Real-life Monsters from the Animal Kingdom

[Professor Emeritus]

I don't mean just stuff that looks crazy or frightening. I'm talking about animals that actually inspired monster stories. Got the idea from the oarfish thread, an eel-like fish that gets up to 26 feet long and likely was the basis for many "sea monster" sightings.

The hippopotamus is almost certainly the inspiration behind the "Behemoth" of Biblical times:

Behold, Behemoth, which I made as I made you; he eats grass like an ox. Behold, his strength in his loins, and his power in the muscles of his belly. He makes his tail stiff like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are knit together. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like bars of iron. He is the first of the works of God; let him who made him bring near his sword! For the mountains yield food for him where all the wild beasts play. Under the lotus plants he lies, in the shelter of the reeds and in the marsh. For his shade the lotus trees cover him; the willows of the brook surround him. Behold, if the river is turbulent he is not frightened; he is confident though Jordan rushes against his mouth. Can one take him by his eyes, or pierce his nose with a snare?

Which makes sense considering hippos are fukking terrifying.

Got some more?

 

[Professor Emeritus]

One more for now - old fossil skulls of the Dwarf Elephant that lived on Mediterranean islands about 10,000 years ago are likely the origin of the Greek "Cyclops" myth. The elephant was only about 6-7 feet long, with a head larger than a human head but not enormously so.

In Homer's epic, Odysseus lands on the island of the Cyclopes during his journey home from the Trojan War and, together with some of his men, enters a cave filled with provisions. When the giant Polyphemus returns home with his flocks, he blocks the entrance with a great stone and, scoffing at the usual custom of hospitality, eats two of the men. Next morning, the giant kills and eats two more and leaves the cave to graze his sheep.

After the giant returns in the evening and eats two more of the men, Odysseus offers Polyphemus some strong and undiluted wine given to him earlier on his journey. Drunk and unwary, the giant asks Odysseus his name, promising him a guest-gift if he answers. Odysseus tells him "Οὖτις", which means "nobody" and Polyphemus promises to eat this "Nobody" last of all. With that, he falls into a drunken sleep. Odysseus had meanwhile hardened a wooden stake in the fire and drives it into Polyphemus' eye. When Polyphemus shouts for help from his fellow giants, saying that "Nobody" has hurt him, they think Polyphemus is being afflicted by divine power and recommend prayer as the answer.

In the morning, the blind Cyclops lets the sheep out to graze, feeling their backs to ensure that the men are not escaping. However, Odysseus and his men have tied themselves to the undersides of the animals and so get away. As he sails off with his men, Odysseus boastfully reveals his real name, an act of hubris that was to cause problems for him later. Polyphemus prays to his father, Poseidon, for revenge and casts huge rocks towards the ship, which Odysseus barely escapes.

The story reappears in later Classical literature. In Cyclops, the 5th-century BC play by Euripides, a chorus of satyrs offers comic relief from the grisly story of how Polyphemus is punished for his impious behaviour in not respecting the rites of hospitality. In his Latin epic, Virgil describes how Aeneas observes blind Polyphemus as he leads his flocks down to the sea. They have encountered Achaemenides, who re-tells the story of how Odysseus and his men escaped, leaving him behind. The giant is described as descending to the shore, using a "lopped pine tree" as a walking staff. Once Polyphemus reaches the sea, he washes his oozing, bloody eye socket and groans painfully. Achaemenides is taken aboard Aeneas’ vessel and they cast off with Polyphemus in chase. His great roar of frustration brings the rest of the Cyclopes down to the shore as Aeneas draws away in fear.

The skulls have a giant nostril hole in the middle that was probably interpreted as an eye:

Dwarf Elephant skeletons from this species have been found on Cyprus, Malta, Crete, Sicily, Sardinia, the Cyclades Islands and the Dodecanese Islands.

 

[The axe murderer]

One more for now - old fossil skulls of the Dwarf Elephant that lived on Mediterranean islands about 10,000 years ago are likely the origin of the Greek "Cyclops" myth. The elephant was only about 6-7 feet long, with a head larger than a human head but not enormously so.

The skulls have a giant nostril hole in the middle that was probably interpreted as an eye:

Dwarf Elephant skeletons from this species have been found on Cyprus, Malta, Crete, Sicily, Sardinia, the Cyclades Islands and the Dodecanese Islands.

Wow I had no idea about this and I check a lot of Greek mythology

 

[The axe murderer]

We know of the hobbit from Tolkien books but they are also the name of these creatures that inspired another myth. Their name is due to their short stature

Investigating Homo floresiensis and the myth of the ebu gogo

Homo floresiensis model at the David H Koch Hall of Human Origins at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Photo by Ryan Somma/Flickr


Paige Madison is a graduate student at the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University. She is interested in the history of paleoanthropology, Neanderthals, Australopithecines and Homo floresiensis.

Edited by Pam Weintraub

1,200 words

An ancient legend from the Indonesian island of Flores speaks of a mysterious, wild grandmother of the forest who eats everything: the ‘ebu gogo’. According to folklore, such tiny, hairy people as her once roamed the tropical forests alongside modern humans, eating crops and sometimes even human flesh. For decades, ethnographers documented the tale, recording details of the ebu gogo’s mumbling speech to her long, pendulous breasts, all while assuming the story was simply a myth. The legend became viewed in entirely new light, however, when the bones of an equally small, previously unknown species of human relative was discovered deep in a cave on the very same island.

The 2004 announcement of a new branch on the human evolutionary tree was astonishing, to say the least. Standing just over a metre tall, the hominin labelled Homo floresiensis had a small brain, the apparent ability to make arduous water crossings, and seemingly honed skills in making stone tools. Much of the species’ anatomy looked primitive, yet evidence for their behaviour indicated an advanced, humanlike being. The hominin was so seemingly mythical that the research team drew from J R R Tolkien’s fictional world for its nickname: the hobbit.

Arguably the strangest aspect of the diminutive hominins’ story was the suggestion that they survived into the recent past, roaming the tropical forests and ancient volcanoes as recently as 12,000 years ago. Not only was this date surprising because it is a time when scientists believed that Homo sapiens were alone on the planet, but also because it was long after the arrival of modern humans in the area – tens of thousands of years after, in fact. Had hobbits lived alongside our own species for all that time?

Associations between ebu gogo and H floresiensis arose immediately after the media hobbit frenzy broke. From news headlines to scientific meetings, people wondered: could these two creatures be one and the same? Had the locals been imagining mythical, wild people of the forest – or merely reporting on them? Perhaps the seemingly fictitious legend had an empirical basis all along. While the media ran with the idea, some scientists, too, entertained it – fuelling hope that the legend could suggest that a living, breathing H floresiensis could still be found on some remote part of the island today.

The proposed connection between the bones and the myth raised an interesting question, one that is being explored by anthropologists in other parts of the world: how far back in time can oral traditions accurately report events? Some scientists studying indigenous memory have suggested that oral traditions contain extraordinarily reliable records of real events occurring thousands of years ago. Where, then, are the boundaries between legend, memory, myth and science? Had the people of Flores preserved an oral record of H floresiensis?

The ethnographer who originally documented the tale of ebu gogo, Gregory Forth of the University of Alberta in Canada, argued that anthropologists are too inclined to dismiss folk categories as products of the imagination, while others pointed to the many correlations that existed between the description of ebu gogo and H floresiensis. Both were described as having long arms, for example, and being small in stature. Many were intrigued by the extreme detail of the legend; surely the vivid description of the ‘pendulous breasts’ that the ebu gogo allegedly threw over her shoulders must be compelling. Forth even lamented that the ‘dimensions of female breasts is, unfortunately, one of many things that cannot be gauged from paleontological evidence’.

From the beginning, there were, however, weak links in the proposed connection between the prehistoric bones and the mythical legend. To begin with, the two concepts exist in entirely different regions of Flores. The category ‘ebu gogo’ belongs to the Nage people who reside more than 100 kilometres away from the H floresiensis discovery site at Liang Bua, across treacherous mountains and thick jungle forests. The hobbit cave is instead home to the culturally and linguistically distinct people known as the Manggarai. While it is not unimaginable that H floresiensis could have roamed the landscape, it is suspicious that ebu gogo is not a Manggarai invention. A quick glance across the archipelago also reveals that stories of small forest creatures are not unique to Flores, which is perhaps unsurprising given that the area is rife with living, humanlike primates. The well-known orang pendek (short people) of nearby Sumatra, for example, are thought to be accounts of orangutans. While Flores has no orangutans, there are plenty of macaques.

Yet these holes didn’t stop discussions of ebu gogo from recurring. Expeditions endeavoured to find still-living wildmen, hoping to gaze into their bestial eyes. Local villagers, too, began reporting having killed them. A mockumentary ‘inspired by real scientific discovery’ – The Cannibal in the Jungle (2015) – told the story of a cannibalised murder in the forest, blamed on a foreign researcher who was vindicated only after the discovery of H floresiensis and the realisation that the crime had been committed by ebu gogo. Playing with fact and fiction, it mixed genuine footage from the hobbit excavations with eccentric actors and fake newspaper headlines. The film even features interviews with real scientists and experts, whose comments about the ‘exceptional’ fossil discovery were woven into the fictional narrative.

The myth persisted even as real scientists scoffed. But eventually holes in the ebu gogo/H floresiensis association grew too large to be ignored. Each expedition in search of a reported sighting revealed an empty cave or else, a macaque. New pieces of scientific evidence have also made the connection increasingly implausible, especially a revision of the dating that moved the hobbits’ disappearance to almost 50,000 years ago. To experts, ebu gogo was about as real as the tooth fairy.

So, what then, are we to make of the legend of ebu gogo? Why are we so captivated by the idea of ancient wildmen of the forest?

Some culpability lies in the bones themselves. Over the past couple of decades, with palaeoanthropology changing rapidly, discoveries such as H floresiensis have overturned basic assumptions about the past. One example is the shifting realisation that the picture of hominin diversity during our own species’ time on this planet was much more crowded and entangled than previously believed – a notion brought on largely by H floresiensis and since added to by additional discoveries.

Maybe the significance of the intertwined stories of H floresiensis and ebu gogo, then, is the realisation that scientific discoveries – particularly the unexpected ones – have the power to transform the way we think. By confronting scientists with something so unforeseen, these small bones opened the door to big speculation.

H floresiensis revealed that the past was more bizarre than we imagined, full of evolutionary hodgepodges, unexpected migrations, and life in surprising places. And while the legend of ebu gogo failed to echo paleoanthropological reality, such botched connections are not always the case. Researchers from geology to palaeontology turn to folklore, and events from volcanic eruptions to fossil discoveries have shown that science has something to gain from engaging with legend. Even the fabled creature with a lion’s body and an eagle’s beak introduced to Greek travellers as the griffin was likely grounded in encounters with dinosaur bones. The interplay between science and myth has become ever more complex – and more interesting. After all, if hobbits once lived on a remote Indonesian island, what else was once possible?

Investigating Homo floresiensis and the myth of the ebu gogo | Aeon Ideas

 

[The axe murderer]

Fiadh Mór Irish mythology for great deer may have been inspired by this

The Giant Irish Elk That Wasn’t
Updated: Feb 23, 2020

I am flying back home to Ireland today, hopefully bringing some gorgeous Cretan blue sky and sunshine with me to brighten my return. I’ll be bringing you something new and just a bit different next week, but until then, here’s an oldie, but a goodie, one of my fave posts which I suspect not many of you have seen yet.

Why are all things ancient and Irish always so complicated? For the Giant Irish Elk turns out to be neither exclusively Irish, nor an elk. He was a species of Megaloceros, and was the largest deer that ever walked this planet. He actually roamed across the plains and lowlands of Europe, Africa and Asia, but became known as the Irish Elk due to the large number of skeletons found in Irish bogs.

The average male stood about 2 metres tall at the shoulders (that’s nearly 7ft!), and his antlers would have extended up to 4 metres across (12ft), and weighed up to 40 kgs (88lbs)…that’s huge!

His antlers were palm-like in structure, much like those of a fallow deer. It is quite likely that they would have been shed every year, just like those of the modern deer. Despite its great size, its skeleton suggests that it was built for long distance running, so it would have been able to outrun predators without tiring.

It was always assumed that the Irish Elk became extinct during the last ice age, along with the woolly mammoth, however, new evidence has come to light in recent years that would indicate otherwise… for both species.

Mammoth remains discovered on an island just off the Arctic Siberian coast during the 1990s were carbon dated to only 3600 years ago. Similarly, new analyses of elk bones and teeth lead experts to believe that the Irish Elk may also have survived beyond the last ice age up until 5000 BC.

This is where it gets interesting for me, because there are several references to the giant deer (known in Irish as Fiadh Mór, literally the ‘great deer’) in Irish mythology, particularly around the stories of Fionn mac Cumhall.

Fionn was reputed to have owned 500 Irish wolf hounds, his favourites being the magical pair, Bran and Sceolán. Wolf hounds were used in battle to pull enemy warriors from their horses and chariots. They were also used for hunting deer and boar, and were said to be more than capable of bringing down a giant deer.

In a C12th manuscript called the Agallamh na Seanórach (the Colloquy of the Ancients, or Tales of the Elders), which tells many stories of Fionn and the Fianna, it mentions that Diarmuid killed a giant deer so large, that when he rested one of its antlers on his foot, it extended way above his head, even though he was exceptionally tall.

Despite this, no remains have been found in Ireland which date later than 11000 years ago, which means they probably died out long before Fionn and his men were hunting the hills of Ireland.

I would like to stress, though, that just because they have not been found, does not mean that they weren’t around; it simply means that it cannot be proved.

Cave drawing of a giant Irish Elk. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Undoubtedly, they would have been a popular source of food with early hunter gatherers, due to the large amount of meat found on just one animal. Cave paintings of the Irish Elk have been found in France, and across Europe, suggesting its importance to early man.

It is probable that the size of its antlers restricted it to more open pastures, and would have made it easy for potential hunters to spot. It’s possible also, that this factor prevented it from escaping predators by taking cover in woodland, for risk of entanglement.

So just why did the great Irish Elk become extinct, if not because of the last ice age? It’s not really known for sure. Climate change would certainly have had an impact, as food became increasingly scarce, with more competition from other animals. The rapid advancement of mankind could also be blamed, not just in terms of hunting, but also the destruction of habitat due to farming and settlements. After all, it wouldn’t be for the first time, would it?

#Sceolán #cavepainting #fallowdeer #giantdeer #FionnmacCumhall #Diarmuid #irisharchaeology #Fianna #irishelk #woollymammoth #irishwolfhound #hunting #Ireland #Giantirishelk #Bran #antlers #IrishMythology

• Irish Mythology

Recent Posts
See All
https://www.aliisaacstoryteller.com/post/the-secret-of-lismore-castle

https://www.aliisaacstoryteller.com... Giant Irish Elk,that ever walked this planet.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Someone else gotta explain the manatee / mermaid connection cause I heard that one 100 times and still don't get it

 

[Damba]

We know of the hobbit from Tolkien books but they are also the name of these creatures that inspired another myth. Their name is due to their short stature


Investigating Homo floresiensis and the myth of the ebu gogo | Aeon Ideas

I know her

 

[The axe murderer]

Semi related but a mummified dinosaur is a crazy find for me

Miners Stumbled Upon 110 Million-Year-Old Dinosaur ‘Mummy’ With Its Skin Intact
POSTED: 08 JULY 2020

ADVERTISEMENT

It’s not every day when magnificent creatures like Nodosaurs are unearthed with their skin intact, the massive ancient animal that once walked on the land we are living on now.

MINERS IN ALBERTA CANADA FOUND THIS DINOSAUR, THE BEST PRESERVED FOSSIL OF ITS KIND EVER FOUND
Paleontologists from the Royal Tyrrell Museum, Alberta, Canada were more than excited to unveil a dinosaur, because it wasn’t just in form of skeleton, but was so well-preserved that it was considered a dinosaur “mummy” rather than just a fossil.

ADVERTISEMENT
“We don’t just have a skeleton, we have a dinosaur as it would have been”, said one of the researchers involved in the discovery.

A 110 million-year-old plant-eating armored dinosaur which rested undersea for years helped preserve its armor, skins, some of its tissue, and even it’s last meal.

The discovery in 2011 took scientists by storm when a miner was operating heavy machinery to excavate the ground, only to find something that looked like a dragon. When the excavator’s bucket clipped something much harder than usual rocks, Shawn Funk thought it to be some kind of fossiled wood or ribs. Funk and his supervisor were both puzzling over these brownish ‘rocks’, as in their whole career they stumbled across many fossilized wood but never something so strange.

Since the exposed fragments were not something Funk and his supervisor could identify, Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology was alerted of the find. Scientists Donald Henderson confirmed that no land animals have ever been discovered before in the oil sands as this one, it was an Ankylosaurian dinosaur and not a marine reptile, possibly washed out to sea after it died.

ADVERTISEMENT
Nodosaur – the discovered dinosaur species – when alive would have been at least 3,000 pounds heavy and 18 feet long with 20-inch-long spikes on its shoulder. Although how it remained so well preserved still something of a mystery, researchers suggested that being submerged in the ocean floor was a major factor in its preservation. Eventually, the preservation was so good that researchers were able to find the color of its skin.

It took almost 6 years after it the discovery of this fossil was publicized since technician Mark Mitchell spent these years to study and remove adhering rock from the fossil. The species was then named B. Markmitchelli to recognize the skilled work done by Mitchell on the fossil. It was then displayed on May 12, 2017, as part of the Royal Tyrrell Museum’s ‘Grounds for Discovery’.

IT IS A 110 MILLION YEAR OLD NODOSAUR, A TYPE OF PLANT EATING ARMORED DINOSAUR.
Scientists believe that the coloring was a sign of early counter shading – a camouflage technique that provides protection to the animals from predators that we can observe in current time animals too. The color and the tough armor on it’s back probably protected Nodosaurs from enormous carnivores.

This unique impressive natural preservation help protect the skin, armor, and guts in and out, making it possible to obtain the original shape of the animal.

“It will go down in science history as one of the most beautiful and best-preserved dinosaur specimens — the Mona Lisa of dinosaurs,” said Caleb Brown, one of the researchers of the museum.

Miners Stumbled Upon 110 Million-Year-Old Dinosaur 'Mummy' With Its Skin Intact

 

[Yapdatfool]

Someone else gotta explain the manatee / mermaid connection cause I heard that one 100 times and still don't get it

Dude HAD to be drunk as shyt had hm like on that poor sea animal.

 

[The axe murderer]

Someone else gotta explain the manatee / mermaid connection cause I heard that one 100 times and still don't get it

Beer goggles or some shyt

 

[Mr Rager]

Didn't know hippos swam that fast

 

[get these nets]

Someone else gotta explain the manatee / mermaid connection cause I heard that one 100 times and still don't get it

Delirious sailors at sea with scurvy and no women on the ships is likely the origin.

 

[The axe murderer]

Didn't know hippos swam that fast

Shiiiiit and they kinda run fast on land too

 

[2Quik4UHoes]

Saltwater crocs ain’t no jokes

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Didn't know hippos swam that fast

Shiiiiit and they kinda run fast on land too

He's not swimming. He's running alongside the bottom of the river then jumping off the bottom to attack.

And yet, for their size they're fast as shyt on land too. I'd be scared as hell to run into one face-to-face.