Showing posts with label Bernard Heuvelmans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bernard Heuvelmans. Show all posts

Saturday, 18 October 2014

Identifying the... Amazonian Death Worm

An illustration of a caecillan Minhocão.
Image credit user Kryptid of Wikipedia.
One of the most well known of all cryptids, ranking among the likes of Nessie and Bigfoot, is the Mongolian death worm. However, the death worm is often misinterpreted amongst non-cryptozoologists as a giant, supremely aggressive and dangerous animal, akin to the wyrms of heraldry.

In actuality, the death worm is usually described as a fairly small, fat burrowing creature, which only attacks when disturbed, fighting back with acid and electric shocks.

Tuesday, 26 August 2014

Identifying the... Milne

Slightly oversized Arctotherium reconstruction.
Image credit Carnivora Forums.
A fairly obscure cryptid, the Milne is a large black bear known from only one sighting. Allegedly, in 1946, explorer Leonard Clark was floating down the Ucayali River in eastern Peru when he discovered large footprints on the bank, like those of a giant man. The next day, his canoe passed a huge black bear on the bank, clawing apart a rotted tree infested with ants. One of his crew accidentally provoked the bear, and it leaped into the water and swam towards the canoe, prompting Clark's entire crew to leap overboard and flee. Clark shot it dead, but without his crew, he was unable to retrieve it and it was devoured by piranhas (Heuvelmans, 1986; Shuker, 1997).