Mysterious Creatures : A Guide to Cryptozoology

Present status: Probably extinct. The bird was
said to have been unknown to Jamaicans even
when it was collected. It resembles no other living
parrot.
Possible explanation: An erythristic (red) variant
of a West Indian amazon parrot (Amazona
sp.).
Source: Karl Shuker, Mysteries of Planet Earth
(London: Carlton, 1999), pp. 66–67.
Red Wolf
Mystery DOG of Western Europe.
Variant names: Chien rouge, Loup rouge,
Loup-brou.
Physical description: Like a wolf, except for its
red fur. Bright eyes.
Behavior: Attacks animals but avoids humans.
Distribution: Vienne Department, central
France.
Source: Henri Ellenberger, “Le monde
fantastique dans le folklore de la Vienne,”
Nouvelle Revue des Traditions Populaires 1
(1949): 407–435.
Rén-Xióng
Mystery PRIMATE of East Asia.
Etymology: Mandarin Chinese (Sino-
Tibetan), “man-bear.”
Variant names: Gin-sung, Huan, Jen-hsiung.
Physical description: Height, more than 3 feet
when standing. Quadrupedal shoulder height,
16–20 inches. Covered with black, gray, or
brown hair. Round head, about 6–7 inches
long. Curly head-hair. Face looks human. Flat
mouth. Hands and feet have nails. Toenails are
flat. No hair on the buttocks. Short tail, if any.
Behavior: Walks on all fours with a rolling
gait. No language but can laugh. Eats raw meat,
corn, wild fruit, bark, bamboo shoots, grass, and
leaves. In former times, these creatures were
hunted in order to capture and domesticate
them for household and herding chores.
Distribution: Zhejiang Province, Shaanxi
Province, Shennongjia Forest in Hubei
Province, and western Yunnan Province, China.
Significant sightings: A Jen-hsiung was captured
in 1954 when hunters aroused its curios-
ity with a piece of red cloth.
On May 23, 1957, a 5-foot-tall wild monkey
or WILDMAN attacked Wang Congmei on her
way home from tending cattle in the Jiulong
Mountain area, near Zhuantang, Zhejiang
Province. Her screams brought help, and village
women struck the creature with a sticks and
forced it into the mud of a rice paddy, where it
got stuck. They beat the animal senseless, finally
chopping off its head. Its hands and feet were
taken to town for a reward and preserved by a
teacher, Zhou Shousong, who allowed them to
be examined by Zhou Guoxing in 1980. His
analysis showed that they belonged to an extraordinarily
large stump-tailed macaque.
Possible explanation: An outsize Stump-tailed
macaque (Macaca arctoides) or the larger Père
David’s macaque (M. thibetana). Macaques are
diurnal and both arboreal and terrestrial. They
have quite complex social and behavioral systems.
Some use tools. Group size can vary from
10 to around 100 individuals. The animals can
be very aggressive, both to each other and to
other species. Stump-tailed macaques are feared
by locals. They tend to be the dominant species
whenever they are found in association with
other monkeys. They have a wide range of vocalizations
and also communicate by gesture
and facial expressions. These calls and gestures
apparently have specific meanings.
Sources: Bernard Heuvelmans and Boris F.
Porshnev, L’homme de Néanderthal est toujours
vivant (Paris: Plon, 1974), p. 142; “Scientists
Find Nearly Perfect Remains of ‘Zhuantang
Ape-Man’ Killed in 1957,” Pursuit, no. 54
(1981): 64–66; Zhou Guoxing, “The Status of
Wildman Research in China,” Cryptozoology 1
(1982): 13–23; Paul Dong, The Four Major
Mysteries of Mainland China (Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1984), pp. 173,
191–193; Zhou Guoxing, “Morphological
Analysis of the Jiulong Mountain ‘Manbear’
(Wildman) Hand and Foot Specimens,”
Cryptozoology 3 (1984): 58–70; Michael K.
Diamond, “New Macaque Hypothesis Not
Supported,” Cryptozoology 4 (1985): 113–114;
Mark A. Hall, The Yeti, Bigfoot and True
Giants (Minneapolis, Minn.: Mark A. Hall,
1997), p. 46.
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