Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

“Locals in a small Canadian town have been stumped by the appearance of a bizarre creature, which was dragged from a lake. … The creature was discovered by two nurses in the town of Kitchenuhmaykoosib in Ontario, Canada, while out on a walk with their dog.”
Telegraph: New Montauk Monster sighting? Bizarre creature washes up in small Ontario town

The news in the local website for the town, gives the quite important information that “the creature’s tail is like a rat’s tail and it is a foot long.”

It’s quite interesting just how much such unpleasant photos can be milked as a mystery, all the while the news reports end up mentioning – and trying to discard – the most likely explanation.

A dead otter.

Let’s repeat: a dead decomposing otter.

Even the Montauk Monster turned out as a raccoon, and the recent “Cerro Azul” Monster from panama was simply a sloth.

In all these cases, the creatures decomposing in water result in swelling, discoloration and the loss of fur, giving these hairy animals a somewhat different look.

In this Canadian case the look is not even that different, however.

UPDATE 05.22.2010: Was it actually a mink? Through friend Biologist Maria Guimarães, we managed to hear the thoughts of doctor James L. Patton, Curator and Professor Emeritus, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California.

“[The] mystery critter looks more like a mink than an otter to me (longer fingers, without any evidence of webbing).  It clearly was dead in the water for a prolonged period, hence the defurred face and head, and somewhat swollen appearance”, wrote Patton.

“If anyone had bothered to look at the teeth, the identification would have been easy, but…”, he remarked, emphasizing that this likely ID was made only through the photos published on the Internet, without the necessary evidence for a more definite conclusion.

So, it looks like an otter, and was probably a mink. Either way, no monster, both creatures are quite cute, that we can all agree on. [with many thanks to Maria Guimarães and James Patton!]

UPDATE 05.29.2010: Giorgio Castiglioni sends more comments:

“The most visible teeth in the upper jaw looks like a canine and also its position is too backward to be an incisor. So we can discard rodents like the muskrat that someone (e.g. cryptozoologist Loren Coleman) suggested as a possible solution (rodents don’t have canine teeth).
Looking at teeth and shape of boy and paws, it seems clear it’s a mustelid. So your first hypothesis as an otter was a good guess, but also my opinion is that it’s an American mink (Neovison vison).”

Castiglioni also remarks how:

“(Hoping I won’t annoy you) the otter whose photo you used in your blog is an European otter (Lutra lutra) that is found in Europe and Asia, not in Canada. The otter of Canada belongs to another species and genus, Lontra canadensis.”

No annoyance at all! To correct the error, here is not an otter, either European or from Canada, but an American Mink:

[Thank you, Giorgio!]

Over at the Charles Fort Institute website, Mike Dash has an excellent piece about Baron Von Forstner and the U28 sea serpent.

Workers at Fushun, Liaoning, China, allegedly found a 17 meter snake while working with a shovel car this past August 4, 2009. They noticed blood in the sand, apparently the shovel had hit the creature, which died shortly afterwards. Some accounts tell it weighed 300kg, others a measly 103 kg, which is probably closer to reality.

As in so many photos of this kind, there is some forced perspective. Note how the leaves are close and also look unearthly big. We must have a reference, and the shovel seems to be half of the length of the bent snake, that is, the shovel is around a fourth of the creature’s original length.

Assuming a 1,5m length for the shovel, the snake would be around 6 meters in size, around a third of the claimed one.

Of course, it’s possible that that shovel was almost 5 meters in length. Those are small, but Chinese shovel cars, they must have superpowers. In any event, this is a curious photo, and a 20 feet snake is already something impressive.

Shortly before the Blue Hill Sloth, a curious creature showed up in China:

“A snake with a single clawed foot has been discovered in China, according to reports. Dean Qiongxiu, 66, said she discovered the reptile clinging to the wall of her bedroom with its talons in the middle of the night.
[Telegraph: Snake with foot found in China]

Snakes with limbs are not unheard of, since their ancestor did have limbs, but that claw does not looks right. This is how it usually happens:

Fellow Roberto Takata, from Gene Repórter, emphasized the strangeness of the supposed mutation:

“The leg doesn’t fit. It if it was a case of atavism, I would expect the leg to be in the right orientation, but it seems to point in the wrong direction, besides not being in the right position – judging by fossils and the sexual hook of the jiboia, atavic legs should come up near the anus. The coloration pattern, although similar, also doesn’t quite match. And in a case of atavism, perhaps the most usual would be to find two legs, not only one, though a combination of congenital malformation could explain it.”

What would be the explanation for this curious case then? Takata also gives the answer:

“I would say the poor animal had a lateral burst and the leg of its last meal is coming out. Or, better yet, its arm. I suspect it’s a frog’s arm – modern frogs and amphibians have four fingers in their front legs, in general, without claws.”

He also reminded of a previous case of a python who “bursted” after swallowing an alligator in the Everglades:

Here too, the two animals seem fused into one and one can’t quite easily tell where one begins and the other ends. And as in the case of the Panamanian sloth’s carcass, the explanation seems obvious… but only in retrospect. Kudos to Takata for solving this.

I was in doubt if the leg coming out of the Chinese snake wasn’t perhaps of another reptile, perhaps a small gator, and Takata kindly provided an illustration to support his suggestion that it was indeed a frog (click to enlarge):

The four fingers probably seal the deal: it’s a frog. Speaking of frogs, that also reminded me of a previous case that also came to the media spotlight. The three-headed frog:

That one made to the BBC… and like the sloth, like the burst snake, was a simple misinterpretation. Not a three-headed frog, just three frogs, with one-head each, in amorous embrace, as Ray Girvan pointed out.

And that ends the curious case of the snake with a foot. From a frog.

“F**k the Montauk Monster, this is beyond f**ed-up”, wrote Steve Huff in his Tumblr. The images and information come from Telemetro, Panama, and I translate the story here:

“Strange creature found in Cerro Azul
The finding of a strange creature in Cerro Azul has started a buzz among the locals, as even though some claim it is a being from another planet, others believe it’s merely an animal.
Four teenagers between 14 and 16 years-old found it in the Cerro Azul stream last Saturday while playing around.
According to the story told by one of them, they noticed a creature was coming out of a curve behind the water stream. On seeing its appearance and that it started to climb the rocks towards one of them, they got scared and started to throw rocks and logs at it, to which they managed to kill it, took it out of the water and fled.”

The photos were taken by the teenagers themselves and given to the newspaper. The story made it to Fark, and in a couple of hours Vidani Huff quoted a “believable, real-world explanation for this strangeness”. I didn’t want to spoil it for you, so it’s also after the jump.

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