Wednesday 17 August 2022

Tasmanian Tigers Return?

 

Tasmanian tiger: Scientists hope to revive marsupial from extinction

Researchers in Australia and the US are embarking on a multi-million dollar project to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from extinction.

The last known one, officially called a thylacine, died in the 1930s.

The team behind the bid say it can be recreated using stem cells and gene-editing technology, and the first thylacine could be reintroduced to the wild in 10 years' time.

Other experts are sceptical and suggest de-extinction is just science fiction.

The thylacine earned its nickname of Tasmanian tiger for the stripes along its back - but it was actually a marsupial, the type of Australian mammal that raises its young in a pouch.

The group of Australian and US scientists plan to take stem cells from a living marsupial species with similar DNA, and then use gene-editing technology to "bring back" the extinct species - or an extremely close approximation of it.

It would represent a remarkable achievement for the researchers attempting it, and require a number of scientific breakthroughs.

"I now believe that in 10 years' time we could have our first living baby thylacine since they were hunted to extinction close to a century ago," said Professor

Andrew Pask, who is leading the research from the University of Melbourne.


Read rest herehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-62568427?fbclid=IwAR2p-0ci_TS0MV0M67llk0Q9IKmL6QCSP57d0FnvB0B0Ag7S4c2hNdDXbdQ


I wonder if it can adapt to the  polluted air.etc of the modern world? Much as I would love to see an extinct animal I wonder if it is the right thing to do.Most extinct creatures are used to air with higher oxygen content and may have trouble breathing today.


Tuesday 16 August 2022

The Beast of Barrisdale

 

 Barrisdale Monster.

The Beast of Barrisdale is said to have been seen in the area around Loch Hourn in Scotland.It is classed as a lake monster by some but it can fly. The description is that it has three legs, two in front and one in back and  huge wings . It is said to have a home/nest  in the Knoydart Hills, near Ladhar Bheinn. It has a very loud roar often heard at night.

In the late 1800’s  a crofter from Barrisdale said he often  saw it flying  over the Knoydart hills. Once it chased him  but he made it home to safety. An old man by the name of Ranald MacMaster also claimed to have found the tracks of the monster in the hills .

In 1845 a wild roaring was heard  Alasdair Macdonald said  that he was there  near Arnisdale, on the north side of Loch Hourn. A few local men  had got together to push a boat out to go fishing. As they  were pushing the boat out a wild roaring was heard. The boat was dropped and they ran into the house scared.

 In 1903, two men, gamekeepers,John MacMaster and John MacGillvary, were  up on a mountain on the east end of Loch Hourn. There were  six small dogs with them. The roaring started coming across the valley. The dogs tried to get under the legs of the two gamekeepers, hiding with their hair standing on end, frightened out of their wits.

In 1866 it was seen by another gamekeeper. Described as  the size of a donkey but with a mane and a tail like a horse. The head was broad at the top like that of a wild boar but there was no snout. It was a heavy over-hanging jaw and terribly, terribly ugly.It left tracks in the snow, almost round, and about 4 inches(10 cms) in diameter, and gave the impression of a very heavy animal.Behind the impression of the paw there was the mark of a long powerful claw.

No other sightings have been recorded .What was it? Some say it was a dragon,some a wild hybrid,a cross between a boar and something else.

It however is not the only monster in the area.

Loch Hourn runs inland from the sea opposite the island of Skye. Sometimes described as the most fjord-like of the sea lochs of Scotland. It is open to the sea which is important to remember when looking at explanations for sightings in the Loch.  Hourn is Gaelic for Hell, and the Loch is so  named because of the spin drifts which capsized many sailing boats. Quite a few lives have been lost on the Loch . Around a hundred years ago Loch Hourn was busy with small boats fishing for herrings.

Most people will have heard of the famous sea serpent sighting in the Loch that was reported in The Zoologist . According to R T Gould in August 20 and 21 of 1872 6 people on board the cutter Leda saw the creature described as a line of black humps with a  head and neck occasionally seen above the surface on the Loch. In the 1950’s Willie MacKenzie was 9 years of age when he was sitting on a small knoll, near the sea, waiting for his father, to return from delivering the mail, by boat. The head of a creature, that could only be described as a big eel or a serpent emerged, ten feet out of the water, moving its head from side to side, about 250 yards in front of him. Willie had to be forced back in the boat to go home, and to this day, his heart still races when he crosses that part of the Loch. It was suspected that Rob Foster, a fisherman from Corran also saw the monster, around this time

Read more here : https://cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.com/2010/06/more-loch-hourn-creature-sightings.html

Once again a place that seems to have much strangeness going back years.

Yorkshire Vampires?

 

More reports of Vampires in Yorkshire than in Transylvania

I came across this article from 2014.Being from Yorkshire myself,Whitby area I was intrigued,

A new study shows that there are more reports of paranormal activity in Yorkshire than anywhere else in the UK.

The findings were compiled by paranormal investigator Rev Lionel Fanthorpe, who says he has uncovered 11,000 reports of unexplained phenomena in Britain since 1914.

There has only been a handful of reports of any kind of paranormal activity in Transylvania over the same time period.

615 'paranormal activity' cases have been reported in Yorkshire over the last 100 years.

In the whole of Britain, 11,204 reports were filed, 206 of them referring to 'vampire encounters'.

The study was commissioned to mark the start of new vampire TV series called The Strain. It looks at 50 years of paranormal investigative records.

Read rest here:

https://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/2014-09-17/where-ranks-top-for-reported-paranormal-activity

As Bram Stoker set his novel Dracula in Whitby I am not really surprised.Looking up towards the ruined Abbey at dusk and seeing the seagulls flying about it looking like large bats,you can see how he got some of his ideas.Yorkshire is steeped in folklore and legend and I am not surprised people believe in the paranormal.

Monster Fish Spotted

 

A Behemoth

Japanese researchers said they have taken images of a 2.5-meter-long yokozuna slickhead, possibly the world’s largest known deep-sea bony fish.

The scientists, primarily from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), captured the fish on video more than 2 kilometers deep off Suruga Bay in Shizuoka Prefecture in October 2021.

JAMSTEC reported the yokozuna slickhead as a new species only in January last year. It is believed to be an apex predator in deep waters off Suruga Bay.

Six yokozuna slickheads have been caught, but the largest one measures 1.4 meters long.

The research team surveyed ecosystems in four sea areas, including the one off Suruga Bay, that were designated as environmental preservation zones under the Nature Conservation Law in 2020.

DNA was collected from seawater in the zones and analyzed in the study, including samples later confirmed as that of yokozuna slickhead, according to the scientists

Read rest here:

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14662408