Speaker 1: Oh, fellow conspiracy realist, there is a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: going on here in twenty twenty five. We just started
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, and I gotta tell you, guys, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of pooped yet.
Speaker 2: It's kind of exhausting being a human these days.
Speaker 3: Well just look around, Just look around, Just look around.
Speaker 1: And this is why sometimes we take a break and
Speaker 1: go back to our roots.
Speaker 4: The evenings of yesteryear.
Speaker 1: Every so often we will go through a cryptid phase.
Speaker 1: And this is a classic episode for all our fellow
Speaker 1: conspiracy cryptozoologists out there. We've all heard a bigfoot, we've
Speaker 1: all heard of the Lockness Monster and Mothman with that
Speaker 1: amazing posterior. But it turns out there are hundreds hundreds
Speaker 1: of other cryptids that you don't really hear about in
Speaker 1: the West exactly.
Speaker 3: And this episode is pre us finding out about Squank,
Speaker 3: which is super exciting.
Speaker 2: The Squawk guys, people behind the curtain of life. My
Speaker 2: kid's been printing their own clothes lately and trying to
Speaker 2: start a little business, was asking me what would be
Speaker 2: something that they should print on, like a dress they
Speaker 2: found in a threst stort.
Speaker 5: I was like, I got just the thing. It's the Squonk.
Speaker 5: They politely passed, But I love the Squak, the weeping, pathetic,
Speaker 5: little sad boy Cryptid, the.
Speaker 1: Saddest cryptid of all. Check out our other episode which
Speaker 1: is entirely about the Squawk. And for now, we can't
Speaker 1: wait to introduce you to some cryptids you have never
Speaker 1: heard of.
Speaker 2: Let's get right into it.
Speaker 6: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 6: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 6: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 6: production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 3: my name is Nolan.
Speaker 4: They call me Ben.
Speaker 1: We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission
Speaker 1: Control Decant. Most importantly, you are here, and that makes
Speaker 1: this stuff.
Speaker 4: They don't want you to know a little bit of
Speaker 4: a personal story that.
Speaker 1: You guys would enjoy to open up the show today,
Speaker 1: I was at our local bar named in a burst
Speaker 1: of creativity, the local, I guess we give them a
Speaker 1: lot of business. And I realized about twenty five minutes
Speaker 1: into what began as a light conversation and became in
Speaker 1: a passion debate about Bigfoot and cryptozoology in general. It's like, Wow,
Speaker 1: yelling at someone about cryptozoology in a bar is just
Speaker 1: very on brand for me. It might be the most
Speaker 1: on brand thing I've done in the past month.
Speaker 2: How what level of yelling are we talking here?
Speaker 1: Just raised voices what whorp in America would call a
Speaker 1: healthy conversation.
Speaker 2: Oh, you wouldn't elevate it to the level of a rant.
Speaker 4: There was no agro.
Speaker 1: Really, there were disagreements, but it was it was a
Speaker 1: respectful exchange of intellectual perspectives.
Speaker 2: To be fair, if you're in a bar, it's a
Speaker 2: little noisy, so a certain level of voice raising is
Speaker 2: already acceptable as like a baseline of communication.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but if that music comes down in your life.
Speaker 3: But the sheer surface area of the forest, oh you
Speaker 3: were there, Yeah, it did.
Speaker 4: It did good to a thing where it got.
Speaker 1: It did get to a point where he said, you
Speaker 1: know what, let's go outside, and we went outside to
Speaker 1: the front porch area and continued talking.
Speaker 3: Beautiful.
Speaker 1: But this this got me thinking that we have we've
Speaker 1: explored so many different types of cryptids in the past.
Speaker 1: You know, we've explored bigfoot sasquatch, mothman, allegations of dinosaurs
Speaker 1: in parts of what was that Western Africa.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've talked about some worms that were really creepy.
Speaker 4: I remember the Mongolian death worm. Yeah, I love that one.
Speaker 2: Are like the ones from Tremors?
Speaker 1: Do you think they seem it's almost as if the
Speaker 1: ones from Trimmors are based somehow on that idea. They're
Speaker 1: not as big as the worms from trimmers, the Mongolian
Speaker 1: death worms?
Speaker 4: Gotcha?
Speaker 2: Yeah, gotcha? What about the sandworms from beetle juice or
Speaker 2: from Dune?
Speaker 1: No, No, those those things would be if the sandworms
Speaker 1: from Dune would be the largest organisms to exist on Earth.
Speaker 4: If they were real, be cool.
Speaker 1: I would if there was a big if there was
Speaker 1: a bigger thing than a whale, I would hope it
Speaker 1: was not a worm.
Speaker 3: But you know, yeah, we'd all be in the spice
Speaker 3: business anyway.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 4: That's true, we would.
Speaker 1: But we since we've discussed the concept of cryptozoology in
Speaker 1: earlier episodes, we don't need to go into all of
Speaker 1: it today. We can just give you the quick and
Speaker 1: dirty recap. So here are the effects cryptozoology.
Speaker 3: Something we very much enjoy on this show is the
Speaker 3: study of and search for animals that are a lot
Speaker 3: of times considered either extinct or legends, the legendary moch
Speaker 3: le membe that we've talked about before. It's technically the
Speaker 3: mission of a cryptozoologist to evaluate the possibility of the
Speaker 3: existence of something, some animals existence, So a lot of
Speaker 3: times there's specialization that occurs here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's I love that you point out the
Speaker 1: technically that's their mission because one of the criticisms that
Speaker 1: cryptozoologists get, and there are many, is that they are
Speaker 1: setting out to prove something they already believe, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like you're sitting out with an agenda,
Speaker 1: like I know in my heart the four tooth waffle
Speaker 1: snapper is real. Yeah, and a relic population exists in
Speaker 1: the Alps or the Pyrenees or what have you, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to prove that I am correct, rather than
Speaker 1: prove the truth.
Speaker 3: A lot of that has to do with the popularity
Speaker 3: of I'm just going to use one example here of
Speaker 3: something like squatching, like going out squatching to find a sasquatch,
Speaker 3: which is you know, it sounds silly, but it is.
Speaker 2: Wait, is that what you call it?
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 2: You got a squatching?
Speaker 3: Yeah? You an evening you can go squatching. That's real
Speaker 3: seo squatch. Pretty sure. There are Discovery Channel shows where
Speaker 3: people go squatching on the regular.
Speaker 1: So if you are a fan of the search for
Speaker 1: Bigfoot or sasquatch related creatures, let us know if that
Speaker 1: came organically from your community or if a producer at
Speaker 1: you know, Discovery made it up.
Speaker 3: Who knows. All I know is that that. I think
Speaker 3: that concept of someone going out to prove the existence
Speaker 3: of something they already believe in maybe is tied into that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and the animals that they're looking for, the
Speaker 1: life forms have not been conclu usively proven to exist,
Speaker 1: are called cryptids, So cryptos zoologists cryptids. They're popular types
Speaker 1: of cryptids, the greatest hits we all we all know them,
Speaker 1: we love them, like the Elvis of cryptids or the
Speaker 1: jay Z of cryptids. The Who's another musician? The Naws
Speaker 1: of cryptids? Uh, Cisco Cisco a different genre?
Speaker 3: He did he the.
Speaker 2: Oh no, he's canceled. The He's he's not quite famous
Speaker 2: enough to see he's more of a big name. Uh.
Speaker 2: The Alexander Hamilton the cryptids.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's the doctor Frankenforter of cryptids. Is that the
Speaker 1: right name from Rocky Horror picture. Yeah, he's the Paul
Speaker 1: Decant of Cryptids.
Speaker 2: Bigfoot called the Paul Simon even take it, and that
Speaker 2: would also apply to things like the loch Ness Monster
Speaker 2: in earlier days, that Jersey Devil, which should be more
Speaker 2: of a Garfunkle of Cryptids, I.
Speaker 1: Would argue on I would think they were a different band.
Speaker 1: We're going to hit a lot of garfunkle Cryptids today.
Speaker 1: In other words, the lesser Paul actually told us he
Speaker 1: created this file as B Team Cryptids. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: wasn't joking. He's a very serious man.
Speaker 3: It's it's reminiscent of our B Team Superpowers episode we did, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which was still.
Speaker 1: So interesting, like the fact that magnetic people just have
Speaker 1: very frictive skin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they ended up on the B team.
Speaker 1: And they ended up on the B Team. They were
Speaker 1: like the Great Lakes Avengers. For all you comic fans
Speaker 1: out there, we already talked about this on air, right.
Speaker 2: We talked about that in the very episode.
Speaker 1: I believe Great Lakes Avengers. There's one guy who's Doorman
Speaker 1: his power. I just have to bitch this for anybody
Speaker 1: who hasn't heard this, because I'm still fascinated by it.
Speaker 1: Doorman has the amazing superpower that allows him to when
Speaker 1: he's standing next to a wall, people can walk through
Speaker 1: him then and then through the wall.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't he can't teleport, he can't, you know, be intangible.
Speaker 4: He can just become a door.
Speaker 3: But he can become a door and then go on
Speaker 3: the other side. Right, so technically he can go through walls.
Speaker 3: I don't know, he could open up. He could walk
Speaker 3: up to the wall, become a door, and then exit
Speaker 3: on the other side.
Speaker 2: That's just walking through walls.
Speaker 3: That gets pretty dope.
Speaker 4: I guess it's like a super convenience then a power.
Speaker 2: It's more of a super helper than he is a superhero.
Speaker 4: He's kind of a super furniture piece.
Speaker 3: All right, superheroes aside. Yes, let's jump back to e cryptozoology.
Speaker 1: Right, okay, So here's the strange thing about cryptozoology. Although
Speaker 1: it is often called a pseudo science. Although you know,
Speaker 1: most people in the Academy capital A dismiss it as
Speaker 1: pure mallarchy and poppycock, or a lot of people in
Speaker 1: the world of the layman see it as at the
Speaker 1: very least controversial entertaining, maybe more like reality TV junk food,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, rather than some serious pursuit.
Speaker 1: But the truth of the matter is, the ugly truth
Speaker 1: of the matter for people who hate cryptozoology, is that
Speaker 1: researchers have actually verified the existence or rediscovery, we should say,
Speaker 1: of multiple real animals that were once thought to be
Speaker 1: myths or legends or extinct, and we've got famous examples
Speaker 1: of those, like the celicanth. Gorillas were thought to be
Speaker 1: mythical for a long time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just to jump in that Ceilcanth was a fish
Speaker 3: that we thought for humanity, thought for centuries that this
Speaker 3: thing had been extinct, and then it just showed up again.
Speaker 3: And if nobody was looking then it may maybe it
Speaker 3: would have just come back in. We wouldn't have known. Still,
Speaker 3: but thank goodness for ey cryptozoologist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also we have to point out in both
Speaker 1: of those cases, this discovery comes about because Western Europeans
Speaker 1: finally saw these animals that the local people in the
Speaker 1: region had known about four years. The local community where
Speaker 1: the ceilicant was rediscovered, first off, they were very unimpressed
Speaker 1: with the fish and not think was a big deal,
Speaker 1: and their reaction was very much like big whoop because
Speaker 1: those things taste like trash.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what are we going to do with it? On
Speaker 3: an applicable level, cares yeah.
Speaker 1: And so we know that cryptozoology has successes, but it
Speaker 1: also has some baked in flaws, some things that make
Speaker 1: it very difficult for let's say, zoologists to take cryptozoologists seriously.
Speaker 2: And one of the biggest problems, the most prevalent problems
Speaker 2: in the field of cryptozoology, is the potential to misidentify
Speaker 2: some of these things. We see it time and time again.
Speaker 2: It can happen super easily. Most people, for example, haven't
Speaker 2: really seen a bear in the wild, let alone right
Speaker 2: up close. If you add to that the adrenaline rush
Speaker 2: that comes with the initial sighting of said creature, and
Speaker 2: you know, the fallibility of our memories as imperfect human beings,
Speaker 2: despite what we like to tell ourselves, right, And of course, additionally,
Speaker 2: you've got just hoaxes a plenty.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, and this is a really great point here.
Speaker 3: Let's just say we make an example out of it.
Speaker 3: The four of us in this room plus you, we're
Speaker 3: all walking around in the woods. We've got all our
Speaker 3: gear to find our squatch. We know, we don't believe
Speaker 3: it's out there, but we want to prove that it's
Speaker 3: out there or not. And we happen upon something on
Speaker 3: a ridge high above us. It seems to be brown,
Speaker 3: the color that oh, sasquatch might be that color. And
Speaker 3: I can just see some it looks like fur up
Speaker 3: there moving around, just this example that we've given here
Speaker 3: of a bear. If we all observe this thing and
Speaker 3: we're unable to get up there to get our eyes
Speaker 3: on it, and it sounds like there's maybe a weird
Speaker 3: noise occurring up near this location.
Speaker 2: Whoo woo woo, woo woo woo woo boo, sort of
Speaker 2: a three stages kind of sound.
Speaker 3: Right, Oh my god, So what is that? Oh my god?
Speaker 3: What is happening up there? It may be within us
Speaker 3: to at least a few of us would probably believe,
Speaker 3: perhaps you, that that was a sasquatch, even if we
Speaker 3: can't prove it was or not, But another percentage of
Speaker 3: us would say, oh, that's just a bear. Guys, we
Speaker 3: didn't see anything, And that, in I think, is what
Speaker 3: we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's another weird twist. We're in a immensely
Speaker 1: fascinating time. For cryptozoology, twenty nineteen is the best time
Speaker 1: for cryptozoology since the past few centuries, really since back
Speaker 1: in the days when people we're still exploring the edges
Speaker 1: of maps. And it leads us to a weird twist. So,
Speaker 1: the human population is growing more importantly despite concentrating more
Speaker 1: and more in cities and urban areas, our civilization is
Speaker 1: reaching out to places it had never reached before. And
Speaker 1: when we combine this with our weird obsession with making
Speaker 1: surveillance technology, our species, weird obsession with making surveillance technology
Speaker 1: and monitoring everything through satellites, those two factors mean that
Speaker 1: we are more likely than ever before to discover previously
Speaker 1: unidentified or lost organisms. And you can find these kind
Speaker 1: of inspiring lists. It's a sad irony because a lot
Speaker 1: of the reasons we're discovering these these other creatures is
Speaker 1: because we are in the process of destroying their environment,
Speaker 1: obliterating them, creating some sort of some sort of analog
Speaker 1: of genocide. Right, we are rendering them extinct. And this means,
Speaker 1: you know that we might as we go forward, we
Speaker 1: might still find stuff, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 1: the colossal squid that's another cryptid that was proven to exist.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to cryptids, it turns out there
Speaker 1: are way more than Bigfoot, way way more.
Speaker 3: And we'll get into specific examples after this word from
Speaker 3: our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy. We found examples of a
Speaker 1: you know, we don't have every cryptid ever mentioned in
Speaker 1: this episode, but we found some examples of some obscure
Speaker 1: ones that seem pretty interesting. So we're going to explore
Speaker 1: those and then maybe talk a little bit about whether
Speaker 1: or not they could be real pros and cons.
Speaker 2: Okay, so first off, we've got okay, we practice this
Speaker 2: pronunciation off fair. Oh see if I can get it.
Speaker 2: Incan Yamba nailed it great, thanks man. The Incan Yamba
Speaker 2: is a legendary cryptid from Southern Africa that lives by
Speaker 2: waterfalls and most commonly is seen at a place called
Speaker 2: how It Falls in South Africa, and it has a
Speaker 2: reputation for looking like a snake except for the head, which,
Speaker 2: of course, like you do, looks like a horse horse head.
Speaker 2: That seems like a very non functioning creature when it
Speaker 2: use its weird horsehead to kind of drag itself along,
Speaker 2: you know, use it like a weird foot.
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, because it's aquatic, it makes
Speaker 1: a little more sense just because it wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: drag the head around.
Speaker 2: Do you think it's amphibious though? Is the questions? Let's
Speaker 2: let's move forward here. So yeah, like you said, Ben,
Speaker 2: the Incan yamba is aquatic and lives in lakes and
Speaker 2: near waterfalls, and to some it's suspected of being a
Speaker 2: species of giant eel rather than a snake at all.
Speaker 2: And it's distinguished from similar creatures due to its odd size,
Speaker 2: which is over twenty feet long.
Speaker 4: That's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's too much feet along with a giant horse
Speaker 3: looking head hanging out underneath a waterfall. First of all, no,
Speaker 3: thank you. Well, you know you you hear a description
Speaker 3: of something like that, and it makes you wonder how
Speaker 3: many times, how many sightings have occurred to get that
Speaker 3: kind of specific description of something, you know, like the
Speaker 3: horse or horse shaped head is so specific to me.
Speaker 2: Well, now we've heard of the water horse, right, it's
Speaker 2: a film about a small and NeSSI type creature. I
Speaker 2: just wonder if the name you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: Like we've got a sea horse, yeah, we've got which
Speaker 2: has like a elongated head. And with a snouff and
Speaker 2: things like that. I wonder, okay, if it's based on
Speaker 2: that kind of maybe it doesn't actually have has looked
Speaker 2: like a horse per se does and have like fur
Speaker 2: and literally a transplanted horse head looks more like a
Speaker 2: you know, just have it as more of an elongated shape, okay, horse.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, yeah, So, according to locals and people who
Speaker 1: believe in it, it's most active during the summer months.
Speaker 1: Of this leads some people to believe that it is
Speaker 1: migratory or that it's been around so long in the
Speaker 1: local culture that they believe it as supernatural abilities causes
Speaker 1: seasonal storms to come. But if we look at what
Speaker 1: this actually could be, if this were a thing, then
Speaker 1: we could say, maybe it's a large species of fresh
Speaker 1: water eel, like the Angla mosambika or the Angla marmorata,
Speaker 1: both of those.
Speaker 4: Here's the problem with these. These are large.
Speaker 1: These will freaking out if you saw them in the wild, probably,
Speaker 1: but they grow to about six feet instead of twenty
Speaker 1: So is this giant version of an existing thing? Maybe
Speaker 1: the problem is that we usually see We know that
Speaker 1: fish and maritime animals can grow to unusual size, but
Speaker 1: we usually only see them reach that size when they're
Speaker 1: out in deep oceans. So would this lake be deep
Speaker 1: enough that something could grow to like more than three
Speaker 1: times what it's supposed to grow to.
Speaker 3: Mmm, it seems unlikely. But there is something really fascinating
Speaker 3: in particular with this cryptid, and it's that it was
Speaker 3: found and has been found in cave paintings from native tribes.
Speaker 3: Is there are some tribes within the Quazulu Natal province
Speaker 3: that had these cave paintings of these things or allegedly
Speaker 3: of these things, and supposedly they had some kind of
Speaker 3: supernatural power perhaps like they could influence the weather maybe
Speaker 3: or would give good or generally bad tidings or would
Speaker 3: bring bad tidings. What am I trying to say here? Yeah,
Speaker 3: it would it would be it would be bad for
Speaker 3: you to see one generally would be a bad omen
Speaker 3: a bad omen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, woe betide those who crossed the Ikanyamba. Also have
Speaker 1: I zoned out just for saken when you said a
Speaker 1: tribe called because I totally thought you were going to
Speaker 1: say a tribe called question.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I know, I almost did, almost said that,
Speaker 3: but no, it's it's that was actually several tribes within
Speaker 3: a province.
Speaker 1: That makes sense too, because this is a very regionalized creature, right. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of these come to us from the
Speaker 1: African continent because for a long time, the members of
Speaker 1: the Ivory Towers and the academies had no idea what
Speaker 1: the what. They had no very well polished idea of
Speaker 1: what the ecosystems or the biomes were like, and they
Speaker 1: would just hear crazy stories or rely on disreputable sources.
Speaker 3: Or just legends, local legends.
Speaker 1: Or just legends because according to some people, especially if
Speaker 1: you're in the Congo, you may run into gigantic creatures
Speaker 1: undiscovered on the land as well. And that brings us
Speaker 1: to something that I'm surely mispronouncing, that Emmela inca. It's
Speaker 1: apparently around the size of an African bush elephant.
Speaker 2: Cheese, Yeah, I know it's true. The Amela intoka is
Speaker 2: around the size of an African bush elephant, which is
Speaker 2: an average of three point two meters tall, weighing around
Speaker 2: six tons or thirte and thirty pounds. It's brownish or
Speaker 2: gray in color, sort of a gradation, with a very
Speaker 2: heavy tail and a body quite similar in shape and
Speaker 2: look to that of a rhinoceros, including one long horn
Speaker 2: that comes out of its now but here's the difference.
Speaker 2: It has four short, stump like legs, and it's described
Speaker 2: as having no frills or ridges around the neck, and
Speaker 2: the animal is alleged to be semi aquatic and feed
Speaker 2: on malumbo or other leafy plants. The Emila intuca is
Speaker 2: claimed to utter a very specific vocalization, described as a
Speaker 2: variously as a snort, rumble, or growl. So what what
Speaker 2: the heck could this thing be? Is it just sort
Speaker 2: of like a weird pigmy kind of cousin of the rhinoceros?
Speaker 2: Like what are we talking here?
Speaker 4: Right? And why is it?
Speaker 1: Is it a hippo with a horn? Because it's semi aquatic.
Speaker 1: I hope it's a dinosaur whatever I said it. I
Speaker 1: hope it's a large reptile.
Speaker 2: I would love.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just something that was left over or maybe an
Speaker 3: in between somewhere along the evolutionary lines.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, like that that guy we mentioned that previous episode.
Speaker 1: Doctor Roy Mackel, one of the people who is searching
Speaker 1: for another similar cryptid called the Membembe right, Mokele Membebe.
Speaker 1: He was looking for reports of this creature and then
Speaker 1: he ran into reports of Emela and Toka. You'll hear
Speaker 1: folks say that maybe it's a relic population of a dinosaur.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's far enough out in the wild that it's
Speaker 1: just too expensive to search for it, you know.
Speaker 3: But it's the same thing we've been talking about before
Speaker 3: where there were reports that I believe it was in
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty three when the West first, I guess heard
Speaker 3: about this because there was a writer rolling through town, J. E. Hughes,
Speaker 3: and he wrote this scene called eighteen Years on Lake
Speaker 3: Woulou Walou, and he was talking about within this book
Speaker 3: that apparently he was hanging out with some tribesmen or
Speaker 3: he had heard stories at least of some tribesmen who
Speaker 3: slaughtered something that kind of met this description, and you know,
Speaker 3: maybe this thing is actually real. And then the guy
Speaker 3: you're talking about, Roy p what's his name, Roy Mackle,
Speaker 3: That dude was saying, you know, also, hey, here's some
Speaker 3: eyewitness accounts going back to this thing, but we don't
Speaker 3: have any pictures of it. We don't have any you know,
Speaker 3: official pictures.
Speaker 4: We've got some bodies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's yeah, that's the problem with this one, because
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be slightly larger than an elephant, and
Speaker 1: it's supposed to hunt elephants.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you would think you.
Speaker 1: Would think that someone would have discovered this or had
Speaker 1: a taxidermy version of it in the British Museum or
Speaker 1: you know, especially from the age of colonizers, right, you.
Speaker 3: Think something would exist, or even just maybe the horn
Speaker 3: they're talking about that one specific horn or the skull
Speaker 3: or something. You'd have something somewhere, in my opinion, but
Speaker 3: maybe not.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know how this is going to
Speaker 1: work in the edit. And sorry about that, Paul, but
Speaker 1: we took a we we took a really quick break
Speaker 1: and Noel, you went and got some water and it's true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I'm now quenched fully and I stole.
Speaker 1: The pumpkin's right now we have a pumpkin.
Speaker 2: It's kind of changed the vibe in the room, though,
Speaker 2: I know that good for the better.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I'm feeling more focused.
Speaker 2: Did you talk about how this could be something of
Speaker 2: a combo between a triceratops and a striasaurus, a striacasaurus.
Speaker 2: I don't even know that one.
Speaker 1: No, No, that's that's a good point, because we it
Speaker 1: behooves us to have some specificity. You're right, I just
Speaker 1: got excited and said dinosaur. But saying dinosaur is like
Speaker 1: saying chair or cancer. It describes a rough concept of
Speaker 1: a thing, correct, But there are so many differences, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, with the emilia, we also see the we
Speaker 1: we see descriptions of it. The date back pretty far,
Speaker 1: but not as far back as the descriptions of our
Speaker 1: earlier super eel, the Incan Yamba. So the Incan Yamba
Speaker 1: may be an exaggerated story about something that was real.
Speaker 1: The Emeloka is a little harder to explain. Was it
Speaker 1: somebody like? In all the drawings that see of it?
Speaker 1: It looks reptilian right, all the depictions, of course, spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: there are no photographs. So going to your little point,
Speaker 1: noel it it has a horn, it has you know,
Speaker 1: rough skin, it's stuck covered with fur feathers. So could
Speaker 1: they just be seeing a rhinoceros again in the wild
Speaker 1: panicking and freaking out? Because I would.
Speaker 3: This is why I want to bring up, Yeah, when
Speaker 3: is the last time you guys saw with your eyes
Speaker 3: a rhinoceros?
Speaker 4: A number of years ago?
Speaker 2: About six I guess I must have seen one zooed
Speaker 2: up somewhere, But I can't recall which zoo, like real
Speaker 2: San Diego.
Speaker 3: Maybe really picture in your mind the last time you
Speaker 3: saw a rhinoceros.
Speaker 1: This about six years ago. It was that a zoo too,
Speaker 1: It wasn't just like on the street.
Speaker 3: Yeah, those things are just odd. They don't feel real,
Speaker 3: especially if you live anywhere near a city, like anywhere,
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter where're on Earth. If you live near
Speaker 3: you're a city, probably aren't going to see a rhinoceros
Speaker 3: very often, true, And if you just really behold one
Speaker 3: walking around, it's an odd experience. So I'm just saying
Speaker 3: to your point, Ben, when you were trying to build
Speaker 3: off what you were saying, to just behold one may
Speaker 3: throw you off, especially if it's far enough in the
Speaker 3: distance it looks even bigger than maybe it is. Yeah,
Speaker 3: just compared to the surrounding foliage or whatever it's near.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw one in the wild too,
Speaker 1: like most of us, since the majority of human beings
Speaker 1: live in urban areas. Now that's true, that's a change
Speaker 1: that happened during our lifetime. That means the majority of
Speaker 1: us will see most of the wild animals will see
Speaker 1: are going to be in the animal jails that we
Speaker 1: call zoos, or.
Speaker 3: At least in a protected reserve somewhere.
Speaker 1: Okay, yes, which is better than a zoo. Sure, And
Speaker 1: that's not a ding on zoos and being a little
Speaker 1: bit unfair to them, because zoos do tremendous conservation work,
Speaker 1: and the Atlanta Zoo actually has, I think, is this
Speaker 1: huge force in the community. I think they do do
Speaker 1: good work as well.
Speaker 2: And they just expanded and they have a savannah section now,
Speaker 2: which is you know.
Speaker 3: Oh I haven't been there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have either. It's down by my house, so
Speaker 2: I've been seeing the construction going on for quite a while,
Speaker 2: but I have not been since it's been opened up,
Speaker 2: so it'd be interesting.
Speaker 3: To check out.
Speaker 2: I know some people are super anti zoo, which I understand,
Speaker 2: but I also understand that many of these animals would
Speaker 2: not be able to survive in the wild, and that's
Speaker 2: why they bring them in and take good care of them.
Speaker 2: And zoos, I don't know.
Speaker 3: We've talked about the poaching problem that is severe rhinoceross.
Speaker 1: And I mean take the example of tigers. There are
Speaker 1: I think more tigers living in captivity in Texas than
Speaker 1: there are in the wild across the planet, and that's
Speaker 1: from a few years ago. Conservation efforts have up the
Speaker 1: tiger population. Actually get notifications about tigers on Twitter.
Speaker 2: Nice doesn't always just come up with some sports stuff.
Speaker 3: No, I.
Speaker 1: Right now I'm following something called Tiger Tuesday, which I
Speaker 1: didn't know is a thing, and it's where people just
Speaker 1: point just post pictures of tigers. Oh wait, some sports
Speaker 1: stuff creeps in. But I'm you know, I'm there for
Speaker 1: the animals, gotcha. I should get better hobbies, guys. But
Speaker 1: so we've been talking about large creatures in the African continent,
Speaker 1: and again, as you can tell, the big question for
Speaker 1: us is how could something be this big and remain undiscovered.
Speaker 1: But let's go, let's go across the water. Let's let's
Speaker 1: explore the story of one of the cryptids that I'm
Speaker 1: surprised we haven't done a full episode on, and that
Speaker 1: is the thunderbird.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, the fabulous thunderbird.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, so quick story to get us into this.
Speaker 3: Driving around with the wife and kid a couple of
Speaker 3: days ago and we're just playing up stops on and
Speaker 3: my son looks out his window and just kind of says, uh,
Speaker 3: what's that, and it was two huge. I believe they
Speaker 3: were turkey vultures. Okay, so much larger birds than any
Speaker 3: of us are used to seeing just in the wild
Speaker 3: at any time. I couldn't say exactly how tall they were,
Speaker 3: maybe three feet tall something to that effect. Three feet
Speaker 3: is probably about about three feet tall. But as my
Speaker 3: son is remarking about them, they put their wings out
Speaker 3: and fly upwards. And seeing a bird of that size
Speaker 3: up close was intense. And I don't I mean, Noel,
Speaker 3: you would have You would have probably peeped myself, no,
Speaker 3: or at least jumped out and tried to attack them
Speaker 3: just to get them away.
Speaker 2: No. I would have peepeed myself, okay, and then possibly
Speaker 2: gone into an irreversible a coma.
Speaker 3: Oh oh, well, well we would have taken measures.
Speaker 2: I don't think you undershare the level of fear I
Speaker 2: have towards large birds. Yeah, forget forget about it.
Speaker 3: Well, so here's the thing. Could you know, describe to
Speaker 3: us what it would be like to see a thunderbird.
Speaker 2: I'd rather not, but I will give it my all.
Speaker 2: So the popular hot spots for seeing these very large
Speaker 2: bird like creatures would be in Northern Canada and even Alaska, Ben,
Speaker 2: did you happen to catch any while you were vacationing there?
Speaker 2: And then in.
Speaker 1: Alaska vacationing, No, I saw a moose and that was
Speaker 1: enough for me because those those things are huge. There's
Speaker 1: a problem since you got this pumpkin here, there's a
Speaker 1: problem in Alaska for people trying to celebrate Halloween because
Speaker 1: when they carve pumpkins and they set them out on
Speaker 1: their porch, depending on where they live, it's like candy
Speaker 1: to a moose.
Speaker 2: Sure can they make a smell it from a mile
Speaker 2: away and they.
Speaker 4: Just come towards it and you can't stop them.
Speaker 2: What can we do?
Speaker 1: But but yeah, I would I would have freaked out
Speaker 1: if I saw something larger than a move right third.
Speaker 2: Absolutely it would have been that. And then you could
Speaker 2: even see them down in Central America. But in Canada
Speaker 2: you actually there's there's like totem poles that are in
Speaker 2: the shape of thunderbird. Is a place called Thunderbird Park
Speaker 2: in Victoria, British Columbia where you can see some of
Speaker 2: these very things and they are the stuff of legend
Speaker 2: mythical creatures. In fact, sort of eagle like birds that
Speaker 2: are known for having very powerful talons and very much
Speaker 2: present in Native American culture. Various tribes in the American Midwest,
Speaker 2: and as we said, in Canada, the Sioux Nation, the
Speaker 2: Brule Sioux from South Dakota on a reservation known as
Speaker 2: the Rosebud Reservation, has their own thunderbird legend called the
Speaker 2: wakean yon Tonka, also known as the Great Thunderbird.
Speaker 3: So, so if you're imagining these things, it's like a
Speaker 3: large feathered terodon or a pterodactyl like huge and nol.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna show you a picture here, and I want
Speaker 3: you to describe this picture, because I have a feeling
Speaker 3: if you came across this in real life, you'd have
Speaker 3: a reaction. Look at this picture right here.
Speaker 2: I've seen that it looks it looks like it looks
Speaker 2: like a giant corved kind of which a friend to
Speaker 2: Ben's the world over. Ben commands them and they sort
Speaker 2: of flock to him and they bring him shiny things.
Speaker 4: We work together.
Speaker 2: It's it's a symbiotic relationship. But this thing twice as
Speaker 2: tall as that go, twice as tall as this gentleman
Speaker 2: posing with this uh with this taxidermy car.
Speaker 3: No, it's not real. It's not real. It's it's in imagination.
Speaker 3: It's an imagining of what a thunderbird how it's been described.
Speaker 2: Okay, well it's it's the wingspan would probably be in
Speaker 2: the neighborhood of I don't know, about twenty feet.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, like that's that's correct.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, the thunderbird evolved from the word
Speaker 1: we use now has taken a meaning that evolved from
Speaker 1: the original mythology. It is present in a lot of
Speaker 1: ancient Native American mythology, and you can find very old
Speaker 1: sandstone carvings. You can find paintings and caves and so on,
Speaker 1: and you know, like the total poles you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: but now and in the recent in the recent past,
Speaker 1: the phrase thunderbird has been used to describe any large, flying,
Speaker 1: unidentified organism in the US or the.
Speaker 4: Quote unquote New World.
Speaker 1: So you'll hear people like the common thing people say
Speaker 1: is like, well, it flew, but reports didn't see it
Speaker 1: had feathers, so it's obviously a pterodactyl or you know,
Speaker 1: a relic population of something like you know, some creature
Speaker 1: like that, a flying reptile. But then you'll hear other
Speaker 1: people say, no, it's it's it's essentially a massive eagle.
Speaker 1: It's big enough to take your children.
Speaker 3: And they also say, but those pterosaurs did have feathers.
Speaker 1: Dude, exactly exactly. So this animal is, or this cryptid,
Speaker 1: i should say, is almost too famous for our cryptids.
Speaker 1: You've never heard of lists it really is. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you just wanted to explore it a little more
Speaker 1: because growing up, if you were ever one of those
Speaker 1: kids who read those time life mystery books, they all
Speaker 1: had names that were kind of similar, like Mysteries of
Speaker 1: the Unknown or Unexplored Unknown Mysteries, fair and normal, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. They would always trot out stories
Speaker 1: about the thunderbird, usually the same one. There's a story
Speaker 1: about these guys who will save it when if we
Speaker 1: ever do an episode just on the thunderbird, it's a
Speaker 1: story about these guys who shoot and capture one and
Speaker 1: have the body so habeas corpus and all that, so
Speaker 1: they ate.
Speaker 3: For a month.
Speaker 4: Well they take it back.
Speaker 1: But then as we hear, you know, and like a
Speaker 1: lot of those stories, stories of giants from that time,
Speaker 1: stories about the Stecha and all these other things, for
Speaker 1: some reason the proof they had, the tangible proof disappeared,
Speaker 1: and you can see those reproduction photos, right. That may
Speaker 1: may be out and out hoaxes. But we have to
Speaker 1: ask ourselves, if there was such a large creature now,
Speaker 1: especially with the popularity of aircraft, how on earth, how
Speaker 1: on earth have we not seen it?
Speaker 4: This one.
Speaker 1: I would say it's possible that it was an ancestral
Speaker 1: memory of a very large creature. But then again, the
Speaker 1: big birds that we know about, at least in this continent,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, the big birds we know about
Speaker 1: that we see in this continent as early humans were flightless,
Speaker 1: right they weren't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the big bird from Sesame Stream, Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 4: But mean he I don't know.
Speaker 2: He's got a temper he's got when the cameras aren't rolling.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's got a dark ye.
Speaker 2: That guy's a real monster.
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Speaker 1: We're done with birds. We're going to explore something different.
Speaker 1: So if you see something even worse, well that depends
Speaker 1: worse for me. Worse for me, well, statistically worse for people.
Speaker 1: Is the story of the jabab fofi ja apostrophe b
Speaker 1: a f o f I. The name translates to great spider.
Speaker 1: This is also in the Congo. It is exactly what
Speaker 1: it says on the tin, Huge Spider with allegedly a
Speaker 1: six foot wide leg span.
Speaker 2: Yeah, six feet and supposedly it's a fan of eating monkeys, birds, yes,
Speaker 2: and even small antelopes.
Speaker 3: And humans obviously, of.
Speaker 2: Course, not to mention besides their absurd ben as you
Speaker 2: would say, cartoonish size. They're brown and said to be
Speaker 2: a darker the older they get, which is an interesting fact,
Speaker 2: or let's not call it a fact, let's call it
Speaker 2: a detail. And they have a large purple mark on
Speaker 2: their abdomens, so it sounds like a poison boy. Right,
Speaker 2: They've got like some sort of shaped mark and they're black.
Speaker 2: That doesn't sound good, right, Nature's.
Speaker 4: Way of saying, watch out back tf off.
Speaker 2: That's right. They're said to live in a similar to
Speaker 2: the much smaller trapdoor spider conditions where they burn into
Speaker 2: the ground.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, but that's terrifying. Can you imagine something that
Speaker 3: big that's burrowed into a hole? You're like, Oh, what's
Speaker 3: the what's that hole?
Speaker 4: God? What a way to go?
Speaker 2: Sanguinates perhaps, Yeah, it makes me. It makes me think
Speaker 2: of the scene in The Hobbit, you know, with the
Speaker 2: giant spiders that the she.
Speaker 4: Lob and is that Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 2: It's the Hobbit is the Hobbit? Okay, yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: I remember from the ranking, not Ranking Bass, the it
Speaker 2: is Ranking Bass, the animated one with the weird singing
Speaker 2: that great test you know. Yeah, that's there's a part
Speaker 2: where the spiders get Bilbo and crew.
Speaker 1: The Ring.
Speaker 2: It's both. It's definitely in the Hobbit.
Speaker 4: It's definitely in the animated version of the Hobbit.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 2: I just remember, you know he's traveling with the with
Speaker 2: the with the dwarves and they get abducted by spiders
Speaker 2: and the spider wraps them all up and it's the
Speaker 2: whole thing. Yeah, I remember that he's got the little
Speaker 2: the little sword sting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm thinking of I'm thinking of the book. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking not on the book.
Speaker 2: Did they take some license with that scene in the book?
Speaker 1: In the book, shelb the spider, the evil spider is
Speaker 1: in Lord of the Ring.
Speaker 4: You are absolutely correct about that.
Speaker 2: And I don't think the spider in the animated Hobbit
Speaker 2: had a name. It was just creepy spiders. But that's
Speaker 2: the one that made the most indelible mark on me
Speaker 2: when I was.
Speaker 1: Maybe Tolkien had a thing for spiders, maybe he like
Speaker 1: they were scary to him, and that's why I put
Speaker 1: it in. He would have loved this jabab fothey.
Speaker 2: And it also makes me think of George R. Martin
Speaker 2: and the the game Songs of Fire and Ice books
Speaker 2: talks about you know, the the winter that lasted you know,
Speaker 2: years or whatever, and the spiders the size of hounds.
Speaker 1: Is what they say, Well, we do have a possible
Speaker 1: explanation for this.
Speaker 2: And it's even just as creepy and it's worse.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing, though, reports of this have been
Speaker 1: taking place since the eighteenth century or since the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: and the Western Europeans found out about it in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty eight because people from Europe started claiming they had
Speaker 1: seen these massive spiders, and given the politics of the time,
Speaker 1: essentially what happened is that other Europeans said, okay, all right, well,
Speaker 1: if someone who has the same color skin as us
Speaker 1: said something, maybe we should believe them, which is just
Speaker 1: the opposite of critical thinking, right, And because of these descriptions,
Speaker 1: and because they matched so well, they were consistent from
Speaker 1: different populations, they were burrowing trap spiders, Like you said,
Speaker 1: because of this, people treated descriptions of these animals with
Speaker 1: a little more. They give them a little more credibility
Speaker 1: they would have ordinarily. But there has been one theory
Speaker 1: advanced about the jibbuff f fy that says maybe they're
Speaker 1: the misidentification of another type of animal that has proven
Speaker 1: to exist, but not in a way that makes it better.
Speaker 3: It's called a coconut crab.
Speaker 2: It sounds delightful.
Speaker 3: It sounds delicious, sounds.
Speaker 2: Like something you'd get like at a Hawaiian joint.
Speaker 3: Coconut crab, a little pineapple dipping sauce on the side, bring.
Speaker 4: In some spot.
Speaker 1: Well, just just for scale, guys, I'm gonna show you
Speaker 1: a picture of how big the coconut crab is.
Speaker 4: That is a full size trash can.
Speaker 2: It's on a giant trash can. It looks sort of
Speaker 2: like a creepy lobster.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, but on land, just hanging out a lot
Speaker 3: of times. Just see him rolling with coconuts for real,
Speaker 3: rolling around with coconuts and they're huge.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're are the largest land crab. They also they
Speaker 4: make an impression, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: They're terrestrial hermit crabs and oh, I'm sorry, excuse me.
Speaker 1: Not just the largest land crab. They're the largest land
Speaker 1: living arthropod overall in the world, got it. And we
Speaker 1: think that given the environment of our current age, they
Speaker 1: are at the upper limit for what an animal with
Speaker 1: an exoskeleton can grow to be. They're as big as
Speaker 1: it gets unless the environment literally changes.
Speaker 3: It makes total sense.
Speaker 1: And this also gives us some arguments against the existence
Speaker 1: of this great spider, because spiders also have limits to
Speaker 1: how big they can grow due to what they could
Speaker 1: structurally support from the way their bodies are I won't
Speaker 1: say designed, from the way their bodies happened.
Speaker 4: Or the way their bodies evolved.
Speaker 1: They also have a respiratory system and that limits what
Speaker 1: they can what they can grow into. But did they
Speaker 1: exist in the past, yes, or you know.
Speaker 2: Oh perhaps perhaps you're talking about But the coconut crab exists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that definitely, that's that's a real thing. It's a
Speaker 1: real thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Matt, Are you uncomfortable with coconut crab?
Speaker 3: I think I am, And you know, I think one
Speaker 3: coconut crab is fine. I'm okay with that. But if
Speaker 3: if coconut crab has maybe her whole family around a bunch. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't think I'm okay with that.
Speaker 1: You know, they they live probably over sixty years. Whoa,
Speaker 1: so you could get one and maybe bond with it.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the same with most a lot of crustaceans
Speaker 2: right now. They have absurdly long lives, like the the Lobsters.
Speaker 4: I believe that's correct.
Speaker 2: I learned that from the film The Lobster because the
Speaker 2: Colin Carlo's character, Farrell, he wanted to become a lobster
Speaker 2: because it lives a very long time.
Speaker 3: I remember.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was such a McSweeney's type of movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, big heady New Yorker type stuff. Right.
Speaker 1: I'm checking right now and see whether or not you
Speaker 1: can get a coconut crab as a pet. It looks
Speaker 1: like their conservation status is undecided. That data is deficient,
Speaker 1: So let us know if you live in an area
Speaker 1: where coconut crab are around, or if you've seen one,
Speaker 1: whether you think it could be mistaken for a malicious spider.
Speaker 2: This is my favorite, just the name alone.
Speaker 3: Oh, we're removing on.
Speaker 2: I think we should. All right, let's do it. We
Speaker 2: don't have to. You want to talk more about crabs?
Speaker 3: No, no, just take us there.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm gonna take you there in the format I'm
Speaker 2: gonna take you there with two words, my friends, Okay,
Speaker 2: rhinoceros dolphin.
Speaker 4: Finally, boom, that's what I say.
Speaker 2: So we've been asking for this whole time. It's like
Speaker 2: a cryptid whale with two dorsal fins and eighteen twenty
Speaker 2: off the coast of the Sandwich Islands, just a thing.
Speaker 2: And New South Wales. Jean Rene Constean Qui, who was
Speaker 2: a zoologist and anatomist, in addition to his pal Joseph
Speaker 2: Paul Jamar, who was a naturalist, spotted what seemed to
Speaker 2: be never before seen species of dolphins. And forgive me,
Speaker 2: French folks, we don't have the benefit of Casey pegrim
Speaker 2: on the case with us today. But koi or kui koy?
Speaker 2: What do you think ben coy?
Speaker 1: I would go quoi q u o y I would
Speaker 1: because it's fun to say, yes my entire.
Speaker 2: And Jama, I'm gonna say Jama chose to call this
Speaker 2: this new underwater pal the rhinoceros dolphin. It's an official name,
Speaker 2: being Delphinius rhinoceros. There have been a total of nine
Speaker 2: rhinoceros dolphins sighted swimming side by side in a pod
Speaker 2: in the Atlantic Ocean.
Speaker 4: That's the thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So these are credible witnesses who saw multiple instances
Speaker 1: of what appears to be a different they're up to
Speaker 1: that point, undiscovered creature, and they were probably, like a
Speaker 1: lot of us listening now, filled with an immense sense
Speaker 1: of relief because you know, I think we can all
Speaker 1: agree the crappiest, most irritating, depressing thing about dolphins and
Speaker 1: rhinoceros is that they're not lumped together in one species.
Speaker 4: Yet.
Speaker 1: You know, you see a dolphin and you're just like,
Speaker 1: I'm fifty percent there, but I cannot approve of this.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, that fifty rhino.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well, and that's that's the whole thing with
Speaker 3: these these rhinoceros dolphins is that, you know, you've got
Speaker 3: these experts viewing this this pod essentially right hanging out there.
Speaker 3: They're used to seeing perhaps whales, perhaps dolphins, perhaps killer whales,
Speaker 3: and they see these things and they noticed a couple
Speaker 3: of things are different.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: It's not that it's not the same coloration a lot
Speaker 3: of dolphins that they've observed in the past. These are
Speaker 3: I think they're white and black, like the white spots
Speaker 3: on a like a black body. Yeah, similar to a
Speaker 3: killer whale, but or at least in the two colors.
Speaker 3: And they noticed that rather than a single dorsal fin
Speaker 3: like you'd see on any dolphin, they had two.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, one curved fin near the head and one
Speaker 1: curved fin on the back. And it's that second fin
Speaker 1: is placed a little further back than where a dolphin's
Speaker 1: fin would normally be. And they also thought from what
Speaker 1: they could see that the pectoral fins were larger than average.
Speaker 4: And do we say it's nine feet long.
Speaker 3: No, we didn't.
Speaker 1: It's nine feet long, two hundred and fifty pounds. But
Speaker 1: although that's that's that's a big boy. That's a big
Speaker 1: ocean boy.
Speaker 3: And it's also an estimation from being on a ship,
Speaker 3: from sailing while you're observing these, but you know.
Speaker 4: With not with a sample size of nine.
Speaker 3: Yes, and we're having experts.
Speaker 1: So this so is this interesting case because if there
Speaker 1: are any undiscovered cryptids or large creatures as we have seen,
Speaker 1: everything we know tells us that they are going, they
Speaker 1: are most likely to be discovered in the ocean. Yes, right,
Speaker 1: And so now we know that just because of that fact.
Speaker 1: That fact alone, this one has a little more likelihood
Speaker 1: of being a true case of an unapprehended or undocumented,
Speaker 1: unproving cryptid that is a real animal. But we have
Speaker 1: to ask ourselves what can it be? We have to
Speaker 1: play you know, the stick in the mud police here. First,
Speaker 1: it could just be a group of dolphins that had
Speaker 1: a deformity, you know what I mean. There were the
Speaker 1: dolphin version of an inbred hillbilly clan, which I know
Speaker 1: it sounds dismissive, but what we're saying is they could
Speaker 1: have just been a group or a pot that over
Speaker 1: time had passed a mutation on to one another.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, okay, Well there's a there's another idea here
Speaker 3: that possibly it was a different kind of whale that
Speaker 3: they saw that actually looks a little bit like a
Speaker 3: dolphin called the Blainsville's what is it, Blaine Blaineville's beaked whale?
Speaker 3: B e A k ed whale.
Speaker 4: Doesn't that sound like so you buy it at a
Speaker 4: grocery store?
Speaker 3: Uh? Yeah, exactly, blain Well, well you can. You can
Speaker 3: look up pictures of these. It's a very different looking whale,
Speaker 3: and that dorsal fin is pushed. It looks like it's
Speaker 3: pushed way back towards the tail. And they've got horns too, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's a very different creature, and if you had
Speaker 3: never seen one before in let's say eighteen twenty, maybe
Speaker 3: you believe it's just a different looking creature.
Speaker 1: One other theory was proposed by marine biologists Rich Ellis.
Speaker 1: He said, what if the what was called the rhinoceros
Speaker 1: dolphin was just a normal dolphin that had a sucker
Speaker 1: fish or romorra attached to its head. Again, the problem
Speaker 1: of observation. But either way, this feels.
Speaker 2: Like so they saw the two creatures like together in
Speaker 2: concert and thought it was a super creature.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like maybe they saw it from far enough
Speaker 1: away that they mistook the romorra for being another fin
Speaker 1: got it. But there's a problem with that because they
Speaker 1: saw nine different Again, the thing here is they saw
Speaker 1: nine different instances of this, So this would mean this
Speaker 1: would mean we have to ask ourselves what is more likely.
Speaker 1: Is it more likely that nine separate romorra matched up
Speaker 1: with nine separate dolphins and attached themselves to the same
Speaker 1: position on their body, or is it more likely that
Speaker 1: there is a you know, a different explanation that they
Speaker 1: were supposed to have these fins. Still that gives this
Speaker 1: is probably our strongest example of something that might actually
Speaker 1: be a real thing, unless, of course, you're into the
Speaker 1: idea of an enormous octopus.
Speaker 2: Okay, this has been a journey of discovery as a
Speaker 2: non gentlemen. Well, next we're going to continue that into
Speaker 2: into the into the depths with the Akaro Komoi. The
Speaker 2: native I Knew people of Japan have long believed that
Speaker 2: Volcano Bay, which is off the coast of Hokkaido, has
Speaker 2: a population of giant octopuses called Akaro kamoi, and they
Speaker 2: have been cited supposedly or purportedly rather for for many
Speaker 2: many years. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a British missionary. His name was John Batchelor.
Speaker 1: He was working in the area in the early nineteen
Speaker 1: hundreds and he wrote down a siting in a book
Speaker 1: he had called the I Knew in their fo and
Speaker 1: he said that a great sea monster with large staring
Speaker 1: eyes had attacked three local fishermen and their boat. So
Speaker 1: imagine those old woodcuts of a boat sailing and then
Speaker 1: a Leviathan like creature wrapping its tentacles around the mass
Speaker 1: of the plane. It was like that, And he said
Speaker 1: the monster was round in shape and emitted a dark,
Speaker 1: fluid and noxious odor. The three men fled in dismay,
Speaker 1: Not so much indeed, for fear, they say, but on
Speaker 1: account of the dreadful smell, however that may have been.
Speaker 1: They were so scared that the next morning all three
Speaker 1: refused to get up and eat. They were lying in
Speaker 1: their beds, pale and trembling. So the Japanese story giant octopus,
Speaker 1: I feel like that could absolutely be true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's I mean, just now that we know the
Speaker 3: giant squids exist, I feel like the giant octopus is
Speaker 3: just waiting. It's just waiting to be found.
Speaker 2: He really wants to wait. There was a sighting recently,
Speaker 2: there was a there were there were some some reports
Speaker 2: about not too long ago, about some giant giant squids,
Speaker 2: the very least.
Speaker 3: Yeah, squids. I think that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 4: The colossal squid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but an octopus would be a little bit different,
Speaker 1: and uh, I think a little more exciting because they're
Speaker 1: so intelligent.
Speaker 2: Squids are are relatively intelligent, aren't they. Are they pods
Speaker 2: as well or not?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they're not like the octopuses, the brains, the
Speaker 1: krem Delay, the brains of their heist game of the
Speaker 1: tentacled sea dwellers exactly.
Speaker 2: But if they leaked up with rhinoceros.
Speaker 4: Dolphins, that'd be some stuff that'd be hot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, hot mixtape if yeah, hot mix tape.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good look.
Speaker 1: And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
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