I was surfing the Interweb when I came across an article about an unusual animal born on a farm in northern Germany. It was a Geep, a product of a whirlwind liaison between a dashing billy goat and a lovelorn ewe.
The Geep, with the body of a lamb but the coloring and back legs of a goat, wasn't the first of its kind. In 1984, scientists in England, through embryo manipulation, also produced a Geep.
This kind of interspecies breeding is rare by without the manhandling of science and would often result in sterile offspring - probably nature's way of saying "quit it."
Searching a little more on obscure animals, I came across cryptozoology.
Cryptozoology is literally the "study of hidden animals," wherein there are two primary fields of research. The first is the search for living examples of animals that have been identified through fossil records but are believed to be extinct (aka "lazarus taxon"). An example of this is the Takahe, a flightless stocky bird indigenous to New Zealand. Takahes were declared extinct in 1898, and then rediscovered again in 1948. The coelacanth is another example, a species long thought to be extinct since the end of the Cretaceous period until in 1938, the first modern coelacanth was discovered in South Africa. Last year, an Indonesian fisherman caught one near a marine park.
Sadly, the dodo is still dead.
The other field of cryptozoology relates is the search for animals that we have no taxonomic records of due to lack of empirical evidence - a.k.a "monster hunting."
In hunting for monsters, scientists draw information from anecdotal evidence, such as myths, legends or undocumented sightings. In short, they seek to find animals, or "cryptids," that have been reported in order to prove they exist.
There's a menagerie of cryptids: the Jersey Devil, the Mothman, Thunderbirds, el chupacabra, the Ogopogo, ManBearPig.
The mainstream scientific community, of course, considers cryptozoology a pseudoscience, as it doesn't adhere to the scientific method.
And of course monster myths are often discredited: The "surgeon's photo," one of the many iconic photographs of the Loch Ness Monster, was actually a toy submarine outfitted with the head of a sea serpent. The jackalope was popularized by Douglas Herrick, who, along with his brother Ralph, fixed antlers to the head of a rabbit. Similar hoaxes pertain to Bigfoot, such as the footprint cast made by Raymond L. Wallace, who imprinted the ground with oversized, wooden feet.
Despite the evidence, believers are still hopeful about uncovering these monsters. After all, when reports of the platypus first surfaced, European naturalists were convinced that the creature was an elaborate fraud. If you can't find something, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
As I continued reading up on the subject, I came across a news report of a car bomb blast in Iraq, which killed 33 people.
I read another report about a Japanese teen who was arrested for killing three of his family members.
In New York, a man reportedly hacked his psychologist to death with a meat cleaver, and a caretaker alledgedly killed a 4-year-old child after he wet his pants. More recently, America found out that the North Illinois University shooting was perpetuated by Steven Kazmierczak, who turned the gun on himself after killing five and wounding 16.
Here's the scary part. According to police authorities, Kazmierczak was polite, industrious, a good student - no red flags.
While some may be out looking for monsters, I realized there are already some in our midst. Cheong is a screenwriting graduate student
Be the first to comment on this article!