September 24, 2021 • 53 mins
For decades, people across the United Kingdom have been reporting something strange: enormous, cat-like beasts popping up on the edges of cities, only to disappear without a trace. In today's episode, the guys dive into one of the strangest cryptid tales of the modern day -- ABCs, the Abnormally Big Cats of Europe.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul mission controlled decads. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. Uh. Today we're starting with a
very simple, simple question. Uh, it's it's something that you know.
(00:47):
You you always ask people. Uh, you guys like cats, dogs?
If you had to choose, I've got cats, but I
think I'm I'm mainly a cat and dog person. Yeah,
I'm a cat person. Recently adapted a tiny baby kitten
that just kind of waltzed up onto my deck and
I love her, but I forgot that the kittens are
kind of a pain in the butt. They wreck things,
(01:10):
they like to shred things, and track litter everywhere. So
I'm a a patient, yet slowly going insane cat dad. Yeah,
how about you met? I grew up as a catboy.
It was full full catboy. Yeah, you trend and the
tail tucked. Well, well, yeah, yeah, I got my tail
(01:33):
there and talk. I met my current wife, my wife,
and she was allergic to cats, so I had to
give I had to give up my feline friends. Oh man,
that's the choice of people have to make sometimes. You know,
I've got I have two cats. Uh, you guys have
(01:53):
seen them? Um, folks, if you're if you see my
Instagram app then Bowland, then you may have seen pictures
of those cats are huge. They have no right to
be as large as they are and still called house cats.
There must be partming coon to them due to what
I refer to as their dumpster pedigree. But yeah, but
but we've all main tones are are large cats. I
(02:15):
don't know how you describe it. They're large cats that
are common, at least here in Georgia. Yeah. Yeah, and
they're they're super fluffy, so they look even bigger than
they actually are. But they're larger than a lot of
other types of what we call house cats. And to
your Pointnell, what's really interesting about cats, at least house cats,
is that there is an ongoing debate about whether they
(02:38):
are domesticated, and if so, to what degree. In fact,
you'll you'll hear people say that these cats have largely
self domesticated because they started hanging out with early human
beings because human beings are dirty, and rats and vermin
like to hang out and eat all the trash that
humans produce. So cats just started showing up and kinda
(03:02):
never left. Uh. And and cats are popular across the
world in many places. Um, you may be h hanging
out with a cat of your own as you hear
today's episode. And if you were hanging out with a
cat right now in the United Kingdom or Western Europe,
then this is an episode particularly for you. We're traveling
(03:26):
to the United Kingdom inspired by several letters over the
years from our fellow conspiracy realists who asked us about
a b CS, not the alphabet, but something called abnormally
big cats or alien big cats. That's right, it's a
cryptic episode. We're back on the cryptids, and uh, what
(03:48):
better way to get started than to talk a little
bit about our own cats. Let's move on to the
more controversial cats of Europe. Here are the facts. Obviously,
humans throughout history have made an incredibly indelible mark on
the European land mass. Um many parts of Europe today
(04:09):
are of course heavily developed, especially in the UK, but
that wasn't all the case. It used to be much wilier. Um.
In the ancient past, Europe, like much of the rest
of the world, was home to a ton of megafauna,
like big large creatures that roamed the terrain um. The
most recent large cap proven to exist was the Eurasian
(04:31):
cave lion or Panthera Spellia. I think Panthera was like
that isn't a band? That's y r I p dine
bag darryl uh. It's name became part of the scientific
lexicon in around eighteen ten when George August gold Fuss
(04:51):
fabulous name. Uh yeah, exactly as that's what I was
trying for George situation. But who knows. This guy found
and described a fossilized skull excavated from a cave in
southern Germany. Yeah. Yeah, so these these creatures and their
skeletons have been discovered before, but this was, like you said,
(05:14):
and all the first time that they got legitimized in
the scientific community and moved from oral tradition and folklore
and weird fossils to you know, museums and taxonomy. There's
also pretty great evidence that human beings encountered these lions,
because they're depicted in ancient carvings and cave paintings in France,
(05:39):
uh and in Germany. The renderings in France are somewhere
between fifteen thousand to seventeen thousand years old, and the
timeline gets little murky here. So excavators also found a
carving in a place called the vogel Herd Cave southwest Germany.
(06:00):
This carving, in particular, leads experts to conclude that worship
of these animals may have been part of Paleolithic religious ceremonies.
And once you get a sense of the size of
this cat, it's not hard to see why so many
ancient people could have both feared and worshiped it. Like
our earlier discussion about the rumors of a Paleolithic bear
(06:23):
worshiping religion, there may have been something like this going
on with cave lions because they were one of the
largest lion species around. One skeleton that was discovered was
about almost four ft tall at the shoulder and it
was almost seven ft long, not counting the tail, by
(06:46):
the way, So we're not you know, we're not fudging
the numbers. Uh. And that isn't even the biggest example.
There was another one that was eight feet in length,
again not counting the tail. It doesn't matter if you're
a cat person at this point, wather in the modern
day or in ancient times. You don't want to run
into these guys, especially if they're hungry. You would be
(07:07):
a person in a cat not a cat person. Very quickly. Yes,
I like the way you put that, And they're not like,
um this when we talk about height and length, it's
not anywhere near the same thing as describing, say, the
wingspan of a bird. Because these are also chunky boys.
(07:27):
I think the internet would call them. Yeah. Yeah, some
of the best estimates for what these creatures would weigh
or around seven hundred and fifty pounds or you know,
something like that, And that makes it over twelve larger
than any modern day line. And you're gonna see what
waltson around at Uh. It's gonna make a tiger king
(07:51):
joke here. But yeah, we don't need to do that.
I mean, just the the reference alone, LA people's imaginations
running wild. What would it have been that? What would
it have been us a seven hundred fifty pound lion.
Just chilling. Look at these lions. They're crazy and they
also Uh it's fascinating because we said, those cave paintings
(08:14):
are you know, several thousand years old, fifteen to seventeen thousand.
But the lions themselves, you're not gonna run into them
because they're they're thoughts to have gone extinct sometime around
fifty thousand years ago. So already we can see there's
a slight possible discrepancy. Uh, these didn't look like what
you might picture a lot of other lions there. They're similar,
(08:36):
but like, for instance, the males, based on what we've
seen in the cave depictions, probably didn't have a really
big main like you would associate with current lions. And
although it's tragic, of course, these mega fano went extinct, Uh,
they are not the only cats in the game. Modern
day Europe, despite having areas that have been very heavily
(08:59):
developed for a very long time, is still home to
at least three types of wild cats, not counting you know,
feral house cats, not counting you know the county cat
that would show up at your house and beg for
kibbles or whatever. These things are species like the European
wildcat that's an eastern, western, southern central Europe. And then
(09:23):
two types of links, the Iberian Lynx and the Eurasian Links.
The Eurasian Links is in central, eastern and northern Europe
and the Iberian Lynx surprise, surprise, Iberian pleminsula not the
most creative name. And these are all wild creatures to
be clear, they shouldn't be treated as pets. They can
attack wildlife. You shouldn't approach them if you see them.
(09:47):
Like most wild animals, they do not particularly care to
hang out with you, and if they do, it's probably
not for a reason that you're going to be down with.
So the good news is they're a lot smaller than lions.
That is the best news. Well, it's also what makes
them so cute. I remember when I was growing up,
I wanted a links so badly. I thought it was
(10:08):
the coolest animal. I particularly remember the ears, very very anime.
But they look they looked like enough like a house
cat that I felt like I maybe would have a
connection to one, uh you know, if I'm met a
Link somewhere. But man, it was also something I think.
(10:29):
Atari put out a handheld gaming system called the links
at some point and for some reason I I then
had like this weird brain connection to fun gaming and
this creature. Yeah I can. I could totally see that.
The they do look a lot more innocent maybe than
(10:50):
they should. But looked at those little murder pause. Oh,
they're not playing around. Still, they are much less likely
to eat you than a cave line. So go Europe Today.
The days of the large animals are largely in the past,
at least where Europe in general and where the United
(11:13):
Kingdom specifically is concerned. But there are still there are
still some large fauna running around the UK that are
proven to exist. They're just at this point not cats.
That's right. We have the Red Stag, which is the
sigil of how Slanister and I'm kidding that's not true. Um,
that would be the that was a lion, right yeah?
(11:35):
Or or the also known as the service lfus Um.
It's officially the largest animal in the region and in
there's a particularly massive specimen called the Emperor of x
More that was reportedly killed by a hunter, and at
the time of its death that had already drawn a
ton of national attention thanks to some incredible photographs of
(11:58):
weighed more than three pounds and was around nine ft
tall um. But the big cats, it might seem, are
long gone. You can take a look at pictures of
the Emperor of Exmore as we just stated there, and
it really is a majestic, awesome looking creature and it
(12:18):
is big, but it's not that big. And if you
imagine that something like these red deer existed in the
area for a long time, you can also imagine if
there was a seven pound cat rock like rolling around.
This would be great food, right, I mean, you could
(12:39):
totally imagine it. And just when you start to this
has helped me with the size, like really thinking about
the size of these cats. When you see how large
this Emperor of Exmore is in red red deer in general,
and then you imagine that twice to you know, two
point three times the size of that is how big
these cats were. It's like seeing, uh, It's like when
(13:02):
you see a cetacean, a large one, like a whale,
a sperm whale or something, and you think, holy crap,
this thing is huge, and then you see there are
suction marks on it from a fight with some kind
of you know, that's that's what that was. Some of
the strongest evidence of the colossal squid for a long time.
So yeah, look, if you see something big, imagine what
(13:25):
might eat it, because the thing that eats it is gonna,
you know it, maybe even larger. But like we said,
the days of the large fauna in the United Kingdom
have mostly passed and the big cats are relegated to
history or are they dung doung? We're going to pause
(13:48):
for word from our sponsor, which hey, maybe it's maybe
his cafine, and then we'll be back with more. Here's
where it gets crazy. So long after the official extinction
of large cats in the United Kingdom, numerous people have
(14:10):
claimed to have seen something in the wild, and they've
been making these claims for a very very long time.
As late or as early as four hundred, there were
there were folk tales um folk tales that we don't
we don't need to go into too much depth on.
But one that's especially interesting is the story of a
(14:33):
guy named John dis Stratford, who, according to the story,
pulled a giant red antlered lion from the earth at
South bad Asley in four hundred. Important note, at this time,
there are no known species anywhere of lions with antlers,
which is a shame because that would be super cool.
(14:54):
Uh oh god, I was gonna make it terrible. One
of these big lions was hunting a red deer. But
then they like saw each other in a clearing and
they were like, okay. It was like a little bit
(15:15):
of let's get it on kind of vibes. Yeah yeah,
and this yeah jackal lopes, right, yeah, you might have.
You know, animals may find themselves in jack lipes situations
like grizzly bears and polar bears. You know, love is
uh not a thing that always respects those kind of
boundaries in the wild. Well, jackal lobe is what happens
(15:38):
when to jack rabbits a lope there it is, Yeah, which,
but that that is an amazing image, right, I Like,
as you said, like we don't there's obviously no feline
or cat species that has antlers. But uh, for from
a folklore perspective, the imagery alone, I want to see
(16:01):
let's do oh yeah, And there's there's also you know,
the long, the long established tale of the so called
black dog in the UK, which may play a role
in this investigation as well. So fast forward, we'll just
list a few other examples. There's a guy named William
Cobbett in the seventeen sixties and he in one of
(16:24):
the books he writes, he describes how he saw a
cat as big as middle sized spaniel dog near the
ruins of Waverley Abbey, and then later he says he
saw a similar creature in New Brunswick. In neither of
those examples does he have like a body or anything
like that. But these sightings have become a part of
(16:46):
British culture. They've occurred for so often and so long
that pretty much everybody has heard something about them, even
if they don't believe it. It's kind of like the
same way that if you live in the US, particularly
in the Pacific Northwest, you've definitely heard Bigfoot stories, whether
or not you believe they're true. And these sightings, they
(17:10):
are the belief in these animals can be like they're
they're described by a few group terms A B c's,
which I still think is funny, which means either abnormally
big cats, anomalous big cats, or alien big cats. Alien
is in maybe not native to the area more so
than extraterrestrial. And I know, right, I know there's a bummer,
(17:33):
but but it gets better. Phantom cats or mystery cats,
which just sounds still whimsical. Why it's a mystery cats,
that's a Saturday Morning cartoon out there, or I just
figuring it's wearing like a top hat and like carries
a cane or something like that. Perhaps a monocle, uh,
(17:53):
sort of like an Inspector Clouseau type cat. You know,
that'd be cool. I would like I would like maybe
a little bit of for plot tension, maybe we could say,
like the mystery cats are trying to chase down the
phantom cats, and there's you know, whatever mcguffins and red
herrings we want to add in. I imagine, I imagine
it's a cat that whenever you ask it, hey, cat,
(18:14):
what are you been up to? It says, uh, numerous
various pursuits, fid eyes, Frederick Thinis, but uh it's fair touchet. Uh. Yeah.
And there are people who say, well, all cats are mysterious, right,
because they were objects of religious veneration in different cultures.
(18:37):
But it's weird because these sightings for a time kind
of fell to the fringe. Uh, and the they were
you know, relegated to folklore, and they were like cool,
cool stories to learn about in history class, right, And
this was the case until the late nineteen fifties when
(19:00):
these sightings exploded and this became a modern wave of
cryptid reports. Always big cats. There were things like the
cool thing is they all have if they get popular
enough in the public consciousness, they all get a pretty
kick ass nickname. There would be things like the Surrey
(19:21):
Puma or the Thing tiger. And then you know, if
you're still kind of like the minor leagues of being
a feline crypted here, you're a cat like beast, which, um,
which is a weird should we start describing people like that?
It was it was a cat like beast. Oh man,
(19:41):
that's really great. And and there's can we can we
shout out the article at least there's one article that
I was looking through that I think you found been
from the Independent. Yes, yeah, the field Guide, right, it's
a it's titled A Field Guide to the Mystery Beasts
of the British Isles from back into dozen five. But
it was just it's just it's great, and in particular,
(20:05):
I think you pointed out here Ben the names of
these creatures. Each individual one is just a delight. It's
so so wonderful, it is. And the the interesting thing
about that article in particular is that it laundry list
other alleged cryptids non feline in the UK. So if
you are not familiar with crypto zoology in the in
(20:29):
the United Kingdom, then do check out. That article is
an excellent primer. And it also talks a little bit
about how these how some of these sightings came to be.
And this gets reported kind of cyclically in the big
outfits like the Independent or the Telegraph, or the or
the BBC. But the first, if we trace it back,
(20:52):
the first modern major news story about an ABC and
a normally big cat, which reminds the sidebar. It reminds
me of The Princess Bride. You guys, remember what was it?
Rodents of unusual guys, Yes, that's what it is. It
is God. That was such a creepy part of that
(21:13):
movie in the fire Swamps, right, yes, and they're like
nas on Carrie Elwiss, poor arm or he gets seriously injured.
Guess yeah, r o U S r o U S S. Yeah,
Rodents of unusual size. The Princess Bride still holds up.
By the way, it's been a long time. I need
(21:33):
to rewatch knowledge. Yeah, it's great. It's got so many quotables,
mostly dead. Check it out if you somehow I haven't
seen it anyway, so the first if we trace it back,
the first major news story about an abnormal lee large
cat in the modern UK was in nineteen sixty three.
(21:54):
In July there was a guy in a place called
Shooters Hill who reported seeing something off and then the
story grew legs or paws and a tail when people
saw a large golden animal jump over the hood of
a police car nearby. So now it feels more official,
(22:17):
and there was a massive search for what people thought
was possibly a cheetah. They went across a hundred eight
hundred and fifty acres, a hundred police, twenty one dogs,
thirties soldiers. Also, other other professionals were there like ambulance operators, etcetera, etcetera.
(22:37):
And these investigations went on for a while. Nineteen sixty
seven when the gold Domine Police Station in Surrey closed
their big cat investigation like their own sort of feline
project blue book. They had acquired um one plaster cast
of a paw print that was pretty big. It's like
five inches across. And uh, they had logged over three
(23:02):
hundred different alleged sightings of big cats, three hundred and
sixty two from September of sixty four to August of
sixty six. So even if there was nothing out there,
even if we could all be explained away, a lot
of folks were running into stuff, running into something they
did not expect to find. Yes, and these alleged sightings
(23:23):
continue with the Cambridge Shires Fenn Tiger in night, Devon's
Beast of x More and Gwent's Beast of Brechfa, all
incredible names, both in nineteen eighty three so here I
was born and Cornwall's Beast of Bodman in nineteen ninety two.
In May of nine, twelve marines using night vision glasses
(23:46):
scoured eggs more in Operation Beastie after eighties sheep killings
in the area. It's always a good sign when you've
got like spontaneous sheep killings. Eighty sheep killings in the
area since the summer. Most of their skulls were crushed
and their carcasses were gutted, completely eviscerated. Yeah and yeah,
(24:08):
this is a big deal. So to have that many
sheep killed in that way, right, you see. Look, I
I've never kept sheep, never been a shepherd, never been
a farmer where sheep are involved. But I imagine if
there are arrant deaths of your flock, generally by let's
(24:29):
say wolves or some other animal like that, that is
going to be or foxes, something's something that's hunting sheep
on a fairly regular basis for a food source. They're
not going to have their heads crushed. If you think
about the size of a sheep versus the size of
a fox, fairly smaller animal. Uh, it's not going to
be crushing skulls. It's you know, could kill it, can eat.
(24:51):
You know, these animals can easily kill sheep. Uh, and
you know take one down. But just the concept of
an animal with jaws strong enough to crush a sheep's head,
that's baffling. Doesn't make sense. And you'd want to track
down that beast. I love that they're called beasts. Yeah, yeah,
(25:13):
it's it's fun to think about, right, And this we
have to remember there's a very serious thing for the
people involved at the time. In if we move further
into the future, then we see in the Ministry of
Agriculture conducted an investigation of bodmin in particular, and they
(25:34):
examined film, photographs, sheep carcasses, alleged spore. Uh, this is here.
This will make you way less fun at parties. Spore
s p o r E is not the same thing
as spore sp o o r U. S p o
o r is what we're talking about. That's anything you
(25:55):
can use to track in animals, like scent or their poop.
But spore sp o r E is totally different. It's
a reproductive unit that just has one cell and doesn't
need sex to reproduce very huge video game that was
overhyped back in the day. Yes, yeah, so, uh, you're welcome.
(26:18):
You're gonna be a lot of fun at parties now,
especially given the awkwardness of hanging out with people I
r L post COVID. So what did they find in
this investigation. It's very interesting because they said they concluded
that they could find quote no verifiable evidence that there
was any kind of big cat population out there, But
(26:39):
they also in the same report said they quote could
not prove a big cat is not present. Dude, do
you know that lights the fires right for cryptozoologists? Cryptic fans.
I I figured it out. Guys. These big cats out
there in the UK. They are big Foot's pets, so
(27:02):
they have the same powers as Bigfoot. They can just
appear and then disappear, be their shape shift and then
shift out. It's the same thing. They're working together. Verified
natural geographic doesn't want you to do it right like
familiars almost you know, but send them, Oh, they send
(27:25):
them out to do their evil Bigfoot bidding, well, just
bring back, you know, some indviscerated sheep, or you just
leave the sheep there whatever. Yeah, that's what cats do.
They bring it back to show off to their their primate.
I guess if we're saying Bigfoot is in the mix
and they're showing off to just a general primate. So
(27:46):
this this continues, and it might surprise people outside of
the United Kingdom to learn how recent these sightings are.
Like as recently as it goes on. They have also
been attacks. They are allegedly attacked by big cats, but
they're definitely physical attacks. There was a guy named Anthony
(28:09):
Holder who said that he was in Sidenham Park, which
is southeast of London. This this also comes from the
Independent UH as a matter of fact, let's just pulled
the verbatim quote. He had been trying to coax his
cat back. He already had a cat. He was trying
to coax his cat back after hearing it scream, and
he thought it was being attacked by a fox, so
(28:30):
he jumped his garden fence to chase it away. Everybody
outside of the UK, garden is like your backyard. So
he jumps his guarden fence to chase it away. But
then a large feeline emerged from the bushes and pounced
on him and sent him flying. And he said, it's
scratched down the side of my face. His teeth sank
into my fingers. His face was so close to me
(28:50):
I could smell its breath. And then he said, according
to his own estimation, it was about six ft long
and three ft tall, which makes it almost a lion size. Uh.
He also said he was able to throw it off
luckily after about thirty seconds. I have to ask you, guys,
this is I've I've never spoken to Mr Holder, and
I don't believe any of us have. But is it
(29:15):
possible that maybe he was um exaggerating it in his memory,
or like, is it's the eyewitness problem. Right, how big
was the actual cat? Uh, A cat that size would
be pretty powerful. Um, how do you throw that after
thirty seconds? Well, first it sent him flying right, and
(29:37):
so you attacked him and he waid what and then
he got back up. Can't attacked him beginning. Then he
threw the cat and he went what Sorry, there's my
little sound effects. I'm just imagine all of that happening. Uh,
you can't, you can't. You can't do anything with a
story like this other than go wow, hopefully something like
that will happen again and no one gets hurt. So
(29:58):
we can actually verify it in some way with some
form of physical evidence, because right now it's just a
really interesting story. And you know, Tony doesn't mention how
many pints he had. Now I'm just choking. Tony has
nothing to do that of blood taken or of beer drink.
But but the thing is also in this case, there
(30:22):
clearly was something that attacked him. That part of the
story is inarguable. Right. So those are just a couple
of examples, but they're hopefully enough to give us all
a sense of just how frequent and how recent these
sightings have been. So the big question, how do we
explain all of this? For the true cryptic believers out there,
the theory goes something like this, relict populations of animals
(30:47):
like sabertooth cats or leopards, lions links it survived the
ice Age in this part of the world into the
modern day and the entire time they were learning to
avoid human beings as civilization and encroached further and further
into the wild. And for the people who believe this
theory are subscribed to it. These animals now exist in
(31:09):
very small populations in dwindling areas of parks, estate's forested land,
but they still roam the UK and if you are
particularly lucky or unlucky, you may run into one yourself.
And that's a fascinating story. I personally dig it, but
doesn't have any sand. The first thing you have to
(31:29):
admit is like the UK is very heavily developed right
in comparison to a lot of other places in comparison
to the US for sure, and it's also one of
the most heavily surveiled countries in the world, just on
like CCTV cameras alone, and granted most of those are
in urban areas London and so on. Yeah, I was
gonna say, if you, if you get out into the
(31:50):
country in parts of the UK, there's very little going on,
Lots and lots of just land, the old moors that
I'm I'm really that familiar with. But I've definitely driven
through something past the um where there really isn't much
going on, and some of the forested areas, I mean
it's I don't know, there's there's enough mystery left in
(32:12):
there that I think we have to keep an open
mind here. Still, Yeah, TI to agree. I think that's
a good point. And for skeptics, the existence of any
large cat population at all in this area feels incredibly implausible.
And forget a breeding population. Remember those are two different things, right.
(32:33):
You might have like an isolated small population of escaped feelines,
but a breeding population to be sustainable would probably have
to be larger than just a couple of cats. And
then the second thing they ask is where's the actual
evidence if there were a breeding population through were a
large population of cats, wouldn't someone have found the scats
(32:54):
or some spore or skeletons, or perhaps most easily identified
the carcasses of other animals Wilder domestic appeared to be
killed and eaten by large feelines. That's that's one of
the questions. But as we've just as we've just found,
there have been carcasses discovered right now, the only question
is what actually killed them. Anyhow, these are all great
(33:18):
questions on the skeptics end, and the fact is that
no one has found hard evidence of a breeding population
of cryptic cats, and that leads experts to conclude the
stories are just that interesting stories. But we're going to
pause for a word from our sponsor, and then we'll
dig a little further into the litter box here, which
(33:38):
is the worst word play, and we're back. Apologies to
everybody who just just heard the l word and thought,
damn and I have to clean that thing again. Uh,
I had. I had a very strong memory of watching
(34:00):
my cat gingerly cover up her own poop in the
litter box, just to make sure it was hidden away
and didn't smell bad. I don't know, I'm I'm applying
that isn't it weird that cats just naturally do that?
So and also like that not to get more bid,
but with the fact that they if they're injured or
(34:22):
they're like dying, they will crawl under the house, or
they will like hide themselves away. They don't want to know,
they don't want to be seen suffering by They like
they're like very private creatures. It's very interesting of the
mentality of the cat. Yeah, they don't want to be
attacked while they're vulnerable too, you know. And they'll also
kind of hide. Um, I believe to give birth. So yeah,
(34:44):
sorry about that cleaning winter box when you get a chance, folks. Uh,
maybe while are you thinking about that, Let's let's look
at the explanation. So first get this out of the way.
We need the mundane explanation. And in the mundane explanation
here would be misidentification. If you're not expecting to see something,
then you can be startled by its appearance. So it
(35:07):
might be and they may have seen an ordinary house
cat of unusual size main coon style from a distance,
and depending on the angle, they might honestly mistake it
for a larger animal. That doesn't mean it's a hoax.
That doesn't mean they're you know, grifters or crazy people.
It just means that from their vantage point, maybe the
(35:27):
thing looked larger than it is. Similar to that story
we did on a strange news not terribly long ago
about these like dire wolf type creatures that I believe
pulled somebody over or pulled a cow over like a
guardrail or something crazy like. Yeah, I was allegedly allegedly,
but but a big point of contention that was the
(35:48):
distance at which the creatures were viewed, and the time
of night, and the you know what I mean, Like
there's a lot of things that the eyes can certainly
play tricks on you and in certain circumstances. Yeah, and
think about you know that main coon example. Uh, honestly,
some main coons can attain the length of a Eurasian lynx.
(36:09):
But they the thing is, they weigh less and they
have a slimmer build, but you might not be able
to tell if you're looking at them from far enough away,
because they've also got a ton of fur, so they
get puffed up, you know what I mean. And if
you ever uh, well, I think it looks creepy. But
if you ever see a picture of a main coon
shaved versus unshaven, you can see there's a tremendous difference.
(36:34):
So we got that out of the way. Misidentification almost
certainly happened in several many of these sightings over the years. Guys,
correct me if I'm wrong here. Some some cat species,
when they are alerted or angry or you know, in
fight or flight mode, do they physically puff up at all,
(36:57):
like with their fur going out the way a dog's
back raises sometimes. Yeah, you will see them like arch
their backs. Have you seen? Have you? They're creepy videos
of it too. I've seen I've seen a cat do that.
I'm just wondering it's like a lynx species. I'm just
unaware if they have any other kind of I don't know,
physical appearance change when they're in that attack mode. I
(37:21):
just don't don't question. Yeah, that is a good question. Um.
But again, you know, if you're not expecting to see something,
then you might not have the presence of mind to
like try to not physical characteristics. You might just be
baffled and then decide to leave, right. Um. Anybody who's
been surprised by an animal in the wild, especially one
(37:43):
that might be dangerous, it's probably felt the same thing,
right And just you're supposed to slowly back away. They
don't want to hang with you again. Uh, And if
they do want to hang with you, it's probably not
for a reason that you would enjoy. So we've got
that explanation of the way. But secondly, there's something interesting here.
You absolutely can have sightings of a single large cat
(38:07):
without ever having a native breeding population. In the UK
in particular, there there's a strong possibility that some of
these sightings could have been former pets that became inconvenient
or illegal and were later released into the wild, like
their exotic pets in Florida. Um not cats, but like
(38:28):
you know, like gators that have been released. So if
we go over to the BBC reporters did something interesting.
They cited a law in nineteen seventy six is a
possible inflection point the Dangerous Wild Animals Act. Before this act,
there was this weird fad in the sixties and seventies
and people with enough cheese, enough scratch, enough wealth, or
(38:52):
enough influence would keep tigers or cheetahs or whatever as pets,
just as a fla x And they didn't need anything
but money to do this. So that you could you
could go to a park and you could just see
some dude walk in his cheetah and there's nothing you
could do about it. But once, once this Act was
(39:13):
passed in direct response to this fad. A lot of things,
like a lot of primates, um larger carnivores, reptiles, especially
venomous ones are really big ones. And then scorpions and spiders, etcetera,
could no longer be kept as pets unless you met
a number of conditions, unless you got a license. A
(39:34):
lot of people ended up giving away their pets to
zoos or sad sadly almost said sad fully, I want
to say regretfully, sadly, let's just say sad fully. Yeah, yeah,
it's portmanteau. So sad fully they had to put these
animals down. But it is completely possible that a few folks,
(39:54):
you know, said ah Man mc dermott, my favorite puma
or panther or whatever. For a panther, I can't put you,
I can't put you in a zoo. You're you're free,
your soul, your soul was not made for a cage.
But I sadly cannot keep you, thigh McDermott thig off
(40:18):
into the wilds of the estate. You can, you can.
That is so what happened. You know, that happened at
least a few times, right if it was a fad,
even even in the time before it became illegal, or
you know the Dangerous Wild Animals Act in seventy six.
You know that some people had a big cat in
(40:41):
their home because they thought it was gonna be awesome,
and they gave it up once the cat became mature
because they were terrified, you know, or they they had
a human child of their own or something. There are
so many circumstances that could occur that you know, will
have occurred that some of these animals got really beast
or or your spouse was allergic. Yeah, right, and so
(41:06):
like this. If we continue this speculation a little bit further,
it is possible, if not plausible, that some of these
animals could have encountered each other, and again possible not plausible,
that they could have bred in the wild. And if
they had issue, right, if if they created offspring, their
(41:30):
descendants may have been born in the wild and roam
the countryside freely. This is where we get to stories
of things like the Beast of Bodman. That's right. The
Beast of Bodman was a large panther like cap presumably
named McDermott, that claimed to have been active around the
(41:50):
nineteen nineties. UM, and there are multiple photographs, purported photographs anyway,
of what this thing looked like. Um. At the very least, uh,
it looks like an enormous house cat just kind of
kicking it over there in Cornwall. And also it's been
seen in Essex Whales also has been home to some
(42:12):
reports of giant cats in more rural areas. And in
some cases these sightings seem to correlate to UH seeing
these similar kind of scenes of animal mutilation, specifically on sheep,
because that's what you have out there in Cornwall in Essex. Um,
though no one's been able to rule out dogs or
foxes who also are fond of mutilating sheep. UM. Then
(42:34):
the third category we have is as hoaxes, and of
course in this category we have plenty of examples. UM.
We don't need to spend much time on this because
it's obvious when you're talking about things like this, there's
always possibilities of folks trying to put one over on
the public. You know, I don't, I don't know, but
what do you the motivation behind that is? Is it
just people that want to believe they want be they
(42:55):
actively are doing something dishonest? To make people believe. But
it's it's duplicitus that seems quinterintuitive, Like, I don't know
why people would try to spread hoaxes if they're you know,
hoping to shed light on the existence of actual cryptids. Dude. Yeah,
I've I've been here for a while and I still
have no idea why people do any of the things
(43:16):
they do. I'll tell you all right, let's hear it.
I mean, it's it's awesome that what a cool story,
and you get you a little attention, right, It might
get you on the local news for a second. You
might make your buddies laugh, like look at that. Look
who we look who we got them to believe? Huh. Other,
here's something else. Let's say you're small town somewhere out
(43:38):
in Cornwall. That makes sense, right, Oh man, there's a
beast out here. Oh shoot, we're gonna start a pub.
We're gonna name it after this beast. Now it's a
place to go. We can make some money here. This
is easier than all this sheep stuff. Anyway. I'm just
that's this all hypothetical. But okay, okay, that's a good
point to raise the profile of a place for tourists
(44:01):
cryptid tourism, like the Peemi Silent Zone in Mexico. That's right,
it's a really good point, Matt. Maybe no, that's it.
I think that's probably the best argument. Um. But then
other times it's just s is and g's, you know,
spores and giggles. Yeah, so we do have we do
(44:23):
have something really interesting though, and we saved the best
for last. If you like us, love a good a
good cryptid tale, and even if you think most of
them don't add up, and you still find yourself wanting
to believe there's something out there, you might be pleasantly
surprised to learn that get us, some big gass cats
(44:46):
have actually been found in the UK. It's absolutely true.
At least some of these cryptids turned out to be real,
perhaps most famously a puma, a real puma, was captured
in Scotland in nineteen d not too too long ago,
and was after years of reported sightings in the area.
The guy who captured this animal as a farmer named
(45:08):
Ted Noble. Uh. He was responding to these many reports
of this creature being around, so he set up a
trap and by golly he got it. This uh, this
cat was transferred to the Highland Wildlife Park Zoo, where
it lived in comfort until it passed away. And there's
one happy note that I though I would add with
(45:31):
the scripted story. The director of the zoo at the
time was a guy named Eddie or Bell, and he
had a theory of his own. He said, you know
this animal that they named Felicity. By the way, this
animal may have been tamed because she seems to enjoy
being tickled. And uh, that's that's incredibly like sweet. But
(45:53):
but it means you know that it had clearly had
human contact or something like like that in the past.
And then there's another example of an actually Eurasian links
that was found in the nineties. Oh, yes there is.
But before we hit the links, I'm just trying to
imagine the first person who attempted a tickle on a puma,
(46:13):
Like on this particular puma. Let's give it a little
tickle and see what happens. Yeah, and also hit the links. Underrated,
underrated word play. There there we go, before we hit
the links. Um, yes, there there is a story of
a Eurasian lynx that was killed in Norfolk. The story
(46:35):
goes that it attacked several sheep in the area over
period a couple of weeks. And the only reason why
we know about this is because in two thousand three
there was a story written about it, like it became public.
The public became aware in two thousand three, and everybody's like, yeah, okay,
sure there's a Links out here attacking cheap. But then
in two thousand six a police report came out that
(46:56):
confirms that the whole thing happened, or at least a
two six police report about the attack was made public,
I think, and this confirmed that another cryptique case was
indeed true. Additionally, there have also been reports approven reports
(47:19):
of jungle cats uh speculation about awful lots, and of
course Links is another one was captured alive in two
thousand and one. This was called the Beast of Barnett.
It was young Eurasian Links and thankfully was also placed
safely in a zoo. So it's no surprise that today
the search for these A b C's, these big cats
(47:39):
continues across the United Kingdom, and unlike stories of bigfoot
or lock nests, it does genuinely seem that at least
some of the stories are true. If you would like
to learn more, check out the research by an organization
called Big Cats. In Britain, there are a group that
publishes an annual collection of reported sightings. And just to
(47:59):
get in front of this, uh, there are probably some
of less listening to the audience today who would who
would say that a cryptid is uh is strictly defined
as a creature purported but not proven to exist. And
may argue that links is and pumas don't qualify as
cryptids because the scientific world was aware of their existence. However,
(48:22):
I think, for for our money, UH, these, for our
cat these do count as cryptids because they were rumors
that were proven to be true, just like the seed
La cants. But and they were cryptids before we could
at least prove that there was something very similar happening,
(48:43):
say similar creature did exist. And one just one note here,
don't do cat nip. Just you know, think about your life,
think about your family, everybody it effects, and just don't
do cat what are you? Are you serious? Is this
a thing? I'm a monster that just love it so much.
They love it, It's awesome. Also, don't do nutmeg. The
(49:04):
sailor is way over right, and definitely don't ever try
the cinnamon challenge. It's terrifying and it will make you gay. Yeah,
and no one can eat fifty eggs. Yeah, and the
egg create challenge is way easier. Just does there are
another challenge that the egg create challenge? That sounds yeah,
(49:24):
it's egg creates. You just stuck up egg creates and
you try and step on them, but they all break.
It's the challenge to break them or not break them.
It's just way safer. I've got to be very very footed.
You just kind of like ballet dance your way across them. Yeah.
This sounds like big egg propaganda. They're trying to get
people to buy more eggs. Speaking of what did you
do an experiment in like school where you had to
(49:46):
like build a thing to hold eggs and like parachuted
off of buildings so they wouldn't crack. Were you successful
in your attempts? I was, of course you were, Yep, yep,
your genius you. I definitely I lucked out, but I liked.
I can't remember many of the specifics, but I'm sure
it would have. I'm sure it was anybody's game. As
(50:08):
a matter of fact, I would I remember being surprised,
and I think you know, it did occur to me, like,
why didn't anybody just hard boil their egg because that's cheating.
That's like, that's like hot gluing up silver dollar to
the bottom of your pinewood derby car. I guess you
disqualified in the egg situation. You're already in this really
ridiculous scenario, you know what I mean, Like I I
(50:32):
don't know. Well, let us know about your egg drops,
let us know about your your favorite weird internet challenges. Uh,
don't do catnet, don't do nutmeg, but do tell us
about any rumors you've heard of cryptid sightings in your
neck of the global woods. And let us know if
you have, uh, if you have encountered something on your
(50:54):
own that you cannot explain. We've had a lot of
our fellow listeners sharing some pretty credible stories. You know,
it does. It doesn't just stop in Idaho, because the
truth of the matter is um. The truth of the
matter is, even though humanity is all over the world now,
there's still a lot of wilderness out there, and our
(51:14):
odds of finding cryptids for various somewhat depressing reasons are
actually higher now than ever before. So let us know,
and also let us know if you saw a big
cat in uh, if you saw a big cat in
the United Kingdom, if you're one of those people, if
you were one of the people you related to actually
(51:35):
owned a puma or a leopard in the seventies, and
let it go, what happened to it. Uh, we can't
wait to hear from you. We try to be easy
to find online all over the place. On the Internet.
You can find us on Facebook, you can find us
on Twitter, you can find us on YouTube at the
handle conspiracy Stuff. We change it up ever so slightly
(51:55):
for Instagram or wre conspiracy Stuff Show. If those things
aren't your bag, you can try get ving us a
telephone call at one eight three three std w y
t K. Yes, you have three minutes to leave a message.
Please say whatever you'd like. Give yourself a great nickname.
We accept all of them. We uh, we just think
it's safer that way. Use a nickname. Just as a
(52:17):
heads up. If you've called in the past month, we
have not listened to your message yet, but we are
working on that right now, so we're gonna get up
to date. Make sure we've listened to everything. And uh,
you know we we can't thank you enough for those
As we're going through just so many of you have
wonderful stories and cool ideas. Really appreciate you. Yeah, we
should also. I think we can allude to this part
(52:40):
part of the part of the reason we're a little
backed up there is that we have a real life
secret project in the works. Yes, that's all we can
say about it. The last thing we can say is
if you want to talk cryptics, If you've got a story,
we can't wait to hear it. If you if you
feel like the phone call won't cut it because you
you're elf, have photographs, or you have links you want
(53:02):
to send, then there's one last way we always ask
people to contact us. It's at our good old fashioned
email address. We read every letter we get. Go ahead
and drop a conspiratorial line to us where we are
conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't
(53:36):
want you to know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul mission controlled decads. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. Uh. Today we're starting with a
very simple, simple question. Uh, it's it's something that you know.
(00:47):
You you always ask people. Uh, you guys like cats, dogs?
If you had to choose, I've got cats, but I
think I'm I'm mainly a cat and dog person. Yeah,
I'm a cat person. Recently adapted a tiny baby kitten
that just kind of waltzed up onto my deck and
I love her, but I forgot that the kittens are
kind of a pain in the butt. They wreck things,
(01:10):
they like to shred things, and track litter everywhere. So
I'm a a patient, yet slowly going insane cat dad. Yeah,
how about you met? I grew up as a catboy.
It was full full catboy. Yeah, you trend and the
tail tucked. Well, well, yeah, yeah, I got my tail
(01:33):
there and talk. I met my current wife, my wife,
and she was allergic to cats, so I had to
give I had to give up my feline friends. Oh man,
that's the choice of people have to make sometimes. You know,
I've got I have two cats. Uh, you guys have
(01:53):
seen them? Um, folks, if you're if you see my
Instagram app then Bowland, then you may have seen pictures
of those cats are huge. They have no right to
be as large as they are and still called house cats.
There must be partming coon to them due to what
I refer to as their dumpster pedigree. But yeah, but
but we've all main tones are are large cats. I
(02:15):
don't know how you describe it. They're large cats that
are common, at least here in Georgia. Yeah. Yeah, and
they're they're super fluffy, so they look even bigger than
they actually are. But they're larger than a lot of
other types of what we call house cats. And to
your Pointnell, what's really interesting about cats, at least house cats,
is that there is an ongoing debate about whether they
(02:38):
are domesticated, and if so, to what degree. In fact,
you'll you'll hear people say that these cats have largely
self domesticated because they started hanging out with early human
beings because human beings are dirty, and rats and vermin
like to hang out and eat all the trash that
humans produce. So cats just started showing up and kinda
(03:02):
never left. Uh. And and cats are popular across the
world in many places. Um, you may be h hanging
out with a cat of your own as you hear
today's episode. And if you were hanging out with a
cat right now in the United Kingdom or Western Europe,
then this is an episode particularly for you. We're traveling
(03:26):
to the United Kingdom inspired by several letters over the
years from our fellow conspiracy realists who asked us about
a b CS, not the alphabet, but something called abnormally
big cats or alien big cats. That's right, it's a
cryptic episode. We're back on the cryptids, and uh, what
(03:48):
better way to get started than to talk a little
bit about our own cats. Let's move on to the
more controversial cats of Europe. Here are the facts. Obviously,
humans throughout history have made an incredibly indelible mark on
the European land mass. Um many parts of Europe today
(04:09):
are of course heavily developed, especially in the UK, but
that wasn't all the case. It used to be much wilier. Um.
In the ancient past, Europe, like much of the rest
of the world, was home to a ton of megafauna,
like big large creatures that roamed the terrain um. The
most recent large cap proven to exist was the Eurasian
(04:31):
cave lion or Panthera Spellia. I think Panthera was like
that isn't a band? That's y r I p dine
bag darryl uh. It's name became part of the scientific
lexicon in around eighteen ten when George August gold Fuss
(04:51):
fabulous name. Uh yeah, exactly as that's what I was
trying for George situation. But who knows. This guy found
and described a fossilized skull excavated from a cave in
southern Germany. Yeah. Yeah, so these these creatures and their
skeletons have been discovered before, but this was, like you said,
(05:14):
and all the first time that they got legitimized in
the scientific community and moved from oral tradition and folklore
and weird fossils to you know, museums and taxonomy. There's
also pretty great evidence that human beings encountered these lions,
because they're depicted in ancient carvings and cave paintings in France,
(05:39):
uh and in Germany. The renderings in France are somewhere
between fifteen thousand to seventeen thousand years old, and the
timeline gets little murky here. So excavators also found a
carving in a place called the vogel Herd Cave southwest Germany.
(06:00):
This carving, in particular, leads experts to conclude that worship
of these animals may have been part of Paleolithic religious ceremonies.
And once you get a sense of the size of
this cat, it's not hard to see why so many
ancient people could have both feared and worshiped it. Like
our earlier discussion about the rumors of a Paleolithic bear
(06:23):
worshiping religion, there may have been something like this going
on with cave lions because they were one of the
largest lion species around. One skeleton that was discovered was
about almost four ft tall at the shoulder and it
was almost seven ft long, not counting the tail, by
(06:46):
the way, So we're not you know, we're not fudging
the numbers. Uh. And that isn't even the biggest example.
There was another one that was eight feet in length,
again not counting the tail. It doesn't matter if you're
a cat person at this point, wather in the modern
day or in ancient times. You don't want to run
into these guys, especially if they're hungry. You would be
(07:07):
a person in a cat not a cat person. Very quickly. Yes,
I like the way you put that, And they're not like,
um this when we talk about height and length, it's
not anywhere near the same thing as describing, say, the
wingspan of a bird. Because these are also chunky boys.
(07:27):
I think the internet would call them. Yeah. Yeah, some
of the best estimates for what these creatures would weigh
or around seven hundred and fifty pounds or you know,
something like that, And that makes it over twelve larger
than any modern day line. And you're gonna see what
waltson around at Uh. It's gonna make a tiger king
(07:51):
joke here. But yeah, we don't need to do that.
I mean, just the the reference alone, LA people's imaginations
running wild. What would it have been that? What would
it have been us a seven hundred fifty pound lion.
Just chilling. Look at these lions. They're crazy and they
also Uh it's fascinating because we said, those cave paintings
(08:14):
are you know, several thousand years old, fifteen to seventeen thousand.
But the lions themselves, you're not gonna run into them
because they're they're thoughts to have gone extinct sometime around
fifty thousand years ago. So already we can see there's
a slight possible discrepancy. Uh, these didn't look like what
you might picture a lot of other lions there. They're similar,
(08:36):
but like, for instance, the males, based on what we've
seen in the cave depictions, probably didn't have a really
big main like you would associate with current lions. And
although it's tragic, of course, these mega fano went extinct, Uh,
they are not the only cats in the game. Modern
day Europe, despite having areas that have been very heavily
(08:59):
developed for a very long time, is still home to
at least three types of wild cats, not counting you know,
feral house cats, not counting you know the county cat
that would show up at your house and beg for
kibbles or whatever. These things are species like the European
wildcat that's an eastern, western, southern central Europe. And then
(09:23):
two types of links, the Iberian Lynx and the Eurasian Links.
The Eurasian Links is in central, eastern and northern Europe
and the Iberian Lynx surprise, surprise, Iberian pleminsula not the
most creative name. And these are all wild creatures to
be clear, they shouldn't be treated as pets. They can
attack wildlife. You shouldn't approach them if you see them.
(09:47):
Like most wild animals, they do not particularly care to
hang out with you, and if they do, it's probably
not for a reason that you're going to be down with.
So the good news is they're a lot smaller than lions.
That is the best news. Well, it's also what makes
them so cute. I remember when I was growing up,
I wanted a links so badly. I thought it was
(10:08):
the coolest animal. I particularly remember the ears, very very anime.
But they look they looked like enough like a house
cat that I felt like I maybe would have a
connection to one, uh you know, if I'm met a
Link somewhere. But man, it was also something I think.
(10:29):
Atari put out a handheld gaming system called the links
at some point and for some reason I I then
had like this weird brain connection to fun gaming and
this creature. Yeah I can. I could totally see that.
The they do look a lot more innocent maybe than
(10:50):
they should. But looked at those little murder pause. Oh,
they're not playing around. Still, they are much less likely
to eat you than a cave line. So go Europe Today.
The days of the large animals are largely in the past,
at least where Europe in general and where the United
(11:13):
Kingdom specifically is concerned. But there are still there are
still some large fauna running around the UK that are
proven to exist. They're just at this point not cats.
That's right. We have the Red Stag, which is the
sigil of how Slanister and I'm kidding that's not true. Um,
that would be the that was a lion, right yeah?
(11:35):
Or or the also known as the service lfus Um.
It's officially the largest animal in the region and in
there's a particularly massive specimen called the Emperor of x
More that was reportedly killed by a hunter, and at
the time of its death that had already drawn a
ton of national attention thanks to some incredible photographs of
(11:58):
weighed more than three pounds and was around nine ft
tall um. But the big cats, it might seem, are
long gone. You can take a look at pictures of
the Emperor of Exmore as we just stated there, and
it really is a majestic, awesome looking creature and it
(12:18):
is big, but it's not that big. And if you
imagine that something like these red deer existed in the
area for a long time, you can also imagine if
there was a seven pound cat rock like rolling around.
This would be great food, right, I mean, you could
(12:39):
totally imagine it. And just when you start to this
has helped me with the size, like really thinking about
the size of these cats. When you see how large
this Emperor of Exmore is in red red deer in general,
and then you imagine that twice to you know, two
point three times the size of that is how big
these cats were. It's like seeing, uh, It's like when
(13:02):
you see a cetacean, a large one, like a whale,
a sperm whale or something, and you think, holy crap,
this thing is huge, and then you see there are
suction marks on it from a fight with some kind
of you know, that's that's what that was. Some of
the strongest evidence of the colossal squid for a long time.
So yeah, look, if you see something big, imagine what
(13:25):
might eat it, because the thing that eats it is gonna,
you know it, maybe even larger. But like we said,
the days of the large fauna in the United Kingdom
have mostly passed and the big cats are relegated to
history or are they dung doung? We're going to pause
(13:48):
for word from our sponsor, which hey, maybe it's maybe
his cafine, and then we'll be back with more. Here's
where it gets crazy. So long after the official extinction
of large cats in the United Kingdom, numerous people have
(14:10):
claimed to have seen something in the wild, and they've
been making these claims for a very very long time.
As late or as early as four hundred, there were
there were folk tales um folk tales that we don't
we don't need to go into too much depth on.
But one that's especially interesting is the story of a
(14:33):
guy named John dis Stratford, who, according to the story,
pulled a giant red antlered lion from the earth at
South bad Asley in four hundred. Important note, at this time,
there are no known species anywhere of lions with antlers,
which is a shame because that would be super cool.
(14:54):
Uh oh god, I was gonna make it terrible. One
of these big lions was hunting a red deer. But
then they like saw each other in a clearing and
they were like, okay. It was like a little bit
(15:15):
of let's get it on kind of vibes. Yeah yeah,
and this yeah jackal lopes, right, yeah, you might have.
You know, animals may find themselves in jack lipes situations
like grizzly bears and polar bears. You know, love is
uh not a thing that always respects those kind of
boundaries in the wild. Well, jackal lobe is what happens
(15:38):
when to jack rabbits a lope there it is, Yeah, which,
but that that is an amazing image, right, I Like,
as you said, like we don't there's obviously no feline
or cat species that has antlers. But uh, for from
a folklore perspective, the imagery alone, I want to see
(16:01):
let's do oh yeah, And there's there's also you know,
the long, the long established tale of the so called
black dog in the UK, which may play a role
in this investigation as well. So fast forward, we'll just
list a few other examples. There's a guy named William
Cobbett in the seventeen sixties and he in one of
(16:24):
the books he writes, he describes how he saw a
cat as big as middle sized spaniel dog near the
ruins of Waverley Abbey, and then later he says he
saw a similar creature in New Brunswick. In neither of
those examples does he have like a body or anything
like that. But these sightings have become a part of
(16:46):
British culture. They've occurred for so often and so long
that pretty much everybody has heard something about them, even
if they don't believe it. It's kind of like the
same way that if you live in the US, particularly
in the Pacific Northwest, you've definitely heard Bigfoot stories, whether
or not you believe they're true. And these sightings, they
(17:10):
are the belief in these animals can be like they're
they're described by a few group terms A B c's,
which I still think is funny, which means either abnormally
big cats, anomalous big cats, or alien big cats. Alien
is in maybe not native to the area more so
than extraterrestrial. And I know, right, I know there's a bummer,
(17:33):
but but it gets better. Phantom cats or mystery cats,
which just sounds still whimsical. Why it's a mystery cats,
that's a Saturday Morning cartoon out there, or I just
figuring it's wearing like a top hat and like carries
a cane or something like that. Perhaps a monocle, uh,
(17:53):
sort of like an Inspector Clouseau type cat. You know,
that'd be cool. I would like I would like maybe
a little bit of for plot tension, maybe we could say,
like the mystery cats are trying to chase down the
phantom cats, and there's you know, whatever mcguffins and red
herrings we want to add in. I imagine, I imagine
it's a cat that whenever you ask it, hey, cat,
(18:14):
what are you been up to? It says, uh, numerous
various pursuits, fid eyes, Frederick Thinis, but uh it's fair touchet. Uh. Yeah.
And there are people who say, well, all cats are mysterious, right,
because they were objects of religious veneration in different cultures.
(18:37):
But it's weird because these sightings for a time kind
of fell to the fringe. Uh, and the they were
you know, relegated to folklore, and they were like cool,
cool stories to learn about in history class, right, And
this was the case until the late nineteen fifties when
(19:00):
these sightings exploded and this became a modern wave of
cryptid reports. Always big cats. There were things like the
cool thing is they all have if they get popular
enough in the public consciousness, they all get a pretty
kick ass nickname. There would be things like the Surrey
(19:21):
Puma or the Thing tiger. And then you know, if
you're still kind of like the minor leagues of being
a feline crypted here, you're a cat like beast, which, um,
which is a weird should we start describing people like that?
It was it was a cat like beast. Oh man,
(19:41):
that's really great. And and there's can we can we
shout out the article at least there's one article that
I was looking through that I think you found been
from the Independent. Yes, yeah, the field Guide, right, it's
a it's titled A Field Guide to the Mystery Beasts
of the British Isles from back into dozen five. But
it was just it's just it's great, and in particular,
(20:05):
I think you pointed out here Ben the names of
these creatures. Each individual one is just a delight. It's
so so wonderful, it is. And the the interesting thing
about that article in particular is that it laundry list
other alleged cryptids non feline in the UK. So if
you are not familiar with crypto zoology in the in
(20:29):
the United Kingdom, then do check out. That article is
an excellent primer. And it also talks a little bit
about how these how some of these sightings came to be.
And this gets reported kind of cyclically in the big
outfits like the Independent or the Telegraph, or the or
the BBC. But the first, if we trace it back,
(20:52):
the first modern major news story about an ABC and
a normally big cat, which reminds the sidebar. It reminds
me of The Princess Bride. You guys, remember what was it?
Rodents of unusual guys, Yes, that's what it is. It
is God. That was such a creepy part of that
(21:13):
movie in the fire Swamps, right, yes, and they're like
nas on Carrie Elwiss, poor arm or he gets seriously injured.
Guess yeah, r o U S r o U S S. Yeah,
Rodents of unusual size. The Princess Bride still holds up.
By the way, it's been a long time. I need
(21:33):
to rewatch knowledge. Yeah, it's great. It's got so many quotables,
mostly dead. Check it out if you somehow I haven't
seen it anyway, so the first if we trace it back,
the first major news story about an abnormal lee large
cat in the modern UK was in nineteen sixty three.
(21:54):
In July there was a guy in a place called
Shooters Hill who reported seeing something off and then the
story grew legs or paws and a tail when people
saw a large golden animal jump over the hood of
a police car nearby. So now it feels more official,
(22:17):
and there was a massive search for what people thought
was possibly a cheetah. They went across a hundred eight
hundred and fifty acres, a hundred police, twenty one dogs,
thirties soldiers. Also, other other professionals were there like ambulance operators, etcetera, etcetera.
(22:37):
And these investigations went on for a while. Nineteen sixty
seven when the gold Domine Police Station in Surrey closed
their big cat investigation like their own sort of feline
project blue book. They had acquired um one plaster cast
of a paw print that was pretty big. It's like
five inches across. And uh, they had logged over three
(23:02):
hundred different alleged sightings of big cats, three hundred and
sixty two from September of sixty four to August of
sixty six. So even if there was nothing out there,
even if we could all be explained away, a lot
of folks were running into stuff, running into something they
did not expect to find. Yes, and these alleged sightings
(23:23):
continue with the Cambridge Shires Fenn Tiger in night, Devon's
Beast of x More and Gwent's Beast of Brechfa, all
incredible names, both in nineteen eighty three so here I
was born and Cornwall's Beast of Bodman in nineteen ninety two.
In May of nine, twelve marines using night vision glasses
(23:46):
scoured eggs more in Operation Beastie after eighties sheep killings
in the area. It's always a good sign when you've
got like spontaneous sheep killings. Eighty sheep killings in the
area since the summer. Most of their skulls were crushed
and their carcasses were gutted, completely eviscerated. Yeah and yeah,
(24:08):
this is a big deal. So to have that many
sheep killed in that way, right, you see. Look, I
I've never kept sheep, never been a shepherd, never been
a farmer where sheep are involved. But I imagine if
there are arrant deaths of your flock, generally by let's
(24:29):
say wolves or some other animal like that, that is
going to be or foxes, something's something that's hunting sheep
on a fairly regular basis for a food source. They're
not going to have their heads crushed. If you think
about the size of a sheep versus the size of
a fox, fairly smaller animal. Uh, it's not going to
be crushing skulls. It's you know, could kill it, can eat.
(24:51):
You know, these animals can easily kill sheep. Uh, and
you know take one down. But just the concept of
an animal with jaws strong enough to crush a sheep's head,
that's baffling. Doesn't make sense. And you'd want to track
down that beast. I love that they're called beasts. Yeah, yeah,
(25:13):
it's it's fun to think about, right, And this we
have to remember there's a very serious thing for the
people involved at the time. In if we move further
into the future, then we see in the Ministry of
Agriculture conducted an investigation of bodmin in particular, and they
(25:34):
examined film, photographs, sheep carcasses, alleged spore. Uh, this is here.
This will make you way less fun at parties. Spore
s p o r E is not the same thing
as spore sp o o r U. S p o
o r is what we're talking about. That's anything you
(25:55):
can use to track in animals, like scent or their poop.
But spore sp o r E is totally different. It's
a reproductive unit that just has one cell and doesn't
need sex to reproduce very huge video game that was
overhyped back in the day. Yes, yeah, so, uh, you're welcome.
(26:18):
You're gonna be a lot of fun at parties now,
especially given the awkwardness of hanging out with people I
r L post COVID. So what did they find in
this investigation. It's very interesting because they said they concluded
that they could find quote no verifiable evidence that there
was any kind of big cat population out there, But
(26:39):
they also in the same report said they quote could
not prove a big cat is not present. Dude, do
you know that lights the fires right for cryptozoologists? Cryptic fans.
I I figured it out. Guys. These big cats out
there in the UK. They are big Foot's pets, so
(27:02):
they have the same powers as Bigfoot. They can just
appear and then disappear, be their shape shift and then
shift out. It's the same thing. They're working together. Verified
natural geographic doesn't want you to do it right like
familiars almost you know, but send them, Oh, they send
(27:25):
them out to do their evil Bigfoot bidding, well, just
bring back, you know, some indviscerated sheep, or you just
leave the sheep there whatever. Yeah, that's what cats do.
They bring it back to show off to their their primate.
I guess if we're saying Bigfoot is in the mix
and they're showing off to just a general primate. So
(27:46):
this this continues, and it might surprise people outside of
the United Kingdom to learn how recent these sightings are.
Like as recently as it goes on. They have also
been attacks. They are allegedly attacked by big cats, but
they're definitely physical attacks. There was a guy named Anthony
(28:09):
Holder who said that he was in Sidenham Park, which
is southeast of London. This this also comes from the
Independent UH as a matter of fact, let's just pulled
the verbatim quote. He had been trying to coax his
cat back. He already had a cat. He was trying
to coax his cat back after hearing it scream, and
he thought it was being attacked by a fox, so
(28:30):
he jumped his garden fence to chase it away. Everybody
outside of the UK, garden is like your backyard. So
he jumps his guarden fence to chase it away. But
then a large feeline emerged from the bushes and pounced
on him and sent him flying. And he said, it's
scratched down the side of my face. His teeth sank
into my fingers. His face was so close to me
(28:50):
I could smell its breath. And then he said, according
to his own estimation, it was about six ft long
and three ft tall, which makes it almost a lion size. Uh.
He also said he was able to throw it off
luckily after about thirty seconds. I have to ask you, guys,
this is I've I've never spoken to Mr Holder, and
I don't believe any of us have. But is it
(29:15):
possible that maybe he was um exaggerating it in his memory,
or like, is it's the eyewitness problem. Right, how big
was the actual cat? Uh, A cat that size would
be pretty powerful. Um, how do you throw that after
thirty seconds? Well, first it sent him flying right, and
(29:37):
so you attacked him and he waid what and then
he got back up. Can't attacked him beginning. Then he
threw the cat and he went what Sorry, there's my
little sound effects. I'm just imagine all of that happening. Uh,
you can't, you can't. You can't do anything with a
story like this other than go wow, hopefully something like
that will happen again and no one gets hurt. So
(29:58):
we can actually verify it in some way with some
form of physical evidence, because right now it's just a
really interesting story. And you know, Tony doesn't mention how
many pints he had. Now I'm just choking. Tony has
nothing to do that of blood taken or of beer drink.
But but the thing is also in this case, there
(30:22):
clearly was something that attacked him. That part of the
story is inarguable. Right. So those are just a couple
of examples, but they're hopefully enough to give us all
a sense of just how frequent and how recent these
sightings have been. So the big question, how do we
explain all of this? For the true cryptic believers out there,
the theory goes something like this, relict populations of animals
(30:47):
like sabertooth cats or leopards, lions links it survived the
ice Age in this part of the world into the
modern day and the entire time they were learning to
avoid human beings as civilization and encroached further and further
into the wild. And for the people who believe this
theory are subscribed to it. These animals now exist in
(31:09):
very small populations in dwindling areas of parks, estate's forested land,
but they still roam the UK and if you are
particularly lucky or unlucky, you may run into one yourself.
And that's a fascinating story. I personally dig it, but
doesn't have any sand. The first thing you have to
(31:29):
admit is like the UK is very heavily developed right
in comparison to a lot of other places in comparison
to the US for sure, and it's also one of
the most heavily surveiled countries in the world, just on
like CCTV cameras alone, and granted most of those are
in urban areas London and so on. Yeah, I was
gonna say, if you, if you get out into the
(31:50):
country in parts of the UK, there's very little going on,
Lots and lots of just land, the old moors that
I'm I'm really that familiar with. But I've definitely driven
through something past the um where there really isn't much
going on, and some of the forested areas, I mean
it's I don't know, there's there's enough mystery left in
(32:12):
there that I think we have to keep an open
mind here. Still, Yeah, TI to agree. I think that's
a good point. And for skeptics, the existence of any
large cat population at all in this area feels incredibly implausible.
And forget a breeding population. Remember those are two different things, right.
(32:33):
You might have like an isolated small population of escaped feelines,
but a breeding population to be sustainable would probably have
to be larger than just a couple of cats. And
then the second thing they ask is where's the actual
evidence if there were a breeding population through were a
large population of cats, wouldn't someone have found the scats
(32:54):
or some spore or skeletons, or perhaps most easily identified
the carcasses of other animals Wilder domestic appeared to be
killed and eaten by large feelines. That's that's one of
the questions. But as we've just as we've just found,
there have been carcasses discovered right now, the only question
is what actually killed them. Anyhow, these are all great
(33:18):
questions on the skeptics end, and the fact is that
no one has found hard evidence of a breeding population
of cryptic cats, and that leads experts to conclude the
stories are just that interesting stories. But we're going to
pause for a word from our sponsor, and then we'll
dig a little further into the litter box here, which
(33:38):
is the worst word play, and we're back. Apologies to
everybody who just just heard the l word and thought,
damn and I have to clean that thing again. Uh,
I had. I had a very strong memory of watching
(34:00):
my cat gingerly cover up her own poop in the
litter box, just to make sure it was hidden away
and didn't smell bad. I don't know, I'm I'm applying
that isn't it weird that cats just naturally do that?
So and also like that not to get more bid,
but with the fact that they if they're injured or
(34:22):
they're like dying, they will crawl under the house, or
they will like hide themselves away. They don't want to know,
they don't want to be seen suffering by They like
they're like very private creatures. It's very interesting of the
mentality of the cat. Yeah, they don't want to be
attacked while they're vulnerable too, you know. And they'll also
kind of hide. Um, I believe to give birth. So yeah,
(34:44):
sorry about that cleaning winter box when you get a chance, folks. Uh,
maybe while are you thinking about that, Let's let's look
at the explanation. So first get this out of the way.
We need the mundane explanation. And in the mundane explanation
here would be misidentification. If you're not expecting to see something,
then you can be startled by its appearance. So it
(35:07):
might be and they may have seen an ordinary house
cat of unusual size main coon style from a distance,
and depending on the angle, they might honestly mistake it
for a larger animal. That doesn't mean it's a hoax.
That doesn't mean they're you know, grifters or crazy people.
It just means that from their vantage point, maybe the
(35:27):
thing looked larger than it is. Similar to that story
we did on a strange news not terribly long ago
about these like dire wolf type creatures that I believe
pulled somebody over or pulled a cow over like a
guardrail or something crazy like. Yeah, I was allegedly allegedly,
but but a big point of contention that was the
(35:48):
distance at which the creatures were viewed, and the time
of night, and the you know what I mean, Like
there's a lot of things that the eyes can certainly
play tricks on you and in certain circumstances. Yeah, and
think about you know that main coon example. Uh, honestly,
some main coons can attain the length of a Eurasian lynx.
(36:09):
But they the thing is, they weigh less and they
have a slimmer build, but you might not be able
to tell if you're looking at them from far enough away,
because they've also got a ton of fur, so they
get puffed up, you know what I mean. And if
you ever uh, well, I think it looks creepy. But
if you ever see a picture of a main coon
shaved versus unshaven, you can see there's a tremendous difference.
(36:34):
So we got that out of the way. Misidentification almost
certainly happened in several many of these sightings over the years. Guys,
correct me if I'm wrong here. Some some cat species,
when they are alerted or angry or you know, in
fight or flight mode, do they physically puff up at all,
(36:57):
like with their fur going out the way a dog's
back raises sometimes. Yeah, you will see them like arch
their backs. Have you seen? Have you? They're creepy videos
of it too. I've seen I've seen a cat do that.
I'm just wondering it's like a lynx species. I'm just
unaware if they have any other kind of I don't know,
physical appearance change when they're in that attack mode. I
(37:21):
just don't don't question. Yeah, that is a good question. Um.
But again, you know, if you're not expecting to see something,
then you might not have the presence of mind to
like try to not physical characteristics. You might just be
baffled and then decide to leave, right. Um. Anybody who's
been surprised by an animal in the wild, especially one
(37:43):
that might be dangerous, it's probably felt the same thing,
right And just you're supposed to slowly back away. They
don't want to hang with you again. Uh, And if
they do want to hang with you, it's probably not
for a reason that you would enjoy. So we've got
that explanation of the way. But secondly, there's something interesting here.
You absolutely can have sightings of a single large cat
(38:07):
without ever having a native breeding population. In the UK
in particular, there there's a strong possibility that some of
these sightings could have been former pets that became inconvenient
or illegal and were later released into the wild, like
their exotic pets in Florida. Um not cats, but like
(38:28):
you know, like gators that have been released. So if
we go over to the BBC reporters did something interesting.
They cited a law in nineteen seventy six is a
possible inflection point the Dangerous Wild Animals Act. Before this act,
there was this weird fad in the sixties and seventies
and people with enough cheese, enough scratch, enough wealth, or
(38:52):
enough influence would keep tigers or cheetahs or whatever as pets,
just as a fla x And they didn't need anything
but money to do this. So that you could you
could go to a park and you could just see
some dude walk in his cheetah and there's nothing you
could do about it. But once, once this Act was
(39:13):
passed in direct response to this fad. A lot of things,
like a lot of primates, um larger carnivores, reptiles, especially
venomous ones are really big ones. And then scorpions and spiders, etcetera,
could no longer be kept as pets unless you met
a number of conditions, unless you got a license. A
(39:34):
lot of people ended up giving away their pets to
zoos or sad sadly almost said sad fully, I want
to say regretfully, sadly, let's just say sad fully. Yeah, yeah,
it's portmanteau. So sad fully they had to put these
animals down. But it is completely possible that a few folks,
(39:54):
you know, said ah Man mc dermott, my favorite puma
or panther or whatever. For a panther, I can't put you,
I can't put you in a zoo. You're you're free,
your soul, your soul was not made for a cage.
But I sadly cannot keep you, thigh McDermott thig off
(40:18):
into the wilds of the estate. You can, you can.
That is so what happened. You know, that happened at
least a few times, right if it was a fad,
even even in the time before it became illegal, or
you know the Dangerous Wild Animals Act in seventy six.
You know that some people had a big cat in
(40:41):
their home because they thought it was gonna be awesome,
and they gave it up once the cat became mature
because they were terrified, you know, or they they had
a human child of their own or something. There are
so many circumstances that could occur that you know, will
have occurred that some of these animals got really beast
or or your spouse was allergic. Yeah, right, and so
(41:06):
like this. If we continue this speculation a little bit further,
it is possible, if not plausible, that some of these
animals could have encountered each other, and again possible not plausible,
that they could have bred in the wild. And if
they had issue, right, if if they created offspring, their
(41:30):
descendants may have been born in the wild and roam
the countryside freely. This is where we get to stories
of things like the Beast of Bodman. That's right. The
Beast of Bodman was a large panther like cap presumably
named McDermott, that claimed to have been active around the
(41:50):
nineteen nineties. UM, and there are multiple photographs, purported photographs anyway,
of what this thing looked like. Um. At the very least, uh,
it looks like an enormous house cat just kind of
kicking it over there in Cornwall. And also it's been
seen in Essex Whales also has been home to some
(42:12):
reports of giant cats in more rural areas. And in
some cases these sightings seem to correlate to UH seeing
these similar kind of scenes of animal mutilation, specifically on sheep,
because that's what you have out there in Cornwall in Essex. Um,
though no one's been able to rule out dogs or
foxes who also are fond of mutilating sheep. UM. Then
(42:34):
the third category we have is as hoaxes, and of
course in this category we have plenty of examples. UM.
We don't need to spend much time on this because
it's obvious when you're talking about things like this, there's
always possibilities of folks trying to put one over on
the public. You know, I don't, I don't know, but
what do you the motivation behind that is? Is it
just people that want to believe they want be they
(42:55):
actively are doing something dishonest? To make people believe. But
it's it's duplicitus that seems quinterintuitive, Like, I don't know
why people would try to spread hoaxes if they're you know,
hoping to shed light on the existence of actual cryptids. Dude. Yeah,
I've I've been here for a while and I still
have no idea why people do any of the things
(43:16):
they do. I'll tell you all right, let's hear it.
I mean, it's it's awesome that what a cool story,
and you get you a little attention, right, It might
get you on the local news for a second. You
might make your buddies laugh, like look at that. Look
who we look who we got them to believe? Huh. Other,
here's something else. Let's say you're small town somewhere out
(43:38):
in Cornwall. That makes sense, right, Oh man, there's a
beast out here. Oh shoot, we're gonna start a pub.
We're gonna name it after this beast. Now it's a
place to go. We can make some money here. This
is easier than all this sheep stuff. Anyway. I'm just
that's this all hypothetical. But okay, okay, that's a good
point to raise the profile of a place for tourists
(44:01):
cryptid tourism, like the Peemi Silent Zone in Mexico. That's right,
it's a really good point, Matt. Maybe no, that's it.
I think that's probably the best argument. Um. But then
other times it's just s is and g's, you know,
spores and giggles. Yeah, so we do have we do
(44:23):
have something really interesting though, and we saved the best
for last. If you like us, love a good a
good cryptid tale, and even if you think most of
them don't add up, and you still find yourself wanting
to believe there's something out there, you might be pleasantly
surprised to learn that get us, some big gass cats
(44:46):
have actually been found in the UK. It's absolutely true.
At least some of these cryptids turned out to be real,
perhaps most famously a puma, a real puma, was captured
in Scotland in nineteen d not too too long ago,
and was after years of reported sightings in the area.
The guy who captured this animal as a farmer named
(45:08):
Ted Noble. Uh. He was responding to these many reports
of this creature being around, so he set up a
trap and by golly he got it. This uh, this
cat was transferred to the Highland Wildlife Park Zoo, where
it lived in comfort until it passed away. And there's
one happy note that I though I would add with
(45:31):
the scripted story. The director of the zoo at the
time was a guy named Eddie or Bell, and he
had a theory of his own. He said, you know
this animal that they named Felicity. By the way, this
animal may have been tamed because she seems to enjoy
being tickled. And uh, that's that's incredibly like sweet. But
(45:53):
but it means you know that it had clearly had
human contact or something like like that in the past.
And then there's another example of an actually Eurasian links
that was found in the nineties. Oh, yes there is.
But before we hit the links, I'm just trying to
imagine the first person who attempted a tickle on a puma,
(46:13):
Like on this particular puma. Let's give it a little
tickle and see what happens. Yeah, and also hit the links. Underrated,
underrated word play. There there we go, before we hit
the links. Um, yes, there there is a story of
a Eurasian lynx that was killed in Norfolk. The story
(46:35):
goes that it attacked several sheep in the area over
period a couple of weeks. And the only reason why
we know about this is because in two thousand three
there was a story written about it, like it became public.
The public became aware in two thousand three, and everybody's like, yeah, okay,
sure there's a Links out here attacking cheap. But then
in two thousand six a police report came out that
(46:56):
confirms that the whole thing happened, or at least a
two six police report about the attack was made public,
I think, and this confirmed that another cryptique case was
indeed true. Additionally, there have also been reports approven reports
(47:19):
of jungle cats uh speculation about awful lots, and of
course Links is another one was captured alive in two
thousand and one. This was called the Beast of Barnett.
It was young Eurasian Links and thankfully was also placed
safely in a zoo. So it's no surprise that today
the search for these A b C's, these big cats
(47:39):
continues across the United Kingdom, and unlike stories of bigfoot
or lock nests, it does genuinely seem that at least
some of the stories are true. If you would like
to learn more, check out the research by an organization
called Big Cats. In Britain, there are a group that
publishes an annual collection of reported sightings. And just to
(47:59):
get in front of this, uh, there are probably some
of less listening to the audience today who would who
would say that a cryptid is uh is strictly defined
as a creature purported but not proven to exist. And
may argue that links is and pumas don't qualify as
cryptids because the scientific world was aware of their existence. However,
(48:22):
I think, for for our money, UH, these, for our
cat these do count as cryptids because they were rumors
that were proven to be true, just like the seed
La cants. But and they were cryptids before we could
at least prove that there was something very similar happening,
(48:43):
say similar creature did exist. And one just one note here,
don't do cat nip. Just you know, think about your life,
think about your family, everybody it effects, and just don't
do cat what are you? Are you serious? Is this
a thing? I'm a monster that just love it so much.
They love it, It's awesome. Also, don't do nutmeg. The
(49:04):
sailor is way over right, and definitely don't ever try
the cinnamon challenge. It's terrifying and it will make you gay. Yeah,
and no one can eat fifty eggs. Yeah, and the
egg create challenge is way easier. Just does there are
another challenge that the egg create challenge? That sounds yeah,
(49:24):
it's egg creates. You just stuck up egg creates and
you try and step on them, but they all break.
It's the challenge to break them or not break them.
It's just way safer. I've got to be very very footed.
You just kind of like ballet dance your way across them. Yeah.
This sounds like big egg propaganda. They're trying to get
people to buy more eggs. Speaking of what did you
do an experiment in like school where you had to
(49:46):
like build a thing to hold eggs and like parachuted
off of buildings so they wouldn't crack. Were you successful
in your attempts? I was, of course you were, Yep, yep,
your genius you. I definitely I lucked out, but I liked.
I can't remember many of the specifics, but I'm sure
it would have. I'm sure it was anybody's game. As
(50:08):
a matter of fact, I would I remember being surprised,
and I think you know, it did occur to me, like,
why didn't anybody just hard boil their egg because that's cheating.
That's like, that's like hot gluing up silver dollar to
the bottom of your pinewood derby car. I guess you
disqualified in the egg situation. You're already in this really
ridiculous scenario, you know what I mean, Like I I
(50:32):
don't know. Well, let us know about your egg drops,
let us know about your your favorite weird internet challenges. Uh,
don't do catnet, don't do nutmeg, but do tell us
about any rumors you've heard of cryptid sightings in your
neck of the global woods. And let us know if
you have, uh, if you have encountered something on your
(50:54):
own that you cannot explain. We've had a lot of
our fellow listeners sharing some pretty credible stories. You know,
it does. It doesn't just stop in Idaho, because the
truth of the matter is um. The truth of the
matter is, even though humanity is all over the world now,
there's still a lot of wilderness out there, and our
(51:14):
odds of finding cryptids for various somewhat depressing reasons are
actually higher now than ever before. So let us know,
and also let us know if you saw a big
cat in uh, if you saw a big cat in
the United Kingdom, if you're one of those people, if
you were one of the people you related to actually
(51:35):
owned a puma or a leopard in the seventies, and
let it go, what happened to it. Uh, we can't
wait to hear from you. We try to be easy
to find online all over the place. On the Internet.
You can find us on Facebook, you can find us
on Twitter, you can find us on YouTube at the
handle conspiracy Stuff. We change it up ever so slightly
(51:55):
for Instagram or wre conspiracy Stuff Show. If those things
aren't your bag, you can try get ving us a
telephone call at one eight three three std w y
t K. Yes, you have three minutes to leave a message.
Please say whatever you'd like. Give yourself a great nickname.
We accept all of them. We uh, we just think
it's safer that way. Use a nickname. Just as a
(52:17):
heads up. If you've called in the past month, we
have not listened to your message yet, but we are
working on that right now, so we're gonna get up
to date. Make sure we've listened to everything. And uh,
you know we we can't thank you enough for those
As we're going through just so many of you have
wonderful stories and cool ideas. Really appreciate you. Yeah, we
should also. I think we can allude to this part
(52:40):
part of the part of the reason we're a little
backed up there is that we have a real life
secret project in the works. Yes, that's all we can
say about it. The last thing we can say is
if you want to talk cryptics, If you've got a story,
we can't wait to hear it. If you if you
feel like the phone call won't cut it because you
you're elf, have photographs, or you have links you want
(53:02):
to send, then there's one last way we always ask
people to contact us. It's at our good old fashioned
email address. We read every letter we get. Go ahead
and drop a conspiratorial line to us where we are
conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't
(53:36):
want you to know is a production of I Heart Radio.
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