ShukerNature Himalayan Mystery

Sunday, 25 August 2013

LEGLESS IN NEPAL - A LIMBLESS HIMALAYAN CROCODILE DRAGON?

 

Nepal's limbless crocodile dragon (William M. Rebsamen)

As comprehensively documented in my latest book, Mirabilis: A Carnival of Cryptozoology and Unnatural History (2013), crocodilian mystery beasts come in all shapes and sizes and are of worldwide distribution. Yet few, surely, can be stranger than the giant limbless version reported from southern Asia as recently as 1980.

That was when Reverend Resham Poudal, an Indian missionary, was leading an entourage through a Himalayan jungle valley in Nepal. They came upon what seemed at first sight to be an enormous log, greenish-brown in colour, lying on the ground across their planned path – and then the 'log' moved! To the great alarm of everyone present, it proved to be a huge limbless reptile, whose scaly serpentine form blended in so well with the surrounding vegetation that when stationary, it did indeed look exactly like a log or fallen tree trunk.

Its eyewitnesses estimated the creature's total body length to be at least 42 ft, and approximately 6.5 ft in circumference, but most shocking of all were its jaws. For whereas those of true snakes, even massive ones, are relatively short in relation to their body, this mystery reptile's were extremely long, greatly resembling a crocodile's jaws. And although they were motionless, they were fully open, yielding a gape wide enough for a 6.5-ft-tall human to stand inside!

As I learnt from veteran cryptozoological explorer Bill Gibbons, who has also written about this bizarre cryptid, the entourage's native Nepalese members informed the Reverend that they considered these 'crocodile-snakes' to be dragons, but stated that they were only very occasionally encountered - and even when one was met with, it rarely moved. Instead, it would simply lie impassively with its monstrous jaws agape and wait for unsuspecting prey, usually water buffaloes, to approach, not seeing its enormous yet perfectly camouflaged form until it was too late. For as soon as a buffalo walked within range, the dragon's open jaws would seize it, and from those immensely powerful killing implements, brimming with sharp teeth, there would be no escape. In addition, the natives claimed that its eyes glowed like luminescent lamps at night (a feature also reported for anacondas and other very large snakes), which helped to lure prey.

But if such a remarkable creature as this truly exists, what could it be? Possibly an immense species of snake with unusually large jaws, or perhaps a gigantic legless lizard? Might it even be a unique limbless species of terrestrial crocodilian, highly specialised for this cryptic, motionless lifestyle? Whatever it is, it certainly does not match the appearance of any reptile currently known to science.

This ShukerNature blog post is excerpted from my newly-published book Mirabilis:A Carnival of Cryptozoology and Unnatural History (Anomalist Books: New York, 2013), which is available as a hard-copy paperback book and also as a Kindle e-book.

 This may not be transparently obvious to everybody but the creature that is described here is really the same thing as the Buru, the Buru being a creature that is alternately described as having four limbs like a crocodile but also as being limbless like a sepent. The size as reported here is comparable to the clearly identical Bu-Rin of Burma, said to be 50 feet long and limbless (but also seen swimming in the water only and so the legs could be missed. In this case the creature was well-camouflaged and hard to discern from the vegetation, well covered by vegetation as well, so the legs could conceivably be missed.
The story of "we thought it was a log until it moved and then we saw it was a big snake" is a popular legend found in many places, including several different parts of Indonesia and including also many parts of Latin America. Of course selecting only one telling of the legend as a report is analogous to singling out one report of The Phantom Hitchhiker and treating the story as a real event unrelated to the dozens of other other near-identical retellings of the same story.
Personally I think estimations of lengths up to 50 feet or more are only exaggerations. Heuvelmans allows a length of up to 25 feet for this species and this blog has had an ongoing disputation over that point. The more exaggerated accounts allege that such creatures (called Nyans) can eat whole elephants and so the stories of buffalos marching into its open jaws are right in line with that. (The bestiary dragons which attack elephants come out of this legend) The legends of larger creatures undoubtedly originate in sightings of wakes-in-the-water and an early publication of the reports notes a distinct resemblance to Scandinavian sea-serpent reports. Because of this there is at least the sound suggestion that some of the reports are actually referring to giant eels instead.  All of this has also been mentioned on this blog before.


The Buru of Assam as illustrated by Neave Parker of the British Museum (Natural History)
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/art-nature-imaging/collections/art-themes/20thcentury/more/iguanodon_more_info.htm

Nagas, Plesiosaurs and Rainbow Serpents

 

Nagas are the South Asian (Indian and Indonesian) equivalents of Dragons, and the name "Naga" simply means "Snake", In Indonesia the Nagas tend to be a very peculiar sort of snake with a distinct neck; shoulders with forefins, wings or legs; a short thick torso tapering down into what looks like a distinct tail also. In more elaborate depictions they are shown with several loops in the water following the head and neck in typical "Sea-Serpent" style. The range of size in depicted Nagas is very great, from less than human size (three feet?) to a very great size, perhaps over fifty feet long.

 

 

 

 I had seen a similar pattern to this Suma Islands textile [below] before from the Phillipines before but I did not have a photo for it. It occurred to me that the creature on the other textile had a body plan like a Plesiosaur. One of the styles of depiction on the other cloth had an enlarged "Snake Head" and this one has "Devil Heads" instead. at any rate, the heads are mostly symbolic, the important thing is that the depictions are not showing ordinary crocodiles but something different.

(The lizards shown in the center are possibly very large and unclassified monitor lizards)

 

Cast of a Plesiosaur fossil, to show the similar body plan.

 

The two Batak carved wooden panels below show something like the local version of the Tao-tieh (Taotie) Chinese dragon head and once again it seems that the spiral design behind the eyes represents the Euryapsid skull openings that Plesiosaurs have (but that snakes do not have) The pineal 'eye' may also be intended by thesmall diamond shape above the eyes but situated medially: the boxed-off area in front of the eyes may indicate the area where the nostrils are located.

It turns out that in Northern Australia the Rainbow Snake (also known in Southern India) is a local variation on the Naga design. I am borrowing the logo of the Aboriginal Northern Land Council (This is not meant in any way to be disrespectful, I just needed to illustrate the design). Compare to the body plan of the first Indonesian Naga at the top of this article. An earlier blog noted the comparison of the Rainbow Serpent's teeth to PLesiosaur teeth: I did not make the comparison myself but it is also a good argument.

And finally it seems that the Nagas of Indonesia carry over intio New Guinea and Melanesia, where some of the native names sound as if they are variations of "Naga" and "Naga Raja" (King-of-Serpents) in the sield below, the Naga is shown in an ambiguous way, either as the top half done X-ray style with the throat indicated from the mouth down and then a schematic herart (The curlicues at the ends of the jaws is a design also known from Indonesia) and then as the top half, showing the twi foreflippers in the same manner as the Rotomahana sighting off New Zealand in the 1800s: and it is also a stlyised profile with both head and tail ends up, and indicating both fore and rear flippers.

 The catline face at the top of the shield is also interesting and I wonder if there are local reports of "Phantom panthers" to go along with the catfaced design?

Here is a comparison of a Plesiosaur reconstruction by National Geographic

to compare to the "Winged Foreflippers" top-part sighting design.

 Such sightings are infrequent but have been recorded in the Baltic sea, in the North

Atlantic, near New Zealand, off the US East Coast, off the US West Coast and near Japan.

Tarantula The Size Of A Human Face Discovered

Tarantula The Size Of A Human Face Discovered

1:51pm UK, Thursday 04 April 2013
http://news.sky.com/story/1073751/tarantula-the-size-of-a-human-face-discovered

Scientists have found an enormous, previously unknown, species of venomous spider in a remote Sri Lankan village.

The newly-found spider (Pics: British Tarantula Society/ Ranil Nanayakkara)

The giant tarantula is as big as a human face.

Its legs, which have unique daffodil-yellow markings, span a massive 20cm (eight inches). The arachnid also has a distinctive pink band around its body.

The new species was found in the war-torn north of the South Asian country by scientists from Sri Lanka's Biodiversity Education and Research (BER) organisation.

It has been named Poecilotheria rajaei, in recognition of a senior police officer called Michael Rajakumar Purajah, who guided the research team through a hazardous jungle overrun by civil unrest in order to seek out the spider.

The spider is said to prefer living on old trees

The arachnid had originally been presented to BER three years ago by villagers in Mankulam, who had killed a male specimen.

Scientists immediately realised the dead spider was not like anything they already knew and a group was charged with finding any living relatives.

The living Poecilotheria rajaei were eventually discovered in the former doctor's quarters of the village's hospital.

According to wired.com, Ranil Nanayakkara, the co-founder of BER, said: "They are quite rare.

The tarantula is characterised by its yellow legs and pink band

"They prefer well-established old trees, but due to deforestation the number have dwindled and due to lack of suitable habitat they enter old buildings."

The website described the tarantula as "colourful, fast and venomous".

The species is said to be related to a class of South American tarantula that includes the Goliath bird-eater, one of the world's largest spiders.

In other reports Mr Nanayakkara is quoted as saying none of the tarantulas found in Sri Lanka have bites that are deadly to humans. However, the Poecilotheria rajaei would be able to kill animals as large as mice, lizards and small birds and snakes.

A male member of the Poecilotheria rajaei species

Peter Kirk, who covered the discovery for the British Tarantula Society's journal, told Sky News: "Ranil has been working on these spiders since 2009 out in Sri Lanka and this is the first of what is thought to be a number of new species he has discovered in what was previously the inaccessible northern region of the island.

"It demonstrates that wildlife continues to survive whilst we are in the throes of conflict and that they can adapt to its changing environment - but also highlights that we risk destroying the habitats of species new to science and condemning them to extinction before they are even discovered."

Crossover Posting on Giant Tortoises

Posting on Giant Tortoises just made at the Frontiers of Athropology. This problem has two aspects: a cultural one and a Cryptozoological one. Because of the cultural aspect I added it on the Anthropology blog, but people interested in the Cryptozoological aspect should also check it out. It contains a CFZ Reprint on the bottom with an updated comment to tie it in.
http://frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.com/2011/11/giant-turtle-that-bears-world-on-its.html

Best Wishes, Dale D.