcher on the Myakka photographs, having helped track down the two photographs to an "Eckerd photo lab at the intersection of Fruitville and Tuttle Roads" in Sarasota County, Florida.

N AUGUST, 2004, Jennifer Ward was driving on a rural road in Southern Florida. She had just been visiting a friend and, as the sun was setting, she was now on her way home with her two daughters asleep in the back seat.

Something on the side of the road caught her attention. She suspected it was an animal of some kind, but could not tell what. She slowed the car to a crawl to get a better look. It appeared to be crouched in a ditch on the roadside. It was something large. Something she had never seen before.

As she neared it, the creature noticed her and stood to its full height – on two legs. It was the last thing Jennifer expected to see. “When he saw me, he was as surprised as I was,” she told the Sun-Sentinal. “I didn't stop because I was scared. It was almost dark, but I could see it and get a good look.”

What Jennifer described was a mysterious creature that has been seen in virtually every state of the Union, but has never been scientifically classified. It stood six to eight feet tall, she reported, and was covered in dark hair about two inches long. The area around its eyes was whitish and its full lips had the color and texture of the pad on a dog’s paw.


The Skunk Ape is thought to dwell in Florida’s swamps and Everglades. Researchers suspect that the individual Jennifer encountered may have been displaced by Hurricane Charley, which recently had ravaged the area.

Despite the number of sightings – the largest number of Bigfoot-type sightings outside the Pacific Northwest where Sasquatch resides – the rangers who regularly patrol the large nature preserves are skeptical about the existence of the Skunk Ape. So far, no rangers have officially reported any sightings.

David Shealy, a Skunk Ape researcher and lifetime resident of the Everglades thinks otherwise. He believes he has evidence in the form of a plaster cast of a large Skunk Ape footprint and a reddish hair sample that was found in a broken branch seven feet above the ground. Shealy also runs a small roadside “zoo” and a gift shop stocked with Skunk Ape memorabilia, so he may have a vested interest in keeping the creature alive in the minds of the public.


There was a wave of sightings in the 1970s, all consistently describing the animal as reaching about seven feet tall, weighing about 300 pounds or more, and to be foul-smelling. (Although Bigfoot or Sasquatch is also said to be bad-smelling, the Skunk Ape’s odor is particularly offensive.)

Sightings became scarcer over the following 30 years and then escalated again in the 2000s, with most sightings coming out of the Ochopee area. A group of people taking a guided tour of a swamp area claimed to have seen a large, hairy ape-like creature walking along the banks of the swamp.

Soon after, a local fire chief named Vince Doerr said he saw it crossing a road near his home, and before it disappeared into the swamp, he managed to snap a photo of it. Because the creature is some distance away in the photo, it is considered interesting but not conclusive evidence. In fact, Doerr himself later stated that he suspected it was just someone in a gorilla suit.

Jennifer Ward’s account of her sighting is also highly compelling, and adds yet another piece in the hairy hominid puzzle.