February 28, 2025 • 57 mins
Everyone's heard of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster -- but what about the hundreds of other cryptids rumored to exist around the world? Join the guys as they delve into the stories of cryptids you may have never heard of.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh, fellow conspiracy realist, there is a lot of stuff
going on here in twenty twenty five. We just started
twenty twenty five, and I gotta tell you, guys, I'm
kind of pooped yet.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
It's kind of exhausting being a human these days.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Well just look around, Just look around, Just look around.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
And this is why sometimes we take a break and
go back to our roots.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
The evenings of yesteryear.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Every so often we will go through a cryptid phase.
And this is a classic episode for all our fellow
conspiracy cryptozoologists out there. We've all heard a bigfoot, we've
all heard of the Lockness Monster and Mothman with that
amazing posterior. But it turns out there are hundreds hundreds
(00:54):
of other cryptids that you don't really hear about in
the West exactly.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
And this episode is pre us finding out about Squank,
which is super exciting.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
The Squawk guys, people behind the curtain of life. My
kid's been printing their own clothes lately and trying to
start a little business, was asking me what would be
something that they should print on, like a dress they
found in a threst stort.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
I was like, I got just the thing. It's the Squonk.
They politely passed, But I love the Squak, the weeping, pathetic,
little sad boy Cryptid, the.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Saddest cryptid of all. Check out our other episode which
is entirely about the Squawk. And for now, we can't
wait to introduce you to some cryptids you have never
heard of.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Let's get right into it.
Speaker 6 (01:42):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nolan.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission
Control Decant. Most importantly, you are here, and that makes
this stuff.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
They don't want you to know a little bit of
a personal story that.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
You guys would enjoy to open up the show today,
I was at our local bar named in a burst
of creativity, the local, I guess we give them a
lot of business. And I realized about twenty five minutes
into what began as a light conversation and became in
a passion debate about Bigfoot and cryptozoology in general. It's like, Wow,
(02:47):
yelling at someone about cryptozoology in a bar is just
very on brand for me. It might be the most
on brand thing I've done in the past month.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
How what level of yelling are we talking here?
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Just raised voices what whorp in America would call a
healthy conversation.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Oh, you wouldn't elevate it to the level of a rant.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
There was no agro.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Really, there were disagreements, but it was it was a
respectful exchange of intellectual perspectives.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
To be fair, if you're in a bar, it's a
little noisy, so a certain level of voice raising is
already acceptable as like a baseline of communication.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Yeah, but if that music comes down in your life.
But the sheer surface area of the forest, oh you
were there, Yeah, it did.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
It did good to a thing where it got.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
It did get to a point where he said, you
know what, let's go outside, and we went outside to
the front porch area and continued talking.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Beautiful.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
But this this got me thinking that we have we've
explored so many different types of cryptids in the past.
You know, we've explored bigfoot sasquatch, mothman, allegations of dinosaurs
in parts of what was that Western Africa.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Yeah, we've talked about some worms that were really creepy.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
I remember the Mongolian death worm. Yeah, I love that one.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Are like the ones from Tremors?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Do you think they seem it's almost as if the
ones from Trimmors are based somehow on that idea. They're
not as big as the worms from trimmers, the Mongolian
death worms?
Speaker 4 (04:20):
Gotcha?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, gotcha? What about the sandworms from beetle juice or
from Dune?
Speaker 1 (04:26):
No, No, those those things would be if the sandworms
from Dune would be the largest organisms to exist on Earth.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
If they were real, be cool.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
I would if there was a big if there was
a bigger thing than a whale, I would hope it
was not a worm.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
But you know, yeah, we'd all be in the spice
business anyway.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
That's true.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
That's true, we would.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
But we since we've discussed the concept of cryptozoology in
earlier episodes, we don't need to go into all of
it today. We can just give you the quick and
dirty recap. So here are the effects cryptozoology.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Something we very much enjoy on this show is the
study of and search for animals that are a lot
of times considered either extinct or legends, the legendary moch
le membe that we've talked about before. It's technically the
mission of a cryptozoologist to evaluate the possibility of the
(05:24):
existence of something, some animals existence, So a lot of
times there's specialization that occurs here.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah, And that's I love that you point out the
technically that's their mission because one of the criticisms that
cryptozoologists get, and there are many, is that they are
setting out to prove something they already believe, you know
what I mean, Like you're sitting out with an agenda,
like I know in my heart the four tooth waffle
(05:52):
snapper is real. Yeah, and a relic population exists in
the Alps or the Pyrenees or what have you, and
I'm going to prove that I am correct, rather than
prove the truth.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
A lot of that has to do with the popularity
of I'm just going to use one example here of
something like squatching, like going out squatching to find a sasquatch,
which is you know, it sounds silly, but it is.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Wait, is that what you call it?
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Really?
Speaker 2 (06:18):
You got a squatching?
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Yeah? You an evening you can go squatching. That's real
seo squatch. Pretty sure. There are Discovery Channel shows where
people go squatching on the regular.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
So if you are a fan of the search for
Bigfoot or sasquatch related creatures, let us know if that
came organically from your community or if a producer at
you know, Discovery made it up.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Who knows. All I know is that that. I think
that concept of someone going out to prove the existence
of something they already believe in maybe is tied into that.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Yeah. Yeah, and the animals that they're looking for, the
life forms have not been conclu usively proven to exist,
are called cryptids, So cryptos zoologists cryptids. They're popular types
of cryptids, the greatest hits we all we all know them,
we love them, like the Elvis of cryptids or the
jay Z of cryptids. The Who's another musician? The Naws
(07:18):
of cryptids? Uh, Cisco Cisco a different genre?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
He did he the.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Oh no, he's canceled. The He's he's not quite famous
enough to see he's more of a big name. Uh.
The Alexander Hamilton the cryptids.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah, he's the doctor Frankenforter of cryptids. Is that the
right name from Rocky Horror picture. Yeah, he's the Paul
Decant of Cryptids.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Bigfoot called the Paul Simon even take it, and that
would also apply to things like the loch Ness Monster
in earlier days, that Jersey Devil, which should be more
of a Garfunkle of Cryptids, I.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Would argue on I would think they were a different band.
We're going to hit a lot of garfunkle Cryptids today.
In other words, the lesser Paul actually told us he
created this file as B Team Cryptids. Yeah, and I
wasn't joking. He's a very serious man.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
It's it's reminiscent of our B Team Superpowers episode we did, right.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Yeah, which was still.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
So interesting, like the fact that magnetic people just have
very frictive skin.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Yeah, and they ended up on the B team.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
And they ended up on the B Team. They were
like the Great Lakes Avengers. For all you comic fans
out there, we already talked about this on air, right.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
We talked about that in the very episode.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
I believe Great Lakes Avengers. There's one guy who's Doorman
his power. I just have to bitch this for anybody
who hasn't heard this, because I'm still fascinated by it.
Doorman has the amazing superpower that allows him to when
he's standing next to a wall, people can walk through
(09:06):
him then and then through the wall.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
It doesn't he can't teleport, he can't, you know, be intangible.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
He can just become a door.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
But he can become a door and then go on
the other side. Right, so technically he can go through walls.
I don't know, he could open up. He could walk
up to the wall, become a door, and then exit
on the other side.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
That's just walking through walls.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
That gets pretty dope.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
I guess it's like a super convenience then a power.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
It's more of a super helper than he is a superhero.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
He's kind of a super furniture piece.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
All right, superheroes aside. Yes, let's jump back to e cryptozoology.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Right, okay, So here's the strange thing about cryptozoology. Although
it is often called a pseudo science. Although you know,
most people in the Academy capital A dismiss it as
pure mallarchy and poppycock, or a lot of people in
the world of the layman see it as at the
(10:11):
very least controversial entertaining, maybe more like reality TV junk food,
you know what I mean, rather than some serious pursuit.
But the truth of the matter is, the ugly truth
of the matter for people who hate cryptozoology, is that
researchers have actually verified the existence or rediscovery, we should say,
(10:32):
of multiple real animals that were once thought to be
myths or legends or extinct, and we've got famous examples
of those, like the celicanth. Gorillas were thought to be
mythical for a long time.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Yeah, just to jump in that Ceilcanth was a fish
that we thought for humanity, thought for centuries that this
thing had been extinct, and then it just showed up again.
And if nobody was looking then it may maybe it
would have just come back in. We wouldn't have known. Still,
but thank goodness for ey cryptozoologist.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, and also we have to point out in both
of those cases, this discovery comes about because Western Europeans
finally saw these animals that the local people in the
region had known about four years. The local community where
(11:25):
the ceilicant was rediscovered, first off, they were very unimpressed
with the fish and not think was a big deal,
and their reaction was very much like big whoop because
those things taste like trash.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Yeah, what are we going to do with it? On
an applicable level, cares yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
And so we know that cryptozoology has successes, but it
also has some baked in flaws, some things that make
it very difficult for let's say, zoologists to take cryptozoologists seriously.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
And one of the biggest problems, the most prevalent problems
in the field of cryptozoology, is the potential to misidentify
some of these things. We see it time and time again.
It can happen super easily. Most people, for example, haven't
really seen a bear in the wild, let alone right
up close. If you add to that the adrenaline rush
(12:18):
that comes with the initial sighting of said creature, and
you know, the fallibility of our memories as imperfect human beings,
despite what we like to tell ourselves, right, And of course, additionally,
you've got just hoaxes a plenty.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Well, you know, and this is a really great point here.
Let's just say we make an example out of it.
The four of us in this room plus you, we're
all walking around in the woods. We've got all our
gear to find our squatch. We know, we don't believe
it's out there, but we want to prove that it's
out there or not. And we happen upon something on
a ridge high above us. It seems to be brown,
(12:56):
the color that oh, sasquatch might be that color. And
I can just see some it looks like fur up
there moving around, just this example that we've given here
of a bear. If we all observe this thing and
we're unable to get up there to get our eyes
on it, and it sounds like there's maybe a weird
noise occurring up near this location.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Whoo woo woo, woo woo woo woo boo, sort of
a three stages kind of sound.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Right, Oh my god, So what is that? Oh my god?
What is happening up there? It may be within us
to at least a few of us would probably believe,
perhaps you, that that was a sasquatch, even if we
can't prove it was or not, But another percentage of
us would say, oh, that's just a bear. Guys, we
didn't see anything, And that, in I think, is what
(13:41):
we're talking about here.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Yeah, and there's another weird twist. We're in a immensely
fascinating time. For cryptozoology, twenty nineteen is the best time
for cryptozoology since the past few centuries, really since back
in the days when people we're still exploring the edges
of maps. And it leads us to a weird twist. So,
(14:05):
the human population is growing more importantly despite concentrating more
and more in cities and urban areas, our civilization is
reaching out to places it had never reached before. And
when we combine this with our weird obsession with making
surveillance technology, our species, weird obsession with making surveillance technology
(14:30):
and monitoring everything through satellites, those two factors mean that
we are more likely than ever before to discover previously
unidentified or lost organisms. And you can find these kind
of inspiring lists. It's a sad irony because a lot
of the reasons we're discovering these these other creatures is
(14:52):
because we are in the process of destroying their environment,
obliterating them, creating some sort of some sort of analog
of genocide. Right, we are rendering them extinct. And this means,
you know that we might as we go forward, we
might still find stuff, you know what I mean, Like
(15:13):
the colossal squid that's another cryptid that was proven to exist.
And when it comes to cryptids, it turns out there
are way more than Bigfoot, way way more.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
And we'll get into specific examples after this word from
our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Here's where it gets crazy. We found examples of a
you know, we don't have every cryptid ever mentioned in
this episode, but we found some examples of some obscure
ones that seem pretty interesting. So we're going to explore
those and then maybe talk a little bit about whether
or not they could be real pros and cons.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Okay, so first off, we've got okay, we practice this
pronunciation off fair. Oh see if I can get it.
Incan Yamba nailed it great, thanks man. The Incan Yamba
is a legendary cryptid from Southern Africa that lives by
waterfalls and most commonly is seen at a place called
how It Falls in South Africa, and it has a
reputation for looking like a snake except for the head, which,
(16:17):
of course, like you do, looks like a horse horse head.
That seems like a very non functioning creature when it
use its weird horsehead to kind of drag itself along,
you know, use it like a weird foot.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
I don't know, you know, because it's aquatic, it makes
a little more sense just because it wouldn't have to
drag the head around.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Do you think it's amphibious though? Is the questions? Let's
let's move forward here. So yeah, like you said, Ben,
the Incan yamba is aquatic and lives in lakes and
near waterfalls, and to some it's suspected of being a
species of giant eel rather than a snake at all.
And it's distinguished from similar creatures due to its odd size,
(17:00):
which is over twenty feet long.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
That's ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Yeah, it's too much feet along with a giant horse
looking head hanging out underneath a waterfall. First of all, no,
thank you. Well, you know you you hear a description
of something like that, and it makes you wonder how
many times, how many sightings have occurred to get that
(17:25):
kind of specific description of something, you know, like the
horse or horse shaped head is so specific to me.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Well, now we've heard of the water horse, right, it's
a film about a small and NeSSI type creature. I
just wonder if the name you know what I mean,
Like we've got a sea horse, yeah, we've got which
has like a elongated head. And with a snouff and
things like that. I wonder, okay, if it's based on
that kind of maybe it doesn't actually have has looked
like a horse per se does and have like fur
and literally a transplanted horse head looks more like a
(17:57):
you know, just have it as more of an elongated shape, okay, horse.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Like yeah, yeah, So, according to locals and people who
believe in it, it's most active during the summer months.
Of this leads some people to believe that it is
migratory or that it's been around so long in the
local culture that they believe it as supernatural abilities causes
(18:23):
seasonal storms to come. But if we look at what
this actually could be, if this were a thing, then
we could say, maybe it's a large species of fresh
water eel, like the Angla mosambika or the Angla marmorata,
both of those.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
Here's the problem with these. These are large.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
These will freaking out if you saw them in the wild, probably,
but they grow to about six feet instead of twenty
So is this giant version of an existing thing? Maybe
the problem is that we usually see We know that
fish and maritime animals can grow to unusual size, but
(19:05):
we usually only see them reach that size when they're
out in deep oceans. So would this lake be deep
enough that something could grow to like more than three
times what it's supposed to grow to.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Mmm, it seems unlikely. But there is something really fascinating
in particular with this cryptid, and it's that it was
found and has been found in cave paintings from native tribes.
Is there are some tribes within the Quazulu Natal province
that had these cave paintings of these things or allegedly
(19:38):
of these things, and supposedly they had some kind of
supernatural power perhaps like they could influence the weather maybe
or would give good or generally bad tidings or would
bring bad tidings. What am I trying to say here? Yeah,
it would it would be it would be bad for
(19:58):
you to see one generally would be a bad omen
a bad omen.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah, woe betide those who crossed the Ikanyamba. Also have
I zoned out just for saken when you said a
tribe called because I totally thought you were going to
say a tribe called question.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Oh yeah, I know, I almost did, almost said that,
but no, it's it's that was actually several tribes within
a province.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
That makes sense too, because this is a very regionalized creature, right. Yes,
there's a lot of these come to us from the
African continent because for a long time, the members of
the Ivory Towers and the academies had no idea what
the what. They had no very well polished idea of
(20:46):
what the ecosystems or the biomes were like, and they
would just hear crazy stories or rely on disreputable sources.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Or just legends, local legends.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Or just legends because according to some people, especially if
you're in the Congo, you may run into gigantic creatures
undiscovered on the land as well. And that brings us
to something that I'm surely mispronouncing, that Emmela inca. It's
apparently around the size of an African bush elephant.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Cheese, Yeah, I know it's true. The Amela intoka is
around the size of an African bush elephant, which is
an average of three point two meters tall, weighing around
six tons or thirte and thirty pounds. It's brownish or
gray in color, sort of a gradation, with a very
heavy tail and a body quite similar in shape and
(21:37):
look to that of a rhinoceros, including one long horn
that comes out of its now but here's the difference.
It has four short, stump like legs, and it's described
as having no frills or ridges around the neck, and
the animal is alleged to be semi aquatic and feed
on malumbo or other leafy plants. The Emila intuca is
(21:58):
claimed to utter a very specific vocalization, described as a
variously as a snort, rumble, or growl. So what what
the heck could this thing be? Is it just sort
of like a weird pigmy kind of cousin of the rhinoceros?
Like what are we talking here?
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Right? And why is it?
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Is it a hippo with a horn? Because it's semi aquatic.
I hope it's a dinosaur whatever I said it. I
hope it's a large reptile.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
I would love.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Yeah, just something that was left over or maybe an
in between somewhere along the evolutionary lines.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yeah, yeah, like that that guy we mentioned that previous episode.
Doctor Roy Mackel, one of the people who is searching
for another similar cryptid called the Membembe right, Mokele Membebe.
He was looking for reports of this creature and then
he ran into reports of Emela and Toka. You'll hear
(22:56):
folks say that maybe it's a relic population of a dinosaur.
Maybe it's far enough out in the wild that it's
just too expensive to search for it, you know.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
But it's the same thing we've been talking about before
where there were reports that I believe it was in
nineteen thirty three when the West first, I guess heard
about this because there was a writer rolling through town, J. E. Hughes,
and he wrote this scene called eighteen Years on Lake
Woulou Walou, and he was talking about within this book
(23:28):
that apparently he was hanging out with some tribesmen or
he had heard stories at least of some tribesmen who
slaughtered something that kind of met this description, and you know,
maybe this thing is actually real. And then the guy
you're talking about, Roy p what's his name, Roy Mackle,
That dude was saying, you know, also, hey, here's some
(23:49):
eyewitness accounts going back to this thing, but we don't
have any pictures of it. We don't have any you know,
official pictures.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
We've got some bodies.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yeah, that's yeah, that's the problem with this one, because
it's supposed to be slightly larger than an elephant, and
it's supposed to hunt elephants.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Yeah, I mean you would think you.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Would think that someone would have discovered this or had
a taxidermy version of it in the British Museum or
you know, especially from the age of colonizers, right, you.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Think something would exist, or even just maybe the horn
they're talking about that one specific horn or the skull
or something. You'd have something somewhere, in my opinion, but
maybe not.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
You know, I don't know how this is going to
work in the edit. And sorry about that, Paul, but
we took a we we took a really quick break
and Noel, you went and got some water and it's true.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
Yeah, and I'm now quenched fully and I stole.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
The pumpkin's right now we have a pumpkin.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
It's kind of changed the vibe in the room, though,
I know that good for the better.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
Yeah, yeah, I'm feeling more focused.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Did you talk about how this could be something of
a combo between a triceratops and a striasaurus, a striacasaurus.
I don't even know that one.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
No, No, that's that's a good point, because we it
behooves us to have some specificity. You're right, I just
got excited and said dinosaur. But saying dinosaur is like
saying chair or cancer. It describes a rough concept of
a thing, correct, But there are so many differences, uh,
you know, with the emilia, we also see the we
(25:37):
we see descriptions of it. The date back pretty far,
but not as far back as the descriptions of our
earlier super eel, the Incan Yamba. So the Incan Yamba
may be an exaggerated story about something that was real.
The Emeloka is a little harder to explain. Was it
somebody like? In all the drawings that see of it?
(26:00):
It looks reptilian right, all the depictions, of course, spoiler alert,
there are no photographs. So going to your little point,
noel it it has a horn, it has you know,
rough skin, it's stuck covered with fur feathers. So could
they just be seeing a rhinoceros again in the wild
(26:22):
panicking and freaking out? Because I would.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
This is why I want to bring up, Yeah, when
is the last time you guys saw with your eyes
a rhinoceros?
Speaker 4 (26:31):
A number of years ago?
Speaker 2 (26:33):
About six I guess I must have seen one zooed
up somewhere, But I can't recall which zoo, like real
San Diego.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Maybe really picture in your mind the last time you
saw a rhinoceros.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
This about six years ago. It was that a zoo too,
It wasn't just like on the street.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Yeah, those things are just odd. They don't feel real,
especially if you live anywhere near a city, like anywhere,
it doesn't matter where're on Earth. If you live near
you're a city, probably aren't going to see a rhinoceros
very often, true, And if you just really behold one
(27:09):
walking around, it's an odd experience. So I'm just saying
to your point, Ben, when you were trying to build
off what you were saying, to just behold one may
throw you off, especially if it's far enough in the
distance it looks even bigger than maybe it is. Yeah,
just compared to the surrounding foliage or whatever it's near.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
I don't know if you saw one in the wild too,
like most of us, since the majority of human beings
live in urban areas. Now that's true, that's a change
that happened during our lifetime. That means the majority of
us will see most of the wild animals will see
are going to be in the animal jails that we
call zoos, or.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
At least in a protected reserve somewhere.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Okay, yes, which is better than a zoo. Sure, And
that's not a ding on zoos and being a little
bit unfair to them, because zoos do tremendous conservation work,
and the Atlanta Zoo actually has, I think, is this
huge force in the community. I think they do do
good work as well.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
And they just expanded and they have a savannah section now,
which is you know.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Oh I haven't been there.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Yeah, I have either. It's down by my house, so
I've been seeing the construction going on for quite a while,
but I have not been since it's been opened up,
so it'd be interesting.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
To check out.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
I know some people are super anti zoo, which I understand,
but I also understand that many of these animals would
not be able to survive in the wild, and that's
why they bring them in and take good care of them.
And zoos, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
We've talked about the poaching problem that is severe rhinoceross.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
And I mean take the example of tigers. There are
I think more tigers living in captivity in Texas than
there are in the wild across the planet, and that's
from a few years ago. Conservation efforts have up the
tiger population. Actually get notifications about tigers on Twitter.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Nice doesn't always just come up with some sports stuff.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
No, I.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Right now I'm following something called Tiger Tuesday, which I
didn't know is a thing, and it's where people just
point just post pictures of tigers. Oh wait, some sports
stuff creeps in. But I'm you know, I'm there for
the animals, gotcha. I should get better hobbies, guys. But
so we've been talking about large creatures in the African continent,
(29:30):
and again, as you can tell, the big question for
us is how could something be this big and remain undiscovered.
But let's go, let's go across the water. Let's let's
explore the story of one of the cryptids that I'm
surprised we haven't done a full episode on, and that
is the thunderbird.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Oh okay, the fabulous thunderbird.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Yes, okay, so quick story to get us into this.
Driving around with the wife and kid a couple of
days ago and we're just playing up stops on and
my son looks out his window and just kind of says, uh,
what's that, and it was two huge. I believe they
were turkey vultures. Okay, so much larger birds than any
(30:16):
of us are used to seeing just in the wild
at any time. I couldn't say exactly how tall they were,
maybe three feet tall something to that effect. Three feet
is probably about about three feet tall. But as my
son is remarking about them, they put their wings out
and fly upwards. And seeing a bird of that size
(30:39):
up close was intense. And I don't I mean, Noel,
you would have You would have probably peeped myself, no,
or at least jumped out and tried to attack them
just to get them away.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
No. I would have peepeed myself, okay, and then possibly
gone into an irreversible a coma.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Oh oh, well, well we would have taken measures.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
I don't think you undershare the level of fear I
have towards large birds. Yeah, forget forget about it.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Well, so here's the thing. Could you know, describe to
us what it would be like to see a thunderbird.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
I'd rather not, but I will give it my all.
So the popular hot spots for seeing these very large
bird like creatures would be in Northern Canada and even Alaska, Ben,
did you happen to catch any while you were vacationing there?
And then in.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Alaska vacationing, No, I saw a moose and that was
enough for me because those those things are huge. There's
a problem since you got this pumpkin here, there's a
problem in Alaska for people trying to celebrate Halloween because
when they carve pumpkins and they set them out on
their porch, depending on where they live, it's like candy
(31:56):
to a moose.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Sure can they make a smell it from a mile
away and they.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
Just come towards it and you can't stop them.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
What can we do?
Speaker 1 (32:03):
But but yeah, I would I would have freaked out
if I saw something larger than a move right third.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Absolutely it would have been that. And then you could
even see them down in Central America. But in Canada
you actually there's there's like totem poles that are in
the shape of thunderbird. Is a place called Thunderbird Park
in Victoria, British Columbia where you can see some of
these very things and they are the stuff of legend
mythical creatures. In fact, sort of eagle like birds that
(32:32):
are known for having very powerful talons and very much
present in Native American culture. Various tribes in the American Midwest,
and as we said, in Canada, the Sioux Nation, the
Brule Sioux from South Dakota on a reservation known as
(32:52):
the Rosebud Reservation, has their own thunderbird legend called the
wakean yon Tonka, also known as the Great Thunderbird.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
So, so if you're imagining these things, it's like a
large feathered terodon or a pterodactyl like huge and nol.
I'm gonna show you a picture here, and I want
you to describe this picture, because I have a feeling
if you came across this in real life, you'd have
a reaction. Look at this picture right here.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
I've seen that it looks it looks like it looks
like a giant corved kind of which a friend to
Ben's the world over. Ben commands them and they sort
of flock to him and they bring him shiny things.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
We work together.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
It's it's a symbiotic relationship. But this thing twice as
tall as that go, twice as tall as this gentleman
posing with this uh with this taxidermy car.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
No, it's not real. It's not real. It's it's in imagination.
It's an imagining of what a thunderbird how it's been described.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Okay, well it's it's the wingspan would probably be in
the neighborhood of I don't know, about twenty feet.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
Yeah, yeah, like that's that's correct.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
And the thing is, the thunderbird evolved from the word
we use now has taken a meaning that evolved from
the original mythology. It is present in a lot of
ancient Native American mythology, and you can find very old
sandstone carvings. You can find paintings and caves and so on,
(34:30):
and you know, like the total poles you mentioned earlier,
but now and in the recent in the recent past,
the phrase thunderbird has been used to describe any large, flying,
unidentified organism in the US or the.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
Quote unquote New World.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
So you'll hear people like the common thing people say
is like, well, it flew, but reports didn't see it
had feathers, so it's obviously a pterodactyl or you know,
a relic population of something like you know, some creature
like that, a flying reptile. But then you'll hear other
people say, no, it's it's it's essentially a massive eagle.
(35:11):
It's big enough to take your children.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
And they also say, but those pterosaurs did have feathers.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Dude, exactly exactly. So this animal is, or this cryptid,
i should say, is almost too famous for our cryptids.
You've never heard of lists it really is. Yeah, I
think you just wanted to explore it a little more
because growing up, if you were ever one of those
(35:38):
kids who read those time life mystery books, they all
had names that were kind of similar, like Mysteries of
the Unknown or Unexplored Unknown Mysteries, fair and normal, you
know what I mean. They would always trot out stories
about the thunderbird, usually the same one. There's a story
about these guys who will save it when if we
(35:59):
ever do an episode just on the thunderbird, it's a
story about these guys who shoot and capture one and
have the body so habeas corpus and all that, so
they ate.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
For a month.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
Well they take it back.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
But then as we hear, you know, and like a
lot of those stories, stories of giants from that time,
stories about the Stecha and all these other things, for
some reason the proof they had, the tangible proof disappeared,
and you can see those reproduction photos, right. That may
may be out and out hoaxes. But we have to
(36:34):
ask ourselves, if there was such a large creature now,
especially with the popularity of aircraft, how on earth, how
on earth have we not seen it?
Speaker 4 (36:47):
This one.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
I would say it's possible that it was an ancestral
memory of a very large creature. But then again, the
big birds that we know about, at least in this continent,
from what I understand, the big birds we know about
that we see in this continent as early humans were flightless,
(37:08):
right they weren't.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Yeah, like the big bird from Sesame Stream, Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 4 (37:12):
But mean he I don't know.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
He's got a temper he's got when the cameras aren't rolling.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
Yeah, he's got a dark ye.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
That guy's a real monster.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
And while we're on this subject of terrifying things, let's
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Speaker 4 (39:33):
All right, we're back. We're back.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
We're done with birds. We're going to explore something different.
So if you see something even worse, well that depends
worse for me. Worse for me, well, statistically worse for people.
Is the story of the jabab fofi ja apostrophe b
a f o f I. The name translates to great spider.
(39:57):
This is also in the Congo. It is exactly what
it says on the tin, Huge Spider with allegedly a
six foot wide leg span.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah, six feet and supposedly it's a fan of eating monkeys, birds, yes,
and even small antelopes.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
And humans obviously, of.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Course, not to mention besides their absurd ben as you
would say, cartoonish size. They're brown and said to be
a darker the older they get, which is an interesting fact,
or let's not call it a fact, let's call it
a detail. And they have a large purple mark on
their abdomens, so it sounds like a poison boy. Right,
(40:41):
They've got like some sort of shaped mark and they're black.
That doesn't sound good, right, Nature's.
Speaker 4 (40:47):
Way of saying, watch out back tf off.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
That's right. They're said to live in a similar to
the much smaller trapdoor spider conditions where they burn into
the ground.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Right, Yeah, but that's terrifying. Can you imagine something that
big that's burrowed into a hole? You're like, Oh, what's
the what's that hole?
Speaker 4 (41:09):
God? What a way to go?
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Sanguinates perhaps, Yeah, it makes me. It makes me think
of the scene in The Hobbit, you know, with the
giant spiders that the she.
Speaker 4 (41:20):
Lob and is that Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
It's the Hobbit is the Hobbit? Okay, yeah, I mean
I remember from the ranking, not Ranking Bass, the it
is Ranking Bass, the animated one with the weird singing
that great test you know. Yeah, that's there's a part
where the spiders get Bilbo and crew.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
The Ring.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
It's both. It's definitely in the Hobbit.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
It's definitely in the animated version of the Hobbit.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4 (41:47):
Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
I just remember, you know he's traveling with the with
the with the dwarves and they get abducted by spiders
and the spider wraps them all up and it's the
whole thing. Yeah, I remember that he's got the little
the little sword sting.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Yeah, I'm thinking of I'm thinking of the book. I'm
thinking not on the book.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Did they take some license with that scene in the book?
Speaker 1 (42:11):
In the book, shelb the spider, the evil spider is
in Lord of the Ring.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
You are absolutely correct about that.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
And I don't think the spider in the animated Hobbit
had a name. It was just creepy spiders. But that's
the one that made the most indelible mark on me
when I was.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Maybe Tolkien had a thing for spiders, maybe he like
they were scary to him, and that's why I put
it in. He would have loved this jabab fothey.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
And it also makes me think of George R. Martin
and the the game Songs of Fire and Ice books
talks about you know, the the winter that lasted you know,
years or whatever, and the spiders the size of hounds.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Is what they say, Well, we do have a possible
explanation for this.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
And it's even just as creepy and it's worse.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
So here's the thing, though, reports of this have been
taking place since the eighteenth century or since the nineteenth century,
and the Western Europeans found out about it in nineteen
thirty eight because people from Europe started claiming they had
seen these massive spiders, and given the politics of the time,
(43:25):
essentially what happened is that other Europeans said, okay, all right, well,
if someone who has the same color skin as us
said something, maybe we should believe them, which is just
the opposite of critical thinking, right, And because of these descriptions,
and because they matched so well, they were consistent from
(43:45):
different populations, they were burrowing trap spiders, Like you said,
because of this, people treated descriptions of these animals with
a little more. They give them a little more credibility
they would have ordinarily. But there has been one theory
advanced about the jibbuff f fy that says maybe they're
(44:10):
the misidentification of another type of animal that has proven
to exist, but not in a way that makes it better.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
It's called a coconut crab.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
It sounds delightful.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
It sounds delicious, sounds.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Like something you'd get like at a Hawaiian joint.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Coconut crab, a little pineapple dipping sauce on the side, bring.
Speaker 4 (44:32):
In some spot.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Well, just just for scale, guys, I'm gonna show you
a picture of how big the coconut crab is.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
That is a full size trash can.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
It's on a giant trash can. It looks sort of
like a creepy lobster.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
Yeah yeah, but on land, just hanging out a lot
of times. Just see him rolling with coconuts for real,
rolling around with coconuts and they're huge.
Speaker 4 (44:54):
Yeah, they're are the largest land crab. They also they
make an impression, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
They're terrestrial hermit crabs and oh, I'm sorry, excuse me.
Not just the largest land crab. They're the largest land
living arthropod overall in the world, got it. And we
think that given the environment of our current age, they
are at the upper limit for what an animal with
(45:23):
an exoskeleton can grow to be. They're as big as
it gets unless the environment literally changes.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
It makes total sense.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
And this also gives us some arguments against the existence
of this great spider, because spiders also have limits to
how big they can grow due to what they could
structurally support from the way their bodies are I won't
say designed, from the way their bodies happened.
Speaker 4 (45:54):
Or the way their bodies evolved.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
They also have a respiratory system and that limits what
they can what they can grow into. But did they
exist in the past, yes, or you know.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Oh perhaps perhaps you're talking about But the coconut crab exists.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
Yeah, that definitely, that's that's a real thing. It's a
real thing.
Speaker 4 (46:18):
Yeah, Matt, Are you uncomfortable with coconut crab?
Speaker 3 (46:21):
I think I am, And you know, I think one
coconut crab is fine. I'm okay with that. But if
if coconut crab has maybe her whole family around a bunch. Yeah,
I don't think I'm okay with that.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
You know, they they live probably over sixty years. Whoa,
so you could get one and maybe bond with it.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Well, that's the same with most a lot of crustaceans
right now. They have absurdly long lives, like the the Lobsters.
Speaker 4 (46:51):
I believe that's correct.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
I learned that from the film The Lobster because the
Colin Carlo's character, Farrell, he wanted to become a lobster
because it lives a very long time.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
I remember.
Speaker 4 (47:02):
Yeah, that was such a McSweeney's type of movie.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Yeah, big heady New Yorker type stuff. Right.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
I'm checking right now and see whether or not you
can get a coconut crab as a pet. It looks
like their conservation status is undecided. That data is deficient,
So let us know if you live in an area
where coconut crab are around, or if you've seen one,
whether you think it could be mistaken for a malicious spider.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
This is my favorite, just the name alone.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
Oh, we're removing on.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
I think we should. All right, let's do it. We
don't have to. You want to talk more about crabs?
Speaker 3 (47:36):
No, no, just take us there.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Okay, I'm gonna take you there in the format I'm
gonna take you there with two words, my friends, Okay,
rhinoceros dolphin.
Speaker 4 (47:46):
Finally, boom, that's what I say.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
So we've been asking for this whole time. It's like
a cryptid whale with two dorsal fins and eighteen twenty
off the coast of the Sandwich Islands, just a thing.
And New South Wales. Jean Rene Constean Qui, who was
a zoologist and anatomist, in addition to his pal Joseph
(48:09):
Paul Jamar, who was a naturalist, spotted what seemed to
be never before seen species of dolphins. And forgive me,
French folks, we don't have the benefit of Casey pegrim
on the case with us today. But koi or kui koy?
What do you think ben coy?
Speaker 1 (48:28):
I would go quoi q u o y I would
because it's fun to say, yes my entire.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
And Jama, I'm gonna say Jama chose to call this
this new underwater pal the rhinoceros dolphin. It's an official name,
being Delphinius rhinoceros. There have been a total of nine
rhinoceros dolphins sighted swimming side by side in a pod
in the Atlantic Ocean.
Speaker 4 (48:56):
That's the thing.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Yeah, So these are credible witnesses who saw multiple instances
of what appears to be a different they're up to
that point, undiscovered creature, and they were probably, like a
lot of us listening now, filled with an immense sense
of relief because you know, I think we can all
agree the crappiest, most irritating, depressing thing about dolphins and
(49:22):
rhinoceros is that they're not lumped together in one species.
Speaker 4 (49:25):
Yet.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
You know, you see a dolphin and you're just like,
I'm fifty percent there, but I cannot approve of this.
Speaker 4 (49:32):
I mean, yeah, that fifty rhino.
Speaker 3 (49:35):
Oh yeah, well, and that's that's the whole thing with
these these rhinoceros dolphins is that, you know, you've got
these experts viewing this this pod essentially right hanging out there.
They're used to seeing perhaps whales, perhaps dolphins, perhaps killer whales,
and they see these things and they noticed a couple
of things are different.
Speaker 4 (49:56):
Right.
Speaker 3 (49:56):
It's not that it's not the same coloration a lot
of dolphins that they've observed in the past. These are
I think they're white and black, like the white spots
on a like a black body. Yeah, similar to a
killer whale, but or at least in the two colors.
And they noticed that rather than a single dorsal fin
like you'd see on any dolphin, they had two.
Speaker 1 (50:19):
Right, Yeah, one curved fin near the head and one
curved fin on the back. And it's that second fin
is placed a little further back than where a dolphin's
fin would normally be. And they also thought from what
they could see that the pectoral fins were larger than average.
Speaker 4 (50:39):
And do we say it's nine feet long.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
No, we didn't.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
It's nine feet long, two hundred and fifty pounds. But
although that's that's that's a big boy. That's a big
ocean boy.
Speaker 3 (50:48):
And it's also an estimation from being on a ship,
from sailing while you're observing these, but you know.
Speaker 4 (50:54):
With not with a sample size of nine.
Speaker 3 (50:56):
Yes, and we're having experts.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
So this so is this interesting case because if there
are any undiscovered cryptids or large creatures as we have seen,
everything we know tells us that they are going, they
are most likely to be discovered in the ocean. Yes, right,
And so now we know that just because of that fact.
(51:22):
That fact alone, this one has a little more likelihood
of being a true case of an unapprehended or undocumented,
unproving cryptid that is a real animal. But we have
to ask ourselves what can it be? We have to
play you know, the stick in the mud police here. First,
(51:42):
it could just be a group of dolphins that had
a deformity, you know what I mean. There were the
dolphin version of an inbred hillbilly clan, which I know
it sounds dismissive, but what we're saying is they could
have just been a group or a pot that over
time had passed a mutation on to one another.
Speaker 3 (52:04):
Okay, okay, okay, Well there's a there's another idea here
that possibly it was a different kind of whale that
they saw that actually looks a little bit like a
dolphin called the Blainsville's what is it, Blaine Blaineville's beaked whale?
B e A k ed whale.
Speaker 4 (52:22):
Doesn't that sound like so you buy it at a
grocery store?
Speaker 3 (52:25):
Uh? Yeah, exactly, blain Well, well you can. You can
look up pictures of these. It's a very different looking whale,
and that dorsal fin is pushed. It looks like it's
pushed way back towards the tail. And they've got horns too, right, Yeah, yeah,
it's it's a very different creature, and if you had
(52:46):
never seen one before in let's say eighteen twenty, maybe
you believe it's just a different looking creature.
Speaker 1 (52:55):
One other theory was proposed by marine biologists Rich Ellis.
He said, what if the what was called the rhinoceros
dolphin was just a normal dolphin that had a sucker
fish or romorra attached to its head. Again, the problem
of observation. But either way, this feels.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
Like so they saw the two creatures like together in
concert and thought it was a super creature.
Speaker 1 (53:19):
Yeah, it's like maybe they saw it from far enough
away that they mistook the romorra for being another fin
got it. But there's a problem with that because they
saw nine different Again, the thing here is they saw
nine different instances of this, So this would mean this
would mean we have to ask ourselves what is more likely.
(53:40):
Is it more likely that nine separate romorra matched up
with nine separate dolphins and attached themselves to the same
position on their body, or is it more likely that
there is a you know, a different explanation that they
were supposed to have these fins. Still that gives this
(54:01):
is probably our strongest example of something that might actually
be a real thing, unless, of course, you're into the
idea of an enormous octopus.
Speaker 2 (54:15):
Okay, this has been a journey of discovery as a
non gentlemen. Well, next we're going to continue that into
into the into the depths with the Akaro Komoi. The
native I Knew people of Japan have long believed that
Volcano Bay, which is off the coast of Hokkaido, has
a population of giant octopuses called Akaro kamoi, and they
(54:40):
have been cited supposedly or purportedly rather for for many
many years. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
Yeah, there was a British missionary. His name was John Batchelor.
He was working in the area in the early nineteen
hundreds and he wrote down a siting in a book
he had called the I Knew in their fo and
he said that a great sea monster with large staring
eyes had attacked three local fishermen and their boat. So
imagine those old woodcuts of a boat sailing and then
(55:11):
a Leviathan like creature wrapping its tentacles around the mass
of the plane. It was like that, And he said
the monster was round in shape and emitted a dark,
fluid and noxious odor. The three men fled in dismay,
Not so much indeed, for fear, they say, but on
account of the dreadful smell, however that may have been.
(55:33):
They were so scared that the next morning all three
refused to get up and eat. They were lying in
their beds, pale and trembling. So the Japanese story giant octopus,
I feel like that could absolutely be true.
Speaker 3 (55:47):
Yeah, there's I mean, just now that we know the
giant squids exist, I feel like the giant octopus is
just waiting. It's just waiting to be found.
Speaker 2 (55:56):
He really wants to wait. There was a sighting recently,
there was a there were there were some some reports
about not too long ago, about some giant giant squids,
the very least.
Speaker 3 (56:06):
Yeah, squids. I think that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 4 (56:08):
The colossal squid.
Speaker 1 (56:10):
Yeah, but an octopus would be a little bit different,
and uh, I think a little more exciting because they're
so intelligent.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
Squids are are relatively intelligent, aren't they. Are they pods
as well or not?
Speaker 1 (56:24):
Yeah, but they're not like the octopuses, the brains, the
krem Delay, the brains of their heist game of the
tentacled sea dwellers exactly.
Speaker 2 (56:35):
But if they leaked up with rhinoceros.
Speaker 4 (56:36):
Dolphins, that'd be some stuff that'd be hot.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
Yeah, yeah, hot mixtape if yeah, hot mix tape.
Speaker 4 (56:43):
Yeah, that's a good look.
Speaker 1 (56:45):
And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (56:51):
That's right. Let us know what you think. You can reach.
You to the handle conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
Facebook X and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok or conspiracy stuff.
Speaker 3 (57:00):
If you want to call us dial one eight three
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Speaker 1 (57:17):
We are the entities to read every single piece of
correspondence we receive.
Speaker 4 (57:22):
Be aware, yet not afraid.
Speaker 1 (57:24):
Sometimes the void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (57:47):
Stuff They don't want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Oh, fellow conspiracy realist, there is a lot of stuff
going on here in twenty twenty five. We just started
twenty twenty five, and I gotta tell you, guys, I'm
kind of pooped yet.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
It's kind of exhausting being a human these days.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Well just look around, Just look around, Just look around.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
And this is why sometimes we take a break and
go back to our roots.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
The evenings of yesteryear.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Every so often we will go through a cryptid phase.
And this is a classic episode for all our fellow
conspiracy cryptozoologists out there. We've all heard a bigfoot, we've
all heard of the Lockness Monster and Mothman with that
amazing posterior. But it turns out there are hundreds hundreds
(00:54):
of other cryptids that you don't really hear about in
the West exactly.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
And this episode is pre us finding out about Squank,
which is super exciting.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
The Squawk guys, people behind the curtain of life. My
kid's been printing their own clothes lately and trying to
start a little business, was asking me what would be
something that they should print on, like a dress they
found in a threst stort.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
I was like, I got just the thing. It's the Squonk.
They politely passed, But I love the Squak, the weeping, pathetic,
little sad boy Cryptid, the.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Saddest cryptid of all. Check out our other episode which
is entirely about the Squawk. And for now, we can't
wait to introduce you to some cryptids you have never
heard of.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Let's get right into it.
Speaker 6 (01:42):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nolan.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission
Control Decant. Most importantly, you are here, and that makes
this stuff.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
They don't want you to know a little bit of
a personal story that.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
You guys would enjoy to open up the show today,
I was at our local bar named in a burst
of creativity, the local, I guess we give them a
lot of business. And I realized about twenty five minutes
into what began as a light conversation and became in
a passion debate about Bigfoot and cryptozoology in general. It's like, Wow,
(02:47):
yelling at someone about cryptozoology in a bar is just
very on brand for me. It might be the most
on brand thing I've done in the past month.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
How what level of yelling are we talking here?
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Just raised voices what whorp in America would call a
healthy conversation.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Oh, you wouldn't elevate it to the level of a rant.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
There was no agro.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Really, there were disagreements, but it was it was a
respectful exchange of intellectual perspectives.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
To be fair, if you're in a bar, it's a
little noisy, so a certain level of voice raising is
already acceptable as like a baseline of communication.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Yeah, but if that music comes down in your life.
But the sheer surface area of the forest, oh you
were there, Yeah, it did.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
It did good to a thing where it got.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
It did get to a point where he said, you
know what, let's go outside, and we went outside to
the front porch area and continued talking.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Beautiful.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
But this this got me thinking that we have we've
explored so many different types of cryptids in the past.
You know, we've explored bigfoot sasquatch, mothman, allegations of dinosaurs
in parts of what was that Western Africa.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Yeah, we've talked about some worms that were really creepy.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
I remember the Mongolian death worm. Yeah, I love that one.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Are like the ones from Tremors?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Do you think they seem it's almost as if the
ones from Trimmors are based somehow on that idea. They're
not as big as the worms from trimmers, the Mongolian
death worms?
Speaker 4 (04:20):
Gotcha?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, gotcha? What about the sandworms from beetle juice or
from Dune?
Speaker 1 (04:26):
No, No, those those things would be if the sandworms
from Dune would be the largest organisms to exist on Earth.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
If they were real, be cool.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
I would if there was a big if there was
a bigger thing than a whale, I would hope it
was not a worm.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
But you know, yeah, we'd all be in the spice
business anyway.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
That's true.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
That's true, we would.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
But we since we've discussed the concept of cryptozoology in
earlier episodes, we don't need to go into all of
it today. We can just give you the quick and
dirty recap. So here are the effects cryptozoology.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Something we very much enjoy on this show is the
study of and search for animals that are a lot
of times considered either extinct or legends, the legendary moch
le membe that we've talked about before. It's technically the
mission of a cryptozoologist to evaluate the possibility of the
(05:24):
existence of something, some animals existence, So a lot of
times there's specialization that occurs here.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah, And that's I love that you point out the
technically that's their mission because one of the criticisms that
cryptozoologists get, and there are many, is that they are
setting out to prove something they already believe, you know
what I mean, Like you're sitting out with an agenda,
like I know in my heart the four tooth waffle
(05:52):
snapper is real. Yeah, and a relic population exists in
the Alps or the Pyrenees or what have you, and
I'm going to prove that I am correct, rather than
prove the truth.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
A lot of that has to do with the popularity
of I'm just going to use one example here of
something like squatching, like going out squatching to find a sasquatch,
which is you know, it sounds silly, but it is.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Wait, is that what you call it?
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Really?
Speaker 2 (06:18):
You got a squatching?
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Yeah? You an evening you can go squatching. That's real
seo squatch. Pretty sure. There are Discovery Channel shows where
people go squatching on the regular.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
So if you are a fan of the search for
Bigfoot or sasquatch related creatures, let us know if that
came organically from your community or if a producer at
you know, Discovery made it up.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Who knows. All I know is that that. I think
that concept of someone going out to prove the existence
of something they already believe in maybe is tied into that.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Yeah. Yeah, and the animals that they're looking for, the
life forms have not been conclu usively proven to exist,
are called cryptids, So cryptos zoologists cryptids. They're popular types
of cryptids, the greatest hits we all we all know them,
we love them, like the Elvis of cryptids or the
jay Z of cryptids. The Who's another musician? The Naws
(07:18):
of cryptids? Uh, Cisco Cisco a different genre?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
He did he the.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Oh no, he's canceled. The He's he's not quite famous
enough to see he's more of a big name. Uh.
The Alexander Hamilton the cryptids.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yeah, he's the doctor Frankenforter of cryptids. Is that the
right name from Rocky Horror picture. Yeah, he's the Paul
Decant of Cryptids.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Bigfoot called the Paul Simon even take it, and that
would also apply to things like the loch Ness Monster
in earlier days, that Jersey Devil, which should be more
of a Garfunkle of Cryptids, I.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Would argue on I would think they were a different band.
We're going to hit a lot of garfunkle Cryptids today.
In other words, the lesser Paul actually told us he
created this file as B Team Cryptids. Yeah, and I
wasn't joking. He's a very serious man.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
It's it's reminiscent of our B Team Superpowers episode we did, right.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Yeah, which was still.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
So interesting, like the fact that magnetic people just have
very frictive skin.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Yeah, and they ended up on the B team.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
And they ended up on the B Team. They were
like the Great Lakes Avengers. For all you comic fans
out there, we already talked about this on air, right.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
We talked about that in the very episode.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
I believe Great Lakes Avengers. There's one guy who's Doorman
his power. I just have to bitch this for anybody
who hasn't heard this, because I'm still fascinated by it.
Doorman has the amazing superpower that allows him to when
he's standing next to a wall, people can walk through
(09:06):
him then and then through the wall.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
It doesn't he can't teleport, he can't, you know, be intangible.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
He can just become a door.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
But he can become a door and then go on
the other side. Right, so technically he can go through walls.
I don't know, he could open up. He could walk
up to the wall, become a door, and then exit
on the other side.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
That's just walking through walls.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
That gets pretty dope.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
I guess it's like a super convenience then a power.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
It's more of a super helper than he is a superhero.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
He's kind of a super furniture piece.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
All right, superheroes aside. Yes, let's jump back to e cryptozoology.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Right, okay, So here's the strange thing about cryptozoology. Although
it is often called a pseudo science. Although you know,
most people in the Academy capital A dismiss it as
pure mallarchy and poppycock, or a lot of people in
the world of the layman see it as at the
(10:11):
very least controversial entertaining, maybe more like reality TV junk food,
you know what I mean, rather than some serious pursuit.
But the truth of the matter is, the ugly truth
of the matter for people who hate cryptozoology, is that
researchers have actually verified the existence or rediscovery, we should say,
(10:32):
of multiple real animals that were once thought to be
myths or legends or extinct, and we've got famous examples
of those, like the celicanth. Gorillas were thought to be
mythical for a long time.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Yeah, just to jump in that Ceilcanth was a fish
that we thought for humanity, thought for centuries that this
thing had been extinct, and then it just showed up again.
And if nobody was looking then it may maybe it
would have just come back in. We wouldn't have known. Still,
but thank goodness for ey cryptozoologist.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, and also we have to point out in both
of those cases, this discovery comes about because Western Europeans
finally saw these animals that the local people in the
region had known about four years. The local community where
(11:25):
the ceilicant was rediscovered, first off, they were very unimpressed
with the fish and not think was a big deal,
and their reaction was very much like big whoop because
those things taste like trash.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Yeah, what are we going to do with it? On
an applicable level, cares yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
And so we know that cryptozoology has successes, but it
also has some baked in flaws, some things that make
it very difficult for let's say, zoologists to take cryptozoologists seriously.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
And one of the biggest problems, the most prevalent problems
in the field of cryptozoology, is the potential to misidentify
some of these things. We see it time and time again.
It can happen super easily. Most people, for example, haven't
really seen a bear in the wild, let alone right
up close. If you add to that the adrenaline rush
(12:18):
that comes with the initial sighting of said creature, and
you know, the fallibility of our memories as imperfect human beings,
despite what we like to tell ourselves, right, And of course, additionally,
you've got just hoaxes a plenty.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Well, you know, and this is a really great point here.
Let's just say we make an example out of it.
The four of us in this room plus you, we're
all walking around in the woods. We've got all our
gear to find our squatch. We know, we don't believe
it's out there, but we want to prove that it's
out there or not. And we happen upon something on
a ridge high above us. It seems to be brown,
(12:56):
the color that oh, sasquatch might be that color. And
I can just see some it looks like fur up
there moving around, just this example that we've given here
of a bear. If we all observe this thing and
we're unable to get up there to get our eyes
on it, and it sounds like there's maybe a weird
noise occurring up near this location.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Whoo woo woo, woo woo woo woo boo, sort of
a three stages kind of sound.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Right, Oh my god, So what is that? Oh my god?
What is happening up there? It may be within us
to at least a few of us would probably believe,
perhaps you, that that was a sasquatch, even if we
can't prove it was or not, But another percentage of
us would say, oh, that's just a bear. Guys, we
didn't see anything, And that, in I think, is what
(13:41):
we're talking about here.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Yeah, and there's another weird twist. We're in a immensely
fascinating time. For cryptozoology, twenty nineteen is the best time
for cryptozoology since the past few centuries, really since back
in the days when people we're still exploring the edges
of maps. And it leads us to a weird twist. So,
(14:05):
the human population is growing more importantly despite concentrating more
and more in cities and urban areas, our civilization is
reaching out to places it had never reached before. And
when we combine this with our weird obsession with making
surveillance technology, our species, weird obsession with making surveillance technology
(14:30):
and monitoring everything through satellites, those two factors mean that
we are more likely than ever before to discover previously
unidentified or lost organisms. And you can find these kind
of inspiring lists. It's a sad irony because a lot
of the reasons we're discovering these these other creatures is
(14:52):
because we are in the process of destroying their environment,
obliterating them, creating some sort of some sort of analog
of genocide. Right, we are rendering them extinct. And this means,
you know that we might as we go forward, we
might still find stuff, you know what I mean, Like
(15:13):
the colossal squid that's another cryptid that was proven to exist.
And when it comes to cryptids, it turns out there
are way more than Bigfoot, way way more.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
And we'll get into specific examples after this word from
our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Here's where it gets crazy. We found examples of a
you know, we don't have every cryptid ever mentioned in
this episode, but we found some examples of some obscure
ones that seem pretty interesting. So we're going to explore
those and then maybe talk a little bit about whether
or not they could be real pros and cons.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Okay, so first off, we've got okay, we practice this
pronunciation off fair. Oh see if I can get it.
Incan Yamba nailed it great, thanks man. The Incan Yamba
is a legendary cryptid from Southern Africa that lives by
waterfalls and most commonly is seen at a place called
how It Falls in South Africa, and it has a
reputation for looking like a snake except for the head, which,
(16:17):
of course, like you do, looks like a horse horse head.
That seems like a very non functioning creature when it
use its weird horsehead to kind of drag itself along,
you know, use it like a weird foot.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
I don't know, you know, because it's aquatic, it makes
a little more sense just because it wouldn't have to
drag the head around.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Do you think it's amphibious though? Is the questions? Let's
let's move forward here. So yeah, like you said, Ben,
the Incan yamba is aquatic and lives in lakes and
near waterfalls, and to some it's suspected of being a
species of giant eel rather than a snake at all.
And it's distinguished from similar creatures due to its odd size,
(17:00):
which is over twenty feet long.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
That's ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Yeah, it's too much feet along with a giant horse
looking head hanging out underneath a waterfall. First of all, no,
thank you. Well, you know you you hear a description
of something like that, and it makes you wonder how
many times, how many sightings have occurred to get that
(17:25):
kind of specific description of something, you know, like the
horse or horse shaped head is so specific to me.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Well, now we've heard of the water horse, right, it's
a film about a small and NeSSI type creature. I
just wonder if the name you know what I mean,
Like we've got a sea horse, yeah, we've got which
has like a elongated head. And with a snouff and
things like that. I wonder, okay, if it's based on
that kind of maybe it doesn't actually have has looked
like a horse per se does and have like fur
and literally a transplanted horse head looks more like a
(17:57):
you know, just have it as more of an elongated shape, okay, horse.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Like yeah, yeah, So, according to locals and people who
believe in it, it's most active during the summer months.
Of this leads some people to believe that it is
migratory or that it's been around so long in the
local culture that they believe it as supernatural abilities causes
(18:23):
seasonal storms to come. But if we look at what
this actually could be, if this were a thing, then
we could say, maybe it's a large species of fresh
water eel, like the Angla mosambika or the Angla marmorata,
both of those.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
Here's the problem with these. These are large.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
These will freaking out if you saw them in the wild, probably,
but they grow to about six feet instead of twenty
So is this giant version of an existing thing? Maybe
the problem is that we usually see We know that
fish and maritime animals can grow to unusual size, but
(19:05):
we usually only see them reach that size when they're
out in deep oceans. So would this lake be deep
enough that something could grow to like more than three
times what it's supposed to grow to.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Mmm, it seems unlikely. But there is something really fascinating
in particular with this cryptid, and it's that it was
found and has been found in cave paintings from native tribes.
Is there are some tribes within the Quazulu Natal province
that had these cave paintings of these things or allegedly
(19:38):
of these things, and supposedly they had some kind of
supernatural power perhaps like they could influence the weather maybe
or would give good or generally bad tidings or would
bring bad tidings. What am I trying to say here? Yeah,
it would it would be it would be bad for
(19:58):
you to see one generally would be a bad omen
a bad omen.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah, woe betide those who crossed the Ikanyamba. Also have
I zoned out just for saken when you said a
tribe called because I totally thought you were going to
say a tribe called question.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Oh yeah, I know, I almost did, almost said that,
but no, it's it's that was actually several tribes within
a province.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
That makes sense too, because this is a very regionalized creature, right. Yes,
there's a lot of these come to us from the
African continent because for a long time, the members of
the Ivory Towers and the academies had no idea what
the what. They had no very well polished idea of
(20:46):
what the ecosystems or the biomes were like, and they
would just hear crazy stories or rely on disreputable sources.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Or just legends, local legends.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Or just legends because according to some people, especially if
you're in the Congo, you may run into gigantic creatures
undiscovered on the land as well. And that brings us
to something that I'm surely mispronouncing, that Emmela inca. It's
apparently around the size of an African bush elephant.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Cheese, Yeah, I know it's true. The Amela intoka is
around the size of an African bush elephant, which is
an average of three point two meters tall, weighing around
six tons or thirte and thirty pounds. It's brownish or
gray in color, sort of a gradation, with a very
heavy tail and a body quite similar in shape and
(21:37):
look to that of a rhinoceros, including one long horn
that comes out of its now but here's the difference.
It has four short, stump like legs, and it's described
as having no frills or ridges around the neck, and
the animal is alleged to be semi aquatic and feed
on malumbo or other leafy plants. The Emila intuca is
(21:58):
claimed to utter a very specific vocalization, described as a
variously as a snort, rumble, or growl. So what what
the heck could this thing be? Is it just sort
of like a weird pigmy kind of cousin of the rhinoceros?
Like what are we talking here?
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Right? And why is it?
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Is it a hippo with a horn? Because it's semi aquatic.
I hope it's a dinosaur whatever I said it. I
hope it's a large reptile.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
I would love.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Yeah, just something that was left over or maybe an
in between somewhere along the evolutionary lines.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yeah, yeah, like that that guy we mentioned that previous episode.
Doctor Roy Mackel, one of the people who is searching
for another similar cryptid called the Membembe right, Mokele Membebe.
He was looking for reports of this creature and then
he ran into reports of Emela and Toka. You'll hear
(22:56):
folks say that maybe it's a relic population of a dinosaur.
Maybe it's far enough out in the wild that it's
just too expensive to search for it, you know.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
But it's the same thing we've been talking about before
where there were reports that I believe it was in
nineteen thirty three when the West first, I guess heard
about this because there was a writer rolling through town, J. E. Hughes,
and he wrote this scene called eighteen Years on Lake
Woulou Walou, and he was talking about within this book
(23:28):
that apparently he was hanging out with some tribesmen or
he had heard stories at least of some tribesmen who
slaughtered something that kind of met this description, and you know,
maybe this thing is actually real. And then the guy
you're talking about, Roy p what's his name, Roy Mackle,
That dude was saying, you know, also, hey, here's some
(23:49):
eyewitness accounts going back to this thing, but we don't
have any pictures of it. We don't have any you know,
official pictures.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
We've got some bodies.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yeah, that's yeah, that's the problem with this one, because
it's supposed to be slightly larger than an elephant, and
it's supposed to hunt elephants.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Yeah, I mean you would think you.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Would think that someone would have discovered this or had
a taxidermy version of it in the British Museum or
you know, especially from the age of colonizers, right, you.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Think something would exist, or even just maybe the horn
they're talking about that one specific horn or the skull
or something. You'd have something somewhere, in my opinion, but
maybe not.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
You know, I don't know how this is going to
work in the edit. And sorry about that, Paul, but
we took a we we took a really quick break
and Noel, you went and got some water and it's true.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
Yeah, and I'm now quenched fully and I stole.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
The pumpkin's right now we have a pumpkin.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
It's kind of changed the vibe in the room, though,
I know that good for the better.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
Yeah, yeah, I'm feeling more focused.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Did you talk about how this could be something of
a combo between a triceratops and a striasaurus, a striacasaurus.
I don't even know that one.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
No, No, that's that's a good point, because we it
behooves us to have some specificity. You're right, I just
got excited and said dinosaur. But saying dinosaur is like
saying chair or cancer. It describes a rough concept of
a thing, correct, But there are so many differences, uh,
you know, with the emilia, we also see the we
(25:37):
we see descriptions of it. The date back pretty far,
but not as far back as the descriptions of our
earlier super eel, the Incan Yamba. So the Incan Yamba
may be an exaggerated story about something that was real.
The Emeloka is a little harder to explain. Was it
somebody like? In all the drawings that see of it?
(26:00):
It looks reptilian right, all the depictions, of course, spoiler alert,
there are no photographs. So going to your little point,
noel it it has a horn, it has you know,
rough skin, it's stuck covered with fur feathers. So could
they just be seeing a rhinoceros again in the wild
(26:22):
panicking and freaking out? Because I would.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
This is why I want to bring up, Yeah, when
is the last time you guys saw with your eyes
a rhinoceros?
Speaker 4 (26:31):
A number of years ago?
Speaker 2 (26:33):
About six I guess I must have seen one zooed
up somewhere, But I can't recall which zoo, like real
San Diego.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Maybe really picture in your mind the last time you
saw a rhinoceros.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
This about six years ago. It was that a zoo too,
It wasn't just like on the street.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Yeah, those things are just odd. They don't feel real,
especially if you live anywhere near a city, like anywhere,
it doesn't matter where're on Earth. If you live near
you're a city, probably aren't going to see a rhinoceros
very often, true, And if you just really behold one
(27:09):
walking around, it's an odd experience. So I'm just saying
to your point, Ben, when you were trying to build
off what you were saying, to just behold one may
throw you off, especially if it's far enough in the
distance it looks even bigger than maybe it is. Yeah,
just compared to the surrounding foliage or whatever it's near.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
I don't know if you saw one in the wild too,
like most of us, since the majority of human beings
live in urban areas. Now that's true, that's a change
that happened during our lifetime. That means the majority of
us will see most of the wild animals will see
are going to be in the animal jails that we
call zoos, or.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
At least in a protected reserve somewhere.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Okay, yes, which is better than a zoo. Sure, And
that's not a ding on zoos and being a little
bit unfair to them, because zoos do tremendous conservation work,
and the Atlanta Zoo actually has, I think, is this
huge force in the community. I think they do do
good work as well.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
And they just expanded and they have a savannah section now,
which is you know.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Oh I haven't been there.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Yeah, I have either. It's down by my house, so
I've been seeing the construction going on for quite a while,
but I have not been since it's been opened up,
so it'd be interesting.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
To check out.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
I know some people are super anti zoo, which I understand,
but I also understand that many of these animals would
not be able to survive in the wild, and that's
why they bring them in and take good care of them.
And zoos, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
We've talked about the poaching problem that is severe rhinoceross.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
And I mean take the example of tigers. There are
I think more tigers living in captivity in Texas than
there are in the wild across the planet, and that's
from a few years ago. Conservation efforts have up the
tiger population. Actually get notifications about tigers on Twitter.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Nice doesn't always just come up with some sports stuff.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
No, I.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Right now I'm following something called Tiger Tuesday, which I
didn't know is a thing, and it's where people just
point just post pictures of tigers. Oh wait, some sports
stuff creeps in. But I'm you know, I'm there for
the animals, gotcha. I should get better hobbies, guys. But
so we've been talking about large creatures in the African continent,
(29:30):
and again, as you can tell, the big question for
us is how could something be this big and remain undiscovered.
But let's go, let's go across the water. Let's let's
explore the story of one of the cryptids that I'm
surprised we haven't done a full episode on, and that
is the thunderbird.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Oh okay, the fabulous thunderbird.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Yes, okay, so quick story to get us into this.
Driving around with the wife and kid a couple of
days ago and we're just playing up stops on and
my son looks out his window and just kind of says, uh,
what's that, and it was two huge. I believe they
were turkey vultures. Okay, so much larger birds than any
(30:16):
of us are used to seeing just in the wild
at any time. I couldn't say exactly how tall they were,
maybe three feet tall something to that effect. Three feet
is probably about about three feet tall. But as my
son is remarking about them, they put their wings out
and fly upwards. And seeing a bird of that size
(30:39):
up close was intense. And I don't I mean, Noel,
you would have You would have probably peeped myself, no,
or at least jumped out and tried to attack them
just to get them away.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
No. I would have peepeed myself, okay, and then possibly
gone into an irreversible a coma.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Oh oh, well, well we would have taken measures.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
I don't think you undershare the level of fear I
have towards large birds. Yeah, forget forget about it.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Well, so here's the thing. Could you know, describe to
us what it would be like to see a thunderbird.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
I'd rather not, but I will give it my all.
So the popular hot spots for seeing these very large
bird like creatures would be in Northern Canada and even Alaska, Ben,
did you happen to catch any while you were vacationing there?
And then in.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Alaska vacationing, No, I saw a moose and that was
enough for me because those those things are huge. There's
a problem since you got this pumpkin here, there's a
problem in Alaska for people trying to celebrate Halloween because
when they carve pumpkins and they set them out on
their porch, depending on where they live, it's like candy
(31:56):
to a moose.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Sure can they make a smell it from a mile
away and they.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
Just come towards it and you can't stop them.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
What can we do?
Speaker 1 (32:03):
But but yeah, I would I would have freaked out
if I saw something larger than a move right third.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Absolutely it would have been that. And then you could
even see them down in Central America. But in Canada
you actually there's there's like totem poles that are in
the shape of thunderbird. Is a place called Thunderbird Park
in Victoria, British Columbia where you can see some of
these very things and they are the stuff of legend
mythical creatures. In fact, sort of eagle like birds that
(32:32):
are known for having very powerful talons and very much
present in Native American culture. Various tribes in the American Midwest,
and as we said, in Canada, the Sioux Nation, the
Brule Sioux from South Dakota on a reservation known as
(32:52):
the Rosebud Reservation, has their own thunderbird legend called the
wakean yon Tonka, also known as the Great Thunderbird.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
So, so if you're imagining these things, it's like a
large feathered terodon or a pterodactyl like huge and nol.
I'm gonna show you a picture here, and I want
you to describe this picture, because I have a feeling
if you came across this in real life, you'd have
a reaction. Look at this picture right here.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
I've seen that it looks it looks like it looks
like a giant corved kind of which a friend to
Ben's the world over. Ben commands them and they sort
of flock to him and they bring him shiny things.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
We work together.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
It's it's a symbiotic relationship. But this thing twice as
tall as that go, twice as tall as this gentleman
posing with this uh with this taxidermy car.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
No, it's not real. It's not real. It's it's in imagination.
It's an imagining of what a thunderbird how it's been described.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Okay, well it's it's the wingspan would probably be in
the neighborhood of I don't know, about twenty feet.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
Yeah, yeah, like that's that's correct.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
And the thing is, the thunderbird evolved from the word
we use now has taken a meaning that evolved from
the original mythology. It is present in a lot of
ancient Native American mythology, and you can find very old
sandstone carvings. You can find paintings and caves and so on,
(34:30):
and you know, like the total poles you mentioned earlier,
but now and in the recent in the recent past,
the phrase thunderbird has been used to describe any large, flying,
unidentified organism in the US or the.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
Quote unquote New World.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
So you'll hear people like the common thing people say
is like, well, it flew, but reports didn't see it
had feathers, so it's obviously a pterodactyl or you know,
a relic population of something like you know, some creature
like that, a flying reptile. But then you'll hear other
people say, no, it's it's it's essentially a massive eagle.
(35:11):
It's big enough to take your children.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
And they also say, but those pterosaurs did have feathers.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Dude, exactly exactly. So this animal is, or this cryptid,
i should say, is almost too famous for our cryptids.
You've never heard of lists it really is. Yeah, I
think you just wanted to explore it a little more
because growing up, if you were ever one of those
(35:38):
kids who read those time life mystery books, they all
had names that were kind of similar, like Mysteries of
the Unknown or Unexplored Unknown Mysteries, fair and normal, you
know what I mean. They would always trot out stories
about the thunderbird, usually the same one. There's a story
about these guys who will save it when if we
(35:59):
ever do an episode just on the thunderbird, it's a
story about these guys who shoot and capture one and
have the body so habeas corpus and all that, so
they ate.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
For a month.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
Well they take it back.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
But then as we hear, you know, and like a
lot of those stories, stories of giants from that time,
stories about the Stecha and all these other things, for
some reason the proof they had, the tangible proof disappeared,
and you can see those reproduction photos, right. That may
may be out and out hoaxes. But we have to
(36:34):
ask ourselves, if there was such a large creature now,
especially with the popularity of aircraft, how on earth, how
on earth have we not seen it?
Speaker 4 (36:47):
This one.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
I would say it's possible that it was an ancestral
memory of a very large creature. But then again, the
big birds that we know about, at least in this continent,
from what I understand, the big birds we know about
that we see in this continent as early humans were flightless,
(37:08):
right they weren't.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Yeah, like the big bird from Sesame Stream, Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 4 (37:12):
But mean he I don't know.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
He's got a temper he's got when the cameras aren't rolling.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
Yeah, he's got a dark ye.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
That guy's a real monster.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
And while we're on this subject of terrifying things, let's
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Speaker 4 (39:33):
All right, we're back. We're back.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
We're done with birds. We're going to explore something different.
So if you see something even worse, well that depends
worse for me. Worse for me, well, statistically worse for people.
Is the story of the jabab fofi ja apostrophe b
a f o f I. The name translates to great spider.
(39:57):
This is also in the Congo. It is exactly what
it says on the tin, Huge Spider with allegedly a
six foot wide leg span.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah, six feet and supposedly it's a fan of eating monkeys, birds, yes,
and even small antelopes.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
And humans obviously, of.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Course, not to mention besides their absurd ben as you
would say, cartoonish size. They're brown and said to be
a darker the older they get, which is an interesting fact,
or let's not call it a fact, let's call it
a detail. And they have a large purple mark on
their abdomens, so it sounds like a poison boy. Right,
(40:41):
They've got like some sort of shaped mark and they're black.
That doesn't sound good, right, Nature's.
Speaker 4 (40:47):
Way of saying, watch out back tf off.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
That's right. They're said to live in a similar to
the much smaller trapdoor spider conditions where they burn into
the ground.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Right, Yeah, but that's terrifying. Can you imagine something that
big that's burrowed into a hole? You're like, Oh, what's
the what's that hole?
Speaker 4 (41:09):
God? What a way to go?
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Sanguinates perhaps, Yeah, it makes me. It makes me think
of the scene in The Hobbit, you know, with the
giant spiders that the she.
Speaker 4 (41:20):
Lob and is that Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
It's the Hobbit is the Hobbit? Okay, yeah, I mean
I remember from the ranking, not Ranking Bass, the it
is Ranking Bass, the animated one with the weird singing
that great test you know. Yeah, that's there's a part
where the spiders get Bilbo and crew.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
The Ring.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
It's both. It's definitely in the Hobbit.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
It's definitely in the animated version of the Hobbit.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4 (41:47):
Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
I just remember, you know he's traveling with the with
the with the dwarves and they get abducted by spiders
and the spider wraps them all up and it's the
whole thing. Yeah, I remember that he's got the little
the little sword sting.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Yeah, I'm thinking of I'm thinking of the book. I'm
thinking not on the book.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Did they take some license with that scene in the book?
Speaker 1 (42:11):
In the book, shelb the spider, the evil spider is
in Lord of the Ring.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
You are absolutely correct about that.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
And I don't think the spider in the animated Hobbit
had a name. It was just creepy spiders. But that's
the one that made the most indelible mark on me
when I was.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Maybe Tolkien had a thing for spiders, maybe he like
they were scary to him, and that's why I put
it in. He would have loved this jabab fothey.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
And it also makes me think of George R. Martin
and the the game Songs of Fire and Ice books
talks about you know, the the winter that lasted you know,
years or whatever, and the spiders the size of hounds.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Is what they say, Well, we do have a possible
explanation for this.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
And it's even just as creepy and it's worse.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
So here's the thing, though, reports of this have been
taking place since the eighteenth century or since the nineteenth century,
and the Western Europeans found out about it in nineteen
thirty eight because people from Europe started claiming they had
seen these massive spiders, and given the politics of the time,
(43:25):
essentially what happened is that other Europeans said, okay, all right, well,
if someone who has the same color skin as us
said something, maybe we should believe them, which is just
the opposite of critical thinking, right, And because of these descriptions,
and because they matched so well, they were consistent from
(43:45):
different populations, they were burrowing trap spiders, Like you said,
because of this, people treated descriptions of these animals with
a little more. They give them a little more credibility
they would have ordinarily. But there has been one theory
advanced about the jibbuff f fy that says maybe they're
(44:10):
the misidentification of another type of animal that has proven
to exist, but not in a way that makes it better.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
It's called a coconut crab.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
It sounds delightful.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
It sounds delicious, sounds.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Like something you'd get like at a Hawaiian joint.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Coconut crab, a little pineapple dipping sauce on the side, bring.
Speaker 4 (44:32):
In some spot.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Well, just just for scale, guys, I'm gonna show you
a picture of how big the coconut crab is.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
That is a full size trash can.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
It's on a giant trash can. It looks sort of
like a creepy lobster.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
Yeah yeah, but on land, just hanging out a lot
of times. Just see him rolling with coconuts for real,
rolling around with coconuts and they're huge.
Speaker 4 (44:54):
Yeah, they're are the largest land crab. They also they
make an impression, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
They're terrestrial hermit crabs and oh, I'm sorry, excuse me.
Not just the largest land crab. They're the largest land
living arthropod overall in the world, got it. And we
think that given the environment of our current age, they
are at the upper limit for what an animal with
(45:23):
an exoskeleton can grow to be. They're as big as
it gets unless the environment literally changes.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
It makes total sense.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
And this also gives us some arguments against the existence
of this great spider, because spiders also have limits to
how big they can grow due to what they could
structurally support from the way their bodies are I won't
say designed, from the way their bodies happened.
Speaker 4 (45:54):
Or the way their bodies evolved.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
They also have a respiratory system and that limits what
they can what they can grow into. But did they
exist in the past, yes, or you know.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Oh perhaps perhaps you're talking about But the coconut crab exists.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
Yeah, that definitely, that's that's a real thing. It's a
real thing.
Speaker 4 (46:18):
Yeah, Matt, Are you uncomfortable with coconut crab?
Speaker 3 (46:21):
I think I am, And you know, I think one
coconut crab is fine. I'm okay with that. But if
if coconut crab has maybe her whole family around a bunch. Yeah,
I don't think I'm okay with that.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
You know, they they live probably over sixty years. Whoa,
so you could get one and maybe bond with it.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Well, that's the same with most a lot of crustaceans
right now. They have absurdly long lives, like the the Lobsters.
Speaker 4 (46:51):
I believe that's correct.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
I learned that from the film The Lobster because the
Colin Carlo's character, Farrell, he wanted to become a lobster
because it lives a very long time.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
I remember.
Speaker 4 (47:02):
Yeah, that was such a McSweeney's type of movie.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Yeah, big heady New Yorker type stuff. Right.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
I'm checking right now and see whether or not you
can get a coconut crab as a pet. It looks
like their conservation status is undecided. That data is deficient,
So let us know if you live in an area
where coconut crab are around, or if you've seen one,
whether you think it could be mistaken for a malicious spider.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
This is my favorite, just the name alone.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
Oh, we're removing on.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
I think we should. All right, let's do it. We
don't have to. You want to talk more about crabs?
Speaker 3 (47:36):
No, no, just take us there.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Okay, I'm gonna take you there in the format I'm
gonna take you there with two words, my friends, Okay,
rhinoceros dolphin.
Speaker 4 (47:46):
Finally, boom, that's what I say.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
So we've been asking for this whole time. It's like
a cryptid whale with two dorsal fins and eighteen twenty
off the coast of the Sandwich Islands, just a thing.
And New South Wales. Jean Rene Constean Qui, who was
a zoologist and anatomist, in addition to his pal Joseph
(48:09):
Paul Jamar, who was a naturalist, spotted what seemed to
be never before seen species of dolphins. And forgive me,
French folks, we don't have the benefit of Casey pegrim
on the case with us today. But koi or kui koy?
What do you think ben coy?
Speaker 1 (48:28):
I would go quoi q u o y I would
because it's fun to say, yes my entire.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
And Jama, I'm gonna say Jama chose to call this
this new underwater pal the rhinoceros dolphin. It's an official name,
being Delphinius rhinoceros. There have been a total of nine
rhinoceros dolphins sighted swimming side by side in a pod
in the Atlantic Ocean.
Speaker 4 (48:56):
That's the thing.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Yeah, So these are credible witnesses who saw multiple instances
of what appears to be a different they're up to
that point, undiscovered creature, and they were probably, like a
lot of us listening now, filled with an immense sense
of relief because you know, I think we can all
agree the crappiest, most irritating, depressing thing about dolphins and
(49:22):
rhinoceros is that they're not lumped together in one species.
Speaker 4 (49:25):
Yet.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
You know, you see a dolphin and you're just like,
I'm fifty percent there, but I cannot approve of this.
Speaker 4 (49:32):
I mean, yeah, that fifty rhino.
Speaker 3 (49:35):
Oh yeah, well, and that's that's the whole thing with
these these rhinoceros dolphins is that, you know, you've got
these experts viewing this this pod essentially right hanging out there.
They're used to seeing perhaps whales, perhaps dolphins, perhaps killer whales,
and they see these things and they noticed a couple
of things are different.
Speaker 4 (49:56):
Right.
Speaker 3 (49:56):
It's not that it's not the same coloration a lot
of dolphins that they've observed in the past. These are
I think they're white and black, like the white spots
on a like a black body. Yeah, similar to a
killer whale, but or at least in the two colors.
And they noticed that rather than a single dorsal fin
like you'd see on any dolphin, they had two.
Speaker 1 (50:19):
Right, Yeah, one curved fin near the head and one
curved fin on the back. And it's that second fin
is placed a little further back than where a dolphin's
fin would normally be. And they also thought from what
they could see that the pectoral fins were larger than average.
Speaker 4 (50:39):
And do we say it's nine feet long.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
No, we didn't.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
It's nine feet long, two hundred and fifty pounds. But
although that's that's that's a big boy. That's a big
ocean boy.
Speaker 3 (50:48):
And it's also an estimation from being on a ship,
from sailing while you're observing these, but you know.
Speaker 4 (50:54):
With not with a sample size of nine.
Speaker 3 (50:56):
Yes, and we're having experts.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
So this so is this interesting case because if there
are any undiscovered cryptids or large creatures as we have seen,
everything we know tells us that they are going, they
are most likely to be discovered in the ocean. Yes, right,
And so now we know that just because of that fact.
(51:22):
That fact alone, this one has a little more likelihood
of being a true case of an unapprehended or undocumented,
unproving cryptid that is a real animal. But we have
to ask ourselves what can it be? We have to
play you know, the stick in the mud police here. First,
(51:42):
it could just be a group of dolphins that had
a deformity, you know what I mean. There were the
dolphin version of an inbred hillbilly clan, which I know
it sounds dismissive, but what we're saying is they could
have just been a group or a pot that over
time had passed a mutation on to one another.
Speaker 3 (52:04):
Okay, okay, okay, Well there's a there's another idea here
that possibly it was a different kind of whale that
they saw that actually looks a little bit like a
dolphin called the Blainsville's what is it, Blaine Blaineville's beaked whale?
B e A k ed whale.
Speaker 4 (52:22):
Doesn't that sound like so you buy it at a
grocery store?
Speaker 3 (52:25):
Uh? Yeah, exactly, blain Well, well you can. You can
look up pictures of these. It's a very different looking whale,
and that dorsal fin is pushed. It looks like it's
pushed way back towards the tail. And they've got horns too, right, Yeah, yeah,
it's it's a very different creature, and if you had
(52:46):
never seen one before in let's say eighteen twenty, maybe
you believe it's just a different looking creature.
Speaker 1 (52:55):
One other theory was proposed by marine biologists Rich Ellis.
He said, what if the what was called the rhinoceros
dolphin was just a normal dolphin that had a sucker
fish or romorra attached to its head. Again, the problem
of observation. But either way, this feels.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
Like so they saw the two creatures like together in
concert and thought it was a super creature.
Speaker 1 (53:19):
Yeah, it's like maybe they saw it from far enough
away that they mistook the romorra for being another fin
got it. But there's a problem with that because they
saw nine different Again, the thing here is they saw
nine different instances of this, So this would mean this
would mean we have to ask ourselves what is more likely.
(53:40):
Is it more likely that nine separate romorra matched up
with nine separate dolphins and attached themselves to the same
position on their body, or is it more likely that
there is a you know, a different explanation that they
were supposed to have these fins. Still that gives this
(54:01):
is probably our strongest example of something that might actually
be a real thing, unless, of course, you're into the
idea of an enormous octopus.
Speaker 2 (54:15):
Okay, this has been a journey of discovery as a
non gentlemen. Well, next we're going to continue that into
into the into the depths with the Akaro Komoi. The
native I Knew people of Japan have long believed that
Volcano Bay, which is off the coast of Hokkaido, has
a population of giant octopuses called Akaro kamoi, and they
(54:40):
have been cited supposedly or purportedly rather for for many
many years. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
Yeah, there was a British missionary. His name was John Batchelor.
He was working in the area in the early nineteen
hundreds and he wrote down a siting in a book
he had called the I Knew in their fo and
he said that a great sea monster with large staring
eyes had attacked three local fishermen and their boat. So
imagine those old woodcuts of a boat sailing and then
(55:11):
a Leviathan like creature wrapping its tentacles around the mass
of the plane. It was like that, And he said
the monster was round in shape and emitted a dark,
fluid and noxious odor. The three men fled in dismay,
Not so much indeed, for fear, they say, but on
account of the dreadful smell, however that may have been.
(55:33):
They were so scared that the next morning all three
refused to get up and eat. They were lying in
their beds, pale and trembling. So the Japanese story giant octopus,
I feel like that could absolutely be true.
Speaker 3 (55:47):
Yeah, there's I mean, just now that we know the
giant squids exist, I feel like the giant octopus is
just waiting. It's just waiting to be found.
Speaker 2 (55:56):
He really wants to wait. There was a sighting recently,
there was a there were there were some some reports
about not too long ago, about some giant giant squids,
the very least.
Speaker 3 (56:06):
Yeah, squids. I think that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 4 (56:08):
The colossal squid.
Speaker 1 (56:10):
Yeah, but an octopus would be a little bit different,
and uh, I think a little more exciting because they're
so intelligent.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
Squids are are relatively intelligent, aren't they. Are they pods
as well or not?
Speaker 1 (56:24):
Yeah, but they're not like the octopuses, the brains, the
krem Delay, the brains of their heist game of the
tentacled sea dwellers exactly.
Speaker 2 (56:35):
But if they leaked up with rhinoceros.
Speaker 4 (56:36):
Dolphins, that'd be some stuff that'd be hot.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
Yeah, yeah, hot mixtape if yeah, hot mix tape.
Speaker 4 (56:43):
Yeah, that's a good look.
Speaker 1 (56:45):
And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (56:51):
That's right. Let us know what you think. You can reach.
You to the handle conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
Facebook X and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok or conspiracy stuff.
Speaker 3 (57:00):
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three STDWYTK. That's our voicemail system. You've got three minutes,
give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
we can use your name and message on the air.
If you've got more to say than can fit in
that voicemail, why not instead send us a good old
fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (57:17):
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correspondence we receive.
Speaker 4 (57:22):
Be aware, yet not afraid.
Speaker 1 (57:24):
Sometimes the void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (57:47):
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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