The alligator gar- an explanation for some river/lake monster sightings ?

The alligator gar is a carnivorous fish with an average lifespan of females of the species 50 years, males 26 years and it can measure up to 10 ft (3 m) and weigh up to 300 lbs (140 kg). Could this be the explanation for some river/ lake monster sightings?

Lacepede first described the alligator gar in 1803. The original name was Lepisosteus spatula and later changed by Wiley in 1976 to Atractosteus spatula

The alligator Gar is usually described as olive green or yellow with a white underneath and with diamond shaped scales on a cylindrical body .It has a wide, alligator-like snout full of sharp teeth which is probably what gave the species its name. It s front end looks like an alligator, the back end like a serpent or eel. A joint behind the head allows these creatures to make nodding head movements. The anal and dorsal fins of the fish are located towards the rear and are nearly opposite to each other. The fish's eggs are poisonous to humans if ingested. When an Alligator Gar leaps out of the water it will often make a loud grunt noise as the air in its air bladder is forced out. Then it inhales making a rasping sound. These sorts of noises are often reported in lake/ river monster encounters. They have few natural predators once they reach adulthood.

They inhabit waters from Texas and Oklahoma, to the Mississippi River Basin and the lower Ohio and Missouri river systems, and into Mexico. Their habitat includes lakes, bayous, and bays and they are able to tolerate brackish and even salt water., The only reports of attacks on humans have been few and tend to be either a child dangling it’s feet in the water or a fisherman landing one in their boat that was still alive. On record there are two attacks on youngsters dangling their feet in the water around the Lake Charles area ,one from the 1920s. It is probable the gar mistook them for a waterfowl splashing or a fish.

Story of a 8’10” gar caught by two fishermen plus more pics.:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/hunting/alligatorgar.asp

The gar would certainly b e a n explanation for some crocodilian type sightings in the states where it lives and it’s description could be that of a lake creature. I think it is certainly an explanation for some sightings but not all as an experienced fisherman would recognise the gar. They are apparently good to eat but the scales are very difficult to remove. Due to overfishing they are protected in some states. Their long life and fairly solitary existence would tally again with some sightings. So worth a thought when you read about new sightings…could it be an alligator gar and not an unknown species?

News of a giant Black Boa or is it a Minhocao?

AH Juan Pablo Event November 2009, Iquitos, Peru

This news was received from our friend and co-researcher in the Amazon on the Friday 13th November! We sent him in the next day to get first hand photos and eye-witness accounts of the event from the locals in the settlement of AH Juan Pablo on the edge of the jungle city of Iquitos (where our expedition base was in March 2009).

This event took place only 1.3KM from the Moronococha event which we reported in June 2009 where a giant black boa dragged a floating island across a lake to destroy a house (on stilts).This gives the evidence provenance. The Moronocha account can be found further down this page.

We have already published our connection between the Sachamama (mother of the earth), Yacumama (mother of the water) and the Minhocao (S. American Cryptid) stating that we believe these all to be the same animal, a giant black snake, known for its burrowing behaviour and propensity to leave large channels and trenches in its habitat.

It turned out that the photographers from El Popular newspaper went in the day of the event (Monday, 9th November) and we were able to obtain their photos and add them to those we commissioned privately 3 days later on Monday 16th November.

We believe that this is the first time that a Minhocao 'trench' has been photographed and released to the world!

Go here to read more and see pics: http://www.bigsnakes.net/Research.htm

Thailand lake home of giant fish

Lake Full of Giants

Many fish from other tropical countries thrive in Thai lakes, and in recent years the country has become a breeding center for exotic species. Lake Monster's owner, Ittiporn Parnitpechedpong, says he began stocking it two years ago so his friends could fish for fun. But what started as a hobby has grown into an increasingly lucrative business. "People want to come and fish for these big fish, especially because many of these exotic species are new for Asia," Parnitpechedpong said. Lake Monster is now a haven for the Mekong giant catfish, a Southeast Asian beast that has seen its wild population drop by about 95 percent over the past century. At 9 feet (2.7 meters) long and 646 pounds (293 kilograms), a Mekong giant catfish currently holds the record for the largest freshwater fish ever caught (see photos). Lake Monster also hosts alligator gar, which can grow as long as 10 feet (3 meters) and weigh 300 pounds (135 kilograms). These North American giants are not listed as endangered, but habitat loss and overfishing have taken a toll on the species' preferred spawning habitats, contributing to significant population declines. Conservationists are also concerned about another giant inhabitant of Lake Monster, the arapaima, which is becoming increasingly rare in its native Amazonian habitat.

Arapaima can grow more than 10 feet (3 meters) long and 400 pounds (180 kilograms). As an air breather, the species is vulnerable to hunters with harpoons when it surfaces for air every 10 to 20 minutes.

Source with pics and more info:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/07/080715-monster-fish_2.html

news of bigfoot tracks found

SAN ANTONIO -- Experts are now investigating reported sightings of a large, hairy, 'Bigfoot-type' creature on the West Side. Police said the 'Bigfoot-type' creature was spotted in the area around Highway 151 and Loop 1604. A caller told police a large, tall, hairy creature dragged a deer carcass into the woods. Officers searched the area, but said they did not find anything. "If one sighting is real, then that means something is out there," said Rick Tullos, who is a member of the Gulf Coast Bigfoot Research Organization. Tullos has traveled around the country to investigate sightings and is now checking out the latest report in the San Antonio area. "We look for an area where the fence has been bent down," Tullos explained. "Or maybe evidence of some hairs caught in some of the barbs of the fence." News 4 WOAI's crew looked around the area with Tullos and didn't find anything at first. But a short time later, a set of tracks was spotted that Tullos said did not look like those that would be made by a human. Tullos said he will have to analyze the tracks and, hopefully, find more evidence of what may have been in the woods. Tullos told News WOAI there have been a handful of sightings on the Far West Side, including out near Lackland Air Force Base and in other wooded areas near Highway 151 several years back.

Reported by: Kristina De Leon source:

http://www.woai.com/news/local/story/Update-Tracks-found-in-area-where-Bigfoot-type/y2q5CwG2O0-ZmMjICO2tDQ.cspx

Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs sightings 35 years later

A report 35 years later of a prehistoric bird sighting:

LONG BEACH, Calif./EWORLDWIRE/June 8, 2007 - A psychologist at a university in Central China asserts that he saw, in 1971, a prehistoric-looking creature flying in Papua New Guinea. Brian Hennessy of the Chongqing University of Medical Sciences described the creature as black or dark brown with a "longish narrow tail" and a beak that was "indistinguishable from the head." In the daylight of an early morning on Bougainville Island, on a dirt road that led down to the coast, Hennessy heard a slow "flapping" and looked up to see a "very big" creature with a "horn" at the back of its head. There was "not a feather in sight." After thirty-five years, in the summer of 2006, a friend of Hennessy referred him to the American, Jonathan Whitcomb, author of the book "Searching for Ropens," who interviewed him. The eyewitness account was added to the second edition of the book, which was published on May 30, 2007. Until 2006, Hennessy had been unaware of cryptozoological expeditions related to what he had seen. (Whitcomb's book tells how, in the 1990's, a few Americans began investigating, in Papua New Guinea, creatures described like living pterosaurs, commonly called, by Americans, "pterodactyls.") Hennessy was also unaware that many natives have names for giant flying creatures: One of those names is "ropen."
The American author noticed similarities between Hennessy's description and that of a creature reported 500 miles to the west, near Finschhafen, Papua New Guinea, twenty-seven years earlier. In 1944, Duane Hodgkinson, now living in Montana, saw a giant "prehistoric" creature flying over a clearing where he and another soldier were standing. Whitcomb had interviewed Hodgkinson in 2004 and realized, two years later, that both the American veteran and the psychologist had seen a dark flying creature with a long tail but no sign of feathers. Both men used the word "prehistoric." In 2006, Whitcomb showed Hennessy a series of sketches for determining the shape of the head, including the beak and the head appendage. (A similar questionnaire had been given to Hodgkinson two years earlier.) Whitcomb then drew a sketch based on Hennessy's answers, and concluded that Hennessy had seen, in 1971, the same type of creature that Hodgkinson had seen in 1944.

Jonathan Whitcomb, the author of Searching for Ropens, and Live Pterosaurs in America, interviewed Hennessy by email in 2006 and made up a composite sketch of the head from the descriptions. Whitcomb said it was very similar to a composite sketch from another interview two years earlier with Duane Hodgkinson who described a "pterodactyl." Hodgkinson talked about the size of the creature he saw saying it was similar in size to that of a "Piper Tri-Pacer airplane" .In the second edition of the book Searching for Ropens, Brian Hennessy was quoted as saying : “It was so unusual. I actually heard it before I saw it. A slow flap . . . flap . . flapping sound. The air was still, and our truck had stopped on our downward journey from the top of the range to the coast way below . . . it was very big (wingspan at least two metres, probably more . . . possibly much, much more). It was black or dark brown. I had never seen anything like it before. . . . I recall seeing this creature with a longish narrow tail . . . the head was disproportionately large compared to the body [no feathers in sight]."

Both the 1944 and 1971 sightings were in daylight and Whitcomb's book asserts that Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs live in Papua New Guinea and that they are larger than the normally discovered Rhamphorhynchoid fossils.

Although I don’t dispute the men saw something , I am not sure that it could the Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs that Whitcomb asserts it is. The world has changed so much that creatures would have had to evolve and would not look exactly the same as the fossil record. Plus bear in mind we can only guess a lot of the time what creatures looked like from fossils. Very few complete skeletons are found and often no tissue so colour and texture is often guesswork. There may be an unknown species of giant bat as some assert or it may be some evolved creature from the past but I doubt it would look exactly like a prehistoric creature after these millions of years. The world has been colder and polluted and the prey that this predator eats would have changed considerably . Prey changes to avoid predator and the predator than has to change. Maybe some more recent sightings will surface that will answer the conundrum.

Did a hairy monster stalk Tazewell County?

I came across this on my daily meander through the internet. So what do you think- was it collective hysteria or did people really see something? Anyone knows anything about this please post a comment. It takes a lot to get 100 armed men together and into the woods to search , if that is true!

Did a hairy monster stalk Tazewell County?[Illinois]

| 06 Nov 2006 | AP Posted on 07 November 2006 02:47:56 by FLOutdoorsman

Thirty-four years ago in Tazewell County, 100 armed men walked the woods around East Peoria's Cole Hollow Road in search of a monster. The search was called off about 7:45 p.m. when one of the men accidentally shot himself in the foot. The creature was never found. The monster hunters were looking for was dubbed the Cohomo Monster, a beast thought to be lurking in Tazewell County in the summer of 1972. James Donahue, Tazewell County Sheriff in 1972, still remembers the infectious hysteria of that summer." At the time it was a very big deal," Donahue recently told the Pekin Daily Times. "Several people indicated they'd seen a monster up in that area. It was described as something like Bigfoot. All the neighbors showed up. We spent a lot of time up there. We never found anything to substantiate the claims. We were up there for a week or two weeks. A lot of volunteer people came out looking for this monster." On Tuesday, July 25, 1972, Creve Coeur authorities reported that a witness saw something big swimming in the Illinois River. The following evening, the Tazewell County Sheriffs Department received a call from a Eureka man who said he and his family were having a birthday party in Fondulac Park in East Peoria. The witness said he and his party saw strange lights come in a vertical position and go down behind some trees. The light allegedly left a vapor or smoke trail. That same night, more than 200 phone calls about monster sightings jammed the switchboard at the East Peoria Police Department. On July 28, a rural Pekin woman reported that she saw Cohomo while picking berries by an old coal mine. The woman told the Tazewell County Sheriff's office she was so scared she ran off, leaving her purse behind. That same night, East Peoria Police said two reliable citizens claimed they saw Cohomo. It was described as 10 feet tall. The creature's face had long, gray U-shaped ears and a red mouth with sharp teeth. The reliable citizens said the creature possessed thumbs with long second joints and looked like a cross between an ape and a cave man. Newspaper articles of the time suggest that Cohomo had a horrible smell, sometimes compared to that of a wet dog, rotten eggs, or as sulphur-like. The Cohomo craze swept over Tazewell County. It's hard to pin down exactly when and where all the excitement over the Cohomo monster started. Old articles found in the Daily Times archives blame a monster called Momo who was first spotted in rural northeastern Missouri a year before the Tazewell County sightings. One of the first Illinois reports came from Randy Emert, then 18, of Peoria, who claimed he spotted some type of hairy creature in the woods near Cole Hollow Road in Tazewell County. Emert said he didn't report seeing the monster at first because he feared people would think him crazy. In 1991, the Peoria Journal Star received a phone call from Emert, who said that he made the whole thing up. Emert told the newspaper that he and his friends made the story up to scare another friend who worked late nights at a gas station. But one remains. If Cohomo was the product of mass hallucination, caused by the sightings of a Missouri monster called Momo, why did only the citizens of Tazewell County invent the elusive beast? And although he has no idea what it may have been, Donahue says he thinks somebody may have seen something.
source: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1733712/post

Take Loch Ness research seriously and stop messing about!

Part of the problem at Loch Ness is it attracts the weird and wonderful which makes serious scientific research more difficult and makes any mention of the creature a reason for sniggers. This is an example from 2008:

French connection tries to make contact with Nessie

Madcap performance artist ‘could feel presence’ of elusive monster after diving into loch

By Neil MacPhail Published: 02/10/2008

A MADCAP Frenchman braved the rain and chilly water of Loch Ness yesterday to strip to his shorts and jump in to say “bonjour” to Nessie. But before plunging in, the eccentric visitor beat a tattoo on his two large kettledrums mounted on the foredeck of a borrowed cabin cruiser and uttered strange incantations in his native tongue. The French connection with Nessie was by Don Jean Habrey, 56, who back home in Paris gives one-man theatre performances and teaches people to breathe properly. The spells and drumming-up of the monster appeared to have done the trick, for, as he emerged shivering with the cold, Mr Habrey announced: “I could feel the presence.” Yesterday’s visit was a trial run for another visit to the loch later this year which, he says, will be a “sacred collision with Nessie”. He is no stranger to cold water, however, having in a previous stunt jumped from a helicopter into the sea off Greenland. He said: “What I would like to do is to provide the children of the Earth whose living conditions are badly endangered by pollution, wars, and violence, with breathing, poetry and imagery.” Mr Habrey, whose performance name is Hors Humain (beyond human) added: “Hors Humain will breathe with the monster to send ultimate breathing to the world of childhood.” The next visit on Christmas Eve promises to be even more dramatic when he plans to conjure Nessie from the loch with chants, drumming, burning flares, and bonfires round the shore. He said: “On December 24, at the stroke of midnight, Nessie is expected to appear amid the black and boiling waters of Loch Ness. “Nessie will breathe golden pearls for all the children from the Earth, this endangered innocence that badly needs air. “A boat equipped with a sound system will air the great organs of Notre Dame de Paris on the waves of the loch and the oratorios by Mozart, Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach will resound, together with the Hors Humain’s chants and kettledrums. “Ghost spirits will attend this poetic mass. They will breathe with Nessie.”

Source:http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/867348

A lot of people who do this sort of thing are publicity seekers and have no thought for what this means for those who study the Loch seriously. I am sure part of the problem at Loch Ness is no one takes it too seriously because of the hoaxes and silly seasons of people casting spells and so forth. I have no objection to their beliefs or their right to do so, but if they did it privately so it did not attract a media circus I would have more respect for them and it would mean other research would get support and funding instead of ridicule. I am all for tourism for the area as it brings in much needed cash to the local economy but this sort of thing simply makes life for serious researchers that much more difficult.