Monday, April 5, 2010

Mystery animal baffles scientists!!

Not really. The Daily Telegraph says,"A creature dubbed the 'oriental yeti' is being examined by scientists after emerging from ancient woodlands in remote central China." This sort of mystery animal pops up all the time and all over the world. They are always some familiar (or at least known) animal in an unfamiliar condition. Sometimes they are found washed up on a beach after having been the water long enough to lose their hair and get bloated but, for some reason, not yeat eaten by scavengers. Other times, they are suffereing from mange or some other skin disease, like this miserable looking fellow. I'm calling dibs on it being a Binturong. Any other bets?


Mystery animal. A Binturong with mange?



Binturong without mange.

11 comments:

  1. Argh, it was killing me what it looked like and you beat it to me. My .25 is with a Binturong as well.

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  2. Considering the region, red panda.

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  3. it is a either a palm civet or common civet with mange

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  4. With that long face I am more inclined toward Paguma, known to carry notoedric mange, but it is hard to rule out Paradoxurus. Sichuan would be at the limit of Binturong's range too.

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  5. Because of the location, my first impulse was red panda, but the long skull didn't look right to me. Even though there's nothing to establish size in the picture, the statement that they thought it was some kind of bear made me think it had to be bigger than a civet. For me, that left binturong.

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  6. *cough* The Daily Telegraph clearly wasn't on the ground in China, yet they don't cite their (presumably) Chinese source. There's no video footage of the creature despite it being in captivity. Despite intense media interest there doesn't appear to be any third party verification. Either the Daily Telegraph is pulling our collective leg or someone is pulling theirs.

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  7. Most other bloggers seem to be voting for palm civet. Poo.

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  8. I don't see the palm civet. Too big and it's head is way too long with long nose. Dog like head, rather than cat like. Sounds like a cat and body of a civet. What is it?

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  9. much more like a binturong with those legs and creatures move all the time....location nowadays is minor.

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  10. Hmm... you got me total stuck on this one. Binturong or civet. BTW, poor guy!

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