Day 3 of the CFZ Weird Weekend 2012

Sunday at the Weird Weekend 2012 In Woolfardisworthy, Devon.

By Tania Poole - from the CFZ Australia, now living in the wilds of a Yorkshire valley...

Apparently, during the night, here in Woolfardisworthy, a leopard was heard calling nearby! Jon McGowan, a large cat expert and hunter, heard it at about 5am, while he camped by the local Community Centre. Jon has heard many large cats before, so he should know. Yes, all manner of weird things come to the Weird Weekend, even cryptids like out-of-place leopards.

First of the day was Richard Muirhead’s ‘The Flying Snakes of Namibia’ where he looked into old stories from the 1950s where someone saw a flying snake – or thought they did. Since then and in many areas of this south western part of Africa, people who see lights in the sky at night, don’t say it’s a UFO like we would, but that it’s a flying snake with glowing lights on its head.

Lars Thomas gave us a run down on the cryptids of Denmark, ranging from bugs, beetles, wolves, and chipmunks, to trolls, hominids and lake monsters. Lars not only reads a lot, and travels to see  location of sightings, but he uses the microscope to discover what is out there – and has tested many hairs under a microscope, finding leopards, out-of-place cats, hominids, and even a platypus hair…from New Zealand. The old stories in Denmark of hominids and hairy creatures are found in many old documents from wooden carvings to old manuscripts. He also knows of a colony of Siberian Chipmunks that live in forests in Denmark, but is uncertain how they got there. The questions at the end even involved Trolls, and it was clear to Lars and many others that questions were asked in relation to the ‘Troll Hunter’ movie, released in 2011.

Richard Freeman spoke about the Sumatra expedition of 2011 – so far the largest group to go on an expedition, splitting 3 teams up to cover more ground to try and see the Orang-Pendek. Even our fair Rebecca Lang was mentioned, as she and Mike Williams were two of the explorers. There was no success in seeing the cryptid this time round, like the sighting in 2009, but Richard still has hopes to see something one day and tick this off as ‘found’ for the CFZ.

Lars and Jon teamed up to talk about the nature walk they took people on the grounds of the community centre, and Lars came back with photos of several bugs and flies – including over a dozen types of hover fly.

Ronan Coghlan, the CFZ’s ever hilarious trickster talked about Sinbad the sailor, and the cryptids he had encountered. This re-introduced us to creatures like the Roc, and the ‘Old Man of the Sea’ – from Sumatra and probably like our Orang-Pendek or even the Flores dwarf.

Jon ended the Weird Weekend by remembering those lost to us this year – Jeanett Thomas, the late wife of Lars, and Lionel Beer’s long term partner Joy who passed away this week. And there was acknowledgment of a CFZ birth and a wedding too.

The dinner was held in the hall this year, with a wonderful meal presented to us by the lovely ladies of the community centre, and we all ended the night eating a CFZ cake too. After dinner, a small few of us stayed behind and watched ‘Occasional Monsters’ a British film that, I think, was inspired by Nick Redfern’s book ‘Three Men seeking Monsters.’

Due to the excitement about possibly having a leopard nearby, Max Blake, Jon McGowan, Darren Naish, and Mark North appeared to walk away from the Community Centre equipt with headlights, torches and wet weather gear, into the dark fields of the Devon countryside in search of it. The rest of us (now an even smaller group) listened to Silas Hawkins read out a third story of Richard Freeman’s book ‘Green Unpleasant Land’ – this one a rather creepy one about the Bodmin little people. Richard is an excellent writer of the macabre and I recommend this book, and not just to those interested in forteana, but those who love ghost stories.

This ended the XIIIth Weird Weekend for 2012, and as a representative of the Australian CFZ gang, I was honoured to be there (It certainly helps when you are currently living in Yorkshire). Thanks to Jon and Corinna Downes, and all other members of the CFZ that helped me out this weekend. And thanks to Joe Thomas who taught me how to say Haribo properly! Those of you who have not been to a Weird Weekend, make an effort, DON’T MISS IT!

Missing lynx revealed at Weird Weekend 2011

Last week UK news site This is Devon covered an intriguing story that was also the subject of a talk at this year's Weird Weekend: the discovery of a 100-year-old specimen in a museum basement. We'll be featuring the video of the talk by Max Blake and Dr Darren Naish on this blog, but in the meantime here's the story:

The evidence includes the body of a lynx that was shot in mid-Devon just over a century ago, and leopard hairs and plaster-cast paw prints found recently near Woolfardisworthy that have been positively identified by independent experts.

Jonathan Downes, director of CFZ, told the Western Morning News: “We showed the lynx to various people last night and Dr Darren Naish and student Max Blake will be explaining its story this weekend. It is absolutely fascinating and it proves big cats are not a new thing.

“Max discovered the lynx in the archives of Bristol Museum and realised the importance of it,” said Mr Downes. “The animal was shot over 100 years ago in mid-Devon and that’s important because it proves there have been exotic cats in British countryside for many years.

“This animal has provenance – we have the date, time and the name of the person who presented it to the museum. This is a breakthrough,” he added saying that the stuffed body was of an animal smaller than a Euro-Asian lynx.

“It is within size the range normally equated with a Canadian lynx,” said Mr Downes. “So is it a Canadian lynx that was in captivity and escaped? Or it might be something even more interesting? There were no zoos in Devon that it could have escaped from at the time it was shot.

“The Devonshire naturalist HG Hurrell – a respected columnist for the Western Morning News – suggested that lynx were living in parts of Westcountry 50 years ago – as did Professor Bernard Heuvalmann, a noted academic. We know there were lynx living in Britain 1500 years ago, but could some have survived?”

Mr Downes said the next move was to have DNA extracted from the animal’s teeth or bone in an attempt to answer the riddle. CFZ also revealed that hairs found in woods near Woolfardisworthy had been positively identified as those of a leopard.

“We had them DNA tested by Durham University and they confirmed they were leopard. This is proof that there was, as of last summer, at least one leopard apparently wild in the woodlands of North Devon,” said Mr Downes.

“Local sightings have gone back an awful long time which implies there’s a population here. A few years ago a local farmer contacted us saying something had attacked one of his sheep – we saw the carcase and it had been killed in a fashion characteristic of a leopard.”

Given the subject matter and that the name of his organisation’s conference is “The Weird Weekend”, did Mr Downes fear that some people might question the seriousness of the evidence?

“We are not making outrageous claims,” he told the WMN. “We are not talking about sabre-toothed tigers or Loch Ness Monsters. That’s all nonsense. We are simply saying an animal can live here and adapt to the natural conditions.”

New discovery - TWO types of Asia's clouded leopard

By sleuthing through genes found in feline pelts more than a century old, scientists have discovered that the newest species of big cat known to science, the mysterious Sunda clouded leopard, actually comes in two different types.

These big cats apparently owe their origins to cataclysmic super-volcano eruptions and rising sea levels, researchers found.

The clouded leopards — the most elusive of all the big cats — make up the group known as genus Neofelis. Seen from the foothills of the Himalayas through Southeast Asia into China, they are most notable for patches on their fur said to be shaped like clouds and for the largest canine fangs relative to their bodies of any living cat. (Despite their name, clouded leopards are not actually a kind of leopard, but are completely separate from the genus that includes lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars.)

"They're sometimes even called modern-day saber-toothed cats," researcher Andreas Wilting, a wildlife biologist at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, told LiveScience from Borneo.
Comparisons between the clouded leopards of mainland Asia and the Sunda Islands of Southeast Asia, which include Borneo, Java, Sumatra and Bali, revealed the Sunda clouded leopard was genetically distinct, making it the newest species of big cat known to science. 

"The canines on the Sunda clouded leopard are even longer than seen on the mainland clouded leopard, and they have more dots in their cloud-shaped markings than mainland ones," Wilting said. "They are as genetically distinct from mainland clouded leopards as leopards are distinct from lions."

Although scientists wanted to learn more about the Sunda clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi), "they are hard to find in the forest," Wilting said. As such, he and his colleagues investigated DNA they gleaned from clouded leopard pelts, skulls, claws and bones gathered on the islands and kept in museums worldwide for up to more than a century, as well as excrement collected more recently by researchers in the field.

"Working with ancient DNA from museum specimens that were often highly degraded was a major challenge," Wilting said.

The scientists' genetic analysis — combined with investigation of available bones — revealed the Sunda clouded leopard is actually divided into two subspecies — Neofelis diardi diardi, indigenous to Sumatra, and Neofelis diardi borneensis, exclusive to Borneo.

"Although we suspected that Sunda clouded leopards on Borneo and Sumatra have likely been geographically separated since the last ice age, it was not known whether this long isolation had caused them to split up into separate subspecies," Wilting said.

There were considerable genetic differences between the groups. There were also physical distinctions, often subtle in nature. A comparison of coat color patterns conducted by researcher Andrew Kitchener from National Museums Scotland saw only small deviations between the groups, which could be due to how the highly similar tropical habitats on the islands demanded similar camouflage strategies. The skulls also showed minor variations, according to researcher Per Christiansen of the University of Aalborg in Denmark — for instance, the Sumatra cat has a slightly wider nasal aperture relative to muzzle width than the Borneo one.

Both subspecies of Sunda clouded leopard are classified as endangered, since their numbers are low just like all other big cats. In order to save the Sunda clouded leopard, it is paramount to protect large areas of forest in Borneo and Sumatra or at least to manage them sustainably, Wilting said. The researchers are working closely with wildlife officials in the Malaysian state of Sabah in Borneo to investigate and conserve the cats.

Bambra big cat sighting

 

Chilean tourist Romina Bucarey was under the mistaken impression that 'big cats' must have been native to Australia after one sauntered across her path recently in Victoria.
She casually asked workmates at the Hare Krishna Valley farm about the resident wild panthers and was surprised by the response.

Ms Bucarey, 33, was walking by herself along a track about a kilometre from the farm, off Winchelsea-Deans Marsh Rd, at the weekend when she saw a big cat about 100m in front of her.

"It was very clear, about 6.30pm, she was walking fast," she said. "It was completely black, and shiny ... like normal size for being a panther. My reaction was I didn't continue to walk because I didn't know if she can attack me."

Readers of Australian Big Cats: An Unnatural History of Panthers will remember the Winchelsea area as the location where some suspected big cat faeces was collected and analysed by a government department and deemed 'possibly leopard'!

CFZ WW leopard hair update

Cast your minds back to the Weird Weekend in August, this year attended by Aussies Rebecca and Mike who were spruiking their book, Australian Big Cats: An Unnatural History of Panthers.

On the August 17, CFZ Director Jon Downes announced that Danish Zoologist Lars Thomas had examined hair samples found in Huddisford Woods near Woolsery, and pronounced them to be leopard.

The hairs (which were found by Lars, naturalist and big cat researcher Jon McGowan and a team known as the Four-Teans) were offered to any research group or academic institution who wanted to try and verify Lars's findings.

The first person to contact Jon was Dr Ross Barnett from Durham University who has done DNA analysis on them, and has confirmed that they are Pantherine, probably leopard.

Dr Barnett is now carrying out further tests to establish the species and subspecies for certain and a full announcement by Jon will be made then.

Stay tuned!

In the meantime you can read about Lars's analysis at the Fortean Times website.