May 22, 2024 • 50 mins
You've heard of Bigfoot, but what else is out there? In tonight's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel explore the fact and fiction of cryptids in India.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noel.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Paul, Mission Control, DECANDT. Most importantly, you are here.
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
A bit of a palette cleanser tonight. We have heard
from many of our fellow conspiracy realists who are always
(00:51):
asking us for more cryptid explorations. Now, long time listeners,
you know we've examined in depth. What are some of
the episodes. I'll always remember our pal who runs Expedition Bigfoot.
That was a great interview.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
I love a wistful way you said. We'll always remember
Expedition Bigfoot. You know it was a golden time in
all of our lives. I think.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Let's see, we also looked at cryptids in Indonesia, right
the ohl oh jeez, that was well.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Well that was another one. Oh man. There was the
spooky fans. Remember those spooky fans that were killing everybody
that we sort of lumped into cryptids because it was
like a I don't know, there was a ghost.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
At play, perhaps in South Korea, that's right. Yeah, And
now we are traveling this evening to a place that
has its own, largely unique population of alleged cryptids that
many people in the West have not heard of. I mean,
you've heard of the region, you've heard of India and
(01:59):
Pakistan in Afghanistan, but you may not know they have
monsters all their own, one of which is just by
the way, spoiler, extremely adorable. Will get to it. Here
(02:19):
are the facts for anyone unfamiliar. We'd like to give
you just a quick and dirty understanding of what cryptids
are and why they fascinate us.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
So cryptids are sneaky animals that might exist. That's how
I will define a crypti.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
That's what cryptid translates to actually in Latin as sneaky animal.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Yeah, it's a group term for any number of organisms
that are alleged to exist or believed to exist, outside
the bounds of modern acknowledged scientific consensus. And these are
very old. Like you know, everybody has their own version
of Bigfoot. As we'll see, there are also more regional
(03:03):
cryptids like the Jersey Devil. Neither of those have been
proven to exist, but every year there are dozens, if
not hundreds of people who believe that they have seen one.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Well, And I mean it's all so tightly wound up
in folklore and tradition of different cultures, and a lot
of times there's a belief in these creatures that stems
from either kind of superstition or even religion sometimes and
that leads to, perhaps without proof, a genuine belief in
some parts of the world, and these things existing.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Well, and every once in a while, as we're going
to find in this episode, as we have in the past,
there's a documented sighting of something in the way it's
written about in that first documented sighting, it's so mysterious
and strange that it creates its own lore.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Right, Yeah, there's a real umami to it, right, because
humans seek to understand the world around them, and there
are few things as intellectually take as the ability to
discover a new animal.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
You did promise a palate cleanser, Benz, and this is
going to be sort of a chicken noodle soup for
the conspiratorial soul here today. I like that phrase.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah, we were talking about this off air. We wanted
to do one fun one because we have deep water
behind us and ahead. There's also a lot of scientific
basis to the idea of cryptids. You know, some cryptids,
the most plausible ones, turn out to be animals that
we already knew existed, and perhaps society, often Western society,
(04:36):
mistakenly concluded these animals were extinct. Our number one example
of this is the seilacanth. They were supposed to have
died out millions of years ago, and then, surprise, surprise,
some Western scientists got over to the part of Africa
where the ceilacanth is still very much alive and they said, oh,
(04:58):
we've proven cryptid. And all the people who are living
in that area were like, no, this ugly fish has
always been around. You can't eat it. It's a trash fish.
And they were like, no, history, we are writing it.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
But isn't there even a specific Indian selacanth that we've
heard about for this episode.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Yes, yes, there very much is, and we are going
to in the course of this exploration, introduce you, fellow
conspiracy realist, to an amazing map that inspired a lot
of this conversation. There are other cryptids, like the Tasmanian tiger,
still officially considered extinct, but every single year a few
(05:40):
people in Australia or Tasmania are certain they have seen
one alive in the wild. It's a really the study
of cryptozoology is a study of human encroachment into wilderness.
And you know, it's also weird. Like we think when
you see stuff on the History Channel or Discovery ID
(06:02):
or whatever, you get the sense that cryptids are kind
of a modern concept. But it turns out, over the
course of history, every single human culture has been fascinated
by the story of fantastic creatures, and often it's because
they were just working with what they had.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
I mean, y'all, even some of the ones we know about.
One could argue you are pretty fantastic. Can you imagine
seeing some of these for the first time or catching
a glimpse, you know, before there was scientific basis to explain,
you know, the nature of connection between different species and
phyla and kingdoms and all of that good stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Pretty wild, Even something as simple as you live in
an area and nobody you've ever known has ever seen
a big cat in anywhere near where you are, and
there's no writings about big cats, there's no official big
cats anywhere near you. But then you swear you experienced
seeing one and hearing one out in the woods, like
(06:58):
you know you did, and what he like? What do
you tell your friends? And what does that turn into?
And it's the same with big reptiles, right.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Yes, yeah, it is the same with reptiles. As we'll
find there are still reptiles out there to be discovered.
An interesting side note for a different thing. I recently
learned that some reptiles may indeed be capable of what
mammals would recognize as affection. Story for another day, Story
(07:27):
for another day.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Dude, have you ever seen a guy walking around holding
a bearded dragon just on their chest? You know there's
love in those eyes. I've seen it.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
I've recently saw this video of a guy who he's
out on the swamp. He's taking some people on a tour,
I think, and he tells about this smamp puppy. You've
seen a swamp puppy And they're like what, And it's
an allegorty. He basically calls a wild alligator over to
the boat, gives it some gimick.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
Kind of whistle like a call an a gator car.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
He was just talking to it like it's a dog
man and he's just patting it on the nose. That
you just pat him right on the nose and if
they ever come at you just pop them right in
that nose.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Chicken.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
Maybe yeah, yeah, you guys. I don't know if this
was like a common thing in Georgia. I think this
guy might have made the rounds. But there's this dude
named Joe would come tonight elementary school always talked about
being swamp wise.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Did he tour everyone?
Speaker 4 (08:21):
There's more than one. Maybe there's like like various.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Psychics calling themselves Madame Bell. Perhaps it's a brand name. Yeah,
we know also that uh, first off, we're establishing here
that the human species has a lot to learn about
other non human animals, and humans are still very much animals.
They are type of primate. We know that the humans
(08:48):
have been attempting to explain the world around them since
they started peopling. And so some of your favorite mythologies,
some of your favorite legends, they originate from prototypes of
scientific investigation. One of the most famous would be the
legend of the Cyclops, the giant with one eye instead
(09:11):
of two. That most likely came from the discovery of
the skull of an elephant and the misinterpretation. We talked
about this in the past. If you look at an
elephant's skull, you can look at the big hole in
the middle where the trunk is and think, yeah, that's
where I would put an eye if I was gone.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
Man, I was hoping there was some kind of proto
man that definitely had one eye. That was a real thing.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Oh, there's been a couple, a couple non consensually, but
we know some cryptids also are the result of the
great game of telephone oral communication, mistranslation, embellishment. One person
travels from beyond the bounds of their known part of
(09:57):
the world, and then they see amazing animals, perhaps in Asia,
perhaps in Africa, perhaps in what we call the Americas.
They come back, they tell their colleagues, they tell their
peer groups, and the colleagues start to tell other people
the story. And every single time they tell the story,
they embellish it a little bit, they exaggerate a little bit.
(10:19):
They might even twist it around to support whatever their
preexisting ideology is. You know, the weirdest thing is There
are scammers now in the modern evenings talking about cryptids
as a way to sort of bait and switch folks.
But for most of human history, so far as we know,
(10:41):
these people were not trying to pull a scam. These
early philosophers, these historians, these proto scientists, they wanted to
understand the world around them, and they got it wrong
pretty often. But they still, even with everything that looked
like a misstep, they still played a important role in
the larger or and important role in the larger advancement
(11:05):
of civilization. India is no different. India is perhaps one
of the best land areas to find an actual cryptid.
I mean, it's so old, it's massive. Yes, it has
one of, if not the world's largest populations of human beings,
(11:27):
but it also has a lot of wild countries.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
Still. I think this came up in another episode recently.
We were talking about our friend Mangesh telling us the
story about how his father, I want to say, or
maybe it was grandfather, was send minister grandfather like a
minister of forestry or it was responsible for like overseeing
a lot of this crazy you know jungle, and he
you know, really pointed out to us how wild so
(11:52):
much of India really, really is.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
We also learned the phrase mega diverse. We've talked about
biodiversity in the past, but very few places are mega diverse.
Right now, as we are recording in twenty twenty four,
the nation of India, not just the region of that subcontinent,
but on the single nation of India has seven to
(12:19):
eight percent of all of the recorded species in the world.
There are thirty four universally agreed upon biodiversity hotspots, and
India has four of them. The Himalaya region, as you
mentioned earlier, in nol Indo, Burma, or miandmar the western
(12:42):
Sri Lanka. It goes on and on. But the question
is what else is out there now? Are there any
true cryptids unidentified life forms in India? Could any of
these stories be real? We're going to pause for a
word from our response, and then we're diving in. Here's
(13:09):
where it gets crazy. Yes, it sounds weird to think
that the most heavily human occupied nation on the planet
could still be very rife with wilderness and animals, but
it's true. Like if you are if you are looking
anywhere but the depths of the ocean, India is quite
(13:32):
likely the place where you could find a real cryptid.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
And I mean in general, when we're talking about cryptids,
not all of them are created equal in terms of
their provenance. As we mentioned at the top of the show,
there are certainly some of them that may have been
misidentified in historical records, you know, in writing and early
kind of naturalists and misunderstandings galore that played, you know,
into that game of telephone can really make something into
something pretty outrageously cryptid. Like I guess what what I'm
(14:00):
trying to say is there's sort of a there's a
likelihood factor of whether some of these things are related
in these tales to actual creatures, or if the game
of telephone just got completely out of hand, driven by
ideology or superstition or what have you.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Yeah, let's go to some examples. One of the most
ancient cryptids in India and in Ethiopia is a little
thing called the crow cutta. To describe it, it sounds
like we're setting up a bar joke. What do you
get when you cross a wolf, a dog, a hyena,
(14:37):
and a lion, Well, you get the cro tutta.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
Sounds like a delicious pastry, though, doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
It does very much. So, Yeah, it's an ancient cryptid.
It's described by multiple historians throughout antiquity, including our boy Plenty, PLI,
n Y. And it's weird when you look at what
he writes in natural history. He is kind of the
first crypto zoologist, Like the the scholarly burden of proof
(15:09):
is not really a thing. So this guy is just
sort of like when Freud was making up psychoanalysis. He's saying, oh,
I heard about this one thing, you know, and I
heard about this other thing, and then other people took
his descriptions and they ran with it, as you said, Noel,
adding on their own twist.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
Well, and as we you know, we described this thing.
It's kind of fine for all these to play the
game of like, well, let's filter these descriptions through the
things we now know that science has explained, and what
is maybe the more likely possibility of what this thing was,
or there's the WCF moment where we don't really have
a reasonable explanation.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah, just quick side note from me, guys. Plenty is
the dude that I've always heard as Plenty or Pliny
the Elder.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Correct, Yeah, I've heard of both for sure. Something about
the mouthfeel of Pliny is fun for me. But yeah,
that's the guy.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Well isn't it so cool that that guy was around
so long ago and we still like look to him
as some of the for some of the original recorded
descriptions of a lot of these things. As you said, Ben,
this guy was all about weird creatures from different places because.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Clearly well traveled, right, I mean it wasn't from around here,
you know, but he didn't.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
When you look at the translated recorded writings of him,
he's not discounting things. He's not immediately saying, well, you know,
because of my extensive knowledge of natural history, this Krakata
couldn't possibly exist. It's like it's like the concept is, well, what,
maybe there is something like that, we just haven't found
it yet.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
He's got such abe if you've read natural history, He's like, hey, bro,
you know what I heard. I heard there was this
turtle that's like bigger than every turtle ever.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Yeah. You know. But back in those days too, it
seems like historians and scientists and philosophers there was a
little bit more of a healthy mix of mysticism in
their vibes, you know what I mean. There was an
acceptance of the impossible, right, They weren't always out to
debunk necessarily, or they were even in some ways driven
by some of these kind of metaphysical pursuits more so
(17:22):
than what you might consider a scientist or a historian
you know, to be today.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
The Elder would have been an absolute beast on Twitter,
that's for sure. But and he probably would have hosted
a discovery show like River Monsters or something.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
But I just to clarify, he's from Rome, right, ancient
Roman mytory philosopher, natural philosopher.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Ye, yeah, natural philosopher, which was a quality job at
the time if you could get it. According to what
we know about about this creature, the qro cutta from
plenty of the Elder, the animal was thought to be
found most often in the rainforest areas of India and
then parts of Africa. Ethiopia we'll call it today, Actually
(18:06):
we'll call it Ethiopia back then because it's one of
the oldest countries that is still a country. This cro
cutta thing, it's definitely quadruped. It's about the size of
a mule. According to descriptions. It is known for hunting
humans as well as regular dogs, and we know dogs
(18:28):
were at this time already well domesticated, already speciated from wolves.
The Krokutta had a lot of powers ascribed to it.
It could change its color at will, It could blend
into its surroundings like the predator it attacked from the shadows.
It could eat a person in It could kill a
(18:52):
person in seconds. It could digest them very quickly, and
it had a voracious appetite. Perhaps the most interesting thing
here is that it could mimic the sounds of human beings.
There are legends of it going to someone's doorstep and
then sounding like a person another person to get it outside,
(19:16):
to get that person outside, and then eating it.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
Yo.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
If you guys seen that movie Annihilation, remember the part
of me it's you know, there's a whole part of this. Yeah,
the bear, but it's a combination of a bear, and
it screams with the voice of a human, and it's
sort of this like bear, pig, bore, alligator monster thing,
this hybrid And that's what I'm picturing here. And I'm
also wondering too if, like a lot of these h takes,
(19:43):
there's some fear involved. You're like, this is a thing
that is absolutely terrifying is going to murder me, and therefore,
in my mind, I'm projecting the scariest possible thing that
it could be. Maybe you didn't even get a good look.
You're mainly running away from this thing, you know.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Well, it's kind of I again, the way this creature
is disc with such a combo of scary things. It
gives me those vibes as well, But it also really
reminds me of some of the skinwalker legends that exist,
especially out in the Southwest. Here in the United States.
We're from indigenous tribes that have lived there for way,
way longer than anybody who was writing stuff down about that.
(20:19):
So I don't know that alone gives me the creeps. Mostly,
I think the mimicry part.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Right, Yeah, that's where we edge into the supernatural, or
verge into the supernatural. Another complication in the legends, this
Krokutta is said to be able to change genders. And
believe it or not, folks, we can explain this. We
have to ask one of the first questions for this
crypti example, could the Krocutta be a case of misidentification?
(20:51):
India does have large dangerous animals. I mean the tiger. Look,
I could. I am confident that I could PvP kangaroo.
I am right about that. I don't want to do it.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
I look forward to this.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
I don't want to do it. But if worse comes
to worse, I've got the agility, I've got the thumbs,
I've got the knowledge. But no one or the vast
majority of people cannot PvP a tiger, which means that
the population of India, going back to pre written history,
like before the recorded word, they knew about the tiger.
(21:27):
They knew about dangerous animals, they did not identify this one.
And interestingly enough, there are multiple historical descriptions post plenty
of the elder of the Krokutta being taken to Roman civilization.
We know it goes. I mean, it's weirdly recent in
(21:49):
the grand scheme of things. It was common era one
eight when Roman Emperor got his hands on one.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
So I'm just trying to backtrack a little bit to
the switch swapping of gender. Is this maybe a case
where you know, I mean, I always bring this up,
but like the Brotherhood of the Wolf and the Beast
of Gotto Van or whatever, and you're searching and hunting
for this very murderous beast that you believe to be
an individual, a single individual, right, and then maybe there
(22:18):
are more than one. And maybe there's this idea that
you're hunting this one thing and you think it's a male,
and then you catch one and it's a female, and
you believe that it's changed genders because it could only
be the one individual that was causing all that havoc.
But in fact there are more than one. Maybe because
there's a lack of understanding. I don't know. I'm just
wondering what could lead to that misunderstanding or that belief.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Quite possibly, We're we're going to solve it here. So
for the historical record, we know how the a book
called the Augustine History argues that at some point the
Roman emperor Antoninus A received one of these creatures as
a gift. It was just like a flex you know,
(23:01):
It's like, here's a fancy souvenir. And then later another
historian called Cassius Dio talks about an emperor named Septimus
Severus who brought a crocutta to Rome, and Dio says
this quote Indian species was then introduced to Rome for
(23:22):
the first time so far as I am aware. It
has the color of a lioness and tiger combined, and
the general appearance of those animals as also of a
dog and folks gloriously blended. So okay, once you get
past all the weird myths that game a telephone, we're
pretty sure that this they're describing the spotted hyena and
(23:48):
gr tracks right. It answers the idea of imitation, right,
the idea of imitating calls right like a hyena laughs,
et cetera. It also it also answers the gender question
because we know that female spotted hyenas when they become
the dominant members of their pack. I don't want to
(24:11):
be too crass here, but if you look at the
biology the dominant female hyena, it's glitterius will enlarge, it
will become fully a rectile, so it would appear to
change gender.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
That's fascinating. Yeah, that was gonna be my first bet.
Those things are scary, man, those are and they're yeah,
I mean, I don't know, guys. I always picture the
hyenas from The Lion King because I found them to
be pretty menacing in some of those scenes when I
was a kid. That stuck with me they've got the
sloped kind of you know, down on their haunches, ready
(24:46):
to pounce kind of quality to them. And you're right
that the human laugh almost like a mockingbird or something,
or like a parrot. It almost does have this sort
of foremant quality to it, like a human local court.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
And now I just have images of whoope as the
hyaena becoming the alpha. I don't like any of it.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
Yeah, if you ever come back, we're gonna kill you.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
So we have solved that effectively, one cryptid case, an
ancient one. But let's move to other things. Because again
our pals, the historians of old, to my knowledge, they
have all passed on. They wrote a lot about weird animals.
And another one that's continually fascinating is something called the manticore.
(25:36):
It's also ancient, but it's a little tougher to explain
because it's got a weird vibe. It looks as the
head of a person right well.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
But again to me though, it feels like a continuation
of the crocutta because of that human voice quality. Now
all of a sudden it's got the whole human head,
you know. And you hear about the manticore and all
kinds of law and like, you know, tantamount to fighting
a dragon or something almost you know, you really do
hear about you know, these brave knights or what have
(26:07):
you that would go out to slay a manticore. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Yeah, it's got the body of a lion, the head
of a man, and then in a Shamelan twist, it
also has the tail of a scorpion that can shoot
poisonous starts. I mean, this.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
Looks like a giant clitists.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
And a giant glitterist. This looks like a drawing that
we would make when we were children, if all of
us were children at some point.
Speaker 4 (26:31):
I mean.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
The earliest mention of it comes from another ancient historian,
a Greek historian uh Tasius. He had a book called
Indica in the fifth century BCE, and the.
Speaker 6 (26:46):
Acts in the couch right right right, and thank you
for everybody wrote in with some really fun ones about
Indica versus Sativa and are they a myth?
Speaker 4 (26:56):
Anyway? Starry to derail it?
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Well, the perfect because Indica, the actual book or the manuscript,
is lost to time, and we only know about it
because we hear other writers, later writers name checking it.
Going back to Plitty in Natural History. He has the
following description of Tasius and the manticore.
Speaker 4 (27:22):
Yeah, and he writes that amongst these same men there
is found an animal have to lapse into the voice,
called the mantichora, which has three rows of teeth like
a comb, the face and ears of a human, and
bluish eyes. It is red in color, with the body
of a lion and a tail with stigers like a scorpion.
(27:42):
Its voice is as if the sounds of the pipe
were mixed with a trumpet, and it is a creature
of great speed which avidly goes after human flesh. Guys,
the sound of the pipe mixed with the troupe. This
sounds like Jurassic Park, Foley work right here. I mean,
all of those crazy roars they did in Jurassic Park.
A lot of those are combining different animals and sometimes
(28:05):
musical instruments and drones to make these other worldly kind
of you know roars. Guys.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
It's making me think of psychological manipulation war tactics that
we've talked about in the past.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
This is what I'm thinking about here, yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Right where It's like if you could convince with either
instrumentation like you know, imagine war drums, but in this
case some kind of horns and other sounds that you're
shooting out at great distances when your army is gathered
together behind a big wall right or across a ridge,
but you're making these sounds to make it feel as
(28:40):
though there's a super creepy creature just across the ridge.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
I think think about like, you know, warring people with
wild animals, where they dress them up and like armor
and things like that, sometimes like rhinoceroses or what have you. Elephants,
even war elephants. You know, people are hearing these sounds
coming across the battlefield and only seeing them when they're
in the thick of the heat of battle, and they
(29:05):
might be hallucinating some stuff, seeing things that this armor
or what have you maybe make them think are like
actually parts of the animals themselves.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Yeah, and with this one, with this guy, we see
the game of telephone. Because those original accounts, right, the
first one is lost to history as far as we know.
The second one that name checks that original author goes
on to influence everybody else who writes about the manticre
(29:37):
without actually having seen one or what they thought was one,
And to date, there has been no proven capture of
a mant core. There have been no proven accounts of
attacks on humans from manti cores, despite their fearsome reputation.
So in this case, our verdict at Presant has to
(29:58):
be the following unknown because there's a lot of wilderness
in India, but this creature the way it's described does
not fit our current understanding biology. There is a much
more likely cryptid that we should go to. We're walking
through different flavors of cryptids because India has quite a few.
(30:20):
We've got to introduce you to. I don't know about you, guys.
One of my favorites the boats Billy or ghost cat.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Yeah, this is another sick cryptid again, the manicore. If
you wanted to design something that was just the most
terrifying thing, make the manicore, especially if it's that fast
with all that gear already attached.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
To a human face.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, that one's that's too much. But just big cats
in general, as we've seen in other episodes in the past,
where the thought that there could be even just a
mountain lion lurking in a place where it should be
it's horrifying. But this guy, do you say it ben.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Uh bolts Billy, a ghost cat, a cat that's like
like hiding from you out there.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
It's not just in the woods, it's hiding in the woods.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
Yeah, I like just calling it the boot billy. That's
a lot less like the wild boot billy coming coming
at you.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
It's it's often described as a cross between a cat,
a dog, and a mongoose. So smaller than a.
Speaker 4 (31:29):
Lot the mongoose bark crags, larger.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Than a hyena. Oh, the mongoose is awesome, dude. That's
ticky tappy all day, dude.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
One of the most efficient hunters that exists out there.
Doesn't give an f kind of you know, like one
of those honey badgers where oh, I'm sorry, you're you're
a cobra. Oh you got your rattlesnake too bad, I'm
a mongoose come at you.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Well, they've got asymmetric warfare down. Check out our North
Woods Operation episode where I think, if I recall, I
went on a little bit of tangent kissing the ass
of the mongoose. That's why they named the operation whatever.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
All right, can you say really quickly, I was talking
about like war animals and all of that stuff, And
I said, you know, rhinos out low because it was
you know, in the movie three hundred. But apparently that
misconception because rhino's apparently would be very difficult to train
and it would be unwieldy to use.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
In that terrible right. Exactly that too.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
But there's a very famous wood cut by Albrick Durr,
who is a very famous artist, and I'm not getting
the timeline right, but it was definitely would have been
representative of the time where there was like, you know,
a massive battlefield kind of night type you know, warfare.
But this wasn't real. And I don't know if Albert
Duhr was doing that game of telephone thing and being
(32:44):
smart or if he really thought he saw this thing.
It's another example of how this stuff can just kind
of like churn up its own lore.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
Right, Yeah, I mean this is this is a game. Well,
let's do this part. Now, this is a game you
can play at home with your friends. Fellow conspiracy realist,
describe an unfamiliar animal to a friend of yours or
family member, and then ask them to draw a picture
(33:13):
of what they heard you describe. And that explains to
us even now, you could do this at home even now.
That explains to us so much cryptid lore, because imagine
someone is going, someone's going, well, you know, out in
the brains of Africa, there is a creature that functions.
Speaker 7 (33:36):
As though it was born with armor. It has opponents,
now to a great horn, it runs at its enemies,
and then you know they're like, all right, just draw that.
It's basically producers talking to people in the nineteen eighties, right,
which explains all those films.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
You nailed it.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
That's very kind. We also know that the boots Billy
and we are not native speakers. Here is kind of
a regional a regional terror. People genuinely believe this ghost
cat was real. We found a case from twenty ten,
so about fourteen years ago, when residents of a neighborhood
(34:18):
called Sanjay Park they had claimed a ghost cat was
responsible for killing and eating forty five pigeons and one
goat over the course of about ten days. And the
guy who owned these birds in this goat, dude named
Faraz Dilivar Kahn. He said, look, I have seen this thing.
(34:42):
I saw it eating my pigeons. It is quote fat
and broad with a long tail. It's black in color.
It has a face like a dog and a back
like a mongoose, which, honestly saying a back like a mongoose.
I don't think that really clocks for a lot of
people in the West. We're not mongee experts. Correct.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
Is that a dis or accomplished.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
I just want to be I just want.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
To Yeah, speaking of uh fat and broad, I just
wanted to give this update. I was doing a little
Joe research and I found out who he is and
he has a real name. Uh and I'll just let
you click on that link I just put in the
chat boys. That is the real name of the recording
artist known as Joe.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Oh, Dick Flood.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
His name is Dick Flood.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
Wow, please please, And apparently.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Richard was by father's name.
Speaker 5 (35:42):
Please call legendary Dick Flood, who's playing and recording under
the sobriquet Joe in one of Fervor's most accomplished artists.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
He's this is a record label, I guess. And he
had a group called Dick Flood and the Pathfinders.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Yeah, yes, nice, nice. Let the floodgates loose.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
I'm glad we had that shared experience though growing up, y'all,
is this is another thing that just brings us.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
It's like McGruff, the crime dog, you know, ohly a.
Speaker 4 (36:09):
Real human person that came to our schools.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Yes, all right, don't ruin McGruff for me. That is
an anthropomorphic dog. It's with a real bad drug problem. Apparently, Yes,
with a real you know what, cool vibe.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
Though.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Faraz Con apparently gets fed up with this ghost cat
eating all his birds and maybe eating the goat was
the last straw. So ten days past, almost two weeks,
he goes to the local authorities. He calls the police,
he calls the fire department, he calls the forestry folks.
It's November three, around ten pm, twenty ten. The authorities
(36:48):
all show up. They take this seriously. They get there,
they know there are dead birds and a dead goat.
And when they get there, they say, dang, this ghost
cat ghosted us. It's probably out in the forest somewhere.
We can't find it. It faded from the news. But
the thing that keeps us captivated by this idea is
(37:10):
that these people living in Sanjay Park, they are familiar
with the wildlife around them. If they saw something, they
would be able to identify it. They know what kind
of animals might target livestock, and they said, look, we've
seen wildcats before, this is not a wild cat. So
(37:33):
in this case, our verdict has to be again unknown.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Well, it stinks because if you had, if you just
had some wild like house cats, right, even domesticated house
cats that were hanging out in that area, they could
take down those pigeons easy. I've seen it happen. I
have seen a cat jump in the air on like
a porch and an apartment, you know, just that one
of those tiny little areas, just jump up, grab a
(38:01):
bird out of the air and just pull it down.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
Those little fellows are like cruise missiles, man, you know,
they seek and destroy.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
But but you have people who have this, as you said,
been like. They know the difference. They see something that
is not a cat like that. It's also not a
cat like just a bigger regular cat. It's something different.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Not a cat like that.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
And I think it's probably pretty clear already. But we're
not saying these people were stupid either. We're not saying
these people were like all bugaboo and confused. They just
didn't have access to the same wealth of like the
whole of human civilization that we do you know, so
they were having the kind of make it up as
they went along.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
Also, given that this is twenty ten, you know, these
folks are very well aware of what surrounds them and
they're also they also wanted to be an animal. They understand,
you know what I mean. This is not a Bigfoot fan.
This guy is a dude who was out a significant
amount of capital. Because forty five pigeons, that's a lot
(39:08):
of pigeons. Also, do you know the going price on
a goat, because let me spoil it for you, it
is kind of expensive if you live in that part
of the world. It's like someone stole your car, you
know what I mean, You're not happy about it. You
just lost your camera.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
And this just give you, guys goat sucker vibes like
chuop Ofcabre type vibes as well. I mean, that's a
big part of the reporting on the Cheep Ofcabre is
that it was killing livestock and then it becomes this
like boogeyman almost you know.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Yeah, as a matter of fact, let's take a break
for a word from our sponsors, and then we're going
to introduce you to one of the most adorable of
India's cryptids. We've returned, okay, Loris. You guys know what
(39:59):
the laurus looks like. Like, it's weird. It's got big eyes.
It's always been.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
The trees, right, He's got a.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Lords always look like a laurus. Always looks like it's
scheming like a raccoon. You know. They got hands. They're
just close enough to human hands.
Speaker 4 (40:17):
The meer cat vibes almost like a meer cat mixed
with a sloth.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Perhaps, Yeah, because they are they they're even called like
the slow loris or the loris. I mean that's the
way they're colloquially known, right, Yeah, but yeah, it just
makes me think of a sloth or just a cute
little guy.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
It's just challenge it.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Look, man, don't don't bother me. Just trying to get
some fruits and some leaves.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
It's a little sad. You got big old, we big
old dark circles around it. And it looks like a
little hang dog.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
It looks like you, what's the tree? You know, it
looks like it what's a tree? Which we're fine with.
This idea of the tailed slow Laurus is fascinating because
it's originally reported in the Lushai Hills of Assam State,
and there is an actual photograph of this creature. There
(41:10):
are no extravagant claims about this. The primary difference between
a tailed slow Loris and the other slow lords of
the world, it's just that it's in the name. It
has a tale, white, possibly prehensile are There is a
genuine photograph that came from like capture in eighteen eighty
(41:32):
nine when it was a common animal. It was first
reported in writing in nineteen oh eight or nineteen oh two,
early twentieth century. And the dude who captured these animals
got two of them and then sent it off to
his friends in London. He has a name we have
to share with everyone. His name was Thomas Henry digs
(41:57):
Letouche loves to who.
Speaker 4 (42:01):
I can't, Okay, So I mean, so again, we're just
making it clear. The Loris is a subfamily of primates, right,
I mean, this is like an app absolutely you know,
documented creature. But we're just talking about one slight, little
little twist on the loris that turns it into a
cryptid because we don't have record of this variation.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
This is the way I'm imagining, you, guys. I imagine
this Laura's thing. But then I think about a lemur,
and you know the tail of a lemur, which is
very scientific one. Yeah, I think about that, but that's
not how they described and what the well, the picture
is a little hard to make out. What part is
the tail, right, I think if we're kind of objective
about it. But the way it's described is like super bushy, right,
(42:44):
not like a Lemur's tale.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Like different, right, Like the Lemur's tale is often used
for balance, right, because they're a boreal meaning they live
in trees. But the Laura's here, the slow loris they
have kind of like a stubby tail, you know, like
sometimes the humans are born with a vestigial little bump
at the end of their cocksix or do some.
Speaker 4 (43:07):
Cats too, right? Or maybe wait, are cats born without tails?
Or they just been cut off? I'm sorry this is.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
I think they're usually cut off. I'm sure there are
some stuffy tailed cats.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
No bad one which still still exists. His name is Robert.
He he lives good friend Frank. I think I think
Robert as well.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
But Robert had a little stumpy tail.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
And I believe that there are, you know, very cruel
practices that involve cutting off the cat's tails. But I
do I gotta wonder though, if there are cats that
maybe are born without tails, whether it be like some
sort of mutation.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
You might have accidentally adopted a luries.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
Maybe so so.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Sorry, I'm just thinking of all those types people have
mistakenly adopted an animal that they thought was a dog
or a cat, learned it was something different.
Speaker 4 (43:58):
Genetic mutation. By the way, it is a thing. It is, okay,
But you got to wonder if that's something that we
see too, you know, rare mutations that lead to this
type of identification as like something that we don't know about.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Slightly prescient. Yeah, So the story is our buddy digs
litche He and his crew uh. He and his crew
captured two of these specimens. They reported that they were
familiar with them uh and that it was common to
see this type of lord around. They caged the animals,
but due to their wait for it, slow movements, they
(44:34):
didn't bother to escape proof anything. It's like if you
capture a sloth, are you worried it's going to run away?
Speaker 4 (44:42):
To really take them to lift the latch, she would
just like that scene in Zootopia where the sloths work
at the DMV and like the stamp. Yea, so it's
so funny.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
So they messed up though with this creature, which again
is documented. There is a photograph. As soon as the
human turn away, these purportedly slow little guys saw their chance.
They got out of the cage and they high tailed
it quickly back to the forest. Since that moment in
eighteen eighty nine, they have never been seen again. We
(45:14):
don't know if they're still out there. We don't know
if maybe they were a specific genre of life form
that died out due to human predation or human pressures.
But I like what you're bringing up, nolwhich is prescient.
There is the idea, or there is the possibility that
this was the result of an isolated mutation, an ata
(45:36):
astic gene triggering tail growth in a small number of individuals.
How kind of like how malungeons have creepy stuff.
Speaker 4 (45:45):
Going on, right, I guess that's funny. I think of
maybe a mutation that will cause a tailed animal to
not have a tail, to be a little bit simpler mutation,
but one that actually gives you a taiale out of nowhere.
Maybe that one's like more of like a supermutation, like
you like a superpower, and then you got a wonder too. Evolutionarily,
if the tail ended up being a functional thing, maybe
(46:06):
that species evolves to have the tail because that becomes
a you know, a desirable trait.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
If you see one, don't kill it, don't eat it,
don't pull a Darwin, get a photograph.
Speaker 4 (46:17):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (46:18):
Such a flexer. He totally ate those animals.
Speaker 4 (46:22):
And he loved every bite.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
So what do you think, gents? Is this going to
be a two parter?
Speaker 4 (46:27):
It's a great place to divide it because we've got
some coming up. There are a lot more in the
super dark kind of weirder realm and maybe resemble some
things that we know from other even you know more
you know you United States centric views of kryptids. Oh dude.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
The that map that we found that we mentioned at
the very top of this episode has things like about
creatures that have bioluminescence that shouldn't, creatures of all different
shapes and sizes, and weird stuff that we got to
get into. So yeah, we definitely need more of this.
Speaker 4 (46:59):
Oh yeah, And I mean, just to tease the first
one we're going to talk about on the next episode,
The Monkey Man of New Delhi might interest you if
you've seen the Dev Patel film Monkey Man, which is
out in theaters now, where he's like this fight club
type avenger who is totally capitalizing on the mythology of
this cryptid. Yes the most Yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
Also, Oh, there's so much to go into with the
Monkey Man. That's one of my favorites. We don't have time.
We got to save it. We want to take a
second and think truth is fiction hyt on Reddit Truth
is Fiction yt Your awesome cryptid map of India helped
inspire a lot of tonight's conversation. We have more stories
to explore in depth. There's so many we didn't get to.
(47:43):
Each of these, each of which has their own rich mythology,
fascinating parallels to known biology, or degrees of symbolism, especially
with the Monkey Man relating to the societies in which
those stories were told. We can will go in to
the feedback loop in a future episode, which is very
(48:03):
important to understand. We hope you tune in. If you
enjoyed tonight's episode, be sure to also tune in for
our upcoming exploration of trolls not the ones online as well.
As we can finally announce it on air. We're doing
We're doing the Reptilian conspiracy. Yeah fine, like ten years late.
(48:26):
We're diving into the Reptilian conspiracy. We would love your help.
Tell us your favorite cryptids. If you are a person
who has lived in India, if you have family in India,
especially in some of the areas we named, we'd love
to hear from you. We try to be easy to
find online.
Speaker 4 (48:44):
So easy you can find into the handle conspiracy stuff
where we exist on Facebook. We have our Facebook group
Here's where it gets crazy that you too can be
a member of. We are also conspiracy stuff on x FKA,
Twitter and maybe most importantly, I don't know, they're all
probably equal importance. YouTube or you can find some really
fun video content rolling out every single week, conspiracy stuff
(49:04):
on TikTok and Instagram. We're conspiracy Stuff show.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
There is a phone number and you can call it
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(49:29):
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (49:30):
We are the folks who read every single email we get.
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Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noel.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Paul, Mission Control, DECANDT. Most importantly, you are here.
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
A bit of a palette cleanser tonight. We have heard
from many of our fellow conspiracy realists who are always
(00:51):
asking us for more cryptid explorations. Now, long time listeners,
you know we've examined in depth. What are some of
the episodes. I'll always remember our pal who runs Expedition Bigfoot.
That was a great interview.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
I love a wistful way you said. We'll always remember
Expedition Bigfoot. You know it was a golden time in
all of our lives. I think.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Let's see, we also looked at cryptids in Indonesia, right
the ohl oh jeez, that was well.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Well that was another one. Oh man. There was the
spooky fans. Remember those spooky fans that were killing everybody
that we sort of lumped into cryptids because it was
like a I don't know, there was a ghost.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
At play, perhaps in South Korea, that's right. Yeah, And
now we are traveling this evening to a place that
has its own, largely unique population of alleged cryptids that
many people in the West have not heard of. I mean,
you've heard of the region, you've heard of India and
(01:59):
Pakistan in Afghanistan, but you may not know they have
monsters all their own, one of which is just by
the way, spoiler, extremely adorable. Will get to it. Here
(02:19):
are the facts for anyone unfamiliar. We'd like to give
you just a quick and dirty understanding of what cryptids
are and why they fascinate us.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
So cryptids are sneaky animals that might exist. That's how
I will define a crypti.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
That's what cryptid translates to actually in Latin as sneaky animal.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Yeah, it's a group term for any number of organisms
that are alleged to exist or believed to exist, outside
the bounds of modern acknowledged scientific consensus. And these are
very old. Like you know, everybody has their own version
of Bigfoot. As we'll see, there are also more regional
(03:03):
cryptids like the Jersey Devil. Neither of those have been
proven to exist, but every year there are dozens, if
not hundreds of people who believe that they have seen one.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Well, And I mean it's all so tightly wound up
in folklore and tradition of different cultures, and a lot
of times there's a belief in these creatures that stems
from either kind of superstition or even religion sometimes and
that leads to, perhaps without proof, a genuine belief in
some parts of the world, and these things existing.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Well, and every once in a while, as we're going
to find in this episode, as we have in the past,
there's a documented sighting of something in the way it's
written about in that first documented sighting, it's so mysterious
and strange that it creates its own lore.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Right, Yeah, there's a real umami to it, right, because
humans seek to understand the world around them, and there
are few things as intellectually take as the ability to
discover a new animal.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
You did promise a palate cleanser, Benz, and this is
going to be sort of a chicken noodle soup for
the conspiratorial soul here today. I like that phrase.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah, we were talking about this off air. We wanted
to do one fun one because we have deep water
behind us and ahead. There's also a lot of scientific
basis to the idea of cryptids. You know, some cryptids,
the most plausible ones, turn out to be animals that
we already knew existed, and perhaps society, often Western society,
(04:36):
mistakenly concluded these animals were extinct. Our number one example
of this is the seilacanth. They were supposed to have
died out millions of years ago, and then, surprise, surprise,
some Western scientists got over to the part of Africa
where the ceilacanth is still very much alive and they said, oh,
(04:58):
we've proven cryptid. And all the people who are living
in that area were like, no, this ugly fish has
always been around. You can't eat it. It's a trash fish.
And they were like, no, history, we are writing it.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
But isn't there even a specific Indian selacanth that we've
heard about for this episode.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Yes, yes, there very much is, and we are going
to in the course of this exploration, introduce you, fellow
conspiracy realist, to an amazing map that inspired a lot
of this conversation. There are other cryptids, like the Tasmanian tiger,
still officially considered extinct, but every single year a few
(05:40):
people in Australia or Tasmania are certain they have seen
one alive in the wild. It's a really the study
of cryptozoology is a study of human encroachment into wilderness.
And you know, it's also weird. Like we think when
you see stuff on the History Channel or Discovery ID
(06:02):
or whatever, you get the sense that cryptids are kind
of a modern concept. But it turns out, over the
course of history, every single human culture has been fascinated
by the story of fantastic creatures, and often it's because
they were just working with what they had.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
I mean, y'all, even some of the ones we know about.
One could argue you are pretty fantastic. Can you imagine
seeing some of these for the first time or catching
a glimpse, you know, before there was scientific basis to explain,
you know, the nature of connection between different species and
phyla and kingdoms and all of that good stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Pretty wild, Even something as simple as you live in
an area and nobody you've ever known has ever seen
a big cat in anywhere near where you are, and
there's no writings about big cats, there's no official big
cats anywhere near you. But then you swear you experienced
seeing one and hearing one out in the woods, like
(06:58):
you know you did, and what he like? What do
you tell your friends? And what does that turn into?
And it's the same with big reptiles, right.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Yes, yeah, it is the same with reptiles. As we'll
find there are still reptiles out there to be discovered.
An interesting side note for a different thing. I recently
learned that some reptiles may indeed be capable of what
mammals would recognize as affection. Story for another day, Story
(07:27):
for another day.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Dude, have you ever seen a guy walking around holding
a bearded dragon just on their chest? You know there's
love in those eyes. I've seen it.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
I've recently saw this video of a guy who he's
out on the swamp. He's taking some people on a tour,
I think, and he tells about this smamp puppy. You've
seen a swamp puppy And they're like what, And it's
an allegorty. He basically calls a wild alligator over to
the boat, gives it some gimick.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
Kind of whistle like a call an a gator car.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
He was just talking to it like it's a dog
man and he's just patting it on the nose. That
you just pat him right on the nose and if
they ever come at you just pop them right in
that nose.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Chicken.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
Maybe yeah, yeah, you guys. I don't know if this
was like a common thing in Georgia. I think this
guy might have made the rounds. But there's this dude
named Joe would come tonight elementary school always talked about
being swamp wise.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Did he tour everyone?
Speaker 4 (08:21):
There's more than one. Maybe there's like like various.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Psychics calling themselves Madame Bell. Perhaps it's a brand name. Yeah,
we know also that uh, first off, we're establishing here
that the human species has a lot to learn about
other non human animals, and humans are still very much animals.
They are type of primate. We know that the humans
(08:48):
have been attempting to explain the world around them since
they started peopling. And so some of your favorite mythologies,
some of your favorite legends, they originate from prototypes of
scientific investigation. One of the most famous would be the
legend of the Cyclops, the giant with one eye instead
(09:11):
of two. That most likely came from the discovery of
the skull of an elephant and the misinterpretation. We talked
about this in the past. If you look at an
elephant's skull, you can look at the big hole in
the middle where the trunk is and think, yeah, that's
where I would put an eye if I was gone.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
Man, I was hoping there was some kind of proto
man that definitely had one eye. That was a real thing.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Oh, there's been a couple, a couple non consensually, but
we know some cryptids also are the result of the
great game of telephone oral communication, mistranslation, embellishment. One person
travels from beyond the bounds of their known part of
(09:57):
the world, and then they see amazing animals, perhaps in Asia,
perhaps in Africa, perhaps in what we call the Americas.
They come back, they tell their colleagues, they tell their
peer groups, and the colleagues start to tell other people
the story. And every single time they tell the story,
they embellish it a little bit, they exaggerate a little bit.
(10:19):
They might even twist it around to support whatever their
preexisting ideology is. You know, the weirdest thing is There
are scammers now in the modern evenings talking about cryptids
as a way to sort of bait and switch folks.
But for most of human history, so far as we know,
(10:41):
these people were not trying to pull a scam. These
early philosophers, these historians, these proto scientists, they wanted to
understand the world around them, and they got it wrong
pretty often. But they still, even with everything that looked
like a misstep, they still played a important role in
the larger or and important role in the larger advancement
(11:05):
of civilization. India is no different. India is perhaps one
of the best land areas to find an actual cryptid.
I mean, it's so old, it's massive. Yes, it has
one of, if not the world's largest populations of human beings,
(11:27):
but it also has a lot of wild countries.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
Still. I think this came up in another episode recently.
We were talking about our friend Mangesh telling us the
story about how his father, I want to say, or
maybe it was grandfather, was send minister grandfather like a
minister of forestry or it was responsible for like overseeing
a lot of this crazy you know jungle, and he
you know, really pointed out to us how wild so
(11:52):
much of India really, really is.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
We also learned the phrase mega diverse. We've talked about
biodiversity in the past, but very few places are mega diverse.
Right now, as we are recording in twenty twenty four,
the nation of India, not just the region of that subcontinent,
but on the single nation of India has seven to
(12:19):
eight percent of all of the recorded species in the world.
There are thirty four universally agreed upon biodiversity hotspots, and
India has four of them. The Himalaya region, as you
mentioned earlier, in nol Indo, Burma, or miandmar the western
(12:42):
Sri Lanka. It goes on and on. But the question
is what else is out there now? Are there any
true cryptids unidentified life forms in India? Could any of
these stories be real? We're going to pause for a
word from our response, and then we're diving in. Here's
(13:09):
where it gets crazy. Yes, it sounds weird to think
that the most heavily human occupied nation on the planet
could still be very rife with wilderness and animals, but
it's true. Like if you are if you are looking
anywhere but the depths of the ocean, India is quite
(13:32):
likely the place where you could find a real cryptid.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
And I mean in general, when we're talking about cryptids,
not all of them are created equal in terms of
their provenance. As we mentioned at the top of the show,
there are certainly some of them that may have been
misidentified in historical records, you know, in writing and early
kind of naturalists and misunderstandings galore that played, you know,
into that game of telephone can really make something into
something pretty outrageously cryptid. Like I guess what what I'm
(14:00):
trying to say is there's sort of a there's a
likelihood factor of whether some of these things are related
in these tales to actual creatures, or if the game
of telephone just got completely out of hand, driven by
ideology or superstition or what have you.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Yeah, let's go to some examples. One of the most
ancient cryptids in India and in Ethiopia is a little
thing called the crow cutta. To describe it, it sounds
like we're setting up a bar joke. What do you
get when you cross a wolf, a dog, a hyena,
(14:37):
and a lion, Well, you get the cro tutta.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
Sounds like a delicious pastry, though, doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
It does very much. So, Yeah, it's an ancient cryptid.
It's described by multiple historians throughout antiquity, including our boy Plenty, PLI,
n Y. And it's weird when you look at what
he writes in natural history. He is kind of the
first crypto zoologist, Like the the scholarly burden of proof
(15:09):
is not really a thing. So this guy is just
sort of like when Freud was making up psychoanalysis. He's saying, oh,
I heard about this one thing, you know, and I
heard about this other thing, and then other people took
his descriptions and they ran with it, as you said, Noel,
adding on their own twist.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
Well, and as we you know, we described this thing.
It's kind of fine for all these to play the
game of like, well, let's filter these descriptions through the
things we now know that science has explained, and what
is maybe the more likely possibility of what this thing was,
or there's the WCF moment where we don't really have
a reasonable explanation.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah, just quick side note from me, guys. Plenty is
the dude that I've always heard as Plenty or Pliny
the Elder.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Correct, Yeah, I've heard of both for sure. Something about
the mouthfeel of Pliny is fun for me. But yeah,
that's the guy.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Well isn't it so cool that that guy was around
so long ago and we still like look to him
as some of the for some of the original recorded
descriptions of a lot of these things. As you said, Ben,
this guy was all about weird creatures from different places because.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Clearly well traveled, right, I mean it wasn't from around here,
you know, but he didn't.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
When you look at the translated recorded writings of him,
he's not discounting things. He's not immediately saying, well, you know,
because of my extensive knowledge of natural history, this Krakata
couldn't possibly exist. It's like it's like the concept is, well, what,
maybe there is something like that, we just haven't found
it yet.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
He's got such abe if you've read natural history, He's like, hey, bro,
you know what I heard. I heard there was this
turtle that's like bigger than every turtle ever.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Yeah. You know. But back in those days too, it
seems like historians and scientists and philosophers there was a
little bit more of a healthy mix of mysticism in
their vibes, you know what I mean. There was an
acceptance of the impossible, right, They weren't always out to
debunk necessarily, or they were even in some ways driven
by some of these kind of metaphysical pursuits more so
(17:22):
than what you might consider a scientist or a historian
you know, to be today.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
The Elder would have been an absolute beast on Twitter,
that's for sure. But and he probably would have hosted
a discovery show like River Monsters or something.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
But I just to clarify, he's from Rome, right, ancient
Roman mytory philosopher, natural philosopher.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Ye, yeah, natural philosopher, which was a quality job at
the time if you could get it. According to what
we know about about this creature, the qro cutta from
plenty of the Elder, the animal was thought to be
found most often in the rainforest areas of India and
then parts of Africa. Ethiopia we'll call it today, Actually
(18:06):
we'll call it Ethiopia back then because it's one of
the oldest countries that is still a country. This cro
cutta thing, it's definitely quadruped. It's about the size of
a mule. According to descriptions. It is known for hunting
humans as well as regular dogs, and we know dogs
(18:28):
were at this time already well domesticated, already speciated from wolves.
The Krokutta had a lot of powers ascribed to it.
It could change its color at will, It could blend
into its surroundings like the predator it attacked from the shadows.
It could eat a person in It could kill a
(18:52):
person in seconds. It could digest them very quickly, and
it had a voracious appetite. Perhaps the most interesting thing
here is that it could mimic the sounds of human beings.
There are legends of it going to someone's doorstep and
then sounding like a person another person to get it outside,
(19:16):
to get that person outside, and then eating it.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
Yo.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
If you guys seen that movie Annihilation, remember the part
of me it's you know, there's a whole part of this. Yeah,
the bear, but it's a combination of a bear, and
it screams with the voice of a human, and it's
sort of this like bear, pig, bore, alligator monster thing,
this hybrid And that's what I'm picturing here. And I'm
also wondering too if, like a lot of these h takes,
(19:43):
there's some fear involved. You're like, this is a thing
that is absolutely terrifying is going to murder me, and therefore,
in my mind, I'm projecting the scariest possible thing that
it could be. Maybe you didn't even get a good look.
You're mainly running away from this thing, you know.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Well, it's kind of I again, the way this creature
is disc with such a combo of scary things. It
gives me those vibes as well, But it also really
reminds me of some of the skinwalker legends that exist,
especially out in the Southwest. Here in the United States.
We're from indigenous tribes that have lived there for way,
way longer than anybody who was writing stuff down about that.
(20:19):
So I don't know that alone gives me the creeps. Mostly,
I think the mimicry part.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Right, Yeah, that's where we edge into the supernatural, or
verge into the supernatural. Another complication in the legends, this
Krokutta is said to be able to change genders. And
believe it or not, folks, we can explain this. We
have to ask one of the first questions for this
crypti example, could the Krocutta be a case of misidentification?
(20:51):
India does have large dangerous animals. I mean the tiger. Look,
I could. I am confident that I could PvP kangaroo.
I am right about that. I don't want to do it.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
I look forward to this.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
I don't want to do it. But if worse comes
to worse, I've got the agility, I've got the thumbs,
I've got the knowledge. But no one or the vast
majority of people cannot PvP a tiger, which means that
the population of India, going back to pre written history,
like before the recorded word, they knew about the tiger.
(21:27):
They knew about dangerous animals, they did not identify this one.
And interestingly enough, there are multiple historical descriptions post plenty
of the elder of the Krokutta being taken to Roman civilization.
We know it goes. I mean, it's weirdly recent in
(21:49):
the grand scheme of things. It was common era one
eight when Roman Emperor got his hands on one.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
So I'm just trying to backtrack a little bit to
the switch swapping of gender. Is this maybe a case
where you know, I mean, I always bring this up,
but like the Brotherhood of the Wolf and the Beast
of Gotto Van or whatever, and you're searching and hunting
for this very murderous beast that you believe to be
an individual, a single individual, right, and then maybe there
(22:18):
are more than one. And maybe there's this idea that
you're hunting this one thing and you think it's a male,
and then you catch one and it's a female, and
you believe that it's changed genders because it could only
be the one individual that was causing all that havoc.
But in fact there are more than one. Maybe because
there's a lack of understanding. I don't know. I'm just
wondering what could lead to that misunderstanding or that belief.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Quite possibly, We're we're going to solve it here. So
for the historical record, we know how the a book
called the Augustine History argues that at some point the
Roman emperor Antoninus A received one of these creatures as
a gift. It was just like a flex you know,
(23:01):
It's like, here's a fancy souvenir. And then later another
historian called Cassius Dio talks about an emperor named Septimus
Severus who brought a crocutta to Rome, and Dio says
this quote Indian species was then introduced to Rome for
(23:22):
the first time so far as I am aware. It
has the color of a lioness and tiger combined, and
the general appearance of those animals as also of a
dog and folks gloriously blended. So okay, once you get
past all the weird myths that game a telephone, we're
pretty sure that this they're describing the spotted hyena and
(23:48):
gr tracks right. It answers the idea of imitation, right,
the idea of imitating calls right like a hyena laughs,
et cetera. It also it also answers the gender question
because we know that female spotted hyenas when they become
the dominant members of their pack. I don't want to
(24:11):
be too crass here, but if you look at the
biology the dominant female hyena, it's glitterius will enlarge, it
will become fully a rectile, so it would appear to
change gender.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
That's fascinating. Yeah, that was gonna be my first bet.
Those things are scary, man, those are and they're yeah,
I mean, I don't know, guys. I always picture the
hyenas from The Lion King because I found them to
be pretty menacing in some of those scenes when I
was a kid. That stuck with me they've got the
sloped kind of you know, down on their haunches, ready
(24:46):
to pounce kind of quality to them. And you're right
that the human laugh almost like a mockingbird or something,
or like a parrot. It almost does have this sort
of foremant quality to it, like a human local court.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
And now I just have images of whoope as the
hyaena becoming the alpha. I don't like any of it.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
Yeah, if you ever come back, we're gonna kill you.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
So we have solved that effectively, one cryptid case, an
ancient one. But let's move to other things. Because again
our pals, the historians of old, to my knowledge, they
have all passed on. They wrote a lot about weird animals.
And another one that's continually fascinating is something called the manticore.
(25:36):
It's also ancient, but it's a little tougher to explain
because it's got a weird vibe. It looks as the
head of a person right well.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
But again to me though, it feels like a continuation
of the crocutta because of that human voice quality. Now
all of a sudden it's got the whole human head,
you know. And you hear about the manticore and all
kinds of law and like, you know, tantamount to fighting
a dragon or something almost you know, you really do
hear about you know, these brave knights or what have
(26:07):
you that would go out to slay a manticore. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Yeah, it's got the body of a lion, the head
of a man, and then in a Shamelan twist, it
also has the tail of a scorpion that can shoot
poisonous starts. I mean, this.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
Looks like a giant clitists.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
And a giant glitterist. This looks like a drawing that
we would make when we were children, if all of
us were children at some point.
Speaker 4 (26:31):
I mean.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
The earliest mention of it comes from another ancient historian,
a Greek historian uh Tasius. He had a book called
Indica in the fifth century BCE, and the.
Speaker 6 (26:46):
Acts in the couch right right right, and thank you
for everybody wrote in with some really fun ones about
Indica versus Sativa and are they a myth?
Speaker 4 (26:56):
Anyway? Starry to derail it?
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Well, the perfect because Indica, the actual book or the manuscript,
is lost to time, and we only know about it
because we hear other writers, later writers name checking it.
Going back to Plitty in Natural History. He has the
following description of Tasius and the manticore.
Speaker 4 (27:22):
Yeah, and he writes that amongst these same men there
is found an animal have to lapse into the voice,
called the mantichora, which has three rows of teeth like
a comb, the face and ears of a human, and
bluish eyes. It is red in color, with the body
of a lion and a tail with stigers like a scorpion.
(27:42):
Its voice is as if the sounds of the pipe
were mixed with a trumpet, and it is a creature
of great speed which avidly goes after human flesh. Guys,
the sound of the pipe mixed with the troupe. This
sounds like Jurassic Park, Foley work right here. I mean,
all of those crazy roars they did in Jurassic Park.
A lot of those are combining different animals and sometimes
(28:05):
musical instruments and drones to make these other worldly kind
of you know roars. Guys.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
It's making me think of psychological manipulation war tactics that
we've talked about in the past.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
This is what I'm thinking about here, yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Right where It's like if you could convince with either
instrumentation like you know, imagine war drums, but in this
case some kind of horns and other sounds that you're
shooting out at great distances when your army is gathered
together behind a big wall right or across a ridge,
but you're making these sounds to make it feel as
(28:40):
though there's a super creepy creature just across the ridge.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
I think think about like, you know, warring people with
wild animals, where they dress them up and like armor
and things like that, sometimes like rhinoceroses or what have you. Elephants,
even war elephants. You know, people are hearing these sounds
coming across the battlefield and only seeing them when they're
in the thick of the heat of battle, and they
(29:05):
might be hallucinating some stuff, seeing things that this armor
or what have you maybe make them think are like
actually parts of the animals themselves.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Yeah, and with this one, with this guy, we see
the game of telephone. Because those original accounts, right, the
first one is lost to history as far as we know.
The second one that name checks that original author goes
on to influence everybody else who writes about the manticre
(29:37):
without actually having seen one or what they thought was one,
And to date, there has been no proven capture of
a mant core. There have been no proven accounts of
attacks on humans from manti cores, despite their fearsome reputation.
So in this case, our verdict at Presant has to
(29:58):
be the following unknown because there's a lot of wilderness
in India, but this creature the way it's described does
not fit our current understanding biology. There is a much
more likely cryptid that we should go to. We're walking
through different flavors of cryptids because India has quite a few.
(30:20):
We've got to introduce you to. I don't know about you, guys.
One of my favorites the boats Billy or ghost cat.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Yeah, this is another sick cryptid again, the manicore. If
you wanted to design something that was just the most
terrifying thing, make the manicore, especially if it's that fast
with all that gear already attached.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
To a human face.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, that one's that's too much. But just big cats
in general, as we've seen in other episodes in the past,
where the thought that there could be even just a
mountain lion lurking in a place where it should be
it's horrifying. But this guy, do you say it ben.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Uh bolts Billy, a ghost cat, a cat that's like
like hiding from you out there.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
It's not just in the woods, it's hiding in the woods.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
Yeah, I like just calling it the boot billy. That's
a lot less like the wild boot billy coming coming
at you.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
It's it's often described as a cross between a cat,
a dog, and a mongoose. So smaller than a.
Speaker 4 (31:29):
Lot the mongoose bark crags, larger.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Than a hyena. Oh, the mongoose is awesome, dude. That's
ticky tappy all day, dude.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
One of the most efficient hunters that exists out there.
Doesn't give an f kind of you know, like one
of those honey badgers where oh, I'm sorry, you're you're
a cobra. Oh you got your rattlesnake too bad, I'm
a mongoose come at you.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
Well, they've got asymmetric warfare down. Check out our North
Woods Operation episode where I think, if I recall, I
went on a little bit of tangent kissing the ass
of the mongoose. That's why they named the operation whatever.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
All right, can you say really quickly, I was talking
about like war animals and all of that stuff, And
I said, you know, rhinos out low because it was
you know, in the movie three hundred. But apparently that
misconception because rhino's apparently would be very difficult to train
and it would be unwieldy to use.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
In that terrible right. Exactly that too.
Speaker 4 (32:23):
But there's a very famous wood cut by Albrick Durr,
who is a very famous artist, and I'm not getting
the timeline right, but it was definitely would have been
representative of the time where there was like, you know,
a massive battlefield kind of night type you know, warfare.
But this wasn't real. And I don't know if Albert
Duhr was doing that game of telephone thing and being
(32:44):
smart or if he really thought he saw this thing.
It's another example of how this stuff can just kind
of like churn up its own lore.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
Right, Yeah, I mean this is this is a game. Well,
let's do this part. Now, this is a game you
can play at home with your friends. Fellow conspiracy realist,
describe an unfamiliar animal to a friend of yours or
family member, and then ask them to draw a picture
(33:13):
of what they heard you describe. And that explains to
us even now, you could do this at home even now.
That explains to us so much cryptid lore, because imagine
someone is going, someone's going, well, you know, out in
the brains of Africa, there is a creature that functions.
Speaker 7 (33:36):
As though it was born with armor. It has opponents,
now to a great horn, it runs at its enemies,
and then you know they're like, all right, just draw that.
It's basically producers talking to people in the nineteen eighties, right,
which explains all those films.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
You nailed it.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
That's very kind. We also know that the boots Billy
and we are not native speakers. Here is kind of
a regional a regional terror. People genuinely believe this ghost
cat was real. We found a case from twenty ten,
so about fourteen years ago, when residents of a neighborhood
(34:18):
called Sanjay Park they had claimed a ghost cat was
responsible for killing and eating forty five pigeons and one
goat over the course of about ten days. And the
guy who owned these birds in this goat, dude named
Faraz Dilivar Kahn. He said, look, I have seen this thing.
(34:42):
I saw it eating my pigeons. It is quote fat
and broad with a long tail. It's black in color.
It has a face like a dog and a back
like a mongoose, which, honestly saying a back like a mongoose.
I don't think that really clocks for a lot of
people in the West. We're not mongee experts. Correct.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
Is that a dis or accomplished.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
I just want to be I just want.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
To Yeah, speaking of uh fat and broad, I just
wanted to give this update. I was doing a little
Joe research and I found out who he is and
he has a real name. Uh and I'll just let
you click on that link I just put in the
chat boys. That is the real name of the recording
artist known as Joe.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Oh, Dick Flood.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
His name is Dick Flood.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
Wow, please please, And apparently.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Richard was by father's name.
Speaker 5 (35:42):
Please call legendary Dick Flood, who's playing and recording under
the sobriquet Joe in one of Fervor's most accomplished artists.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
He's this is a record label, I guess. And he
had a group called Dick Flood and the Pathfinders.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Yeah, yes, nice, nice. Let the floodgates loose.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
I'm glad we had that shared experience though growing up, y'all,
is this is another thing that just brings us.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
It's like McGruff, the crime dog, you know, ohly a.
Speaker 4 (36:09):
Real human person that came to our schools.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Yes, all right, don't ruin McGruff for me. That is
an anthropomorphic dog. It's with a real bad drug problem. Apparently, Yes,
with a real you know what, cool vibe.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
Though.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Faraz Con apparently gets fed up with this ghost cat
eating all his birds and maybe eating the goat was
the last straw. So ten days past, almost two weeks,
he goes to the local authorities. He calls the police,
he calls the fire department, he calls the forestry folks.
It's November three, around ten pm, twenty ten. The authorities
(36:48):
all show up. They take this seriously. They get there,
they know there are dead birds and a dead goat.
And when they get there, they say, dang, this ghost
cat ghosted us. It's probably out in the forest somewhere.
We can't find it. It faded from the news. But
the thing that keeps us captivated by this idea is
(37:10):
that these people living in Sanjay Park, they are familiar
with the wildlife around them. If they saw something, they
would be able to identify it. They know what kind
of animals might target livestock, and they said, look, we've
seen wildcats before, this is not a wild cat. So
(37:33):
in this case, our verdict has to be again unknown.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Well, it stinks because if you had, if you just
had some wild like house cats, right, even domesticated house
cats that were hanging out in that area, they could
take down those pigeons easy. I've seen it happen. I
have seen a cat jump in the air on like
a porch and an apartment, you know, just that one
of those tiny little areas, just jump up, grab a
(38:01):
bird out of the air and just pull it down.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
Those little fellows are like cruise missiles, man, you know,
they seek and destroy.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
But but you have people who have this, as you said,
been like. They know the difference. They see something that
is not a cat like that. It's also not a
cat like just a bigger regular cat. It's something different.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Not a cat like that.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
And I think it's probably pretty clear already. But we're
not saying these people were stupid either. We're not saying
these people were like all bugaboo and confused. They just
didn't have access to the same wealth of like the
whole of human civilization that we do you know, so
they were having the kind of make it up as
they went along.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
Also, given that this is twenty ten, you know, these
folks are very well aware of what surrounds them and
they're also they also wanted to be an animal. They understand,
you know what I mean. This is not a Bigfoot fan.
This guy is a dude who was out a significant
amount of capital. Because forty five pigeons, that's a lot
(39:08):
of pigeons. Also, do you know the going price on
a goat, because let me spoil it for you, it
is kind of expensive if you live in that part
of the world. It's like someone stole your car, you
know what I mean, You're not happy about it. You
just lost your camera.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
And this just give you, guys goat sucker vibes like
chuop Ofcabre type vibes as well. I mean, that's a
big part of the reporting on the Cheep Ofcabre is
that it was killing livestock and then it becomes this
like boogeyman almost you know.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Yeah, as a matter of fact, let's take a break
for a word from our sponsors, and then we're going
to introduce you to one of the most adorable of
India's cryptids. We've returned, okay, Loris. You guys know what
(39:59):
the laurus looks like. Like, it's weird. It's got big eyes.
It's always been.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
The trees, right, He's got a.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Lords always look like a laurus. Always looks like it's
scheming like a raccoon. You know. They got hands. They're
just close enough to human hands.
Speaker 4 (40:17):
The meer cat vibes almost like a meer cat mixed
with a sloth.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Perhaps, Yeah, because they are they they're even called like
the slow loris or the loris. I mean that's the
way they're colloquially known, right, Yeah, but yeah, it just
makes me think of a sloth or just a cute
little guy.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
It's just challenge it.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Look, man, don't don't bother me. Just trying to get
some fruits and some leaves.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
It's a little sad. You got big old, we big
old dark circles around it. And it looks like a
little hang dog.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
It looks like you, what's the tree? You know, it
looks like it what's a tree? Which we're fine with.
This idea of the tailed slow Laurus is fascinating because
it's originally reported in the Lushai Hills of Assam State,
and there is an actual photograph of this creature. There
(41:10):
are no extravagant claims about this. The primary difference between
a tailed slow Loris and the other slow lords of
the world, it's just that it's in the name. It
has a tale, white, possibly prehensile are There is a
genuine photograph that came from like capture in eighteen eighty
(41:32):
nine when it was a common animal. It was first
reported in writing in nineteen oh eight or nineteen oh two,
early twentieth century. And the dude who captured these animals
got two of them and then sent it off to
his friends in London. He has a name we have
to share with everyone. His name was Thomas Henry digs
(41:57):
Letouche loves to who.
Speaker 4 (42:01):
I can't, Okay, So I mean, so again, we're just
making it clear. The Loris is a subfamily of primates, right,
I mean, this is like an app absolutely you know,
documented creature. But we're just talking about one slight, little
little twist on the loris that turns it into a
cryptid because we don't have record of this variation.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
This is the way I'm imagining, you, guys. I imagine
this Laura's thing. But then I think about a lemur,
and you know the tail of a lemur, which is
very scientific one. Yeah, I think about that, but that's
not how they described and what the well, the picture
is a little hard to make out. What part is
the tail, right, I think if we're kind of objective
about it. But the way it's described is like super bushy, right,
(42:44):
not like a Lemur's tale.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Like different, right, Like the Lemur's tale is often used
for balance, right, because they're a boreal meaning they live
in trees. But the Laura's here, the slow loris they
have kind of like a stubby tail, you know, like
sometimes the humans are born with a vestigial little bump
at the end of their cocksix or do some.
Speaker 4 (43:07):
Cats too, right? Or maybe wait, are cats born without tails?
Or they just been cut off? I'm sorry this is.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
I think they're usually cut off. I'm sure there are
some stuffy tailed cats.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
No bad one which still still exists. His name is Robert.
He he lives good friend Frank. I think I think
Robert as well.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
But Robert had a little stumpy tail.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
And I believe that there are, you know, very cruel
practices that involve cutting off the cat's tails. But I
do I gotta wonder though, if there are cats that
maybe are born without tails, whether it be like some
sort of mutation.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
You might have accidentally adopted a luries.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
Maybe so so.
Speaker 3 (43:49):
Sorry, I'm just thinking of all those types people have
mistakenly adopted an animal that they thought was a dog
or a cat, learned it was something different.
Speaker 4 (43:58):
Genetic mutation. By the way, it is a thing. It is, okay,
But you got to wonder if that's something that we
see too, you know, rare mutations that lead to this
type of identification as like something that we don't know about.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Slightly prescient. Yeah, So the story is our buddy digs
litche He and his crew uh. He and his crew
captured two of these specimens. They reported that they were
familiar with them uh and that it was common to
see this type of lord around. They caged the animals,
but due to their wait for it, slow movements, they
(44:34):
didn't bother to escape proof anything. It's like if you
capture a sloth, are you worried it's going to run away?
Speaker 4 (44:42):
To really take them to lift the latch, she would
just like that scene in Zootopia where the sloths work
at the DMV and like the stamp. Yea, so it's
so funny.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
So they messed up though with this creature, which again
is documented. There is a photograph. As soon as the
human turn away, these purportedly slow little guys saw their chance.
They got out of the cage and they high tailed
it quickly back to the forest. Since that moment in
eighteen eighty nine, they have never been seen again. We
(45:14):
don't know if they're still out there. We don't know
if maybe they were a specific genre of life form
that died out due to human predation or human pressures.
But I like what you're bringing up, nolwhich is prescient.
There is the idea, or there is the possibility that
this was the result of an isolated mutation, an ata
(45:36):
astic gene triggering tail growth in a small number of individuals.
How kind of like how malungeons have creepy stuff.
Speaker 4 (45:45):
Going on, right, I guess that's funny. I think of
maybe a mutation that will cause a tailed animal to
not have a tail, to be a little bit simpler mutation,
but one that actually gives you a taiale out of nowhere.
Maybe that one's like more of like a supermutation, like
you like a superpower, and then you got a wonder too. Evolutionarily,
if the tail ended up being a functional thing, maybe
(46:06):
that species evolves to have the tail because that becomes
a you know, a desirable trait.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
If you see one, don't kill it, don't eat it,
don't pull a Darwin, get a photograph.
Speaker 4 (46:17):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (46:18):
Such a flexer. He totally ate those animals.
Speaker 4 (46:22):
And he loved every bite.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
So what do you think, gents? Is this going to
be a two parter?
Speaker 4 (46:27):
It's a great place to divide it because we've got
some coming up. There are a lot more in the
super dark kind of weirder realm and maybe resemble some
things that we know from other even you know more
you know you United States centric views of kryptids. Oh dude.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
The that map that we found that we mentioned at
the very top of this episode has things like about
creatures that have bioluminescence that shouldn't, creatures of all different
shapes and sizes, and weird stuff that we got to
get into. So yeah, we definitely need more of this.
Speaker 4 (46:59):
Oh yeah, And I mean, just to tease the first
one we're going to talk about on the next episode,
The Monkey Man of New Delhi might interest you if
you've seen the Dev Patel film Monkey Man, which is
out in theaters now, where he's like this fight club
type avenger who is totally capitalizing on the mythology of
this cryptid. Yes the most Yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
Also, Oh, there's so much to go into with the
Monkey Man. That's one of my favorites. We don't have time.
We got to save it. We want to take a
second and think truth is fiction hyt on Reddit Truth
is Fiction yt Your awesome cryptid map of India helped
inspire a lot of tonight's conversation. We have more stories
to explore in depth. There's so many we didn't get to.
(47:43):
Each of these, each of which has their own rich mythology,
fascinating parallels to known biology, or degrees of symbolism, especially
with the Monkey Man relating to the societies in which
those stories were told. We can will go in to
the feedback loop in a future episode, which is very
(48:03):
important to understand. We hope you tune in. If you
enjoyed tonight's episode, be sure to also tune in for
our upcoming exploration of trolls not the ones online as well.
As we can finally announce it on air. We're doing
We're doing the Reptilian conspiracy. Yeah fine, like ten years late.
(48:26):
We're diving into the Reptilian conspiracy. We would love your help.
Tell us your favorite cryptids. If you are a person
who has lived in India, if you have family in India,
especially in some of the areas we named, we'd love
to hear from you. We try to be easy to
find online.
Speaker 4 (48:44):
So easy you can find into the handle conspiracy stuff
where we exist on Facebook. We have our Facebook group
Here's where it gets crazy that you too can be
a member of. We are also conspiracy stuff on x FKA,
Twitter and maybe most importantly, I don't know, they're all
probably equal importance. YouTube or you can find some really
fun video content rolling out every single week, conspiracy stuff
(49:04):
on TikTok and Instagram. We're conspiracy Stuff show.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
There is a phone number and you can call it
and you can leave us a voicemail. The number is
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If you've got more to say than can fit in
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(49:29):
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (49:30):
We are the folks who read every single email we get.
Be well aware of friends. Sometimes the void writes back.
We want to thank everybody who has taken the time
to send us fantastic pieces of correspondence. We cannot wait
to hear from you. You specifically conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
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