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Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Friday, February 27, 2009

CFZ PEOPLE: CONGRATULATIONS TO GLEN VAUDREY

Regular bloggodude Glen Vaudrey (who is also the suthor of the forthcoming CFZPress book The Mystery Animals of the British Isles: The Western Isles has got married to Kerry today, which is - I suppose - a perfectly good reason for there not having been any blogs from him for a while.


Congratulations my dears, and may the blessings and good wishes of an ageing hippy and the world's largest cryptozoological research group be with you both...

FALMOUTH BAY WEIRD CATTYTHING LATEST

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

So Shiela Bird has come out of the woodwork to report that she has also seen the strange semi-bipedal cattything of the woods between Maenporth and Mawnan. Shiels and her brother first entered crytpozoological circles in the mid 1980s when author Graham McEwan reported in his book The Mystery Animals of Britain and Ireland that she and her brother had seen Morgawr.

I interviewed her in the early 1990s but decided not to include her testimony in my book The Owlman and Others. Doc asked me to point out that Sheila Bird had never been "Shiels's bird".

Sheila is a well known local author who has been around for many years. She was very kind to my ex-wife and me when we visited her, and told us stories of UFOs and seaserpents. The fact that she saw the cattything should not really surprise us..

Cannock Chase bigfoot reports resurface

http://manbeastuk.blogspot.com/2009/02/pye-green-bigfoot.html

Nicholas R continues his investigations into the BHM sightings in the Midlands. We were there some years ago with a UK weatherman who for some reason was making a tongue in cheek paranormal TV series for daytime television here in the UK. We were spectacularly short of money at the time and agreed to take part..





GUEST BLOGGER LINDSAY SELBY: The Long Life of Nessie

Most people think that the Loch Ness creature was first seen in 1933 with the building of the new road. As you can see from the list below, ignoring the oft reported story of St Columba in 565, there have been sightings since 1527.


Animals been seen in the Loch for centuries. As it surely can’t be the same creatureif it is an unknown animal, there must have been a breeding colony to continue to be seen over the years. It has always been said that the Loch doesn’t connect to the sea and therefore no large creatures could have come that way to breed. There is new evidence to say that this isn’t true.

British and U.S. scientists claim they have evidence that the sea extended into Loch Ness at two points in history: after the Ice Age in Europe (125,000 years ago) and 12,800 years ago. A geologist working with a research team in 2001 noticed the clay on the anchor of their boat looked different from other deposits found in the same part of the Loch. Carbon dating and amino-acid testing on the clay indicated that it contained clams and sea urchin spines from both 12,800 and 125,000 years ago. This discovery would tend to lend credence to the theory that large animals could have become trapped in the Loch as the water receded back to the sea. Source: The Press and Journal (North Scotland). Food for thought indeed.

In which Jonathan and the cat commit image fraud

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/02/19/is-100ft-long-snake-mythical-borneo-monster-or-just-a-photo-fake-115875-21137187/

The Daily Mirror describes the latest rather dubious giant snake photographs from Borneo (see yesterday's post) as a "clever piece of photo editing". Having too much time on my hands and a copy of adobe photoshop I decided to see just how clever a piece of photo editing it actually was.

12:20 I open Adobe Photoshop and Google Earth
12:22 I find Bideford Bay on Google Earth and press the "print screen" button on my keyboard
12:24 The cat comes into the office and jumps on the keyboard
12:25 I swear at the cat
12:26 I start again
12:28 After a bit of mucking about I have the following image as a *.jpg on photoshop


12:30 I then type the words 'swimming snake' into Goodle.com/images and find This URL
12:32 I download this picture

12:34 The cat comes back in and jumps onto my lap. We make friends again and I waste several minutes fussing him
23:36 Using the magic eraser tool I do a fairly half-arsed job at getting ridof the background and produce this:
12:38 With the cat still on my knee I paste the snake image onto the image of the Torridge Estuary. I then blur it a little bit, and making sure that I have an opacity of about 40% I resize the snake and cover it with a pasted image of the muddy water.
12:40 We have this - conclusive proof that giant snakes swim up and down the River Torrisge between Bideford and Appledore.

If I had paid more attention to the job in hand, rather than only taking twenty minutes (most of which was spent alternatively playing with the cat, or remonstrating him for his sins) I could have done a much more convincing job.

So If the Daily Mirror really thinks that the Borneo image is a "clever piece of photo editing" can I have a job in the Art Department? I am, sure that they pay more than I earn at the moment..

RICHARD FREEMAN: Giant Snakes (for goodness sakes)

The recent supposed aerial photographs of the 'Borneo Monster' HERE are clearly badly photo shopped fakes. The first shows a South American anaconda, the second looks like it has actually been drawn on, rather than showing a real object.

There are massive snakes in Borneo. The reticulated python can reach 33 feet plus. The South American anaconda is likely to get even larger, with 50 foot specimens being well within the realms of possibility. Isn't it fishy that these particularly crappy looking fakes come hot on the heels of the discovery of Titaniboa, the 43 foot fossil boa?
When snakes at least as large as Titaniboa are still reported today, it is indeed galling when time is wasted with such crude fakes.

In 2007, we travelled to Guyana on the track of the giant anaconda. Drought prevented us from reaching Corona Falls - the remote lake that was its lair.
We want to return this year to search for the monster and are currently looking for funding.
If anyone out there can help, we would be grateful. Forget the fakes, let’s look for the real deal!



OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's news today

I’m just about ready for bed so that means its time for me to write the recap of the news on the CFZ news blog today.

Today, or yesterday as you read this, we heard about the following: Frank Tunbridge’s determination to catch the Stroud big cat on camera, more details about the Thailand super stingray catch, Plans to boost Belarus’ economy with frog farming, A family of tree nesting foxes, A fishy fossil gives clues to the origins of sexual intercourse and Falmouth historian and author, Sheila Bird’s encounter with a cat like animal.

Apparently Mrs Bird must have been ‘feline’ quite shook up by the encounter as she ‘pussy’ed out of reporting her sighting publicly at the time.