WEBVTT - Does the Bunyip Really Roam Austraila's Wetlands? 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:07.560 Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff, 0:00:07.600 --> 0:00:12.080 Lauren Vogelbaum. Here. When you enter the right wetlands in 0:00:12.119 --> 0:00:16.640 New Caledonia, New Zealand, Tasmania or mainland Australia, you might 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:19.880 just come across a tan and speckled heron that's got 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:23.200 the voice of an electric bass. You're more likely to 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:25.880 hear it before you see it in the flesh or 0:00:26.079 --> 0:00:31.160 in the feathers, as it were. The booming cry, deep 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:34.320 and resonant of male Australian bittern birds when they're ready 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:36.960 to breed sounds like it could have been ripped straight 0:00:36.960 --> 0:00:40.760 out of an eighties horror movie. That unsettling sound is 0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:43.960 why the Australian bittern is also called the bunyip bird, 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:48.320 after a legendary cryptid with a similarly frightening bellow that's 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:50.640 said to prey on humans and live in the remote 0:00:50.640 --> 0:00:56.520 billabongs and wetlands of Australia. Legends about the bunyip began 0:00:56.560 --> 0:01:00.720 in Aboriginal communities as cautionary stories to warn people against 0:01:00.760 --> 0:01:03.760 things like going in the water alone, taking more fish 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:07.480 than they needed, or wandering alone at night. Don't do it. 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:11.440 The bunyip will get you. Lots of people's had similar 0:01:11.480 --> 0:01:15.040 stories about local water spirits, like the Mulawonk of the 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:20.440 Narringerry people love southeastern Australia. The word bunyip is thought 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:24.200 to derive from the Wergaya language word anib, the name 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:27.800 of a fearsome emu like river spirit from neighboring people. 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:31.959 The legends morphed as they moved amongst different peoples, and 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:37.319 again as European colonists picked them up. In the eighteen nineties, 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:40.479 a novelist by the name of Rosa Campbell Prade, who 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:43.600 had grown up in Queensland, wrote a short story called 0:01:43.680 --> 0:01:47.160 The Bunyip, now considered a classic work of Gothic horror. 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:50.880 In it, she wrote, the bunyip is said to be 0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:55.120 an amphibious animal, and is variously described, sometimes as a 0:01:55.160 --> 0:01:59.360 giant snake, sometimes as a species of rhinoceros with a smooth, 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:01.840 pulpy sk and a head like that of a calf, 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:05.680 sometimes as a huge pig, its body yellow crossed with 0:02:05.720 --> 0:02:08.840 black stripes. But it is also said to be something 0:02:08.919 --> 0:02:12.920 more than an animal, and among its supernatural attributes is 0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:17.120 the cold, awesome, uncanny feeling which creeps over a company 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:20.040 at night. When the bunyip becomes the subject of conversation. 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:27.040 Over time, the bunyip further evolved. In the nineteen seventies, 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:30.720 the city of murray Bridge received a somewhat fearsome, mechanical 0:02:30.760 --> 0:02:33.640 bunyip named Bert that, for a charge of twenty cents, 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:37.520 could be observed emerging from the water and bellowing. It's 0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:40.800 since been rebuilt to look more friendly and renamed Bertha. 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:44.640 You can now visit her free of charge, and today 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:47.760 there's a whole subgenre of children's books about the bunyip, 0:02:48.080 --> 0:02:52.040 ranging from classic cautionary myths to tales of friendly, if 0:02:52.080 --> 0:02:57.680 misunderstood monsters. Whatever the difference is in the details, the 0:02:57.720 --> 0:03:01.280 beast is usually said to have a mighty roar, hence 0:03:01.360 --> 0:03:06.920 the Australian bitterns awesome nickname. In nineteen forty six, Australian 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:11.240 geographer Charles Fenner wrote, the mysterious booming sound made by 0:03:11.240 --> 0:03:14.640 the bittern a very shy bird, has become associated with 0:03:14.760 --> 0:03:18.560 the bunyip, but actual observers have usually described the sound 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:23.800 of the latter as a roar or bellow. The tales 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:27.720 of the bunyip flourished during Fenner's lifetime, as Europeans further 0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:31.600 settled Australia, unfamiliar with the sounds of the bush, many 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:35.400 colonists were convinced of the bunyip's existence as an undiscovered animal. 0:03:36.720 --> 0:03:38.920 To this day, there are those who believe the legendary 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:42.840 bunyip could be a one hundred percent real, undiscovered species 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:47.160 lurking in the wetlands of the vast Australian continent. Wildlife 0:03:47.200 --> 0:03:51.440 experts aren't sold, though, especially because no verified corpses or 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:55.880 other remains have ever come to light. A skull that 0:03:56.000 --> 0:03:59.200 supposedly belonged to a bunyip went on display in eighteen 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:03.320 forty seven at the Colonial Museum of Sydney. However, a 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:06.240 naturalist examined it and revealed it was actually the head 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:10.880 of a deformed horse. Another famous bunyip head, this one 0:04:10.920 --> 0:04:14.600 complete with fur, found its way to Sydney's Macclay Museum, 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:18.320 alas it turned out the specimen came from yet another horse. 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:23.599 Australia has no shortage of genuine animals that seem too 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:27.960 weird to exist, like the duck billed platypus. Equally amazing, 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:31.200 if a bit less strange, are the multitudes of seals 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:34.120 and sea lions that can be encountered on the nation's beaches. 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:38.000 We should also acknowledge the saltwater crocodile, a semi aquatic 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:42.480 predator that stocks Australian waterways and coastlines. Capable of weighing 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:46.080 two thousand, six hundred pounds that's one two hundred kilos 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:49.080 and reaching lengths of over twenty feet or six meters, 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:54.520 it's the biggest reptile alive today. Could any of these 0:04:54.560 --> 0:05:00.880 beasts have contributed to bunyip lore? Perhaps also a chance 0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:04.200 that the storytellers of ancient Australia were inspired by the 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:09.599 now extinct rhino sized herbivore Diprotodon, a marsupial that roamed 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:13.839 the continent during the last Ice Age. However, paleontologists have 0:05:13.960 --> 0:05:17.920 questioned this idea too, on the grounds that Diprotodon doesn't 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:23.560 neatly align with most descriptions of the bunyip. Whatever its origins, 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:27.159 the bunyip, like other cryptids, holds a very real place 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:31.359 in our collective imagination, especially should you find yourself alone 0:05:31.400 --> 0:05:38.520 by the water on a dark night. Today's episode is 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:40.800 based on the article does the bunyip really haunt the 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:44.120 Australian Wetlands on how Stuffworks dot Com, written by Mark Mancini. 0:05:44.560 --> 0:05:46.840 Brain Stuff was production of by Heart Radio in partnership 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:49.320 with how Stuffworks dot Com and as produced by Tyler Klang. 0:05:49.800 --> 0:05:52.840 Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, 0:05:52.960 --> 0:06:05.599 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.