Karl Shuker's Blog, page 52

THE CELESTIAL STAG – A STINKER OF A BEAST FROM CHINESE FOLKLORE

Ivory netsuke depicting a celestial stag
While browsing online recently, I came upon a fantasy painting entitled 'Stag of Heaven' that was so exquisite it inspired me to write a short poem featuring the divine creature depicted (click here to read my poem and view the painting in question on my Starsteeds poetry blog).
The painting's title also recalled to my mind the realcelestial stag – if we can truly apply the word 'real' to anything that is entirely folkloric in nature. However, this latter entity is a very different animal indeed – a decidedly macabre one, in fact.
Indigenous to the exceedingly imaginative realms of Chinese mythology, little is known about the celestial stag (also referred to more specifically as the celestial roe), for the very simple reason that it is very rarely seen. What is known, however, has been succinctly summarised as follows by Jorges Luis Borges in his classic work The Book of Imaginary Beings (rev. ed. 1974):
"We know absolutely nothing about the appearance of the Celestial Stag (maybe because nobody has ever had a good look at one), but we do know that these tragic animals live underground in mines and desire nothing more than to reach the light of day. They have the power of speech and implore miners to help them to the surface. At first, a Celestial Stag attempts to bribe the workmen with the promise of revealing hidden veins of silver and gold; when this gambit fails, the beast becomes troublesome and the miners are forced to overpower it and wall it up in one of the mine galleries, It is also rumoured that miners outnumbered by the Stags have been tortured to death.
"Legend has it that if the Celestial Stag finds its way into the open air, it becomes a foul-smelling liquid that can breed death and pestilence."
Yet despite its apparent anonymity, the celestial stag has been depicted by several artists and sculptors, with the illustration opening this present ShukerNature blog post being perhaps the best known example.
The Book of Imaginary Beings (artwork by Peter Goodfellow)
Another popular depiction of this creature is as a black stag with blank eyes. However, writing about it in his book Chinese Ghouls and Goblins (1926), which was the original source of Borges's above-quoted information, British author Gerald Willoughby-Meade (who in turn derived his data on it from 18th-Century Chinese scholar Yuan Mei's tome Tsu Pu Yuh) suggested that perhaps 'celestial stag' was a mistranslation of its original Chinese name - because in traditional Chinese folklore it does not appear to share any affinity with any kind of deer, and is of subterranean not celestial abode.
The author responsible for coining this name for it was Dutch Sinological historian Jan J.M. de Groot (1854-1921), who wrote about it as follows in his six-volume treatise The Religious System of China (1892-1910):
"Celestial roes are not men, but belong to the class of kiang si or corpse-demons…Yunnan province has many mines from which five kinds of metal are extracted. If they collapse, preventing the miners from getting out, then, if these men are fed for ten years or even for a hundred by the breath of the earth and of those metals, their bodies do not decay. Though they are not dead, their material substance is dead. 
"It being underground perpetual night for those who work those mines, these men mostly carry a lamp on their forehead. When, while working their way into the ground, they fall in with a celestial roe, this is entranced with joy. Complaining of cold, it asks them for some tobacco, which it smokes immediately; then it prostrates itself upon the ground, entreating the men to take it out of the mine. In reply the miners say: 'We have come here for gold and silver, and we have not yet discovered any veins from which to procure some; do you know where the gold grows?' And the celestial stag guides them to a mine where they can reap a rich harvest. But on leaving the mine, they delude the spectre, saying: 'We must get out first, and then we shall take you out of the shaft with the lift'. And by the rope fastened to the bamboo lift they haul the creature up, but halfway they cut the rope, letting it fall down and die. 
"It has occurred that the men in charge of the mine-sheds were more benevolent and compassionate, and hauled up some seven or eight of those beings. But as soon as these felt the wind, their clothes, flesh and bones changed into a liquid giving out a rancid, putrid stench, which smote with contagious disease all those whose olfactory nerves it affected, so that they died.
"This is the reason why, ever since, those who haul up celestial stags cut the rope, lest they have to endure again that stench and lose their lives. Should they refuse to haul them up, they risk being molested by them incessantly. It is also said, that when a small number of celestial stags are overpowered by a great number of men, tied, placed against an earthen wall, and immured firmly on the four sides with walls of clay, a sort of terrace with a lamp being built overhead, they will do no further harm. But if men are outnumbered by stags, they are tormented to death by these, and not allowed to escape."
This account readily recalls stories from Western folklore of knuckers, kobolds, and other underground entities of generally malign or at least mischievous nature – far removed indeed from visions of heavenly harts or other deer of divine demeanour!
A bona fide celestial stag, very different from this blog post's subject! (© AnnaDraconida/Deviantart.com)

THE BLACK TIGER – A VERITABLE BÊTE NOIRE OF MYSTERY CATS

Computer-generated mock-up of the likely appearance of a bona fide black tiger (Dr Karl Shuker)
Black lions and black pumas (aka cougars, mountain lions) are two of the three most controversial melanistic mystery cats. In previous ShukerNature articles, I have blogged about whether there is evidence for bona fide black lions and I have exposed as photoshopped fakes no fewer than four popular online photographs of supposed black lions (click here and here ). I have also documented a partially black captive lion (click here ), and blogged extensively about alleged black pumas (click here ).
Now, to complete this trio of ebony enigmas of the feline kind, here is my investigation of its third member – the black tiger. By this, I am referring to tiger specimens whose coats exhibit an abnormally dark background colouration, thereby rendering their stripes cryptic, visible only when viewed at close range in certain lights or at certain angles.
In my very first book, Mystery Cats of the World (1989), I presented the most comprehensive coverage of black tigers ever published. Regrettably, however, this has since been plagiarised shamelessly on numerous occasions and on many websites, often without including any reference or credit to my own research. Consequently, I felt that it was high time that my book's original black tiger coverage was presented online, so here it is, quoted in full (except for its text's superscripted bibliographical references) from Mystery Cats of the World.


Melanism in felids is most frequently exhibited by tropical species, as exemplified by the leopard and jaguar. Consequently, one would expect the tiger to exhibit an all-black morph too. Yet, very surprisingly, not a single specimen of a melanistic tiger has ever been submitted for official scientific examination. Indeed, in recent books dealing with felids, mention of black tigers is either omitted or limited to a couple of lines in which alleged sightings of such cats are generally discounted as panther misidentifications. Supported as it is, however, by a very extensive history of observations and reports, the subject of black tigers is one which should not be dismissed so lightly.
Probably the most significant black tiger record was provided by the noted eighteenth-century artist James Forbes. In a Country Life article, Charles Stonor noted that, among the many watercolours by Forbes then housed within the museum of the seminary at Oscott College near Walsall, one, dating back to 1772, depicted in very great detail a black tiger and was painted in south-west India during the period when Forbes was in the service of John Company in India. A description of this felid featured in his painting also exists, contained in one of Forbes's own handwritten letters from that same period. He wrote:
"I have also the opportunity of adding the portrait of an extraordinary Tyger, shot a few months ago by the Nairs in this neighbourhood, and presented to the Chief as a great curiosity. It was entirely black yet striped in the manner of the Royal-Tyger with shades of a still darker hue, like the richest black, glossed with purple. My pencil is very deficient in displaying these mingled tints; nor do I know how to describe them better than by the difference you would observe in a black cloth variegated with shades of a rich velvet."
The current whereabouts of this painting is unknown; in October 1987 I learnt from Oscott College's rector, the Rt. Rev. Mgr. Michael J. Kirkham, that in 1965 the entire Forbes collection was sold at Sotheby's, and no record appears to have been kept of the black tiger painting's new owner.
James Forbes's black tiger painting
A follow-up letter concerning black tigers, written by Lieutenant-Colonel N.M. Hughes-Hallett, appeared in Country Life three weeks after Stonor's article and referred to a book entitled Sophie in London, 1786, published in 1933. In this, the lady in question recorded her impressions of a trip to the Tower of London's menagerie, mentioning lions, leopards, tigers and wolves, and also noting: "The all-black Tiger, which Mr Hastings brought with him from the East Indies is most handsome, but his tigery glance is horrible." Another eighteenth-century black tiger?
The next report which I have is a short item from The Observer for 27 January 1844, which records that a black tiger (originally intended as a present from the King of Java to Napoleon) was currently on display at Kendrick's collection of exotic animals opposite St James's Church, Piccadilly.
Two years later came an account from the noted naturalist C.T. Buckland. Early in 1846, a black tiger was reported from the Chittagong hills, in what is now Bangladesh, which was not only raiding cattle but had also killed a local villager. In March Buckland recorded in his diary that news had reached him of its dead body's having been discovered, lying near the edge of a road; it had been killed by a poisoned arrow. In the company of a number of other interested persons, Buckland set out to view it. Upon arrival, they inspected the carcase closely, and Buckland described it as follows:
"It was a full-sized tiger, and the skin was black, or very dark-brown, so that the stripes showed rather a darker black in the sunlight, just as the spots are visible on the skin of a black leopard ... by the time that we arrived the carcase was swollen, the flies were buzzing about it, and decomposition had set in so that those of our party who knew best, decided that the skin could not be saved.... Captain Swatman, who was in charge of the Government elephant kheddas, and Captain Hore (afterwards Lord Ruthven), of the 25th N.I., were well-known sportsmen, and had each of them killed many tigers. No doubt was expressed about the animal being a black tiger."
Moving into the twentieth century, T.A. Hauxwell (then the Conservator of Forests at Maymyo, Burma) recorded in 1914 the wounding of a supposed black tiger at a range of 15 yards/13.5 m by his son, in the Bhamo district. At first his son took the all-black creature to be a pig, while his shikari insisted that it was a bear. Upon approaching very cautiously the area in which the growling wounded beast was moving, however, they observed enormous round pug-marks, measuring 20 in/50 cm in circumference, which in their judgement seemed closely similar to those of a tiger. Sadly, the body of this mysterious animal was never recovered.
In 1928 the editors of The Field noted that a dead black tiger had been reported in the Lushai Hills, south of Assam; frustratingly, this specimen's skin was too decomposed to be saved.
During the early 1930s, a reward was offered for the destruction of a savage creature inhabiting India's Imphal Manipur state. When eventually dispatched, the latter proved to be an adult black bear - but the Mikirs insisted that it was a black tiger. In the opinion of J.C. Higgins, however, this peculiar classification was largely influenced by the fact that the reward to be gained if the creature proved to be a tiger was more than twice that on offer for a bear.
The sloth bear Melursus ursinus is the most widely distributed bear species in the Indian subcontinent
Also during the 1930s, a series of letters concerning black tigers appeared in The Times. The earlier items dealt with cases noted above, but the later letters provided several additional examples. Captain Guy Dollman of the British Museum (Natural History) reported that a young black tiger had been shot in the Central Provinces some years earlier and had possessed a dark brown background coat colour, overlaid by black stripes. He also commented that a magnificent black tiger had been shot in 1915 by some natives in Assam, east of Dibrugarh - of especial interest was the fact that this specimen was completely black, no vestige of striping being visible even in sunlight.
Colonel S. Capper placed on record a very clear sighting of a black tiger made through a deer-stalker's telescope by himself and his hunting companion C.J. Maltby on 11 September 1895, on the Cardoman Hills of southern India. The tiger was initially lying on a rock at the jungle's edge, but eventually it rose and disappeared from sight into the latter. Upon arrival at this spot, Capper and Maltby discovered the clear pug-marks of a tiger - both men were well acquainted with tiger and leopard spoor.
The first few lines of a letter to The Times in January 1937 by R.G. Griffiths contained the news which science had been awaiting so long - a black tiger had been captured alive! A colossal creature, 12 ft/360 cm long, it had been caught on 4 September 1936 in the vicinity of Dibrugarh. So far so good. As one might have expected of a mystery felid, however, the truth - as Griffiths revealed in the lines that followed - was rather different. Further enquiries (made by Dr Baini Prashad, director of the Zoological Survey of India at Calcutta's Indian Museum) not only revealed that it was a lot shorter than claimed but also discovered that it was not a tiger at all. Instead, it was nothing more than an 8 ft/240 cm-long black panther. This muddled melanistic mammal was later sold and transferred to Calcutta, where Griffiths had recently seen it; further details were given by Captain Dollman.
A black panther (i.e. melanistic leopard) (Qilinmon/Wikipedia)
Regrettably, it seems as if the misidentified panther of Dibrugarh sounded the death-knell for the bona fide black tigers; until then, the existence of such cats had never been seriously doubted, but following this sorry episode the black tiger appeared to fall out of fashion.
In a letter published by The Field on 9 January 1937, Dunbar Brander recorded that a couple of years earlier the sportsman and Calcutta barrister J.A. Clough had seen, in the deputy commissioner's bungalow at Betul, Central Provinces, a tiger skin whose background colour was chocolate brown. When questioned concerning this, the deputy commissioner mentioned that a second tiger of this type had been sighted in the area where his own specimen had been killed.
By and large, however, reports dried up, and the black tiger became yet another felid of fiction and fable rather than fact.
To complete this account, I will come full circle, back to the 1964 Country Life article by Charles Stonor. In this, Stonor also included a personally collected report of particular interest. He recalled that, whilst in the Mishmi Hills, at the foot of the Assam Himalayas, he had learnt from a local headman that the Mishmi tribespeople knew of an occasionally seen creature referred to as the 'bear tiger', which resembles a normal tiger in all respects but one - it is completely black. At Stonor's suggestion that it could simply be a panther, the headman reasserted vehemently that it was a black tiger - stating that not only was it of full tiger stature but also, when observed in sunlight, one could discern the familiar tiger pattern of stripes upon its otherwise inky coat.
'Tigers and Bats' - an anonymous oriental print depicting a black tiger
Very recently, I was informed by [correspondent] Phil Bennett that in India, during 1952, the people of one village complained that an exceedingly large black tiger was killing their cattle. According to these villagers, the cat in question was between 20-24 ft/600-720 cm in length! Although the authorities searched for this extraordinary beast in vain, some unusually large pug-marks were found, which could not be explained. Further reports of this animal continued to emerge until 1967 (Bennett, pers. comm.).
With the exception of this latter colossus (whose length is clearly an immense exaggeration on the part of the locals, its size presumably increasing in direct proportion to their fear of it), the alleged black tigers which figure in the above collection of reports conform to a standard appearance. The only degree of variation on record concerns the pelage's background colour - dark brown in some individuals, totally black in others - but such variation is commonly seen amongst melanistic individuals of other species too, including the leopard.
Is it possible, therefore, that genuine melanistic tigers do occur? Let us first consider some other phenomena which could explain alleged black tiger sightings.
For example, could they be, as with the captured Dibrugarh specimen from 1936, nothing more than misidentified panthers? This could certainly be the case with sightings involving only the briefest of observations, or made in conditions of poor lighting or deceptive shade, or made by observers with little or no experience of tigers. Conversely, most of the reports mentioned in this section have taken place in good light, with ample observation time (in some cases the specimen was dead, and hence unlikely to run away!), and sometimes involving eyewitnesses with superb credentials. These latter include: experienced tiger-hunters Captain Swatman and Lord Ruthven, naturalist and Fellow of the Zoological Society of London C.T. Buckland, and painter and Fellow of the Royal Society James Forbes. The two reports incorporating these eyewitnesses' accounts are in themselves enough to verify that black tigers as well as black leopards exist. The experience of various eyewitnesses in distinguishing readily between tiger and leopard spoor also supports the validity of tiger identifications in relation to certain other black tiger reports.
Online photograph depicting a normal tiger (alongside a white tiger) that has been photoshopped by person(s) unknown into a black tiger
In addition, the description of black tigers contained in the reports given here - a tiger-sized black (occasionally dark brown) cat whose stripes can be discerned in sunlight - is exactly that which we would expect for a true melanistic (non-agouti) tiger.
Certainly it is inconceivable that anyone could fail to distinguish (at least on a dead specimen) between the cryptic spots of a panther and the long, continuous shadowy stripes of a melanistic tiger. This being the case, how did the infamous Dibrugarh 'black tiger' fiasco come about? Most probably not through any morphological muddle or misconception but through an error of etymology, for, as E.P. Gee points out, bagh - the word for 'tiger' in various parts of India - is, in fact, commonly used for almost any cat species. In short, the locals will refer in their language to a 'striped tiger' (the true tiger), a 'spotted tiger' (leopard) and so on, right down to the smaller cat species. Consequently, when the Dibrugarh 'tiger' was captured, it would simply have been referred to locally as a 'black tiger', even though it was a black leopard, and even though the locals knew it to be a black leopard. The error came from the loose translation of bagh not being familiar to non-locals, who naturally took 'black tiger' to mean just that.
It is also worth noting that in the early nineteenth century British people referred to both tiger and panther as 'tiger', with the epithet 'royal' being added when speaking of the genuine striped tiger. Thus the Piccadilly 'black tiger' was probably a black panther - this may also have been the identity of the specimen noted in Sophie in London, 1786.
Excluding etymological ambiguities, however, it is evident that few of the black tiger reports documented here could have been based upon panther sightings.
Another explanation sometimes put forward to deny the existence of genuine black tigers is that sightings of such were really of normal tigers whose coats had become darkened in various ways by external factors. One such manner involves deceptive shadows cast upon terrestrial beasts in dense jungles during early morning and evening. However, such shadows cannot account for the skins of dead black tigers reported here, which were examined carefully by competent observers. A suggestion by Dunbar Brander is that black tigers are actually normal tigers that have rolled in the charcoal and ashes of forest fires. If this were true, the cryptic stripes so characteristic of the black tigers reported would have been totally hidden by the charcoal. Moreover, observers of the dead specimens would surely have noted the presence of charcoal on such skins - no mention of its presence, however, has ever been made.
Dunbar Brander once watched a large tiger devouring a kill and, in so doing, becoming covered with its victim's blood, which rapidly turned from red to black. He commented that, had he not seen this transformation taking place before his very eyes, he would have been firmly convinced that he had stumbled upon a genuine black tiger. Once again, however, such an occurrence would hide the cryptic stripes clearly observed by many black tiger eyewitnesses. This is equally true relative to yet another of Brander's suggestions. In various jungle pools used by tigers for bathing and by tanners for skin-preservation, certain tree barks are introduced to poison fish that become marooned there when the pools shrink during hot weather; these barks also stain fur a deep brown shade and could be responsible, according to Brander, for reports of brown tigers, dead or alive. Elegant, but unsatisfactory.
Only one plausible possibility is left - that sightings of alleged black tigers have really involved melanistic tigers after all, and why not? As vouched for by felid geneticist Roy Robinson, the descriptions of cryptic stripes provide the most telling piece of eyewitness evidence in favour of such creatures' existence.
Black tiger netsuke (© allarih/www.ancientpont.com)
What remains to be explained is why they should be so rare, in contrast to the relative abundance of the melanistic morph in leopards and other tropical felids. The answer is probably connected to the fact that, whilst such species have normally originated in the tropics, the tiger evolved in a much colder climate, invading Asia's tropical zones only in relatively recent times (geologically speaking). Black is the most efficient heat radiator, hence black coat colouration is advantageous to a felid inhabiting a tropical locality, for it would assist it effectively to release heat from its body, especially in shade, where dark colours operate most efficiently. Consequently, melanistic coat colouration would be selected as a result of this inherent survival advantage, and thus the frequency of the non-agouti mutant allele would increase within populations of leopards etc. Once the tiger also entered such locations, this same allele would then begin to increase through selection in tiger populations. Yet because this allele would have been exposed to positive selection for far less time than in populations of leopard etc (due to the tiger's much more recent settlement in the tropics), its frequency (and hence its expression in the form of black tigers) would not be as great as in longstanding tropical felids - and therefore far fewer black tigers would be born.
Moreover, due to the extremely severe depletion of the normal tiger in recent times (a proportion of which must be heterozygous for the mutant non-agouti allele to explain the origin of black tigers in the first place), the numbers of black tigers being born would again be reduced.
Finally, it is worth noting that most black tiger reports derive from localities in fairly close proximity to one another and to the north-east of the Bay of Bengal - such restricted distribution (unusual for a simple mutant) presumably marks its origin (cf. the king cheetah, white lion, blue tiger).
In short, everything points to reports of black tigers being based upon melanistic specimens. Ironically, the black tiger nowadays could in fact be a felid of fable after all, for this fascinating mutant form may have slipped quietly and tragically into extinction while science has been casually contemplating whether or not it ever existed in the first place.
Subsequent to the publication of Mystery Cats of the World, I learnt that a partial black tiger had recently been alive, albeit very briefly, in captivity! Within the space of four years during the early 1970s, when Dr Warren D. Thomas was director, Oklahoma City Zoo's pair of tigers produced six litters. All of the cubs in five of these litters were normal, but of the four cubs in litter #3, three possessed varying degrees of abnormal coat colouration. One had normal background colour but darkening on all four limbs, and a second had dark feet (though these gradually lightened until as an adult the tiger was totally normal in colour). The third, however, was dramatically different. Quoting from a letter that I received from Dr Thomas in 1993:
"It had a normal ground color, but considerable darkening over the shoulders, down both front legs, over the pelvis, and encompassing both back legs. The darkening was essentially the same coloring as the stripes. Over the areas of darkening, the stripes were only partly visible."
This was clearly a case of melanism, albeit of an incomplete nature - which makes it all the more tragic that shortly after their birth, three of the four cubs, including this unique black one, were killed by their mother. Fortunately, Dr Thomas preserved the black cub in formalin, and although this has faded its colouration somewhat over the years, photos taken of it not long after its preservation reveal its remarkable appearance.
Oklahoma City Zoo's partially black tiger cub in a preserved state (Dr Warren D. Thomas)
Of course, it is conceivable that, had it survived to adulthood, this dark-furred tiger may have become lighter.
On 6 March 2009, the carcase of what was claimed to be a female black tiger was found in a poacher's snare in Deniyaya, southern Sri Lanka. However, when viewed at close range, it was found to possess spots, not stripes, and as can be seen here, a photograph of this specimen readily confirms that it was a black panther, not a tiger. The confusion arose from the Sinhalese term 'kotiya' being used for both leopard and tiger by some villagers. Moreover, the tiger is not native to Sri Lanka anyway.
The Deniyaya 'black tiger' - actually a black panther (© Daily Mirror)
There have also been claims of black tigers having been exhibited in circuses, which I have again investigated (click here ), but no confirmation of such claims has so far been uncovered. And the apparent black tiger that featured in the 1982 action movie 'The Beastmaster' starring Marc Singer was nothing more than a normal tiger whose coat had been dyed black.
Marc Singer as the Beastmaster with his loyal (dyed-)black tiger (© MGM)
Most recently, on 19 March 2013, I received the following fascinating email from correspondent Luke Cockle:
  I hope you will forgive my impromptu email; I was idly browsing your blog when I came across the post concerning black tigers [my article re putative black tigers in circuses]. You commented that ‘the fact that its stripes could still be discerned against its fur's black background colouration is precisely what one would expect with a genuine melanistic tiger’. It put me in mind of the following entry from the Erya  (爾雅), an ancient Chinese encyclopaedia written c. 300 BC, in which one of the commentaries specifically mentions this fact. As this work has not, to my knowledge, been translated into English, and Classical Chinese is a somewhat inaccessible language, I thought the following excerpt might be of some small interest.
From the chapter 釋獸 ‘Explaining the beasts’:
虪黑虎。郭璞注:晉永嘉四年建平秭歸縣檻得之狀如小虎而黑毛深者為班[=斑]。
Which I translate as:
“The shu is a black tiger. Guo Pu notes: In the fourth year of Emperor Huai of Jin [310], one was obtained in the border regions between Jianping and Zigui counties. It resembled a small tiger, but it was black; its fur was dark and luxuriant, but bore stripes/spots [the character can mean both, but in the context of a tiger, stripes seem more likely].”
Note that here is a specific (albeit very obscure) character meaning ‘black tiger’ (虪 shu), rather than simply the characters for ‘black’ and ‘tiger’ separately, by which the Erya defines it (黑虎). But looking in the Kangxi dictionary, I find yet another ‘black tiger’ character following it, this one so long-forgotten that it isn’t even in Unicode.
http://www.kangxizidian.com/kangxi/1076.gif   (18th from the right).
Of course, ancient Chinese literature is awash with mythological beasts, but I thought the particular observation of stripes in this instance lends credence to a real animal. And that there are at least two discrete words for a black tiger (the second one would be pronounced teng), suggests that they were well acquainted with melanistic tigers even further back than the Warring States period.  Could this Chinese mystery cat, the shu, be a genuine black tiger? My principal concern is that it is said to be small, whereas melanistic cats across a wide spectrum of species generally tend to be larger than normal. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable document, suggesting strongly that some form of all-black felid did exist in ancient China, though even if so it must surely be long extinct now, as no modern-day reports of such a beast are in evidence. 


So far, the alleged black tigers that I have been chronicling here have apparently been of the melanistic variety. However, black tigers of the pseudo-melanistic variety are also on record, and the existence of this latter form has actually been formally confirmed, by the procurement and preservation of skins.
Here is what I wrote about pseudo-melanistic tigers in my book Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery (2012):
Sometimes reported from Sunderbans are tigers whose coats exhibit an abnormally dark background colour patterned with orange stripes, i.e. the reverse of the normal tiger pelage, which suggests that they may be pseudo-melanistic tigers.
Painting of a pseudo-melanistic tiger (William Rebsamen)
In 1993, moreover, news – and photos – emerged of two such tigers killed that year. One was a young tigress killed in July 1993 by a tribal boy in self-defence at the village of Podagad within the Bhandan river valley, in the west of the Similipal Tiger Reserve. The pelt of the other one had been confiscated from a New Delhi hunter-smuggler and was acquired on 20 February 1993 by India's National Museum of Natural History on the orders of a Delhi court. Remarkably, as I learnt from Dr Lala A.K. Singh, and as shown by both skins, it was as if the normal tiger coat colour and patterning had been reversed – for instead of exhibiting an orange background colour and black stripes, both of these tigers sported a black background colour and orange stripes. Looking at them more closely, however, it became evident that the black colour was actually caused by an abnormal widening and coalescing of the normal black tigerine stripes, yielding a solid black mass of colour; and that the orange stripes were not true tiger stripes at all but were actually gaps in the black mass of amalgamated striping through which the tigers’ normal orange background coat colour was still present. This ‘reverse melanism’ is clearly another example of pseudo-melanism featuring nigrism.
Skin of a reverse-coated pseudo-melanistic tiger (Dr Lala A.K. Singh)
Moreover, as kindly brought to my attention recently by Australian cryptozoological artist Tim Morris, there is currently a short but fascinating video on YouTube (at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01IX9G7YzGk ), uploaded on 5 November 2010 by a user with the screen name uzoouk, which shows a white tiger cub born on 6 June 2010 at the Arignar Anna Zoological Park in Vandalur, Chennai, in India, that is turning black (as also reported on 31 August 2010 by London’s Daily Telegraph newspaper). Although born white like its two siblings and its parents, this remarkable (possibly unique?) little cub has already acquired a coat greatly resembling the pseudo-melanistic condition, and may ultimately transform into a bona fide adult pseudo-melanistic tiger – the first such metamorphosis from a white tiger into a predominantly black one that I have ever encountered.
Still from a short YouTube video showing Chennai's captive white tiger cub that is turning black, together with its normal white tiger mother (© uzoouk)
So although there is ample evidence for the reality of pseudo-melanistic tigers, the melanistic tiger continues to elude scientists – or does it? 

On 12 March 2012, media worldwide carried reports – and a very intriguing colour photograph - concerning what Indian Wildlife officials claimed to be a bona fide melanistic tiger that had lately been observed and photographed in the Similipal National Park's core tiger region. The photo had been snapped by one of the 68 camera traps installed in this particular region of the park by the state government, but no further background information regarding the tiger itself appeared in any accounts that I have so far seen. However, the officials discounted counter-claims that it was merely a black panther. Here is the photo – what do you think that it depicts?

Black mystery big cat photographed in India's Similipal National Park (photo copyright owner unknown to me)

Personally, I feel that it looks more leopard-like than tiger-like in overall build and body proportions. It is a great pity that its pelage isn't clearer, to determine whether it bears any cryptic patterning, which would have greatly assisted in identifying it – stripes vs spots, tiger vs leopard. As nothing more seems to have emerged concerning what would be an extremely significant scientific discovery were it truly a melanistic tiger, however, I feel that this too argues against its being the latter, and in favour of its simply being a black panther. But who can say for certain? 

All that we can say for sure is that the black tiger remains as controversial and tantalising as ever - verily the bête noire of mystery cats!

THE BLACK INDRI – REVIVING ANOTHER MELANISTIC MYSTERY BEAST

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Engraving of a predominantly black indri from Goodrich's book of 1885
A few days ago, I documented here on ShukerNature the rediscovery of a forgotten melanistic mystery beast – Brevet's black Malayan tapir. Now, a second such case has come to my attention.
Isn't it amazing what you can uncover on clip-art sites? While browsing through various of these a couple of nights ago in search of some public-domain animal images for various future writing projects, I came upon the remarkable engraving that opens this present ShukerNature blog post. It was labelled as an indri, but as can readily be observed here, what is so intriguing and unexpected about it is that it is almost entirely black. Only its face and brow, its hands and feet, and its throat appear somewhat paler in hue; the remainder of its body is totally black.
The indri or babakoto Indri indri is famous not only for being arguably the largest species of lemur known to be alive today on Madagascar (the diademed sifaka Propithecus diadema runs it an extremely close second), but also for its very striking black and white pelage.

A typical black-and-white indri (Erik Patel/Wikipedia)
What is not so well known, however, is that in reality this species' colouration varies dramatically through its zoogeographical range on its island home. To quote Nick Garbutt in Mammals of Madagascar (1999):
"Towards the southern limits, the basic colour is black with creamy-white patches on the crown, nape and throat, base of the back, fore-arms, thighs and lower legs – these areas may also be tinged with silver-grey or pale creamy-yellow. The face and muzzle are black and the ears are round, tufted and prominent. The eyes are yellow-green.
"At the northern extreme of the Indri's range pelage pattern is very different. Again the base colour is black, but pale grey and white regions are far less evident. The inner face is black, surrounded by a white facial disc which extends down the throat. There are white areas on the sides of the abdomen which extend under the armpits and there is a white pygal triangle at the base of the back which continues to the rump and includes the vestigial tail; the heels may also be pale grey or yellowish-white. White areas are completely absent on the forearms and upper hindlimbs.
"In some localities towards the centre of the Indri's range, for instance around Mananara, a mixed pattern occurs which is intermediate between the two extremes outlined above."
A taxiderm black-and-white indri at Tring Natural History Museum (Dr Karl Shuker)
Investigating the near-black indri engraving further, I discovered that it had originated from S.G. Goodrich's book The Animal Kingdom Illustrated (A.J. Johnson & Co: NY, 1885), appearing on p. 119.
Could there be any other antiquarian illustrations of black or near-black indri specimens online, I wondered. Despite spending a fair length of time pursuing this possibility, however, only two came to light, neither of which corresponded with the specimen from Goodrich's tome.

Engraving of a supposed black indri that is clearly not an indri at all
The animal depicted in the first of these images, reproduced above, is certainly all-black but is quite evidently not an indri at all. This is evinced not simply by its very long tail (the indri, conversely, is noted for being the only near-tailless modern-day lemur – hence its binomial synonym Indri brevicaudatus – 'short-tailed indri'), but also by its entire morphology. For this compares closely in size and proportions with one of the much smaller, true lemurs. I have been unable to ascertain the original source for this illustration.
In contrast, the second image, produced by French naturalist Pierre Sonnerat and derived from Johann von Schreber's series of animal tomes Die Säugthiere in Abbildungen nach der Natur mit Beschreibungen (Wolfgang Walter: Erlangen, 1775-92), and which is reproduced below, definitely shows an indri. Moreover, it corresponds well with Garbutt's above-quoted description of northern indri specimens.
A mostly black (northern?) indri illustrated by Sonnerat and appearing in Schreber's late 18th-Century series of animal tomes
So was Goodrich's engraving based upon an extreme example of the northern indri, or perhaps even upon a melanistic specimen of the southern indri - or could it simply have been an inaccurate illustration, possibly based only upon verbal descriptions, rather than upon physical specimens directly viewed by the artist? Was it even an indri at all?
With regard to this last-mentioned query, I did notice on a couple of websites that had reproduced this image the suggestion that perhaps it was a late-surviving relative of one of the officially-extinct giant lemurs. As documented extensively within my latest book, Mirabilis: A Carnival of Cryptozoology and Unnatural History (2013), that same explanation has also been proposed in relation to certain other Madagascan mystery beasts, such as the tratratratra, tokandia, and habéby.
Mirabilis , featuring a giant lemur on its front cover (Dr Karl Shuker/Anthony Wallis)
In this particular instance, however, the morphology of the animal in Goodrich's engraving is sufficiently detailed for there to be no doubt whatsoever that it is indeed intended to represent an indri – only the predominantly black colour of its pelage marks it out as different from more typical indri specimens.
In any case, there is also some wholly independent, and very exciting, proof to hand that readily confirms its identity as an indri. Namely, the current existence of living identical near-black specimens!
Nestled within the rugged mountains of northeastern Madagascar is the Anjanaharibe-Sud Special Reserve, which currently protects 42,488 acres of rainforest on the eastern slopes of the Anjanaharibe Massif, and is home to a number of very rare and unusual animals and plants – including what is referred to there as the black indri.
Photo of an Anjanaharibe-Sud black indri that is almost identical to the specimen portrayed in Goodrich's engraving (© Madagascar Biodiversity Partnership)
As its name reveals, this very distinctive form of indri is predominantly black, with only its face, hands, feet, and throat (plus in some specimens its rump, and/or a strip above its haunches) introducing any paler colouration. If such an extreme variety as this can exist today, as indeed it does, I see no problem in accepting that comparably dark-furred individuals were thriving little more than a  century ago – especially as even now, little is known about the black indri of Anjanaharibe-Sud. Also worth remembering is that far more rainforest was still present back in those times, before great swathes were felled during modern-day legal and (particularly) illegal logging activity, which means that much more habitat was available then to sustain these largest of living lemurs.
In short, I consider it likely that the mysterious near-black indri depicted in Goodrich's engraving was a northern indri specimen displaying extremely restricted paler pelage colouration. Another melanistic mystery mammal from the past duly revived and identified.
Primatologist Dr Russell Mittermeier holding an Anjanaharibe-Sud black indri (© Mireya Mayor)

MIRABILIS IS HERE! – MY BRAND-NEW BOOK IS NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

  st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }   Mirabilis has arrived in my study! (Dr Karl Shuker)

Mirabilis is here! I'm very happy to announce that my newly-published 19th book is now available to purchase on Amazon (including both the US and UK sites) and via all other good bookstores. Click here to visit the Mirabilis page on my website, which contains full details concerning my latest book's specifications and content as well as direct clickable links to order it on US Amazon and UK Amazon, and also from its publisher, Anomalist Books (at AnomalistBooks.com ).
Much as I am delighted that Mirabilis is now in print, on a personal note today is also one of great sorrow and poignancy for me, in that this is the first published book of mine that my dear little Mom, Mary Shuker, will never see. My greatest supporter throughout my life, whose abiding faith in me never wavered even when my own did (and still does, on a frequent basis), Mom passed away earlier this year, on Easter Monday, leaving me so devastated that I sometimes wondered during the days and weeks that followed whether I would ever see another book of mine published either.
And yet here it is, and here am I still, somehow, in my grief drawing strength and purpose from knowing how proud Mom would be today, and how much more she would also want me to achieve in my life. I have dedicated Mirabilis to her, in grateful, humble thanks to the best person I shall ever know, and I pray that I shall forever be worthy of her in all that I do throughout the remainder of my days. God bless you Mom, I love you, always.

BREVET'S BLACK MALAYAN TAPIR - AN ASIAN MYSTERY BEAST RESURRECTED

Rotterdam Zoo's adult all-black Malayan tapir
Largest of today's living tapir species, and the only one that is native to the Old World, the Malayan tapir Tapirus indicus is further distinguished by its striking 'saddle' of white, encompassing much of its torso and haunches.
A typical, white-saddled specimen of the Malayan tapir (Ltshears/Wikipedia)
In total contrast, its four New World relatives are all uniformly dark. Naturally, therefore, zoologists were nonplussed when one of the adult Malayan tapirs sent to Rotterdam Zoo in spring 1924 from Sumatra proved to be entirely black, with no saddle.
According to a subsequent paper concerning this singular animal by Dr K. Kuiper of Rotterdam Zoo (Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, July 1926), there were no previous records of all-black Malayan tapirs, and not even Captain K. Brevet (of the Royal Dutch-Indian Army), from whom the tapirs had been received, had ever heard tell of such creatures before. Notwithstanding this, the Rotterdam specimen, a male, confirmed that at least one could (and did) exist. Moreover, when, just a few months later, Brevet sent two juvenile Malayan tapirs to the zoo, one of these matured into a second all-black individual (except for a small grey stripe on the median line of its belly).
Rotterdam Zoo's second all-black Malayan tapir
Yet although they were evidently Malayan tapirs, what was their precise identity, taxonomically speaking? Both specimens had been captured within the Babat district in the low-lying plains of Palembang, a district where the familiar white-saddled form also exists - thereby eliminating any possibility that they constituted a morphologically-distinctive geographical subspecies. And as these two mystifying individuals were both from this same region, with no reports of any all-black tapirs elsewhere, Kuiper also deemed it unlikely that they were merely the product of a simple genetic mutation - i.e. a melanistic (all-black) morph that could appear anywhere and at any time within any population of white-saddled specimens (like black panthers within populations of spotted leopards).
Accordingly, Kuiper looked upon them as representatives of a newly-emerging variety, not replacing the white-saddled version in any specific area (and hence not a subspecies), but nonetheless possessing a specific geographical distribution. In July 1926, within his PZSL paper, he formally christened his newly-categorised variety Tapirus indicus var. brevetianus, in honour of its discoverer.
Another specimen of the normal, white-saddled version of Malayan tapir (Jeffery J. Nichols/Wikipedia)
I brought to a close a short, previous item documenting the above history of Brevet’s black Malayan tapir (within my book Mysteries of Planet Earth , 1999) by stating:
However, it now seems much more plausible that this all-black form was nothing more than a melanistic mutant after all, because no further brevetianus specimens have ever been documented. And both of the Rotterdam individuals died before any matings with white-backed specimens could take place - thereby denying science the opportunity of investigating the genetic basis of their uniformly dark colouration. Even so, their preserved remains at the Leiden Museum of Natural History bear silent witness to their erstwhile existence, and to the tantalising prospect that at some stage in the future, their kind will reappear, reviving the brevetianus zoogeographical paradox - the presence of all-black tapirs in the Old World. 
And indeed, after almost 80 years, that hypothetical stage in the future finally became the very real present, when in 2000, as subsequently documented by Mohammed Azlan J. of WWF Malaysia (Tapir Conservation, vol. 11, no. 1, June 2002), two separate all-black Malayan tapir sightings were recorded within Jerangau Forest Reserve, in Ulu Terengganu, peninsular Malaysia. The first sighting took place on 9 July 2000 at 7.44 pm, when a motion-sensitive infra-red camera set up in lowland forest to monitor tigers obtained a clear photograph of a tapir that was wholly black, with no white saddle marking whatsoever. The second sighting, again the result of triggering an infra-red camera but this time set up in hill forest, snapped an all-black tapir at 1.13 am on 20 July 2001. 

One of  two photographs of a Brevet's black Malayan tapir snapped in the wild just over a decade ago (Mohammed Azlan J)
These are the first, and currently the only, photos obtained in the wild of specimens of Brevet’s black Malayan tapir. Indeed, it might even be that both photos are of the same single animal, which may simply have moved from low forest into hill forest during the intervening year between the snapping of the two photos. Also, according to Wikipedia’s entry for the Malayan tapir, in September 2003 Canadian researcher William Sommers witnessed the live birth of an all-black Malayan tapir in the wild. If correct, this is particularly intriguing, because tapirs of all species are normally born striped, only losing their markings as they mature (as was the case with the second all-black Malayan tapir at Rotterdam Zoo). 
A typical, striped juvenile specimen of Malayan tapir (Sasha Kopf/Wikipedia)
In any event, Azlan’s photos provide conclusive evidence that Brevet’s all-but-forgotten melanistic mystery beast still exists - albeit most probably as an exceedingly rare mutant limited to a couple or so individuals in every generation. And its unexpected appearance in Malaysia, greatly expanding this form’s known distribution, substantiates my belief that it is indeed a mutant morph capable of appearing anywhere within the total Malayan tapir population. Benefiting from modern-day advances in DNA analyses, and with at least one contemporary specimen in existence, it would be fascinating to investigate the genetic make-up of Brevet’s black Malayan tapir, and finally establish after many decades of scientific obscurity the true identity of this enigmatic creature.
Incidentally, in the belief that such a creature would prove exceedingly popular as a pet in the USA, biological engineers have recently attempted to create a dwarf version of the Malayan tapir – but that, as they say, is another story...
Hand-coloured engraving of a normal Malayan tapir, c.1840



 

GO-AWAY BIRDS – WHY THEY DON'T, AND WHAT THEY DO

White-bellied go-away bird (Yathin S Krishnappa/Wikipedia)
Go-away birds – they sound like something from a children's fantasy novel, akin perhaps to the Never bird in J.M. Barrie's classic Peter Pan. And yet they are indisputably – and very audibly – real. Ask any native African hunter attempting to sneak up on his intended animal victim when one or more of these birds is perched close by.
They earn their onomatopoeic name from the sound of their extremely loud, oft-repeated cry, which does sound rather like "g-away!" – check out this YouTube video here of some grey go-away birds in fine voice, and listen for yourself.
Grey go-away bird (Claude Gibney Finch-Davies, 1916)
Acting very much as self-appointed wildlife sentinels, go-away birds perch high up in tree tops, well out of danger themselves, and then proceed via their raucous alarm cries to warn any unsuspecting antelope or any other prey animal in the vicinity of approaching threats, such as human hunters, lions, cheetahs, and other predators. As a result, both prey and predator do indeed go away – the grateful prey to live another day, the seriously aggrieved predators to glare with impotent rage at their feathered nemeses.
But what are go-away birds, zoologically speaking? In fact, they are unusually plain-plumaged relatives of the typically gaudy touracos (and less gaudy plantain-eaters). Touracos are famous for their controversial classification – sometimes allied with the cuckoos, sometimes accorded their very own taxonomic order, Musophagiformes. And they are equally celebrated for producing not one but two porphyrin-derived pigments found nowhere else in the animal kingdom – turacin and turacoverdin.
Johnston's touraco Ruwenzorornis johnstoni (J.G. Keulemans, 1902)
Turacin is the bright crimson pigment commonly seen edging their wings (in all other birds, red colouration is due to the presence of carotenoids); and as its name indicates, turacoverdin is a green pigment that is liberally exhibited in touraco plumage (but in all other birds, green colouration is due to a combination of yellow carotenoids and the scattering of blue light caused by the prismatic qualities of their feathers' surface structure).
Red-crested touraco Tauraco erythrolophus, 1838 painting
In stark contrast, go-away bird are garbed only in the most sombre, nondescript greys and whites, but possess showy crests and long tails, and average 20 inches or so in total length. Like typical touracos, they are endemic to tropical Africa, gregarious, non-migratory, and live principally upon fruit and flowers,. However, they inhabit open or less forested country, whereas other touracos tend to be predominantly forest dwellers.
White-bellied go-away bird (Steve Garvie/Wikipedia)
Three species are recognised. The most attractive member of this trio is the white-bellied go-away bird Corythaixoides leucogaster. Very widely distributed in East Africa, it boasts a lengthy tail handsomely barred in black and white, and bright white underparts too.
Grey go-away birds (Axel Bührmann/Wikipedia)
Less dramatic is the aptly-named grey go-away bird C. concolor. Native to much of southern and southeastern Africa (and often visiting suburban gardens and parks), it is indeed predominantly ashen in colour.
Bare-faced go-away bird (Lip Kee Yap/Wikipedia)
So too is the bare-faced or masked go-away bird C. personatus, but as its name suggests, its facial skin is bereft of feathers and is black in colour, yielding a mask-like appearance that contrasts sharply with its grey crest and the white plumes borne upon the remainder of its face and neck. This species has two discrete populations – one covering much of Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi as well as stretching into the peripheries of Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Malawi, and the Democratic Congo, but the other confined entirely to Ethiopia.
Bare-faced go-away bird (Joseph Smit, 1881)
Happily, none of these three go-away bird species is endangered – much to the chagrin, no doubt, of the hunters all-too-frequently frustrated by their noisy scare-mongering!
Grey go-away bird (Hans Stieglitz/Wikipedia)
Click here for an informative YouTube video featuring a hand-reared white-bellied go-away bird named Mr McBouncyPants at Houston Zoo.
Bare-faced go-away bird (Brooke Bond PG Tips 'Incredible Creatures' collector card, 1986)

WATCH OUT FOR THE NIGHT JAGUAR – RECALLING A FORGOTTEN BUT VERY FEROCIOUS MEXICAN MYSTERY CAT

Boogie, at Tbilisi Zoo (©Vano Shlamov/AFP/Getty Images collection)
Several people have asked me whether the above photograph of an exotic-looking big cat is genuine or photoshopped. Having investigated it, I'm pleased to reveal that it is totally genuine. It was snapped by Vano Shlamov on 10 February 2010, and depicts a black (melanistic) jaguar Panthera onca called Boogie at Tbilisi Zoo in Georgia. The distinctive rosetting is due to the angle at which sunlight is hitting Boogie's pelage. The photograph is part of the AFP/Getty Images collection.
While I was investigating it, moreover, I came upon a couple of tantalising accounts of a very formidable cryptozoological cat that I had never previously known about – hence its absence from my latest book, Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery (2012).
According to an article in Chad Arment's BioFortean Review series, it is known variously as the night jaguar, carraguar, or renegrón. Allegedly native to Colima in Mexico, it is said to resemble a very large all-black jaguar but with coarser fur, and is exceptionally ferocious and fearless. I am only aware of two reports, one extremely brief, the other more extensive, but both of them over a century old. Is this cryptic Mexican cat still being reported today? If so, I'd greatly appreciate receiving any details here.

TAKING A SHINE TO NESSIE RECEIVES THE STAMP OF APPROVAL – THE LNM ON AN FDC

st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
My Nessie First Day Cover (© Royal Mail)

Despite having been named in various polls as Scotland's top tourist attraction, Nessie the Loch Ness Monster has never been commemorated on a British postage stamp – or has she? Well, sort of...
On 20 August 1991, the Royal Mail issued a set of five commemorative postage stamps depicting the skeletons of various dinosaurs. It also produced in association with this set a First Day Cover (FDC), released in Inverness on that same date, and shown above in this present ShukerNature blog post. As can be seen, this FDC features not only all five dinosaur stamps but also a beautiful full-colour illustration of Nessie, depicted in her most popular, plesiosaurian reconstruction and headed 'The Monster of Loch Ness'.
I'm not at all sure what palaeontologists must have thought about cryptozoology's most controversial megastar sharing equal billing with the likes of such dinosaurian celebrities as Iguanodon, Stegosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Protoceratops, and Triceratops. However, worse – at least for them – was still to come.
The FDC also bore two ornate circular franks, both of which took the form of Nessie as a plesiosaur encircled by the words "The Last Dinosaur? The Loch Ness Monster". Now, as any schoolboy dinosaur enthusiast would be quick to point out, plesiosaurs were definitely not dinosaurs, belonging instead to an entirely separate superorder of prehistoric reptiles, Sauropterygia. So even if Nessie does exist, and is a living plesiosaur, she is certainly not the last – or indeed any other – dinosaur.
One day...? (nothing to do with philately, I know - but I just couldn't resist!)
Never mind. This taxonomic tribulation was more than compensated for in my eyes when, after being fortunate enough to stumble upon and duly purchase one of these highly attractive FDCs at a collector's fair several years ago, I discovered to my delight that it had been personally signed by none other than veteran Nessie investigator Adrian Shine, alongside a blue-lettered frank that read: "Carried aboard the research ship Ecos on Loch Ness in the search for Nessie and signed by the project leader Adrian Shine".
All in all, a perfect addition to the collection of any cryptozoological philatelist!
And while on the subject of LNM-inspired philately, Nessie was also featured, again in plesiosaurian guise, on a spectacular miniature sheet issued by the Maldives in 1992. Here it is:
Maldives miniature sheet depicting Nessie, issued in 1992 (© Maldives Royal Mail Postal Service)
For details of many additional cryptozoologically-themed postage stamps, check out my book Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals on Stamps: A Worldwide Catalogue (2008), which includes a special appendix listing every cryptozoology stamp that had been issued prior to this book's publication.

STYMPHALIAN BIRDS, FOREST RAVENS, AND HERMIT IBISES - DREAMS OF A FEATHERED GERONTICUS

A waldrapp or hermit ibis (Dr Karl Shuker)
The famous Greek legend featuring Heracles and the dreaded Stymphalian birds. A non-existent forest raven native to the lofty peaks of the Swiss Alps. The epic biblical story of Noah and the Great Flood. What conceivable connection could exist between such ostensibly disparate subjects as these? The answer is a genuine rara avis called Geronticus - a baffling bird encompassed by all manner of myths and mysteries, drawn together from the dreams of the past. 
A young waldrapp (on left) and an adult (Dr Karl Shuker)
One of the twelve great labours imposed upon the mighty Greek hero Heracles by the cowardly King Eurystheus of Argolis was to vanquish the Stymphalides - a flock of brass-winged, crane-sized, ibis-like birds with crests and a craving for human flesh, which frequented the Stymphalian marshes in Arcadia. With the aid of a loudly resonating pair of brass rattles forged by the fire god Hephaestus and loaned to him by the war goddess Athena, however, Heracles was able to scare the birds out of their marshy domain and into flight. Once they were airborne, wheeling overhead in a frenzy of fright engendered by the ear-splitting cacophony of the rattles, he then proceeded to fire volley after volley of arrows into their soft, unprotected bellies, killing some and sending the remainder flying far away towards the Black Sea, never to return to Arcadia.
A beautiful depiction of the Stymphalian birds battling Heracles (Titta/Deviantart)
These fearful bird-monsters were originally thought to constitute an imaginative personification of marsh fever, but in 1987 Swiss ornithologist Michael Desfayes proposed that they may actually have been based upon a real (albeit smaller, harmless) bird.  Also called the hermit ibis, the waldrapp Geronticus eremita is a very rare relative of the more familiar sacred ibis of Egypt and South America's scarlet ibis, and sports a crest, a long red beak, and bronze-coloured wings. It is nowadays restricted to a scattering of sites in Morocco, Algeria, Syria, and one notable locality in Turkey; it has also been reintroduced into Spain and Austria. However, it was once much more widespread, known from as far west as Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (see below). Moreover, after comparing its morphology with classic descriptions of the Stymphalides, Desfayes opined that they were one and the same species, and that Greece should thus be added to the waldrapp's former distribution range.
Albrecht Dürer's extraordinary semi-humanoid portrayal of the Stymphalides
Not everyone agrees with his opinion - one researcher suggested that the real identity of the Stymphalides was the sacred ibis Threskiornis aethiopicus, which did once exist in Greece. However, this identity was based upon the evidence of a single depiction of the Stymphalides as black and white birds, whereas there are many others depicting them in other forms, so this particular identification is by definition highly selective. Perhaps the strangest and most distinctive portrayal of the Stymphalides appears in a painting from c.1500 by Albrecht Dürer in which they are represented with the heads and upper torsos (including arms and breasts) of women, and long mermaid-like fishtails!
Conrad Gesner's depiction of the mysterious forest raven
Another longstanding mystery bird from Europe was the Swiss forest raven, describedand portrayed by Zurich scholar Conrad Gesner in his Historiae Animalium, published in 1555. Later writers dismissed this bird as imaginary, because it seemed to resemble a crested ibis rather than a raven, and there was no ibis-like bird known from Switzerland. Not until 1941 was the mystery finally resolved, when geologically Recent remains of waldrapps were excavated from the Glarus Alps and sites near Solothurn.
This distinctive bird corresponds perfectly with Gesner's description and depiction of his perplexing 'forest raven', and it is now known that way back in 1504 the waldrapp (whose name translates from German as 'wood crow') was formally designated a protected species in the Alps by Archbishop Leonard of Salzburg. Tragically, however, his decree was largely ignored, and the waldrapp's nestlings were hunted mercilessly as prized culinary delicacies. Less than a century later it had become extinct here, swiftly fading from memory and ultimately transforming into an apparently mythical, non-existent bird known only from a medieval bestiary.
A waldrapp revealing its distinctive crest, as accurately portrayed by Gesner (Dr Karl Shuker)
It is likely that the waldrapp would have become extinct in Turkey too, but here it has been saved not only by modern conservationist zeal but also by traditional religious belief. According to ancient Turkish lore, the waldrapp was one of the birds released by Noah after the Great Flood, and symbolises fertility - giving the people of Birecik, site of this species' only notable Turkish colony, an added incentive for perpetuating its tenuous survival here.
The weird yet very wonderful waldrapp (Dr Karl Shuker)

WHAT MAY BE A HITHERTO-UNDOCUMENTED SIGHTING OF THE LOCH NESS MONSTER, GIVEN TO ME BY TIM DINSDALE ON 25 JULY 1987

st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } The first Nessie book that I ever read was this one, by Tim Dinsdale, purchased for me as a child by my mother
Back in 1986, veteran Loch Ness monster researcher Tim Dinsdale (1924-1987) had corresponded with me in relation to a very different but equally intriguing water monster that formed the basis of my first major cryptozoological investigation – Gambo, the Gambian sea serpent. Consequently, when I attended the International Society of Cryptozoology's two-day symposium held at the Royal Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh on 25-26 July 1987, Day 1 of which was devoted to Nessie and at which Tim was one of the speakers (click here to read my reporting of this symposium), I lost no time in introducing myself to him so that I could thank him directly for his kind interest and encouragement in my own fledgling cryptozoological researches.
Artistic representation of the Gambian sea serpent (William Rebsamen)
In response, Tim gave me a copy of a most interesting Nessie sighting that an eyewitness had recently sent to him. He didn't provide me with the eyewitness's name, because he no doubt intended to publish an exclusive report of it in some future publication. Tragically, however, only a few months after the ISC symposium, on 14 December 1987 Tim suffered a fatal heart attack.
Recently, I came upon the copy of this sighting that Tim had given me all those years ago, and as I am unsure whether it was ever made public, I am now doing so, by including here on ShukerNature the sketches of what the eyewitness claimed to have seen (click image to enlarge it), together with the sparse details concerning it that I have on file, in case this may be of benefit to other Nessie researchers.
The sheet given to me on 25 July 1987 by Tim Dinsdale containing two sketches by a Nessie eyewitness
The eyewitness observed a typical 'periscope' shape projecting up through the water surface, yielding an outline reminiscent of the object in the controversial Surgeon's Photo. He/she also saw a very long hump visible above the water surface, approximately 25-30 ft in length and approximately 1.5 ft high, with what looked like distinct backward-pointing serrations running along the posterior portion of its upper surface.
If anyone has any further knowledge concerning this Nessie sighting, I'd be delighted to receive details here on ShukerNature.
Tim Dinsdale (Tim Dinsdale)