Half 3 – FURTHER IDENTITIES, AND FURTHER AFIELD

Creative illustration of a
satan monkey – is North America house to an undiscovered species of macropod, or
macropod-like thriller beast? (© William M. Rebsamen)

For
the cryptozoologist, essentially the most perplexing of all American phantom kangaroo
reviews (click on right here
and right here
to learn a collection of these as documented in Components 1 and a couple of of this three-part
ShukerNature article) should absolutely be these attributed to the Jersey satan. For
though a number of accounts regarding the latter thriller beast allude to
creatures bearing a superficial similarity to real macropods, such beasts
moreover possess sure options which are something however attribute of
Australia’s most well-known denizens. Such options embody an inclination to emit
bloodcurdling screams, in addition to possessing hooves, horns, and wings.

 

SHRIEKS AND SCREAMS

The
issues with wings and the horrors with horns plus hooves evidently don’t have anything
to do with kangaroos, phantom or in any other case, and subsequently will be omitted from
additional dialogue right here forthwith. The rest, conversely, seem to vary
from typical macropods solely with respect to their spine-chilling shrieks. In
precise truth, America possesses sure identified creatures famed for his or her capacity to
produce these exact same sounds.

The
two most notable species are the nice horned owl Bubo virginianus and
the puma Puma concolor. Because it occurs, though hunters and trackers had
incessantly reported private observations of pumas producing these remarkably
loud and eerie sounds, they have been typically disbelieved by scientists – till
official observations of such exercise have been recorded from varied zoo
specimens, as documented by C.A.W. Guggisberg in his complete ebook Wild
Cats of the World (1975) and subsequently expanded upon by me in my very own,
first ebook Thriller Cats of the World (1989).

Thus
it’s possible that a minimum of some reviews of poorly-observed screaming critters
will be defined on this manner. Such an answer can’t, nonetheless, be utilized to these
reviews through which the witness has distinctly noticed a kangaroo-like creature shrieking at shut quarters.
Furthermore, any ventriloquist puma or owl working along side a kangaroo
stooge is more likely to be discovered employed upon a Saturday morning cartoon
present than wandering by America’s countryside!

Evidently,
the riddle of the screeching kangaroos will stay unresolved till a specimen
can truly be obtained. Nonetheless, there may be one last thriller macropod id
(supplied by a number of writers up to now as a minimum of a theoretical chance)
that has up to now not been investigated right here, however which is especially pertinent
to this extra aberrant, shrieking class of phantom kangaroo (as a result of because of
their bizarre vocals these latter cryptids can’t be so readily thought-about as
easy escapees of identified macropod species). The chance in
query, albeit exceedingly distant and radical, is that America harbours an
unknown, indigenous species of macropod or macropod-like creature. Moreover,
such a type may even have arisen through two fully completely different means.

 

THE CHATATA BIPED AND THE DEVIL MONKEY

Though
at present represented solely by the didelphids (true opossums), caenolestids (rat/shrew
opossums), plus a lone surviving species of microbiotheriid (monito del monte),
and current predominantly in Central and South America (a single didelphid species
happens as far north as the usA.), in earlier instances the marsupials have been a really
various group all through the New World. South America specifically was as soon as
house to quite a few sizeable kinds, together with the pouched sabre-tooth Thylacosmilus
and the wolf-like borhyaenids that belonged to a now totally extinct taxonomic
order whose members have been referred to as sparassodonts and have been solely very distantly
associated to all different South American marsupials.

Curiously,
by morphologically paralleling the placental wolves, the borhyaenids additionally known as
to thoughts Australasia’s marsupial wolves, the thylacinids (of which the now
‘formally’ extinct Tasmanian wolf Thylacinus cynocephalus is the one modern-day
consultant). Certainly, these two latter marsupial teams have been as soon as deemed to
be intently associated. Following more moderen analysis, nonetheless, it’s these days recognised
that this isn’t the case in any respect – their notable outward similarity arose
as an alternative by convergent evolution, because of their occupancy of the identical
ecological area of interest upon their respective continents.

If the
Americas’ pouched mammalian clan may produce a parallel to the Australasian
marsupial wolves, may it even have produced a parallel to the Australasian
macropods – and one, furthermore, which (not like the borhyaenids) has truly
survived to the current day, in North America? Sadly, nonetheless, all the
scientific proof at present obtainable stands firmly in opposition to this chance.
Firstly, excluding only some surviving didelphids all of North America’s
marsupials died out a lot earlier (and have been a lot much less specialised) than these of
the New World’s southern continent. So if an indigenous American macropod-like
type had developed and has presumably survived into the current day,
one would anticipate sightings from South and even Central America quite than from the
northern continent. Moreover, no fossil stays of kangaroo-like beasts have
ever been recorded from the Americas (identified New World fossil marsupials have
been carnivorous or insectivorous quite than herbivorous).

Holding some grapes, a
Virginia opossum Didelphis virginiana,
North America’s solely identified dwelling marsupial species (public area)

Price
noting for comparability functions, nonetheless, is that regardless of the absence of geologically-recent
coelacanth fossils, two dwelling species do certainly exist. Consequently, an absence
of current fossils of a given animal group doesn’t show conclusively that no
dwelling consultant of this group survives. Furthermore, one discovery has
occurred that will have specific bearing upon the veracity of this most intriguing
(albeit extremely unlikely) thriller macropod id.

On 9
November 1891, New York Metropolis historian Prof. Albert Leighton Rawson revealed
within the Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences a brief paper
entitled ‘The Historical Inscription on a Wall at Chatata, Tennessee’. On this,
Rawson described a mysterious wall-like construction recently excavated close to
Cleveland, in Bradley County, which was composed of pink sandstone that bore
many a whole lot of inscribed symbols of unknown that means and origin. Furthermore,
there was additionally proof to recommend that makes an attempt had subsequently been made to
obliterate them, by masking them with cement and inserting on prime of this a layer
of stone – all very unusual.

Strangest
of all, nonetheless, was the truth that sure of the symbols took the type of
uncommon animal sorts, not clearly identifiable with identified American species. Of
these, essentially the most perplexing should absolutely be the very distinctive creature whose
inscribed type is replicated right here:

Actual replica of the inscribed type of the mystifying bipedal
beast current on the Chatata Wall (public area)

For
whereas actually not matching any ‘official’ New World animal, it intently
corresponds with an ‘unofficial’ type – the American phantom kangaroo. Not like
identified macropods, in fact, the Chatata biped sports activities a beard-like construction
hanging from its decrease jaw, plus strange-looking hind toes. Such variations,
nonetheless, may merely be because of creative model. Additionally, if the Americas have certainly
yielded their very own macropod type, one would anticipate a minimum of slight variations
from the Australasian model – another excuse for the ‘beard’ and toes?

The
particular age of the inscriptions is unknown, however they would definitely appear to
predate very significantly the final 200 years or so – when Australasian
macropods first started to reach in America certain for zoos, sideshow, and
circuses, and from which escapees may subsequently infiltrate America’s
countryside.

Of
course the Chatata biped might merely be a beast created by the inscriber’s
creativeness. Nonetheless, is it not curious that it bears so shut a
resemblance to one in every of America’s most puzzling modern-day thriller creatures, the
phantom kangaroo? Tragically, nonetheless, no direct investigations of this carving
or any others on the Chatata Wall can at present be undertaken, as a result of,
extremely, the wall’s actual location is not identified! There may be additionally a
much-debated concept that its inscriptions may very well be nothing greater than the
informal, non-coordinated product of pure geological or palaeontological
phenomena, however I can’t in any manner comprehend how such exact, well-delineated
kinds may have been created by such random means.

Creative reconstruction of
the attainable look of a satan monkey, based mostly upon eyewitness descriptions (©
William M. Rebsamen)

Extra
than 20 years after I wrote the unique model of this text (again within the
mid-Eighties), a brand new and really completely different however no much less intriguing cryptozoological
connection to America’s phantom kangaroos was postulated – this time by Loren
Coleman and fellow American mysteries researcher Patrick Huyghe of their ebook The
Discipline Information to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Different Thriller Primates Worldwide (1999). Even
although I’ve in any other case largely shunned together with updates, this extremely
intriguing id actually deserves point out right here.

They proposed
that a minimum of a few of America’s reported thriller macropods aren’t macropods at
all however truly represent an undiscovered species of indigenous primate, a
big simian to be exact, that Coleman and one other of his co-researchers,
Mark A. Corridor, have dubbed the satan monkey. Right here is how Coleman and Huyghe described
this postulated cryptid of their ebook:

They seem like a type of
big baboon that strikes by saltation, leaping as do kangaroos – and are sometimes
mistaken for them. Because of their measurement [standing up to 5 ft tall according to a
reconstruction of this cryptid’s possible appearance included alongside its verbal
description] and technique of locomotion, they’ve developed a big flat foot with
three rounded toes. Immature Satan Monkeys resemble marsupials equivalent to
wallabies because of convergent evolution however this similarity diminishes as they
mature.

A
fascinating if totally speculative proposal, as a result of as but there isn’t any identified
fossil proof to substantiate the prior existence of any kind of endemic primate
in continental North America (aside from our personal species in fashionable instances, of
course), thereby lowering the chance that any such creatures exist right here
at present.]

A extra baboon-like
interpretation of the satan monkey’s attainable look, ought to it truly
exist (© William M. Rebsamen)

 

OAHU’S ROCK WALLABIES

The
second manner through which America may possess its very personal, separate macropod type
will be illustrated by the startling case of the distinctive type of rock wallaby
distinctive to the Hawaiian island of Oahu. As famous in 1982 inside a Science
Digest information report, a single pair of Australian brush-tailed rock wallabies
Petrogale penicillatus escaped from a zoo on Oahu in 1916. They have been
by no means caught, and subsequently reproduced within the wild, their offspring in flip
mating amongst themselves, till a sizeable inhabitants of a number of hundred wallabies
was established (though this has since declined to a present-day whole of
solely 40 or so specimens).

Moreover,
within the early Eighties, when learning these most uncommon additions to the Oahu
fauna, American biologist Dr James Lazell claimed that they now differed so significantly
each in physique measurement and in colouration from their authentic Antipodean ancestors
that they really appeared to have developed into a completely separate subspecies –
distinctive to Oahu. Such speedy evolutionary divergence from the unique type (much less
than 60 years within the case of the Oahu wallabies) is especially widespread amongst
very small populations of creatures remoted from all different
intraspecific people – a phenomenon termed genetic drift. Moreover, as Lazell
famous in Science Digest, dramatic deviations will happen if the unique
organisms possess any marked genetic irregularities.

[It
should be pointed out, however, that a detailed molecular genetic analysis of
the Oahu wallaby population conducted by Drs Mark D.B. Eldridge and Teena L.
Browning, and published by the Journal of Mammalogy in 2002, refuted
previous suggestions that these Hawaiian specimens now constituted a separate taxon.]

If, as
appears possible, most of the reported ‘regular’ macropods sighted throughout America
are descendants of authentic escapees that survived and multiplied within the wild,
would possibly it’s attainable that a minimum of a few of these have developed (or are evolving)
into separate taxa from their captive ancestors? In different phrases, may America genuinely
possess its personal indigenous macropod type, albeit of accelerated modern-day
quite than conventional prehistoric evolutionary origin? It’s to be hoped that
at any time when dwelling macropods are captured within the wilds of North America, exact
genetic and protein analyses can be undertaken to find conclusively their
taxonomic id and reveal whether or not such an thrilling phenomenon is certainly
occurring right here.

 

NEW ZEALAND’S KAWAU
WALLABIES

Additionally effectively price noting at this level is a comparable wallaby-themed
scenario on a small New Zealand island to that on Oahu. The white-throated
(parma) wallaby Notamacropus (=Macropus)
parma is a really good-looking animal, darkish brown on prime, white beneath, with
a black stripe operating from its neck to halfway down its again. It was as soon as
plentiful within the Illawarra and Cambewarra mountainous areas of southern New
South Wales, Australia, however on account of its woodland habitat’s wholesale
clearance by people, its numbers quickly dwindled. By 1932, this engaging
mammal was thought-about extinct.

In 1966, nonetheless, it made a reappearance that was significantly
sudden – because of the particular locality through which its reappearance came about,
which was not in Australia in any respect, however as an alternative in New Zealand, on a 500-acre
island known as Kawau, sited 30 miles north of Auckland on North Island. New
Zealand is a rustic famed for having simply two species of native mammal, each
of that are bats. So how may the existence on a small New Zealand island of
an allegedly-extinct Australian wallaby be defined? For as soon as, the reply was
fairly easy.

A white-throated (aka parma) wallaby (© Dr Karl Shuker)

In 1870, settlers had launched a number of white-throated wallabies
from Australia onto Kawau, simply as they’d earlier launched many different
non-native animals onto New Zealand’s two principal islands. The wallabies had
thrived, and multiplied, so {that a} wholesome inhabitants now existed there
(alongside these of 4 different wallaby species additionally introduced right here from Australia
at varied instances). And of curiosity, they’re markedly smaller in physique measurement than the unique launched inventory, indicating insular evolution has taken place right here too, as on Oahu.

To safeguard this species’ future, among the island’s white-throated
wallabies have been despatched to zoos all over the world to provoke captive populations
(which has been an important success), simply in case illness or another menace
ought to decimate the Kawau colony. Not lengthy afterwards, furthermore, it was
rediscovered on mainland Australia too, by G.H. Maynes, who situated some
notable forest-dwelling populations in an expanse of land stretching from the
Hunter River to the Clarence River in northeastern New South Wales, thereby tremendously
growing its survival possibilities within the wild too.

 

NATURALISED WALLABIES IN BRITAIN

This
entire topic additionally has nice bearing upon creatures far nearer to house for me –
specifically, throughout the British Isles. For it’s well-known that established populations
of naturalised Bennett’s wallaby Notamacropus
rufogriseus formally exist in Britain.

As
detailed by Sir Christopher Lever in his definitive ebook The Naturalised
Animals of the British Isles (1977), one such inhabitants was lengthy situated
inside heather moorland, scrub, and woodlands within the Peak District of
Derbyshire and Staffordshire, England, descended from 5 macropod escapees from
a personal zoo close to Leek throughout World Conflict II. Sadly, nonetheless, this inhabitants
appears these days to have all however died out, because of a succession of harsh winters,
though occasional sightings of single specimens are nonetheless reported right here.

A shy Bennett’s wallaby (© Dr
Karl Shuker)

One other
documented British wallaby inhabitants exists within the St Leonard’s Forest and
Price Forest space south of Crawley New City in northern Sussex, England, and
might have been equally established by wartime escapees, this time from
Leonardslee Park close to Horsham. There may be even a well-known wallaby inhabitants on
Inchconnachan, one of many islands in Scotland’s Loch Lomond. These are
descended from some specimens that have been launched there in the course of the Nineteen Forties by
Girl Arran Colquhoun, and Inchconnachan itself is popularly referred to
colloquially as Wallaby Island.

In
view of the Oahu wallabies, is it conceivable that in time to return these
British naturalised wallabies will evolve into a minimum of a
phenotypically-distinct type, visually distinguishable from their escapee
ancestors? Really a most stimulating thought, and one made much more tantalising
by the truth that previous to their inhabitants crash the Peak District wallabies
had already yielded some people differing markedly in colouration from the
authentic escapees. Furthermore, lately quite a few albino wallabies have
been reported within the wild from varied disparate localities throughout Nice
Britain.

An albino Bennett’s wallaby (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Intriguingly,
reviews have additionally been filed involving British sightings of macropods in
places aside from these formally confirmed to be occupied by populations.
In some instances, such reviews are identified to have been brought on by lone escapees from
captivity close by; in others, a person from one of many official naturalised
populations might merely have strayed elsewhere.

Nonetheless,
a good few reviews exist that can not be satisfactorily defined by both of
these solutions, resulting in the prospect that different, at present unconfirmed
populations of escapee descendants might exist in Britain. Take, for instance, the
Oxfordshire outbreak of August 1985:

 

ELUDING CAPTURE

On 14
August 1985, scholar Greg Caswell gave chase to a wallaby noticed bounding
alongside the Benson to Crowmarsh street in south Oxfordshire, England, whereas he was
driving house late that night, however he did not catch it. Though two or three
wallabies have been identified to have escaped earlier than Christmas 1984 from the McAlpine
property close to Fawley (about 8 miles from Crowmarsh), these have been all thought to
have been killed in street accidents (Fortean Instances, winter 1985). On 24
or 25 August, a drowned wallaby was found in a personal pool at Crowmarsh –
presumably the person that had eluded seize by Greg simply over every week earlier
(Oxford Mail, 28 August).

A number of
days earlier than that discover, and a minimum of 30 miles north-west of Oxford, Julia Brooks
of Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, had been shocked to watch a wallaby
in her backyard consuming meals scraps put out for the birds; and on 25 August,
employees on the Cornbury Park property (about 15 miles south­east of Chipping
Campden) sighted a macropod in close by fields, however they claimed that it was 5-6
ft tall, grey-coloured, and was recognized emphatically by them as a kangaroo,
not a wallaby (Fortean Instances, winter 1985).

Thus
evidently this latter, a lot bigger beast was not the identical macropod that Brooks
had spied. On 17 September, the Oxford Mail reported that Police
Constable Jon Badrick from Chipping Norton had been assigned to seize his
city’s thriller macropod(s), and he revealed that the wallaby might have as soon as
belonged to a Dennis Washington who saved wallabies at Center Barton – though
whether or not any of his had the truth is escaped was not talked about. Furthermore, on 6
October London’s Mail on Sunday newspaper truly revealed {a photograph}
of a wallaby eluding seize by a Chipping Norton policeman. But whether or not any
macropods from this hotbed of hopping exercise have been ever caught is unknown
– like so many cryptid sagas, after a blaze of publicity Oxfordshire’s mystifying
marsupials merely light from the information.

Much less
than two years later, a wallaby was being pursued by the Royal Ulster
Constabulary after having been noticed close to to Belfast Zoo in Northern Eire,
however it was not revealed whether or not this specimen had the truth is escaped from the zoo
(Sandwell Specific and Star, 30 April 1987). Equally, one other wallaby
of unsure origin was additionally being sought by police after having been noticed
hopping down the Weymouth to Wareham street in Dorset, southwestern England, by
an ambulance crew (Sandwell Specific and Star, 14 August 1987).

As demonstrated right here by the person standing between (however
additional again than) my mom Mary Shuker and myself at a farm in Melbourne,
Australia, grownup kangaroos will be effectively over 5′ tall (I’m 5’10” however by
standing nearer to the digital camera than the kangaroo was, I seem a lot taller than
it was, because of pressured perspective) (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Naturalised
kangaroo (versus wallaby) populations aren’t speculated to exist wherever
within the British Isles, which makes the Cornbury Park specimen a notable puzzle.
Much more weird, nonetheless, is the Lancashire creature noticed one afternoon
in 1967 by David Rees on the fringe of a wooded space known as Freshfields close to
Southport, England – an incident recalled by him in Fortean Instances (summer time
1980). For this animal, described by Rees as being a kangaroo, was a minimum of 8
ft tall, with a rusty-brown pelage. Its most shocking function, nonetheless, was
its gait. Rees reported that after viewing him, the creature “…turned
round and walked into the undergrowth and out of sight”. Enquiries to native
police failed to establish its origin.

Though,
as acknowledged by Dr Alyson Lander of New South Wales, Australia, in a follow-up
letter (Fortean Instances, Summer season 1981), its color matched that of a male
pink kangaroo (albeit an exceedingly tall one), no modern-day species of macropod
strikes by strolling. Not solely the origin but additionally the zoological id of this
animal thus stays a thriller.

 

ENORMOUS RABBIT-LIKE MYSTERY BEASTS DOWN UNDER

Continental
Europe just isn’t resistant to phantom kangaroos both. A collection of reviews
regarding the French equal of America’s ‘regular’ class of such beasts
appeared in Fortean Instances (spring 1987), courtesy of Jean-Louis Brodu.
Moreover, in September 1985 a number of kangaroos have been scary
villagers in northern Hungary; a Hungarian Sunday newspaper utilized the escapee
concept as an evidence (Fortean Instances, winter 1985).

Inevitably,
tales of phantom kangaroos have additionally been recorded from the unique homeland
of all marsupial hoppers – the huge island continent of Australia. Nonetheless, the
Antipodean model of thriller macropod makes even the mighty 6-7-ft-tall pink
kangaroo, able to 10-ft-high bounds, look positively puny compared. For
within the arid desert land constituting the dry coronary heart of Australia, reviews from
gold-prospectors and different occasional travellers to those inhospitable zones have
spoken of monumental rabbit-like beasts that disappear in a single certain.
Moreover, some accounts refer particularly to “kangaroos 12 toes
excessive”.

Consequently,
in his traditional cryptozoological ebook On the Observe of Unknown Animals
(1958), Dr Bernard Heuvelmans boldly advised that these may very well be
surviving representatives of Australia’s big Pleistocene macropods. Grazers
equivalent to Procoptodon and browsers equivalent to Sthenurus attained
heights of 10 ft.

Nonetheless,
lately anatomical research based mostly upon their fossil stays have
indicated that these bipedal giants most certainly moved not by bounding however
as an alternative by strolling. In any occasion, the chance that such huge marsupials nonetheless
exist is one that will by no means be investigated absolutely, because of the daunting
circumstances that should be confronted by anybody penetrating these environmentally
hostile areas.

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

It’s
clear that the creatures hitherto classed as phantom kangaroos truly
represent a range of various animal sorts, of which solely the ‘regular’
class is prone to function real macropods. Consequently, utilization of the
time period ‘phantom kangaroo’ must be restricted hereafter to this single particular group.
It is usually evident that public consciousness regarding the phenomenon of thriller macropods
has been stimulated specifically by the in depth investigations of Loren
Coleman and David Fideler, and the unstinting documentation of reviews by Fortean
Instances. It’s hoped that their efforts can be finally rewarded by
unequivocal options to this most curious cryptozoological conundrum.

Within the
meantime, nonetheless, everytime you put out scraps for the birds, do not forget to
examine whether or not the bipeds consuming them embody not solely winged and feathered
examples but additionally some pouched and furred ones!

Lastly,
remember to click on right here
and right here
to be able to learn Components 1 and a couple of of this ShukerNature article – it makes
sense!

Rolling again the years – how I
appeared manner again within the mid-Eighties once I wrote the unique model of this
article on the very starting of what has develop into for me a lifelong and
exceedingly satisfying cryptozoological profession (© Dr Karl Shuker)