As I recently
posted, it is time to take these sightings seriously and perhaps narrow down
their effective range. What is certain
however is that it is all about avoiding humanity which is actually a lot
easier that we presume.
It is a creature
of the forest and avoids any of open country anywhere near the sound of an
engine or human habitation. Since avoidance
is pretty easy by simply staying twenty miles away in the presence of forest
cover, they will remain elusive if not outright impossible to locate.
What we are
learning is that the big creatures are smart enough. This is certainly true for the bigfoot and
not so true for the Giant Sloth. It has
been seen but not identified.
Mammoth Sightings
A
10-second video has surfaced recently of a supposed woolly mammoth crossing a
stream in Siberia. In this day of cell phone cameras and computer generated
images, cryptozoological videos of various cryptids are a weekly phenomenon.
Most are obvious hoaxes or/and not distinct enough to make any kind of
identification possible; and most are forgotten quickly. This video
showing a large blurry animal with what may or not be tusks has gone mainstream
in a big way. I myself saw it referenced on Moviefone while I was looking at
show-times for Underworld Awakening (don’t judge me it has Kate Bekinsale
in it).
There
is perhaps no more romantic idea in Cryptozoology than the survival of woolly
mammoths into modern times. Personally I do not believe the video to be
authentic. It looks to me like a bear with something in its mouth, possibly a
fish. All that being said, the extension of the mammoth lineage past the end of
the ice age is not as crazy as it sounds. There has indeed been sightings in
Siberia well into the 20th century, and actually a few from Alaska in the late
1800′s and early 1900′s.
Let’s
be clear I am not stating that mammoths are living in Alaska today, I do not
believe that they are. However, the survival in Siberia is not an
impossibility, and perhaps a small population could have survived in Alaska as
recently as the early 1900′s. When the two areas were connected via the
Bering land bridge at the end of the last ice age, this was part of the same
ecological niche. As we know Alaska and Siberia are not very far apart, since
some people in Alaska can see Siberia from their back yard.
The
fossil record will tell you that mammoths went extinct with the rest of the
megafauna at the end of the last ice age, 12000 years ago. That date as been
somewhat adjusted for mammoths when fossils were found on the Siberian island
of Wrangel dating to around 2,500 BC, and on St. Paul Island, Alaska dating to
3,750 BC. These animal were reduced in size due to island dwarfism. Island
dwarfism, also called insular dwarfism, is when in a finite environment such as
an island, large animals become smaller due to limited resources.
Now, back to Siberia; could a population of woolly mammoths have survive into
modern times?
The
Siberian Taiga is the largest forest in the world at almost 3 million square
miles. It is scarcely populated and very remote, and video aside, reports of
large “hairy elephants” emanate out of Siberia from time to time. One of the
more credible stories dates to 1918 when a Russian hunter came upon huge tracks
that he could not identify. Intrigued, he decided to follow them, and deeper in
the forest he went. For days he followed these large unusual tracks and a
considerable amount of dung, until he arrived at a clearing where he could
finally observe the animals responsible for the tracks. There were two of them.
He had seen elephants in photographs and that is what they looked like to him;
even though he had not imagined them so big, he would later admit. He described
two big white curved tusks and a dark body with long chestnut color covered
hair. The hunter told his story in 1920 to M.L Gallon, in charge of the French
Consulate in Vladivostok. Gallon when he later recounted the tale found it
amusing that the hunter did not know what a mammoth was, and simply stated that
he saw two hairy elephants. Local tradition dating back to the 1500′s call the
animal “the mountain of meat”.
As
far as Alaska is concerned, there is an interesting story from 1896 written up
in the Portland Press. It concerns a Col.
C.F
Fowler and then Governor Swineford of Alaska. Fowler worked for the
Alaskan Fur and Commercial Company and mention that he was given tusks by
natives that appeared to be from a recent kill. Surprised, he inquired about
what sort of animal had been killed. He was given the description of what he
called a mastodon. The article also goes to quote Governor Swineford where
he says, “There are mastodons on several high plateaus of the Alaskan interior”
I
cannot comment on the veracity of the Alaskan reports. There are other reports
beside the one I just mentioned, usually dealing with descriptions of a mammoth
like animal by native Americans or/and hunters. Siberia on the other hand is a
much more appealing option in terms of modern day survival; especially in light
of more recent sightings. From a biological standpoint, there is ample room and
enough resources for a breeding population to survive into the 20th and perhaps
even the 21st century.
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