Giant crab on display

A Japanese spider crab believed to be the biggest seen in Britain has gone on display. Named Crab Kong, he has a claw span of more than 8ft (2.4m), weighs 15kg (33lb) and is 30-40 years old. The male spider crab was caught earlier this month by fishermen in Suruga Bay, south west of Tokyo. The crab is on display at the Weymouth Sea Life Park but will be transferred to a permanent home at a Sea Life centre in Munich, Germany, at Easter.The crabs are commonly found in the Pacific in 1,000 ft (300m) deep waters but have been known to live deeper. Sea Life biologist Robin James, who visited that part of Japan, was contacted by the fishermen."Getting in an animal as impressive as Crab Kong is the aquarium equivalent of signing Ronaldo."Giving people a chance to witness first hand one of the many wonders of the deep oceans helps boost support for marine conservation," he said.In the wild, Japanese spider crabs can achieve a leg-span of over 12ft (3.7m). They can weigh as much as 19kg (41lb) and may live 100 years

Source and see Pic here : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-12462694

I have often wondered if the hilbre creature wasn't a spider crab .washed up   see here :

http://cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.com/2010/06/strange-tale-of-hilbre-creature.html

Ghostly Gecko caught on film....does this have implications for cryptozoology?

In rarely captured footage, a giant "ghostly gecko" has been filmed hunting at night in the wild.The leaf or flat-tailed gecko has a flattened tail, huge head and eyes, a fringe around the body and an uncanny ability to disappear from sight as it camouflages itself against tree trunks. If disturbed the gecko raises its tail and head, opens its mouth and screams. But at night, the hunted becomes the hunter, a behaviour filmed for the BBC documentary Madagascar. Commonly known as the flat-tailed or giant leaf-tailed gecko, Uroplatus fimbriatus lives in tropical rain forest in eastern Madagascar. Large individuals can grow up to 30cm long.

As well as being threatened by habitat destruction, the geckos are sought after for the pet trade, which threatens their survival in the wild. The geckos are nocturnal, so to survive by day they choose a favourite tree, the bark of which most closely matches their skin colour.Fringes of skin around the body then break up the gecko's outline, and as the animal sits motionless for hours on end, it becomes almost invisible against the bark. But as night falls, it is transformed.

Read rest and see video here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9397000/9397503.stm

Looking at these traits in other animals and studying their camouflage, may help in the hunt for cryptids- could this be how Bigfoot is said to disappear for example? It would explain the difficulties in seeing some cryptids or capturing them on film if they can blend into their surroundings. Just a thought for us all to ponder.

Update on the bigfoot hunt

Hundreds hunt for Bigfoot

Sunday, February 13, 2011

By David Freeze
For the Salisbury Post
Michael Greene of Salisbury has attracted a lot of attention in his hunt for Bigfoot.More than 300 people joined Greene and about 10 staff members of the Animal Planet cable-TV channel at the Eldorado Outpost on N.C. 109 near Troy and began a search for signs of the mysterious, perhaps mythical, creature on Saturday.Green was glad to see the crowd.
“Five years ago, I joined the Bigfoot Field Research Organization (BFRO). I was just tired of doing this myself, a little discouraged, and had no one to talk to and share my hobby,” Greene said.
Greene’s interest in Bigfoot began when was working toward a master’s in behavioral psychology. He wrote a thesis on group hysteria, and one of the subjects he studied was Bigfoot.He came to believe that Bigfoot was possibly a real entity, so the reading and investigation began.Greene, now 69 and retired, moved with his wife to Salisbury two years ago. They wanted to be near family and to investigate Bigfoot sightings in the area. North Carolina is a hotbed for sightings, according to BFRO investigators who attended Saturday.
John Pate, Tommy Poland and Olaf Seamen all told of the excitement of the hunt. Seamen drove six hours to join the search in the Uwharries, and he usually spends 10 weekends a year on the hunt.“The more you look at something, the more the book opens up,” Pate said.David Pardue says he has pictures of his own sighting of a family of four Bigfoots. He claims to also possess evidence of territory marking by the creature. Pardue says that Bigfoot often twists a small tree, first one way and then another, laying it down to signify its territory. He says that Bigfoot can change his eyes to red, and makes an audible sound known to the investigators.Since Bigfoot, aka Sasquatch, is nocturnal, most of the serious hunting is done at night.
On Saturday, Bigfoot enthusiasts began to arrive about midday. Most came by car or truck, but there were horses and four-wheelers, too. Even a helicopter, arranged by the Animal Planet crew, flew over the activities.Matt Moneymaker, head of the BFRO, organized a grid search that started in a large hay field and moved into the woods. Television cameras and microphones surrounded the searchers as they looked for elusive clues.Moneymaker instructed searchers to spread out and stay at arm’s length from each other as they formed a long line headed into the woods. He used a bullhorn to instruct everyone to look for hair on trees or barbed wire, nests of stick structures, trails cleared of twigs and limbs, and “tall boy trails.” Tall boy trails have been cleared of tree limbs and branches up to 8 feet high.Hair samples were found, and the Animal Planet crew saved them for analysis.

Read rest and see pics here :http://www.salisburypost.com/News/021311-david-freeze-column-sasquatch-w-pics-qcd

Evolution and communication

Unique hedgehog-like mammals have been filmed using their quills to communicate.

A BBC film crew captured footage of the streaked tenrecs in the eastern rainforests of Madagascar.By rubbing together specialised quills on their backs, the tenrecs made high pitch ultrasound calls to each other in the forest undergrowth.The lowland streaked tenrec (Hemicentetes semispinosus) resembles both a hedgehog and a shrew with black and yellow stripes, and is found only in Madagascar.

Scientists have theorised that tenrecs could also be using high pitched calls to echolocate in the dark forest, finding their way with sound rather than sight in a similar way to bats.The film crew were also hoping to record evidence of a particularly bizarre audio behaviour, unique to streaked tenrecs.
In the 1960s, streaked tenrecs were found to communicate using specialised quills on their backs, rubbing them together to make high pitch ultrasound calls.The rich diversity of tenrecs on is explained by scientists as evidence of the Darwinian theory of "adaptive radiation". They propose that the tenrecs evolved from a single ancestor 60 million years ago, possibly a mammal that floated across the sea from mainland Africa. With no other mammals on the island at the time, the different species of tenrecs are thought to have evolved into a diverse family as they adapted to Madagascar's wide variety of environments, free from competition.

Read rest see video here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9392000/9392070.stm

This of course will get cryptozoologists thinking about how some cryptids might communicate. Isn’t evolution fantastic?

Mammals of Madagascar: A Complete Guide 

Madagascar Wildlife 3rd (Bradt Travel Guide. Madagascar Wildlife) 

The Natural History of Madagascar 

Field Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of Madagascar 

Bigfoot search to start Saturday

Massive Bigfoot Search Gains Momentum

Fox Charlotte Feb 8, 2011

TROY,NC- About an hour east of Charlotte, Troy, NC has a population of just over 3000, residents say everyone knows their neighbor. That was until super bowl Sunday when someone spotted a hairy beast.  "Sasquatch, Bigfoot, in Florida they call it the skunk ape, in the Appalachians and in parts of Tennessee and Kentucky it's known as the Wollybooger," says John Pate. Whatever you call it, residents say they have proof it exists with pictures of 17 inch footprints. "When I came out the stretch between the prints is 10 to 12 feet, you know that's a pretty big stretch," said Leonard Braley. Strides that are too big to be a human says the B.F.R.O. or the Bigfoot Field Research Organization. "Every state, except Hawaii, has had some type of Sasquatch/ Bigfoot sighting," said John Pate who is an investigator with the B.F.R.O. and is certain between 3 and 6 thousand big foot creatures exist in North America. "They are very very intelligent they have great eyesight they have great hearing and they know how to survive," said Pate. He says they often communicate by knocking on wood. Bigfoot also reportedly eats plants and meat and throws rocks at campers. One hundred fifty people showed up at a planning meeting Tuesday night where Pate and others organized a grid search. That search will happen on Saturday.

Read rest here and see video: http://www.foxcharlotte.com/news/top-stories/Massive-Bigfoot-Search-Gains-Momentum-115613379.html

Russian Yeti hunt in the news

 Tea party with the Yeti?

Alexei Chernichenko Feb 6, 2011 12:50 Moscow Time

Enthusiasts in the Russian Siberian region of Kuzbass continue to search the region’s remote areas for the Yeti in a drive that was earlier endorsed by Kuzbass Governor Aman Tuleyev. He jokingly announced the payment of one million rubles to a person who he said will be able to bring the ape-like cryptid to the governor’s residence so that the three could have a tea together. The announcement came in the wake of the establishment of the Yeti Day in Kuzbass. For their part, local business people were quick to capitalize on the Yeti boom by opening a fancy restaurant in the Gornaya Shoriya mountains, thought to be Yeti’s habitat. The restaurant includes the Abominable Snowman’s personal chill-out room, where the owners said he will “really enjoy himself.”The Yeti boom kicked off in Kuzbass in 2010 after unverified information about the Yeti allegedly being spotted by local hunters in taiga near the Gornaya Shoriya Mountains. The news immediately hit the headlines, with readers especially amazed with the photograph of the Yeti’s alleged footprint. Experts remained downbeat about the news, which was understandably hailed by PR agencies and tour operators. A number of monuments to the Yeti has been installed across Kuzbass since then, and Russia’s special presidential envoy to Siberia traveled to a cave where the Yeti was ostentatiously tracked down. No traces of the Yeti were discovered at the time.Even so, many in Kuzbass still hope against hope that Aman Tuleyev will be lucky to finally see the Yeti coming to his place for a tea party. Echoing them is Igor Burtsev, a Moscow-based Yeti expert, who argues that that the information about Yeti is first of all music to businessmen’s ears.

See video and read rest here :http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/02/06/43049104.html

Tom Slick and the Search for the Yeti 

Bhutanese Tales of the Yeti. 

My Quest for the Yeti: Confronting the Himalayas' Deepest Mystery 

Travels in Siberia 

The Reindeer People: Living With Animals and Spirits in Siberia