Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Paul, Mission Control, DECANDT. Most importantly, you are here.
Speaker 3: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: A bit of a palette cleanser tonight. We have heard
Speaker 3: from many of our fellow conspiracy realists who are always
Speaker 3: asking us for more cryptid explorations. Now, long time listeners,
Speaker 3: you know we've examined in depth. What are some of
Speaker 3: the episodes. I'll always remember our pal who runs Expedition Bigfoot.
Speaker 3: That was a great interview.
Speaker 4: I love a wistful way you said. We'll always remember
Speaker 4: Expedition Bigfoot. You know it was a golden time in
Speaker 4: all of our lives. I think.
Speaker 3: Let's see, we also looked at cryptids in Indonesia, right
Speaker 3: the ohl oh jeez, that was well.
Speaker 4: Well that was another one. Oh man. There was the
Speaker 4: spooky fans. Remember those spooky fans that were killing everybody
Speaker 4: that we sort of lumped into cryptids because it was
Speaker 4: like a I don't know, there was a ghost.
Speaker 3: At play, perhaps in South Korea, that's right. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: now we are traveling this evening to a place that
Speaker 3: has its own, largely unique population of alleged cryptids that
Speaker 3: many people in the West have not heard of. I mean,
Speaker 3: you've heard of the region, you've heard of India and
Speaker 3: Pakistan in Afghanistan, but you may not know they have
Speaker 3: monsters all their own, one of which is just by
Speaker 3: the way, spoiler, extremely adorable. Will get to it. Here
Speaker 3: are the facts for anyone unfamiliar. We'd like to give
Speaker 3: you just a quick and dirty understanding of what cryptids
Speaker 3: are and why they fascinate us.
Speaker 2: So cryptids are sneaky animals that might exist. That's how
Speaker 2: I will define a crypti.
Speaker 4: That's what cryptid translates to actually in Latin as sneaky animal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a group term for any number of organisms
Speaker 3: that are alleged to exist or believed to exist, outside
Speaker 3: the bounds of modern acknowledged scientific consensus. And these are
Speaker 3: very old. Like you know, everybody has their own version
Speaker 3: of Bigfoot. As we'll see, there are also more regional
Speaker 3: cryptids like the Jersey Devil. Neither of those have been
Speaker 3: proven to exist, but every year there are dozens, if
Speaker 3: not hundreds of people who believe that they have seen one.
Speaker 4: Well, And I mean it's all so tightly wound up
Speaker 4: in folklore and tradition of different cultures, and a lot
Speaker 4: of times there's a belief in these creatures that stems
Speaker 4: from either kind of superstition or even religion sometimes and
Speaker 4: that leads to, perhaps without proof, a genuine belief in
Speaker 4: some parts of the world, and these things existing.
Speaker 2: Well, and every once in a while, as we're going
Speaker 2: to find in this episode, as we have in the past,
Speaker 2: there's a documented sighting of something in the way it's
Speaker 2: written about in that first documented sighting, it's so mysterious
Speaker 2: and strange that it creates its own lore.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, there's a real umami to it, right, because
Speaker 3: humans seek to understand the world around them, and there
Speaker 3: are few things as intellectually take as the ability to
Speaker 3: discover a new animal.
Speaker 4: You did promise a palate cleanser, Benz, and this is
Speaker 4: going to be sort of a chicken noodle soup for
Speaker 4: the conspiratorial soul here today. I like that phrase.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we were talking about this off air. We wanted
Speaker 3: to do one fun one because we have deep water
Speaker 3: behind us and ahead. There's also a lot of scientific
Speaker 3: basis to the idea of cryptids. You know, some cryptids,
Speaker 3: the most plausible ones, turn out to be animals that
Speaker 3: we already knew existed, and perhaps society, often Western society,
Speaker 3: mistakenly concluded these animals were extinct. Our number one example
Speaker 3: of this is the seilacanth. They were supposed to have
Speaker 3: died out millions of years ago, and then, surprise, surprise,
Speaker 3: some Western scientists got over to the part of Africa
Speaker 3: where the ceilacanth is still very much alive and they said, oh,
Speaker 3: we've proven cryptid. And all the people who are living
Speaker 3: in that area were like, no, this ugly fish has
Speaker 3: always been around. You can't eat it. It's a trash fish.
Speaker 3: And they were like, no, history, we are writing it.
Speaker 2: But isn't there even a specific Indian selacanth that we've
Speaker 2: heard about for this episode.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, there very much is, and we are going
Speaker 3: to in the course of this exploration, introduce you, fellow
Speaker 3: conspiracy realist, to an amazing map that inspired a lot
Speaker 3: of this conversation. There are other cryptids, like the Tasmanian tiger,
Speaker 3: still officially considered extinct, but every single year a few
Speaker 3: people in Australia or Tasmania are certain they have seen
Speaker 3: one alive in the wild. It's a really the study
Speaker 3: of cryptozoology is a study of human encroachment into wilderness.
Speaker 3: And you know, it's also weird. Like we think when
Speaker 3: you see stuff on the History Channel or Discovery ID
Speaker 3: or whatever, you get the sense that cryptids are kind
Speaker 3: of a modern concept. But it turns out, over the
Speaker 3: course of history, every single human culture has been fascinated
Speaker 3: by the story of fantastic creatures, and often it's because
Speaker 3: they were just working with what they had.
Speaker 4: I mean, y'all, even some of the ones we know about.
Speaker 4: One could argue you are pretty fantastic. Can you imagine
Speaker 4: seeing some of these for the first time or catching
Speaker 4: a glimpse, you know, before there was scientific basis to explain,
Speaker 4: you know, the nature of connection between different species and
Speaker 4: phyla and kingdoms and all of that good stuff.
Speaker 2: Pretty wild, Even something as simple as you live in
Speaker 2: an area and nobody you've ever known has ever seen
Speaker 2: a big cat in anywhere near where you are, and
Speaker 2: there's no writings about big cats, there's no official big
Speaker 2: cats anywhere near you. But then you swear you experienced
Speaker 2: seeing one and hearing one out in the woods, like
Speaker 2: you know you did, and what he like? What do
Speaker 2: you tell your friends? And what does that turn into?
Speaker 2: And it's the same with big reptiles, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, it is the same with reptiles. As we'll
Speaker 3: find there are still reptiles out there to be discovered.
Speaker 3: An interesting side note for a different thing. I recently
Speaker 3: learned that some reptiles may indeed be capable of what
Speaker 3: mammals would recognize as affection. Story for another day, Story
Speaker 3: for another day.
Speaker 4: Dude, have you ever seen a guy walking around holding
Speaker 4: a bearded dragon just on their chest? You know there's
Speaker 4: love in those eyes. I've seen it.
Speaker 2: I've recently saw this video of a guy who he's
Speaker 2: out on the swamp. He's taking some people on a tour,
Speaker 2: I think, and he tells about this smamp puppy. You've
Speaker 2: seen a swamp puppy And they're like what, And it's
Speaker 2: an allegorty. He basically calls a wild alligator over to
Speaker 2: the boat, gives it some gimick.
Speaker 4: Kind of whistle like a call an a gator car.
Speaker 2: He was just talking to it like it's a dog
Speaker 2: man and he's just patting it on the nose. That
Speaker 2: you just pat him right on the nose and if
Speaker 2: they ever come at you just pop them right in
Speaker 2: that nose.
Speaker 3: Chicken.
Speaker 4: Maybe yeah, yeah, you guys. I don't know if this
Speaker 4: was like a common thing in Georgia. I think this
Speaker 4: guy might have made the rounds. But there's this dude
Speaker 4: named Joe would come tonight elementary school always talked about
Speaker 4: being swamp wise.
Speaker 2: Did he tour everyone?
Speaker 4: There's more than one. Maybe there's like like various.
Speaker 3: Psychics calling themselves Madame Bell. Perhaps it's a brand name. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we know also that uh, first off, we're establishing here
Speaker 3: that the human species has a lot to learn about
Speaker 3: other non human animals, and humans are still very much animals.
Speaker 3: They are type of primate. We know that the humans
Speaker 3: have been attempting to explain the world around them since
Speaker 3: they started peopling. And so some of your favorite mythologies,
Speaker 3: some of your favorite legends, they originate from prototypes of
Speaker 3: scientific investigation. One of the most famous would be the
Speaker 3: legend of the Cyclops, the giant with one eye instead
Speaker 3: of two. That most likely came from the discovery of
Speaker 3: the skull of an elephant and the misinterpretation. We talked
Speaker 3: about this in the past. If you look at an
Speaker 3: elephant's skull, you can look at the big hole in
Speaker 3: the middle where the trunk is and think, yeah, that's
Speaker 3: where I would put an eye if I was gone.
Speaker 4: Man, I was hoping there was some kind of proto
Speaker 4: man that definitely had one eye. That was a real thing.
Speaker 3: Oh, there's been a couple, a couple non consensually, but
Speaker 3: we know some cryptids also are the result of the
Speaker 3: great game of telephone oral communication, mistranslation, embellishment. One person
Speaker 3: travels from beyond the bounds of their known part of
Speaker 3: the world, and then they see amazing animals, perhaps in Asia,
Speaker 3: perhaps in Africa, perhaps in what we call the Americas.
Speaker 3: They come back, they tell their colleagues, they tell their
Speaker 3: peer groups, and the colleagues start to tell other people
Speaker 3: the story. And every single time they tell the story,
Speaker 3: they embellish it a little bit, they exaggerate a little bit.
Speaker 3: They might even twist it around to support whatever their
Speaker 3: preexisting ideology is. You know, the weirdest thing is There
Speaker 3: are scammers now in the modern evenings talking about cryptids
Speaker 3: as a way to sort of bait and switch folks.
Speaker 3: But for most of human history, so far as we know,
Speaker 3: these people were not trying to pull a scam. These
Speaker 3: early philosophers, these historians, these proto scientists, they wanted to
Speaker 3: understand the world around them, and they got it wrong
Speaker 3: pretty often. But they still, even with everything that looked
Speaker 3: like a misstep, they still played a important role in
Speaker 3: the larger or and important role in the larger advancement
Speaker 3: of civilization. India is no different. India is perhaps one
Speaker 3: of the best land areas to find an actual cryptid.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's so old, it's massive. Yes, it has
Speaker 3: one of, if not the world's largest populations of human beings,
Speaker 3: but it also has a lot of wild countries.
Speaker 4: Still. I think this came up in another episode recently.
Speaker 4: We were talking about our friend Mangesh telling us the
Speaker 4: story about how his father, I want to say, or
Speaker 4: maybe it was grandfather, was send minister grandfather like a
Speaker 4: minister of forestry or it was responsible for like overseeing
Speaker 4: a lot of this crazy you know jungle, and he
Speaker 4: you know, really pointed out to us how wild so
Speaker 4: much of India really, really is.
Speaker 3: We also learned the phrase mega diverse. We've talked about
Speaker 3: biodiversity in the past, but very few places are mega diverse.
Speaker 3: Right now, as we are recording in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: the nation of India, not just the region of that subcontinent,
Speaker 3: but on the single nation of India has seven to
Speaker 3: eight percent of all of the recorded species in the world.
Speaker 3: There are thirty four universally agreed upon biodiversity hotspots, and
Speaker 3: India has four of them. The Himalaya region, as you
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier, in nol Indo, Burma, or miandmar the western
Speaker 3: Sri Lanka. It goes on and on. But the question
Speaker 3: is what else is out there now? Are there any
Speaker 3: true cryptids unidentified life forms in India? Could any of
Speaker 3: these stories be real? We're going to pause for a
Speaker 3: word from our response, and then we're diving in. Here's
Speaker 3: where it gets crazy. Yes, it sounds weird to think
Speaker 3: that the most heavily human occupied nation on the planet
Speaker 3: could still be very rife with wilderness and animals, but
Speaker 3: it's true. Like if you are if you are looking
Speaker 3: anywhere but the depths of the ocean, India is quite
Speaker 3: likely the place where you could find a real cryptid.
Speaker 4: And I mean in general, when we're talking about cryptids,
Speaker 4: not all of them are created equal in terms of
Speaker 4: their provenance. As we mentioned at the top of the show,
Speaker 4: there are certainly some of them that may have been
Speaker 4: misidentified in historical records, you know, in writing and early
Speaker 4: kind of naturalists and misunderstandings galore that played, you know,
Speaker 4: into that game of telephone can really make something into
Speaker 4: something pretty outrageously cryptid. Like I guess what what I'm
Speaker 4: trying to say is there's sort of a there's a
Speaker 4: likelihood factor of whether some of these things are related
Speaker 4: in these tales to actual creatures, or if the game
Speaker 4: of telephone just got completely out of hand, driven by
Speaker 4: ideology or superstition or what have you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's go to some examples. One of the most
Speaker 3: ancient cryptids in India and in Ethiopia is a little
Speaker 3: thing called the crow cutta. To describe it, it sounds
Speaker 3: like we're setting up a bar joke. What do you
Speaker 3: get when you cross a wolf, a dog, a hyena,
Speaker 3: and a lion, Well, you get the cro tutta.
Speaker 4: Sounds like a delicious pastry, though, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: It does very much. So, Yeah, it's an ancient cryptid.
Speaker 3: It's described by multiple historians throughout antiquity, including our boy Plenty, PLI,
Speaker 3: n Y. And it's weird when you look at what
Speaker 3: he writes in natural history. He is kind of the
Speaker 3: first crypto zoologist, Like the the scholarly burden of proof
Speaker 3: is not really a thing. So this guy is just
Speaker 3: sort of like when Freud was making up psychoanalysis. He's saying, oh,
Speaker 3: I heard about this one thing, you know, and I
Speaker 3: heard about this other thing, and then other people took
Speaker 3: his descriptions and they ran with it, as you said, Noel,
Speaker 3: adding on their own twist.
Speaker 4: Well, and as we you know, we described this thing.
Speaker 4: It's kind of fine for all these to play the
Speaker 4: game of like, well, let's filter these descriptions through the
Speaker 4: things we now know that science has explained, and what
Speaker 4: is maybe the more likely possibility of what this thing was,
Speaker 4: or there's the WCF moment where we don't really have
Speaker 4: a reasonable explanation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just quick side note from me, guys. Plenty is
Speaker 2: the dude that I've always heard as Plenty or Pliny
Speaker 2: the Elder.
Speaker 4: Correct, Yeah, I've heard of both for sure. Something about
Speaker 4: the mouthfeel of Pliny is fun for me. But yeah,
Speaker 4: that's the guy.
Speaker 2: Well isn't it so cool that that guy was around
Speaker 2: so long ago and we still like look to him
Speaker 2: as some of the for some of the original recorded
Speaker 2: descriptions of a lot of these things. As you said, Ben,
Speaker 2: this guy was all about weird creatures from different places because.
Speaker 4: Clearly well traveled, right, I mean it wasn't from around here,
Speaker 4: you know, but he didn't.
Speaker 2: When you look at the translated recorded writings of him,
Speaker 2: he's not discounting things. He's not immediately saying, well, you know,
Speaker 2: because of my extensive knowledge of natural history, this Krakata
Speaker 2: couldn't possibly exist. It's like it's like the concept is, well, what,
Speaker 2: maybe there is something like that, we just haven't found
Speaker 2: it yet.
Speaker 3: He's got such abe if you've read natural history, He's like, hey, bro,
Speaker 3: you know what I heard. I heard there was this
Speaker 3: turtle that's like bigger than every turtle ever.
Speaker 4: Yeah. You know. But back in those days too, it
Speaker 4: seems like historians and scientists and philosophers there was a
Speaker 4: little bit more of a healthy mix of mysticism in
Speaker 4: their vibes, you know what I mean. There was an
Speaker 4: acceptance of the impossible, right, They weren't always out to
Speaker 4: debunk necessarily, or they were even in some ways driven
Speaker 4: by some of these kind of metaphysical pursuits more so
Speaker 4: than what you might consider a scientist or a historian
Speaker 4: you know, to be today.
Speaker 3: The Elder would have been an absolute beast on Twitter,
Speaker 3: that's for sure. But and he probably would have hosted
Speaker 3: a discovery show like River Monsters or something.
Speaker 4: But I just to clarify, he's from Rome, right, ancient
Speaker 4: Roman mytory philosopher, natural philosopher.
Speaker 3: Ye, yeah, natural philosopher, which was a quality job at
Speaker 3: the time if you could get it. According to what
Speaker 3: we know about about this creature, the qro cutta from
Speaker 3: plenty of the Elder, the animal was thought to be
Speaker 3: found most often in the rainforest areas of India and
Speaker 3: then parts of Africa. Ethiopia we'll call it today, Actually
Speaker 3: we'll call it Ethiopia back then because it's one of
Speaker 3: the oldest countries that is still a country. This cro
Speaker 3: cutta thing, it's definitely quadruped. It's about the size of
Speaker 3: a mule. According to descriptions. It is known for hunting
Speaker 3: humans as well as regular dogs, and we know dogs
Speaker 3: were at this time already well domesticated, already speciated from wolves.
Speaker 3: The Krokutta had a lot of powers ascribed to it.
Speaker 3: It could change its color at will, It could blend
Speaker 3: into its surroundings like the predator it attacked from the shadows.
Speaker 3: It could eat a person in It could kill a
Speaker 3: person in seconds. It could digest them very quickly, and
Speaker 3: it had a voracious appetite. Perhaps the most interesting thing
Speaker 3: here is that it could mimic the sounds of human beings.
Speaker 3: There are legends of it going to someone's doorstep and
Speaker 3: then sounding like a person another person to get it outside,
Speaker 3: to get that person outside, and then eating it.
Speaker 5: Yo.
Speaker 4: If you guys seen that movie Annihilation, remember the part
Speaker 4: of me it's you know, there's a whole part of this. Yeah,
Speaker 4: the bear, but it's a combination of a bear, and
Speaker 4: it screams with the voice of a human, and it's
Speaker 4: sort of this like bear, pig, bore, alligator monster thing,
Speaker 4: this hybrid And that's what I'm picturing here. And I'm
Speaker 4: also wondering too if, like a lot of these h takes,
Speaker 4: there's some fear involved. You're like, this is a thing
Speaker 4: that is absolutely terrifying is going to murder me, and therefore,
Speaker 4: in my mind, I'm projecting the scariest possible thing that
Speaker 4: it could be. Maybe you didn't even get a good look.
Speaker 4: You're mainly running away from this thing, you know.
Speaker 2: Well, it's kind of I again, the way this creature
Speaker 2: is disc with such a combo of scary things. It
Speaker 2: gives me those vibes as well, But it also really
Speaker 2: reminds me of some of the skinwalker legends that exist,
Speaker 2: especially out in the Southwest. Here in the United States.
Speaker 2: We're from indigenous tribes that have lived there for way,
Speaker 2: way longer than anybody who was writing stuff down about that.
Speaker 2: So I don't know that alone gives me the creeps. Mostly,
Speaker 2: I think the mimicry part.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that's where we edge into the supernatural, or
Speaker 3: verge into the supernatural. Another complication in the legends, this
Speaker 3: Krokutta is said to be able to change genders. And
Speaker 3: believe it or not, folks, we can explain this. We
Speaker 3: have to ask one of the first questions for this
Speaker 3: crypti example, could the Krocutta be a case of misidentification?
Speaker 3: India does have large dangerous animals. I mean the tiger. Look,
Speaker 3: I could. I am confident that I could PvP kangaroo.
Speaker 3: I am right about that. I don't want to do it.
Speaker 4: I look forward to this.
Speaker 3: I don't want to do it. But if worse comes
Speaker 3: to worse, I've got the agility, I've got the thumbs,
Speaker 3: I've got the knowledge. But no one or the vast
Speaker 3: majority of people cannot PvP a tiger, which means that
Speaker 3: the population of India, going back to pre written history,
Speaker 3: like before the recorded word, they knew about the tiger.
Speaker 3: They knew about dangerous animals, they did not identify this one.
Speaker 3: And interestingly enough, there are multiple historical descriptions post plenty
Speaker 3: of the elder of the Krokutta being taken to Roman civilization.
Speaker 3: We know it goes. I mean, it's weirdly recent in
Speaker 3: the grand scheme of things. It was common era one
Speaker 3: eight when Roman Emperor got his hands on one.
Speaker 4: So I'm just trying to backtrack a little bit to
Speaker 4: the switch swapping of gender. Is this maybe a case
Speaker 4: where you know, I mean, I always bring this up,
Speaker 4: but like the Brotherhood of the Wolf and the Beast
Speaker 4: of Gotto Van or whatever, and you're searching and hunting
Speaker 4: for this very murderous beast that you believe to be
Speaker 4: an individual, a single individual, right, and then maybe there
Speaker 4: are more than one. And maybe there's this idea that
Speaker 4: you're hunting this one thing and you think it's a male,
Speaker 4: and then you catch one and it's a female, and
Speaker 4: you believe that it's changed genders because it could only
Speaker 4: be the one individual that was causing all that havoc.
Speaker 4: But in fact there are more than one. Maybe because
Speaker 4: there's a lack of understanding. I don't know. I'm just
Speaker 4: wondering what could lead to that misunderstanding or that belief.
Speaker 3: Quite possibly, We're we're going to solve it here. So
Speaker 3: for the historical record, we know how the a book
Speaker 3: called the Augustine History argues that at some point the
Speaker 3: Roman emperor Antoninus A received one of these creatures as
Speaker 3: a gift. It was just like a flex you know,
Speaker 3: It's like, here's a fancy souvenir. And then later another
Speaker 3: historian called Cassius Dio talks about an emperor named Septimus
Speaker 3: Severus who brought a crocutta to Rome, and Dio says
Speaker 3: this quote Indian species was then introduced to Rome for
Speaker 3: the first time so far as I am aware. It
Speaker 3: has the color of a lioness and tiger combined, and
Speaker 3: the general appearance of those animals as also of a
Speaker 3: dog and folks gloriously blended. So okay, once you get
Speaker 3: past all the weird myths that game a telephone, we're
Speaker 3: pretty sure that this they're describing the spotted hyena and
Speaker 3: gr tracks right. It answers the idea of imitation, right,
Speaker 3: the idea of imitating calls right like a hyena laughs,
Speaker 3: et cetera. It also it also answers the gender question
Speaker 3: because we know that female spotted hyenas when they become
Speaker 3: the dominant members of their pack. I don't want to
Speaker 3: be too crass here, but if you look at the
Speaker 3: biology the dominant female hyena, it's glitterius will enlarge, it
Speaker 3: will become fully a rectile, so it would appear to
Speaker 3: change gender.
Speaker 4: That's fascinating. Yeah, that was gonna be my first bet.
Speaker 4: Those things are scary, man, those are and they're yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't know, guys. I always picture the
Speaker 4: hyenas from The Lion King because I found them to
Speaker 4: be pretty menacing in some of those scenes when I
Speaker 4: was a kid. That stuck with me they've got the
Speaker 4: sloped kind of you know, down on their haunches, ready
Speaker 4: to pounce kind of quality to them. And you're right
Speaker 4: that the human laugh almost like a mockingbird or something,
Speaker 4: or like a parrot. It almost does have this sort
Speaker 4: of foremant quality to it, like a human local court.
Speaker 2: And now I just have images of whoope as the
Speaker 2: hyaena becoming the alpha. I don't like any of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you ever come back, we're gonna kill you.
Speaker 3: So we have solved that effectively, one cryptid case, an
Speaker 3: ancient one. But let's move to other things. Because again
Speaker 3: our pals, the historians of old, to my knowledge, they
Speaker 3: have all passed on. They wrote a lot about weird animals.
Speaker 3: And another one that's continually fascinating is something called the manticore.
Speaker 3: It's also ancient, but it's a little tougher to explain
Speaker 3: because it's got a weird vibe. It looks as the
Speaker 3: head of a person right well.
Speaker 4: But again to me though, it feels like a continuation
Speaker 4: of the crocutta because of that human voice quality. Now
Speaker 4: all of a sudden it's got the whole human head,
Speaker 4: you know. And you hear about the manticore and all
Speaker 4: kinds of law and like, you know, tantamount to fighting
Speaker 4: a dragon or something almost you know, you really do
Speaker 4: hear about you know, these brave knights or what have
Speaker 4: you that would go out to slay a manticore. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's got the body of a lion, the head
Speaker 3: of a man, and then in a Shamelan twist, it
Speaker 3: also has the tail of a scorpion that can shoot
Speaker 3: poisonous starts. I mean, this.
Speaker 4: Looks like a giant clitists.
Speaker 3: And a giant glitterist. This looks like a drawing that
Speaker 3: we would make when we were children, if all of
Speaker 3: us were children at some point.
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 3: The earliest mention of it comes from another ancient historian,
Speaker 3: a Greek historian uh Tasius. He had a book called
Speaker 3: Indica in the fifth century BCE, and the.
Speaker 6: Acts in the couch right right right, and thank you
Speaker 6: for everybody wrote in with some really fun ones about
Speaker 6: Indica versus Sativa and are they a myth?
Speaker 4: Anyway? Starry to derail it?
Speaker 3: Well, the perfect because Indica, the actual book or the manuscript,
Speaker 3: is lost to time, and we only know about it
Speaker 3: because we hear other writers, later writers name checking it.
Speaker 3: Going back to Plitty in Natural History. He has the
Speaker 3: following description of Tasius and the manticore.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he writes that amongst these same men there
Speaker 4: is found an animal have to lapse into the voice,
Speaker 4: called the mantichora, which has three rows of teeth like
Speaker 4: a comb, the face and ears of a human, and
Speaker 4: bluish eyes. It is red in color, with the body
Speaker 4: of a lion and a tail with stigers like a scorpion.
Speaker 4: Its voice is as if the sounds of the pipe
Speaker 4: were mixed with a trumpet, and it is a creature
Speaker 4: of great speed which avidly goes after human flesh. Guys,
Speaker 4: the sound of the pipe mixed with the troupe. This
Speaker 4: sounds like Jurassic Park, Foley work right here. I mean,
Speaker 4: all of those crazy roars they did in Jurassic Park.
Speaker 4: A lot of those are combining different animals and sometimes
Speaker 4: musical instruments and drones to make these other worldly kind
Speaker 4: of you know roars. Guys.
Speaker 2: It's making me think of psychological manipulation war tactics that
Speaker 2: we've talked about in the past.
Speaker 3: This is what I'm thinking about here, yeah.
Speaker 2: Right where It's like if you could convince with either
Speaker 2: instrumentation like you know, imagine war drums, but in this
Speaker 2: case some kind of horns and other sounds that you're
Speaker 2: shooting out at great distances when your army is gathered
Speaker 2: together behind a big wall right or across a ridge,
Speaker 2: but you're making these sounds to make it feel as
Speaker 2: though there's a super creepy creature just across the ridge.
Speaker 4: I think think about like, you know, warring people with
Speaker 4: wild animals, where they dress them up and like armor
Speaker 4: and things like that, sometimes like rhinoceroses or what have you. Elephants,
Speaker 4: even war elephants. You know, people are hearing these sounds
Speaker 4: coming across the battlefield and only seeing them when they're
Speaker 4: in the thick of the heat of battle, and they
Speaker 4: might be hallucinating some stuff, seeing things that this armor
Speaker 4: or what have you maybe make them think are like
Speaker 4: actually parts of the animals themselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and with this one, with this guy, we see
Speaker 3: the game of telephone. Because those original accounts, right, the
Speaker 3: first one is lost to history as far as we know.
Speaker 3: The second one that name checks that original author goes
Speaker 3: on to influence everybody else who writes about the manticre
Speaker 3: without actually having seen one or what they thought was one,
Speaker 3: And to date, there has been no proven capture of
Speaker 3: a mant core. There have been no proven accounts of
Speaker 3: attacks on humans from manti cores, despite their fearsome reputation.
Speaker 3: So in this case, our verdict at Presant has to
Speaker 3: be the following unknown because there's a lot of wilderness
Speaker 3: in India, but this creature the way it's described does
Speaker 3: not fit our current understanding biology. There is a much
Speaker 3: more likely cryptid that we should go to. We're walking
Speaker 3: through different flavors of cryptids because India has quite a few.
Speaker 3: We've got to introduce you to. I don't know about you, guys.
Speaker 3: One of my favorites the boats Billy or ghost cat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is another sick cryptid again, the manicore. If
Speaker 2: you wanted to design something that was just the most
Speaker 2: terrifying thing, make the manicore, especially if it's that fast
Speaker 2: with all that gear already attached.
Speaker 4: To a human face.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that one's that's too much. But just big cats
Speaker 2: in general, as we've seen in other episodes in the past,
Speaker 2: where the thought that there could be even just a
Speaker 2: mountain lion lurking in a place where it should be
Speaker 2: it's horrifying. But this guy, do you say it ben.
Speaker 3: Uh bolts Billy, a ghost cat, a cat that's like
Speaker 3: like hiding from you out there.
Speaker 2: It's not just in the woods, it's hiding in the woods.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I like just calling it the boot billy. That's
Speaker 4: a lot less like the wild boot billy coming coming
Speaker 4: at you.
Speaker 3: It's it's often described as a cross between a cat,
Speaker 3: a dog, and a mongoose. So smaller than a.
Speaker 4: Lot the mongoose bark crags, larger.
Speaker 3: Than a hyena. Oh, the mongoose is awesome, dude. That's
Speaker 3: ticky tappy all day, dude.
Speaker 2: One of the most efficient hunters that exists out there.
Speaker 2: Doesn't give an f kind of you know, like one
Speaker 2: of those honey badgers where oh, I'm sorry, you're you're
Speaker 2: a cobra. Oh you got your rattlesnake too bad, I'm
Speaker 2: a mongoose come at you.
Speaker 3: Well, they've got asymmetric warfare down. Check out our North
Speaker 3: Woods Operation episode where I think, if I recall, I
Speaker 3: went on a little bit of tangent kissing the ass
Speaker 3: of the mongoose. That's why they named the operation whatever.
Speaker 4: All right, can you say really quickly, I was talking
Speaker 4: about like war animals and all of that stuff, And
Speaker 4: I said, you know, rhinos out low because it was
Speaker 4: you know, in the movie three hundred. But apparently that
Speaker 4: misconception because rhino's apparently would be very difficult to train
Speaker 4: and it would be unwieldy to use.
Speaker 3: In that terrible right. Exactly that too.
Speaker 4: But there's a very famous wood cut by Albrick Durr,
Speaker 4: who is a very famous artist, and I'm not getting
Speaker 4: the timeline right, but it was definitely would have been
Speaker 4: representative of the time where there was like, you know,
Speaker 4: a massive battlefield kind of night type you know, warfare.
Speaker 4: But this wasn't real. And I don't know if Albert
Speaker 4: Duhr was doing that game of telephone thing and being
Speaker 4: smart or if he really thought he saw this thing.
Speaker 4: It's another example of how this stuff can just kind
Speaker 4: of like churn up its own lore.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I mean this is this is a game. Well,
Speaker 3: let's do this part. Now, this is a game you
Speaker 3: can play at home with your friends. Fellow conspiracy realist,
Speaker 3: describe an unfamiliar animal to a friend of yours or
Speaker 3: family member, and then ask them to draw a picture
Speaker 3: of what they heard you describe. And that explains to
Speaker 3: us even now, you could do this at home even now.
Speaker 3: That explains to us so much cryptid lore, because imagine
Speaker 3: someone is going, someone's going, well, you know, out in
Speaker 3: the brains of Africa, there is a creature that functions.
Speaker 7: As though it was born with armor. It has opponents,
Speaker 7: now to a great horn, it runs at its enemies,
Speaker 7: and then you know they're like, all right, just draw that.
Speaker 7: It's basically producers talking to people in the nineteen eighties, right,
Speaker 7: which explains all those films.
Speaker 4: You nailed it.
Speaker 3: That's very kind. We also know that the boots Billy
Speaker 3: and we are not native speakers. Here is kind of
Speaker 3: a regional a regional terror. People genuinely believe this ghost
Speaker 3: cat was real. We found a case from twenty ten,
Speaker 3: so about fourteen years ago, when residents of a neighborhood
Speaker 3: called Sanjay Park they had claimed a ghost cat was
Speaker 3: responsible for killing and eating forty five pigeons and one
Speaker 3: goat over the course of about ten days. And the
Speaker 3: guy who owned these birds in this goat, dude named
Speaker 3: Faraz Dilivar Kahn. He said, look, I have seen this thing.
Speaker 3: I saw it eating my pigeons. It is quote fat
Speaker 3: and broad with a long tail. It's black in color.
Speaker 3: It has a face like a dog and a back
Speaker 3: like a mongoose, which, honestly saying a back like a mongoose.
Speaker 3: I don't think that really clocks for a lot of
Speaker 3: people in the West. We're not mongee experts. Correct.
Speaker 4: Is that a dis or accomplished.
Speaker 3: I just want to be I just want.
Speaker 2: To Yeah, speaking of uh fat and broad, I just
Speaker 2: wanted to give this update. I was doing a little
Speaker 2: Joe research and I found out who he is and
Speaker 2: he has a real name. Uh and I'll just let
Speaker 2: you click on that link I just put in the
Speaker 2: chat boys. That is the real name of the recording
Speaker 2: artist known as Joe.
Speaker 3: Oh, Dick Flood.
Speaker 2: His name is Dick Flood.
Speaker 4: Wow, please please, And apparently.
Speaker 3: Richard was by father's name.
Speaker 5: Please call legendary Dick Flood, who's playing and recording under
Speaker 5: the sobriquet Joe in one of Fervor's most accomplished artists.
Speaker 4: He's this is a record label, I guess. And he
Speaker 4: had a group called Dick Flood and the Pathfinders.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, nice, nice. Let the floodgates loose.
Speaker 4: I'm glad we had that shared experience though growing up, y'all,
Speaker 4: is this is another thing that just brings us.
Speaker 3: It's like McGruff, the crime dog, you know, ohly a.
Speaker 4: Real human person that came to our schools.
Speaker 3: Yes, all right, don't ruin McGruff for me. That is
Speaker 3: an anthropomorphic dog. It's with a real bad drug problem. Apparently, Yes,
Speaker 3: with a real you know what, cool vibe.
Speaker 4: Though.
Speaker 3: Faraz Con apparently gets fed up with this ghost cat
Speaker 3: eating all his birds and maybe eating the goat was
Speaker 3: the last straw. So ten days past, almost two weeks,
Speaker 3: he goes to the local authorities. He calls the police,
Speaker 3: he calls the fire department, he calls the forestry folks.
Speaker 3: It's November three, around ten pm, twenty ten. The authorities
Speaker 3: all show up. They take this seriously. They get there,
Speaker 3: they know there are dead birds and a dead goat.
Speaker 3: And when they get there, they say, dang, this ghost
Speaker 3: cat ghosted us. It's probably out in the forest somewhere.
Speaker 3: We can't find it. It faded from the news. But
Speaker 3: the thing that keeps us captivated by this idea is
Speaker 3: that these people living in Sanjay Park, they are familiar
Speaker 3: with the wildlife around them. If they saw something, they
Speaker 3: would be able to identify it. They know what kind
Speaker 3: of animals might target livestock, and they said, look, we've
Speaker 3: seen wildcats before, this is not a wild cat. So
Speaker 3: in this case, our verdict has to be again unknown.
Speaker 2: Well, it stinks because if you had, if you just
Speaker 2: had some wild like house cats, right, even domesticated house
Speaker 2: cats that were hanging out in that area, they could
Speaker 2: take down those pigeons easy. I've seen it happen. I
Speaker 2: have seen a cat jump in the air on like
Speaker 2: a porch and an apartment, you know, just that one
Speaker 2: of those tiny little areas, just jump up, grab a
Speaker 2: bird out of the air and just pull it down.
Speaker 4: Those little fellows are like cruise missiles, man, you know,
Speaker 4: they seek and destroy.
Speaker 2: But but you have people who have this, as you said,
Speaker 2: been like. They know the difference. They see something that
Speaker 2: is not a cat like that. It's also not a
Speaker 2: cat like just a bigger regular cat. It's something different.
Speaker 3: Not a cat like that.
Speaker 4: And I think it's probably pretty clear already. But we're
Speaker 4: not saying these people were stupid either. We're not saying
Speaker 4: these people were like all bugaboo and confused. They just
Speaker 4: didn't have access to the same wealth of like the
Speaker 4: whole of human civilization that we do you know, so
Speaker 4: they were having the kind of make it up as
Speaker 4: they went along.
Speaker 3: Also, given that this is twenty ten, you know, these
Speaker 3: folks are very well aware of what surrounds them and
Speaker 3: they're also they also wanted to be an animal. They understand,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. This is not a Bigfoot fan.
Speaker 3: This guy is a dude who was out a significant
Speaker 3: amount of capital. Because forty five pigeons, that's a lot
Speaker 3: of pigeons. Also, do you know the going price on
Speaker 3: a goat, because let me spoil it for you, it
Speaker 3: is kind of expensive if you live in that part
Speaker 3: of the world. It's like someone stole your car, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, You're not happy about it. You
Speaker 3: just lost your camera.
Speaker 4: And this just give you, guys goat sucker vibes like
Speaker 4: chuop Ofcabre type vibes as well. I mean, that's a
Speaker 4: big part of the reporting on the Cheep Ofcabre is
Speaker 4: that it was killing livestock and then it becomes this
Speaker 4: like boogeyman almost you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as a matter of fact, let's take a break
Speaker 3: for a word from our sponsors, and then we're going
Speaker 3: to introduce you to one of the most adorable of
Speaker 3: India's cryptids. We've returned, okay, Loris. You guys know what
Speaker 3: the laurus looks like. Like, it's weird. It's got big eyes.
Speaker 3: It's always been.
Speaker 4: The trees, right, He's got a.
Speaker 3: Lords always look like a laurus. Always looks like it's
Speaker 3: scheming like a raccoon. You know. They got hands. They're
Speaker 3: just close enough to human hands.
Speaker 4: The meer cat vibes almost like a meer cat mixed
Speaker 4: with a sloth.
Speaker 2: Perhaps, Yeah, because they are they they're even called like
Speaker 2: the slow loris or the loris. I mean that's the
Speaker 2: way they're colloquially known, right, Yeah, but yeah, it just
Speaker 2: makes me think of a sloth or just a cute
Speaker 2: little guy.
Speaker 4: It's just challenge it.
Speaker 2: Look, man, don't don't bother me. Just trying to get
Speaker 2: some fruits and some leaves.
Speaker 4: It's a little sad. You got big old, we big
Speaker 4: old dark circles around it. And it looks like a
Speaker 4: little hang dog.
Speaker 3: It looks like you, what's the tree? You know, it
Speaker 3: looks like it what's a tree? Which we're fine with.
Speaker 3: This idea of the tailed slow Laurus is fascinating because
Speaker 3: it's originally reported in the Lushai Hills of Assam State,
Speaker 3: and there is an actual photograph of this creature. There
Speaker 3: are no extravagant claims about this. The primary difference between
Speaker 3: a tailed slow Loris and the other slow lords of
Speaker 3: the world, it's just that it's in the name. It
Speaker 3: has a tale, white, possibly prehensile are There is a
Speaker 3: genuine photograph that came from like capture in eighteen eighty
Speaker 3: nine when it was a common animal. It was first
Speaker 3: reported in writing in nineteen oh eight or nineteen oh two,
Speaker 3: early twentieth century. And the dude who captured these animals
Speaker 3: got two of them and then sent it off to
Speaker 3: his friends in London. He has a name we have
Speaker 3: to share with everyone. His name was Thomas Henry digs
Speaker 3: Letouche loves to who.
Speaker 4: I can't, Okay, So I mean, so again, we're just
Speaker 4: making it clear. The Loris is a subfamily of primates, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, this is like an app absolutely you know,
Speaker 4: documented creature. But we're just talking about one slight, little
Speaker 4: little twist on the loris that turns it into a
Speaker 4: cryptid because we don't have record of this variation.
Speaker 2: This is the way I'm imagining, you, guys. I imagine
Speaker 2: this Laura's thing. But then I think about a lemur,
Speaker 2: and you know the tail of a lemur, which is
Speaker 2: very scientific one. Yeah, I think about that, but that's
Speaker 2: not how they described and what the well, the picture
Speaker 2: is a little hard to make out. What part is
Speaker 2: the tail, right, I think if we're kind of objective
Speaker 2: about it. But the way it's described is like super bushy, right,
Speaker 2: not like a Lemur's tale.
Speaker 3: Like different, right, Like the Lemur's tale is often used
Speaker 3: for balance, right, because they're a boreal meaning they live
Speaker 3: in trees. But the Laura's here, the slow loris they
Speaker 3: have kind of like a stubby tail, you know, like
Speaker 3: sometimes the humans are born with a vestigial little bump
Speaker 3: at the end of their cocksix or do some.
Speaker 4: Cats too, right? Or maybe wait, are cats born without tails?
Speaker 4: Or they just been cut off? I'm sorry this is.
Speaker 3: I think they're usually cut off. I'm sure there are
Speaker 3: some stuffy tailed cats.
Speaker 4: No bad one which still still exists. His name is Robert.
Speaker 4: He he lives good friend Frank. I think I think
Speaker 4: Robert as well.
Speaker 3: But Robert had a little stumpy tail.
Speaker 4: And I believe that there are, you know, very cruel
Speaker 4: practices that involve cutting off the cat's tails. But I
Speaker 4: do I gotta wonder though, if there are cats that
Speaker 4: maybe are born without tails, whether it be like some
Speaker 4: sort of mutation.
Speaker 3: You might have accidentally adopted a luries.
Speaker 4: Maybe so so.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I'm just thinking of all those types people have
Speaker 3: mistakenly adopted an animal that they thought was a dog
Speaker 3: or a cat, learned it was something different.
Speaker 4: Genetic mutation. By the way, it is a thing. It is, okay,
Speaker 4: But you got to wonder if that's something that we
Speaker 4: see too, you know, rare mutations that lead to this
Speaker 4: type of identification as like something that we don't know about.
Speaker 3: Slightly prescient. Yeah, So the story is our buddy digs
Speaker 3: litche He and his crew uh. He and his crew
Speaker 3: captured two of these specimens. They reported that they were
Speaker 3: familiar with them uh and that it was common to
Speaker 3: see this type of lord around. They caged the animals,
Speaker 3: but due to their wait for it, slow movements, they
Speaker 3: didn't bother to escape proof anything. It's like if you
Speaker 3: capture a sloth, are you worried it's going to run away?
Speaker 4: To really take them to lift the latch, she would
Speaker 4: just like that scene in Zootopia where the sloths work
Speaker 4: at the DMV and like the stamp. Yea, so it's
Speaker 4: so funny.
Speaker 3: So they messed up though with this creature, which again
Speaker 3: is documented. There is a photograph. As soon as the
Speaker 3: human turn away, these purportedly slow little guys saw their chance.
Speaker 3: They got out of the cage and they high tailed
Speaker 3: it quickly back to the forest. Since that moment in
Speaker 3: eighteen eighty nine, they have never been seen again. We
Speaker 3: don't know if they're still out there. We don't know
Speaker 3: if maybe they were a specific genre of life form
Speaker 3: that died out due to human predation or human pressures.
Speaker 3: But I like what you're bringing up, nolwhich is prescient.
Speaker 3: There is the idea, or there is the possibility that
Speaker 3: this was the result of an isolated mutation, an ata
Speaker 3: astic gene triggering tail growth in a small number of individuals.
Speaker 3: How kind of like how malungeons have creepy stuff.
Speaker 4: Going on, right, I guess that's funny. I think of
Speaker 4: maybe a mutation that will cause a tailed animal to
Speaker 4: not have a tail, to be a little bit simpler mutation,
Speaker 4: but one that actually gives you a taiale out of nowhere.
Speaker 4: Maybe that one's like more of like a supermutation, like
Speaker 4: you like a superpower, and then you got a wonder too. Evolutionarily,
Speaker 4: if the tail ended up being a functional thing, maybe
Speaker 4: that species evolves to have the tail because that becomes
Speaker 4: a you know, a desirable trait.
Speaker 3: If you see one, don't kill it, don't eat it,
Speaker 3: don't pull a Darwin, get a photograph.
Speaker 4: Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Such a flexer. He totally ate those animals.
Speaker 4: And he loved every bite.
Speaker 3: So what do you think, gents? Is this going to
Speaker 3: be a two parter?
Speaker 4: It's a great place to divide it because we've got
Speaker 4: some coming up. There are a lot more in the
Speaker 4: super dark kind of weirder realm and maybe resemble some
Speaker 4: things that we know from other even you know more
Speaker 4: you know you United States centric views of kryptids. Oh dude.
Speaker 2: The that map that we found that we mentioned at
Speaker 2: the very top of this episode has things like about
Speaker 2: creatures that have bioluminescence that shouldn't, creatures of all different
Speaker 2: shapes and sizes, and weird stuff that we got to
Speaker 2: get into. So yeah, we definitely need more of this.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, And I mean, just to tease the first
Speaker 4: one we're going to talk about on the next episode,
Speaker 4: The Monkey Man of New Delhi might interest you if
Speaker 4: you've seen the Dev Patel film Monkey Man, which is
Speaker 4: out in theaters now, where he's like this fight club
Speaker 4: type avenger who is totally capitalizing on the mythology of
Speaker 4: this cryptid. Yes the most Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, Oh, there's so much to go into with the
Speaker 3: Monkey Man. That's one of my favorites. We don't have time.
Speaker 3: We got to save it. We want to take a
Speaker 3: second and think truth is fiction hyt on Reddit Truth
Speaker 3: is Fiction yt Your awesome cryptid map of India helped
Speaker 3: inspire a lot of tonight's conversation. We have more stories
Speaker 3: to explore in depth. There's so many we didn't get to.
Speaker 3: Each of these, each of which has their own rich mythology,
Speaker 3: fascinating parallels to known biology, or degrees of symbolism, especially
Speaker 3: with the Monkey Man relating to the societies in which
Speaker 3: those stories were told. We can will go in to
Speaker 3: the feedback loop in a future episode, which is very
Speaker 3: important to understand. We hope you tune in. If you
Speaker 3: enjoyed tonight's episode, be sure to also tune in for
Speaker 3: our upcoming exploration of trolls not the ones online as well.
Speaker 3: As we can finally announce it on air. We're doing
Speaker 3: We're doing the Reptilian conspiracy. Yeah fine, like ten years late.
Speaker 3: We're diving into the Reptilian conspiracy. We would love your help.
Speaker 3: Tell us your favorite cryptids. If you are a person
Speaker 3: who has lived in India, if you have family in India,
Speaker 3: especially in some of the areas we named, we'd love
Speaker 3: to hear from you. We try to be easy to
Speaker 3: find online.
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Speaker 4: probably equal importance. YouTube or you can find some really
Speaker 4: fun video content rolling out every single week, conspiracy stuff
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