WELCOME TO THE CFZ BLOG NETWORK: COME AND JOIN THE FUN

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...

Search This Blog

WATCH OUR WEEKLY WEBtv SHOW

SUPPORT OTT ON PATREON

SUPPORT OTT ON PATREON
Click on this logo to find out more about helping CFZtv and getting some smashing rewards...

SIGN UP FOR OUR MONTHLY NEWSLETTER



Unlike some of our competitors we are not going to try and blackmail you into donating by saying that we won't continue if you don't. That would just be vulgar, but our lives, and those of the animals which we look after, would be a damn sight easier if we receive more donations to our fighting fund. Donate via Paypal today...




Sunday, January 19, 2014

CRYPTOZOOLOGY ONLINE: On The Track (Of Unknown Animals) Episode 76



The latest episode of our monthly webTV show from the CFZ and CFZtv, bringing you news on our activities within cryptozoology and natural history as well as the latest cryptozoological, and monster hunting news from around the world. I can't believe that we have done this every month for over six years now - 76 episodes. Golly!

This episode brings you:

CFZ in Winter
Broadband problems
Albino reed wolf
What has happened to the frogs?
Fixing the roof
Animal Rescue: New Guinea blue lobster
The kittens go outside
Animal Rescue: A brace of tortoises
My mama in law is psychopathic and gets peed on by a tortoise
Out of place birds
New and Rediscovered: New tapir
New and Rediscovered: New limpet
New and Rediscovered: New lizards

FORTEAN BIRD NEWS FROM THE WATCHER OF THE SKIES

What has Corinna's column of fortean bird news got to do with Cryptozoology?

Well, everything actually!

In an article for the first edition of Cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans wrote that cryptozoology is the study of 'unexpected animals' and following on from that perfectly reasonable assertion, it seems to us that whereas the study of out-of-place birds may not have the glamour of the hunt for bigfoot or lake monsters, it is still a perfectly valid area for the Fortean zoologist to be interested in. 







TODAY'S BIG CAT ROUND UP



The hunt for British Big Cats attracts far more newspaper-column inches than any other cryptozoological subject. 

There are so many of them now that we feel that they should be archived by us in some way, so we are publishing a regular round-up of the stories as they come in. 

The worldwide mystery cat phenomenon (or group of phenomena, if we are to be more accurate) is not JUST about cryptozoology. At its most basic level it is about the relationship between our species and various species of larger cat. That is why sometimes you will read stories here that appear to have nothing to do with cryptozoology but have everything to do with human/big cat interaction. As committed Forteans, we believe that until we understand the nature of these interactions, we have no hope of understanding the truth that we are seeking. 


  • NEWSLINK: Critically endangered female Amur leopar...
  • NEWSLINK: 'Lion whisperer' gets close with big cat...
  • NEWSLINK: India Tiger Virus Joins Poaching, Encroa...
  • NEWSLINK: Puma in Efford among 220 big cat sightin...
  • NEWSLINK: Bengal's 'big cat minstrel'

  • LOCAL POLICE -BIG CATS REPORTED
  • CRYPTOLINK: Top 20 States for Bigfoot Sightings

    A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me. 

    Want to know where Bigfoot has allegedly been seen, heard or left some footprints? The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization has a handy-dandy database, with more than 4,500 reports, broken down by state and county.

    Pennsylvania, for example, has 101 Sasquatch accounts, making the state No. 12 in the nation and No. 1 in the Northeast. Allegheny County is the top county for sightings, which can't be too surprising since it's close to Ohio, the country's No. 5 state, with 240 sightings. (The BFRO even has a Bigfoot search expedition scheduled for September in Western Pennsylvania.)

    In October, photos taken in Bradford, Pa., supposedly showed a couple of Sasquatch, but at least one skeptic had another explanation for the dark object(s): A tree stump or uprooted rootball.

     Read on...

    THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN IS....

    The Gonzo Daily - Sunday
     
    It's Sunday again, blimey wouldn't you know it
    and its time for me to be a poet
    cos each week regular readers find
    I do the Gonzo blogs in rhyme
     
    So what that last verse's final line
    wasn't exactly a perfect rhyme
    if any of you wanna take that stance,
    haven't you heard of an assonance?
     
    So buckle in and off we go
    first there's my latest webTV show
    which is totally off topic, but serves a valuable purpose
    and features my ma-in-law being pee'd on by a tortoise
    http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2014/01/for-those-of-you-interested-in-such.html
     
    And next in a very little while
    Michael Des Barres meets Belinda Carlisle
    which should be great folks, don't you know?
    it's on his very own radio show
    http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2014/01/michael-des-barres-meets-belinda.html
     
    Frank Zappa's music sometimes hurt
    here's a feature on his LP 'Sleep Dirt'
    check it out guys, or if you'd rather
    its part of his magnum opus Läther
    http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2014/01/35-years-ago-frank-zappa-releases-sleep.html
     
    Barbara Dickson's just begun
    celebrating the songs of WW1
    songs about Germans and Russians and Frenchies
    and mustard gas and guns and trenches
    http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2014/01/barbara-dickson-on-album-of-songs-from.html
     
    The Gonzo Track of the Day today
    is by Rick Wakeman shout hooray!
    the maestro of the piano keys
    he can't half tinkle those ivories
    http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-gonzo-track-of-day-rick-wakeman.html
     
    Thom the World Poet's a really good guy
    read his poem's you'll understand why
    and we've a rhyme from him today
    you know what I mean wayhay!
    http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2014/01/thom-world-poet-daily-poem_19.html
     
    And finally you know what I mean
    the latest Gonzo Weekly magazine
    is out to read edited by me
    and boys and girls it remains free
    http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2014/01/gonzo-weekly-magazine-601.html
     
    This issue contains the legendary Merrell Fankhauser reminiscing about Captain Beefheart and an encounter with the Manson Family, what happened when Michael Des Barres met the 'Hendrix of the Cello', a new album for Yes, a look at the legendary 'Lamb lies down on Broadway' album by Genesis, unpublished photographs showing Liz Lenten as some sort of superhero, exciting news for Hawkwind fans, and columns by C J Stone and Doug Harr. There is the new XNA video and a photograph of Archie the Jack Russell dressed as Sherlock Holmes. There is also more news, reviews, gossip and general rambling than you can shake a stick at!
     
    And its completely free. Check it out:
    http://eepurl.com/Mr2Yz
     
    Or make an old hippy a happy chappy and subscribe
    http://eepurl.com/r-VTD
     
    *  The Gonzo Daily is a two-way process. If you have any news or want to write for us, please contact me at  jon@eclipse.co.uk. If you are an artist and want to showcase your work or even just say hello, please write to me at gonzo@cfz.org.uk. Please copy, paste and spread the word about this magazine as widely as possible. We need people to read us in order to grow, and as soon as it is viable we shall be invading more traditional magaziney areas. Join in the fun, spread the word, and maybe if we all chant loud enough we CAN stop it raining. See you tomorrow...

    *  The Gonzo Daily is - as the name implies - a daily online magazine (mostly) about artists connected to the Gonzo Multimedia group of companies. But it also has other stuff as and when the editor feels like it. The same team also do a weekly newsletter called - imaginatively - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about it at this link: http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/11/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit-to-print.html
     
    * We should probably mention here that some of our posts are links to things we have found on the internet that we think are of interest. We are not responsible for spelling or factual errors in other people's websites. Honest guv!

    *  Jon Downes, the editor of all these ventures (and several others), is an old hippy of 54 who - together with his orange cat (who is currently on sick leave in Staffordshire) and two very small kittens (one of whom is also orange) - puts it all together from a converted potato shed in a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon, which he shares with various fish. He is ably assisted by his lovely wife Corinna, his bulldog/boxer Prudence, his elderly mother-in-law and a motley collection of social malcontents. Plus...did we mention the orange cat?

    CRYPTOLINK: Bigfoot Sighting: Man Asks For Help From Police

    A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me. 


    MIDLAND COUNTY, Mich. – A Midland County man is asking police for help after spotting Bigfoot.
    The report comes in from WEYI.
    Reporter, Josh Marshall, interviewed Anthony Padilla, 52, after Padilla recorded himself walking through the woods where he heard odd noises echoing in the distance.
    “I don’t know nothing on earth that makes that noise,” Padilla told Marshall.
    Padilla told Marshall that he first asked for help from police after what he thought was a hunter, showed up on his property, in a ghillie suit.
    “I got to confront this guy,” Padilla told Marshall. “I got a little nervous. He was all huge like a basketball player mixed with a wrestler, football type size.”
    Padilla then told the reporter that the hunter was a creature commonly known as Sasquatch or Bigfoot…and that the one he saw is “spiritual.”
    Marshall reports that Padilla began leaving pizza boxes in the woods to bait the spiritual creature.

    Read on...

    OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today

    Yesterday’s News Today
    http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

    On this day in 2012 the file sharing website Megaupload.com was illegally seized by the FBI (it was operating out of Hong Kong where the FBI have no jurisdiction, and owned by a person from New Zealand) and shut down, with the excuse of copyright infringement given. It was more likely because Universal Music were annoyed that some of their artists had been used in a song promoting the website and were unsuccessful in their efforts to get the song taken down by YouTube; they may have looked into other more controversial ways to get the content removed.

    And now the news:

  • A New Toad from the 'Warm Valleys' of Peruvian And...
  • Big-Headed Fossil Flies Track Major Ecological Rev...
  • Chimps Can Use Gestures to Communicate in Hunt for...
  • Montana Landowners May Soon Shoot, Trap More Wolve...
  • Rare green sea turtles have overpopulated the Indo...
  • Tiny Swimming Bio-Bots Boldly Go Where No Bot Has ...
  • Key wildlife sites hit in flooding
  • Identifying Danger Zones Could Help Prevent Sea-Tu...
  • Alaskan Caribou, Ptarmigan Migrations Recorded

  • German government pledges 20 million euros to cons...

  • Here's the offending song, which caused all the trouble:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0Wvn-9BXVc