Mysterious Creatures : A Guide to Cryptozoology

Distribution: Bili Forest, northeast Democratic
Republic of the Congo.
Significant sightings: An ape skull of unknown
type was found in the area around 1900 by an
unnamed explorer.
In March 2001, an expedition to the Bili Forest
by National Geographic Radio turned up
ape feces, a ground nest, and a large footprint in
the mud near a stream. Primatologist Richard
Wrangham concluded they were chimpanzee
traces, possibly an unknown variety.
Possible explanation: Unknown variety of
Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), perhaps related to
the Kooloo-Kam ba.
Source: Karl Shuker, “Bemused in Bil i,”
Fortean Times, no. 148 (August 2001): 18.
Bilungi
Wildm an of Central Africa.
Physical description: Height, 6 feet. Covered
with brown hair. Powerful chest.
Distribution: Near Lac Tumba, Democratic
Republic of the Congo.
Source: Bernard Heuvelmans, Les bêtes
humaines d’Afrique (Paris: Plon, 1980), pp.
590–591.
BIRDS (Unknown)
Birds (Class Aves) are warm-blooded animals
that have no teeth, are covered with feathers,
and are wonderfully adapted for true flight. Zoologists
have long recognized that birds evolved
from reptiles, but with the relatively recent discovery
in China that some theropod dinosaurs
had feathers (Sinosauropteryx and Caudipteryx),
it seems likely that early birds (such as the wellknown
Archaeopteryx of the Late Jurassic, 140
million years ago) emerged from these Dinosaurs.
Feathers are complex organs requiring
many different genes for their construction, and
consequently, it makes sense that they evolved
only once. But the feathered dinosaurs did not
fly; they apparently developed feathers either as
insulation to maintain body temperature, for
sexual display, or possibly as an aid in jumping
or gliding. When these animals acquired a
strong breastbone to anchor powerful flight
muscles, modified their forearms into wings, re-
58 BILUNGI
duced their tailbones to a stump, and reengineered
the rest of their skeletons into an aerodynamically
sound structure, they became birds.
There are still many gaps in the avian fossil
record. Unfortunately, cryptozoology may not be
able to help fill them. None of the sixty-one mystery
birds in this section are explainable by the
survival of anything other than recent taxa, except
possibly Big Bird or the Thu n de rb i rd,
which some believe may involve an extant teratorn
from 8 million years ago. Flightlessness,
found in such birds as the moa, is usually a late
adaptation by a bird that was capable of flight but
had few natural predators. The Dodo, Du,
Koau, Mihirung Paringm al, Réunion Solitaire,
Roa-Roa, and Vo ronpatraare flightless.
The largest living bird is the flightless Ostrich
(Struthio camelus); males have been recorded up to
9 feet in height and weighing 345 pounds. The
heaviest flying birds are the Kori bustard (Ardeotis
kori) of Africa and the Great bustard (Otis tarda)
of Europe and Asia, both of which can weigh
more than 40 pounds. The Wandering albatross
(Diomedea exulans) has the largest wingspan of
any living bird; a specimen caught in the Tasman
Sea in 1965 had a wingspan of 11 feet 11 inches.
The seventy-four families of passerine birds,
also known as perching birds, contain more
than half of the world’s bird species.
Sixteen of the entries are birds that, though
known largely from myth and legend, might be
explainable by real species, either living or extinct.
These include the giant Kaha, Piasa,
Roc, and Simurgh and the smaller Caladrius
and Phoenix.
Nine entries are birds that have become extinct
recently but may have lingered past their official
extinction dates, such as the Carolina Parakeet,
Great Auk, or Ivory-Billed Woodpecker.
The remainder are birds about which there is
simply insufficient information to classify or to
verify as distinct species, such as the Goodenough
Island Bird or the Peruvian Wattleless
Guan.
Mystery Birds
Africa
Bagge’s Black Bird; Bennu Bird; Denm an’s
Bird; Dodo; Kigezi Turaco; Kikiyaon;