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...

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Tuesday, April 22, 2014

CRYPTOLINK: Meet the creature found by divers in Russia's Loch Ness, famed for legends of monsters

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. 

Aware of accounts of mysterious relic reptiles lurking in the deep, here are the first pictures from a record breaking dive.
The water in Labynkyr was +1, +2C under the ice; air temperature was about minus 50C with occasional wind. Picture: Alexander Gubin
Reports of a 'Devil' in Siberia's Lake Labynkyr date from the 19th century, and have intrigued scientists for many decades. The inaccessible lake, in the Sakha Republic, Russia's largest and coldest region, was in March the scene of the deepest-ever dive under ice in the world. 
Divers on a joint expedition by the Russian Geographic Society and Diving Sport Federation of Russia reached a depth of 59.6 metres, but their achievement also had a serious scientific purpose. Braving air temperatures as low as minus 50C, and diving under tents erected on the ice, they took samples for examination by scientists which may prove a long-suspected underwater link between the Labynkyr and another similarly mysterious lake, Vorota, some 30km away. 
The divers were keenly aware of the age-old accounts of primeval monsters - perhaps relic ichthyosaurs - in both lakes. 
Read on...

PS My only comment is that the fish pictured appears to be a rather chunky burbot rather than a "dogfish"

CRYPTOLINK: Man says he found the Loch Ness monster through Apple’s Map app

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. 

View image on Twitter


A man claims he has irrefutable proof the Loch Ness monster exists after finding an image of the mythical creature through Apple’s map application.
“I could see something big under the water and I saved it [an image] to my phone. My first thought was that it was the monster and I contacted Gary Campbell of the Official Loch Ness Monster Club,” said Andy Dixon.
Interestingly the image doesn’t appear through Google’s more popular Google Maps application.Appleinsider.com says that Apple’s map software is powered by data from DigitalGlobe.
In reality, since Apple’s map app is so horrible, the Loch Ness monster was probably just a piece of virtual road that somehow found its way into the middle of Loch Ness.

Read on...

Late last week The Daily Mail posted images of what claimed to possibly be the Loch Ness Monster found in a satellite image within Apple Maps. Members and ‘experts’ from the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club got all excited, with Club president Gary Campbell saying:
‘We’ve been looking at it for a long time trying to work out exactly what it is. It looks like a boat wake, but the boat is missing. You can see some boats moored at the shore, but there isn’t one here. We’ve shown it to boat experts and they don’t know what it is.
It didn’t help that Apple executive Phil Schiller tweeted out the link as a joke, snowballing the story:


Read on... 

BIGFOOT NEWS IN BRIEF



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Bigfoot Evidence: Skeptics Compare Jesus Shroud to Bigfoot
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Co-Founder of the Skeptic's Society, Pat Linse, was quoted as saying that the famous Shroud of Turin is a fake just like bigfoot. The Shroud has been

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Close encounter of the 'Yowie' kind
We're talking yowies, bigfoot and really big cats. Have you seen a Yowie? Join our Facebook discussion. The sighting - Imbil State Forest, Kenilworth,  

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. 






THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN IS BACK IN THE SADDLE

The Gonzo Daily - Tuesday
I liked the Easter weekend, and managed to spend most of it doing exactly what I planned...nothing! Yesterday my nephew Dave B-P came around, and for once everyone (meaning me) stayed sober. Cheese was eaten. David went home at gone 1:30am (you can tell that his significant other is on the opposite side of the globe at the moment, cos he is keeping bachelor hours again, although - being a good lad - uses these late sessions to sit around with me talking about computers). However, once David had gone home I couldn't get to sleep, so Iended up dozing in my armchair downstairs rather than keep Corinna and the animals awake. I feel pretty damn good considering I only had about four hours fitful kip. But it was, after all, the kip of the serenes.

The latest issue of Gonzo is out now. It features an exclusive interview with Billy Sherwood about his new solo album, the Prog Collective, and working on the new Yes album. It features exclusive pictures from the rehearsals for the Pink Fairies reunion shows, and episode one of an anarchic new radio show from Jaki Windmill and Tim Rundall and more news, reviews, views, interviews and black wallaroos (OK, no large wallabies of the species Macropus bernardus, but I got carried away with things that rhymed with OOOOS) than you can shake a stick at. And the best part is IT's ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!
These issues (and the current one) can be downloaded at www.gonzoweekly.com if you prefer. If you have problems downloading, just email me and I will add you to the Gonzo Weekly dropbox. Information is power chaps, we have to share it!
To make sure that you don't miss your copy of future issues make an old hippy a happy chappy and subscribe
http://eepurl.com/r-VTD
The complete lineup in this issue is: Jaki Windmill, The Pink Fairies, Tim Rundall, Erik Norlander, Eric Burdon, Rocket Scientists, Michael Des Barres. Galahad, Billy Sherwood, Yes, Rick Wakeman, Geoff Downes, Chris Squire, Hawkwind, Jon Anderson, UB40, Captain Underpants, The Who, Peter Gabriel, Genesis, Robert Plant, Aretha Franklin, Jethro Tull,Wally Hope, Ashtoreth, TCH, Psychedelic Warlords, Dave Bainbridge,Jack Bruce, Steve Hackett, Valentina Blanca, The Dalai Lama, Black Snow, Shane Gibson, Jesse Winchester, Mick Abrahams, Clearlight, John Greaves, Alain Blessing, Hugh Hopper, Andy Colquhoun, Prog Collective, Clepsydra, The Deviants, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Captain Beefheart, George Harrison, The Beatles, Avatarium, Cold Cold Ground, Dawn of Tears, Unextraordinary gentlemen, Marillion, UK, PFM, Steve Hackett, Three Friends
*  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: www.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 an orange kitten named after a song by Frank Zappa puts it all together from a converted potato shed in a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon which he shares with various fish, and sometimes a small Indian frog. 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 kitten?

TODAY'S BIG CAT NEWS

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. 

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