Found Stuff

The ‘Montauk Monster’ is a news story which is gripping the USA at the moment. It all started when a ’strange rodent-like creature, with a dinosaur beak’ (not our words by the way) supposedly washed up on an East Hampton, NY beach in mid-July. It has the whole nation gripped as they try to figure out what exactly the creature is.

A tipster is said to have stated that there is a government animal testing centre very close by on Long Island, but this makes no sense. Why would the government be involving themselves with such a hideous thing, and what possible use could it have for them?

Now, lets look at the pictures of the beast itself…

It sure is ugly, I’ll give you that. It must have scared the hell out of the people who found it.

Now, the story has been covered on CNN, Fox News, etc, but we believe it is all an elaborate hoax, but a good and humorous one.

Here is the orginal story on Gawker.com. It seems to have been a story which caught everyone’s imagination, and they only published the 1st of the 2 pictures you can see above. They gave very sparse details about where the picture came from, and now the big mystery is - Where is the carcass now?

Fox Sports run a story entitled “Montauk Monster mystery gets more mysterious” in which they play up the fact that last Thursday there were many ‘experts’ giving differing opinions, but there was total agreement in that nobody seemed to know where the carcass actually is now.

The East Hampton Department of Environmental Analysis stated that they hadn’t disposed of the carcass, nobody else seems to have it in for study, so the original group who ‘found it’ must still have it.

Then, later on Thursday, the 2nd picture was released of the beast, in a more decomposed state, by 3 women who claimed to be the ones who originally found it.  Another story on the monster which PlumTV published also seems to throw doubt on any links to the Long Island animal research facility.

To complicate matters, Alanna Nevitski, who e-mailed the original photo that started the whole drama, told New York magazine the three women were “full of” shit, and that they had nothing to do with the picture.

We do believe the experts though, as quoted in the FoxNews story, the animal is a semi-decomposed Racoon or some such animal. The ‘beak’ is actually a decomposed mouth with canine teeth.

It has to be, nothing else makes any sense……. or does it?

I would have gone to help, but someone had to hold the camera

Many thanks to Gill for emailing these to us.

This is going to be a big hit in the UK we reckon.

The following pics are amazing, taken at a South African Game Reserve (Kruger National Park) by Hal Brindley, an American wildlife photographer (A more complete collection can be seen at Hal’s own site).

The full story can be read at the Telegraph.co.uk, though we would be keen to point out that they have over-dramatised this as a unique event, since it has actually happened before. More about that later - lets just enjoy the pics.

Apparently, the Leopard raced out of cover to attack the Crocodile, who was swimming nearby. The Leopard dragged the Crocodile from the water and they battled for a while, before the Leopard actually sat on top of it and suffocated it. The Crocodile was never able to fight back properly, as the Leopard had gotten hold of it around the throat.

Now, back to an earlier point I made - this was claimed by most of the newspapers that this was the first time this has ever been recorded, but I would point you to some further evidence of this happening in the past.

Exhibit 1 - A Youtube video claiming to be from 1999, posted on Youtube on 5th Feb 2007. This shows a Leopard doing exactly the same thing as above.

Exhibit 2 - A Youtube video showing a Tigress killing a Crocodile, also posted up on 5th Feb 2007.

Exhibit 3 - A Youtube video showing a Jaguar killing (albeit a smaller version) a Cayman Crocodile. This was posted up on 1st Nov 2006.

We have only uncovered one instance of a Leopard killing a Crocodile, but the others point to a pattern that shows that the big cats are not scared to tackle any creature, even if it is a more powerful beast - providing they can do so on their own terms (in the above cases, they wanted the fight to be on dry land). We also came across a few older clips of Crocodiles killing large cats too, but generally in the water, where they are the masters.

Still, newspapers and their headlines aside - this was one hell of a photographic opportunity for Hal, who was only supposed to be observing Hippo’s Well done on the photo’s, and we would definitely recommend that you view the complete collection (some 34 pics in all) at Hal’s own site.

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