Mysterious Creatures : A Guide to Cryptozoology

Significant sightings: On May 21, 1877, the
crew of the barque Georgina saw a large, grayand-yellow
snake, 40–50 feet long, swimming
in the Indian Ocean west of Sumatra, Indonesia.
Third Officer S. Clayton, of the China Navigation
Company’s Taiyuan, observed what
looked to be a 70-foot, cane-colored python
swimming with horizontal undulations in the
Celebes Sea in the summer of 1907.
Present status: The greatest official length for
a Reticulated python (Python reticulatus) was 32
feet 9.75 inches, recorded in 1912 on the north
coast of Sulawesi, Indonesia. It is the only
species that regularly exceeds 20 feet in length.
Sources: Spenser St. John, Life in the Forests
of the Far East (London: Smith, Elder, 1862),
pp. 256–261; Bernard Heuvelmans, In the
Wake of the Sea-Serpents (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1968), pp. 272, 382–383; Gerald L.
Wood, The Guinness Book of Animal Facts and
Feats (Enfield, England: Guinness Superlatives,
1982), pp. 106–109; Bernard Heuvelmans,
“Annotated Checklist of Apparently Unknown
Animals with Which Cryptozoology Is
Concerned,” Cryptozoology 5 (1986): 1–26;
John C. Murphy and Robert W. Henderson,
Tales of Giant Snakes: A Historical Natural
History of Anacondas and Pythons (Malabar,
Fla.: Krieger, 1997), pp. 27, 47–50.
Giant Rabbit
Mystery Marsup ialof Australia.
Habitat: Desert.
Distribution: Central Australia.
Significant sighting: Gold prospectors are said
to have reported rabbits 9 feet long, according
to Bernard Heuvelmans.
Possible explanations:
(1) Naturalist Ambrose Pratt suggested a
surviving Diprotodon optatum, the largest
marsupial that ever lived, which was
probably contemporaneous with earlier
generations of Aborigines and died out
18,000–6,000 years ago. This large-snouted
browser was nearly 10 feet long and almost
8 feet high at the shoulder.
(2) Palorchestes azael, a Late Pleistocene
herbivore, was a 1-ton marsupial the size of
a horse that could balance on its powerful
tail and hind limbs like a kangaroo while
reaching up with huge, curved claws on its
forelimbs to pull trees and branches into the
reach of its short, elephant-like trunk.
(3) Christine Janis pointed out that the
Sthenurinae, an extinct subfamily of
kangaroos, may be better candidates than
the lumbering Diprotodon optatum. The
sthenurine kangaroos had shorter tails,
bigger forearms, and possibly longer ears,
making them look more rabbitlike.
Sources: Bernard Heuvelmans, On the Track
of Unknown Animals (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1958), pp. 206–209; Christine Janis,
“A Reevaluation of Some Cryptozoological
Animals,” Cryptozoology 6 (1987): 115–118.
Unfortunately, the original source for the
prospectors’ report is unknown.
Giant Rat-Tail
Unknown marine Fish.
Physical description: Length, 6–10 feet.
Distribution: North Atlantic Ocean.
Significant sightings: Two observations—one
in deep water near Bermuda in the 1930s, another
above the seafloor in the Gulf of Mexico
in the 1960s.
Possible explanation: Unknown species of
Grenadier or Rat-tail (Family Macrouridae) of
exceptional size. Macrourids are deepwater
fishes with sharply narrowing tails. There are
285 species, the largest of which is the Giant
grenadier (Albatrossia pectoralis), which grows to
5 feet long.
Source: Gardner Soule, Mystery Monsters of
the Deep (New York: Franklin Watts, 1981).
Giant Salmon
Mystery Fish of northern China.
Physical description: Red fish similar to the
taimen but five times as large. Length, up to 33
feet. Head, 3 feet across. Spiny dorsal rays. Tail
fins.
Behavior: Causes huge waves. Said to feed on
cattle and sheep.
GIANT SALMON 203