Can species of living beings not yet discovered by scientists exist on Earth in the 21st century? And why not, if to this day there are places on our planet where no human has set foot? And it's on land! And the ocean floor has been explored no more than 5%. It is foolish to believe that, having surveyed 5% of 100, we have learned everything.
Interesting things are told by I. Moskhuri, a Crimean journalist who has been collecting information about the mysterious snake for many years:
• “1990, December 7 - a brigade of fishermen from the Karadag branch of the Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas, consisting of A. Tsabanov, I. Nuikin, M. Sych and N. Gerasimov, went to sea to inspect the nets supplied for catching Black Sea rays. The net, which is a canvas 2.5 m wide and 200 m long with a mesh size of 200 mm, was set up at a depth of 50 m, 3 miles southeast of Lyagushachya Bay and 7 miles south of Ordzhonikidze village.
The fishermen were in place at about 12 noon and began to bulkhead the net from the southern end. After 150 meters, the network was cut off. Considering that during the setting they threw their net over someone else's, and the owner of the lower net was forced to cut the upper one in order to check his own, the fishermen entered from the other end of the net and continued checking.
When they reached the ragged edge, they pulled a dolphin - a Black Sea bottlenose dolphin - 2.3 m long, whose tail got entangled in a net, onto the surface. After examining the dolphin, the fishermen found that its belly had been bitten by some mysterious creature, with one bite along with the ribs so that the spine could be clearly seen. In the region of the head were the remains of the lungs from which blood was flowing.
The arc width of the bite was approximately one meter. Along the edge of the arch, teeth marks were clearly visible on the dolphin's skin. The size of the tooth mark is about 40 mm. The distance between the teeth marks is 15–20 mm. In total, traces of at least 16 teeth could be distinguished along the arch of the bite. The dolphin's head was very deformed and evenly compressed on all sides, as if they were trying to drag it into some kind of narrow hole.
The eyes were not visible, and the deformed head had a whitish color, resembling the color of the body of a fish pulled out … from the stomach of another fish. Inspection of the dolphin lasted no more than three minutes - its disfigured appearance and flowing blood caused severe panic among the fishermen. One of them cut off the net, the dolphin fell into the water, and the fishermen left the area at full speed to the base. On the shore, upon returning from the sea, the fishermen were asked in detail by P. G. Semenkov, director of the Karadag reserve. According to the stories of the fishermen, the artist made a sketch of the dolphin they saw.
• 1991, spring - fishermen brought a second dolphin with a similar bite and teeth marks on the body. It was a “azovka” 1.5 m long, which was pulled out of the net, at approximately the same place as on December 7, 1990. This time the net was not torn, and the dolphin was almost completely entangled in it, like a doll, so that only the head looked out. On the dolphin's head, the marks of three teeth were clearly visible, in appearance exactly similar to the marks of the teeth on the body of the Black Sea bottlenose dolphin.
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The brought dolphin was placed in a refrigerator, and YugNIRO employees, specialists in footprints on the body of marine mammals caught in the ocean fishery, were invited to examine it; they were then in Kerch and Odessa. But neither in May, nor in June, nor in July, no one came to the Karadag branch of the InBYUM, and by the end of August there was an accident, and everything in the refrigerator, including the dolphin, disappeared.
Most of the scientific workers of the Karadag branch, primarily zoologists, unanimously rejected the hypothesis that the cause of the death of dolphins and the source of traces on their bodies is some living creature. The reason for their death was seen in the fact that the animals, most likely, collided with some technical device - a ship's propeller or even … a torpedo.
Some employees still admitted that another living creature could be the cause of the death of dolphins, but none of the inhabitants of the Black Sea known to science could be honored to be among the "candidates for the role of killer". Moreover, even the inhabitants of the oceans known to science, if they were guests of the Black Sea, could not leave such traces on the bodies of dolphins!"
• Here is a note from the diary of the writer Ivanov: “The spring of 1952 in Koktebel was cold and rainy. On May 14, after prolonged cold weather, calm warm weather came … I walked past Devil's finger, along the Gyaur-Bakh gorge, and then, so as not to waste a lot of time on a difficult descent to the seashore in Carnelian Bay, on a rock, near a tree … I tied a rope, climbed down. Near the shore, among small stones overgrown with algae, a mullet played. Further, a hundred meters from the coast, dolphins swam, moving in a flock along the bay to the left.
I looked to the right and just in the middle of the bay, 50 meters from the coast, I saw a large, 10-12 meters in circumference, a stone overgrown with brown algae. Is it a stone? I leaned back and noticed that the stone was sloping to the right. So it was not a stone, but a large ball of seaweed. But the algae began to lose their round shape, and then the ball lengthened, turned around and stretched out.
While smoking my pipe, I began to watch the ball of seaweed. The current seemed to be intensifying. The round shape of the algae began to be lost. The ball began to lengthen. In the middle of it, gaps were already visible. And then. Then I trembled all over, got to my feet and sat down, as if afraid that I might scare “this” if I stood on my feet …
The "ball" unfolded. Turned around. Stretched out.
I still thought it was "algae, until" it "swam upstream. This mysterious creature was moving in undulating movements to the place where the dolphins were, i.e. to the left side of the bay. It was large, very large, 25–30 meters thick, and as thick as a desk top if turned sideways. It was half a meter - a meter under water, and it seemed to me that it was flat. The lower part of it was, apparently, white, as far as the blueness of the water made it possible to understand this, and the upper part was dark brown, for which I took it for algae.
I was one of the few people who happened to see this monster. But our upbringing, which did not accustom us to the manifestation of miracles, immediately began to interfere with me. The sea monster, wriggling in the same way as swimming snakes, slowly swam towards the dolphins. They immediately disappeared."
… And yet the sea is the sea. But the land seems to us much more familiar. And yet on land, it is possible to discover a new species literally underfoot.
• So, for example, it was with the Etruscan mouse. This new species of mammal was found not somewhere in wild Asia, but in Europe!.. The history of this discovery is interesting. In the nest of the owl, they accidentally discovered the bones of some small creature unknown to science. The aunt-zoologist who found the remains conducted a survey of local peasants: do they know a mouse two or three centimeters in size? The responses were negative.
Even the locals have never seen such a miracle. Furthermore! The theory generally forbade the existence of such tiny warm-blooded creatures: due to the tiny size, the ratio of body surface to body weight was such that such a creature had to eat all the time to make up for huge heat losses. Such a baby wouldn't even have time to sleep!
However, the zoological aunt was seriously carried away by the idea of catching an impossible creature. She spent two years of her life on it, they laughed at her. But the stubborn woman caught the Etruscan mouse. It turned out that this baby practically does not sleep, because it constantly eats.
Not only Schliemann, who believed in the mythical Troy, was laughed at, as you can see. And over the pilot shot down over one of the islands of the Pacific Ocean, they also laughed at first: he said that he had seen hefty lizards that resembled dragons. Subsequently, these dragons were called Komodo lizards.
• They also laughed at the South African ichthyologist Smith, who believed in the existence of the coelacanth, which fish was considered extinct by zoologists tens of millions of years ago. Smith believed that the stories of fishermen about this fish were not fictions, not legends of the natives, and spent 14 years of his life in search of it. And I found it, I caught it! And if he had abandoned this fanatical and fantastic work of his in the thirteenth year?.. We sing a song to the madness of the brave and not afraid of ridicule.
By the way, when colleagues laugh at you and twist their fingers to your temples - it's very unpleasant. Therefore, when one of his acquaintances sent Smith a sketch of a cross-finned fish (coelacanth), allegedly caught by local fishermen, he was frightened. This is how the ichthyologist himself described his feelings: “I turned the sheet over and saw the drawing. Suddenly, a bomb exploded in my brain: from the sketch, like on the screen, a vision of the inhabitants of the ancient seas appeared, fish that have not existed for a long time, which lived in the distant past and are known to us only from fossil fossils.
“Don't go crazy,” I ordered myself sternly. But feelings argued with common sense. A hurricane of surging thoughts and feelings overshadowed everything else from me. My guess seemed so incredible that common sense urged me to get it out of my head. I got scared. It's scary thinking about what will happen if my guess turns out to be correct. It's amazing! Just imagine: coelacanth lives to this day! The most prominent authorities in the world are ready to swear that all coelacanths died out 50 million years ago, and I, in faraway South Africa, in spite of everything, believe that it is coelacanth.
These were terrible days, and even worse nights. Anxiety and doubt tormented me. It is incredible that coelacanths existed all this time and were not known to modern man. After all, if this is a coelacanth, then somewhere in the East London area other coelacanths should also live. However, is it possible to admit that such large fish were found near East London and they have not been found to this day?.. The answer is only negative. Yet every time I looked at the drawing, he kept repeating to me: “Yes! Yes!.
… 14 years of searching - can you imagine? Is it really so difficult to catch a fish? And if it took a stupid fish 14 years, then what about creatures, a hundred times smarter, whose plans do not include a meeting with a person? Why go far for an example - do any of you doubt that there are wolves in the forest? Hardly. Are there many people in the world who saw a living wolf in the forest? Less than 1% of the population, I think. But there are thousands of wolves! It's just that their plans do not include meeting you.
• Here's another case. Here is a description of the event, personally made by Doctor of Science Yevgeny Velichko: “In 1966, I worked as a UNESCO expert on the organization of the Agricultural Polytechnic Institute in Katibugu (Republic of Mali). On business, I often happened to be in the capital of the republic - Bamako. I went on one such trip together with my wife. On the way, a story happened to us, which to this day haunts me.
About halfway between Katibugu and Bamako, where the road crosses a deep ravine, the wife suddenly exclaimed, "Look, what is this ?!"
On the right side of us, a two-meter lizard jumped out of the ravine. We have seen a lot of large lizards here, especially in remote areas of the country. They are quite close in appearance to our Central Asian monitor lizards, which we have seen more than once in the Karakum Desert.
But this beast, unknown to me, with all its resemblance to a lizard, a monitor lizard, was strikingly different from them in that it was covered with wool! The chocolate-colored coat, as far as it could be judged, was approximately 4 cm long, and was clearly visible. It was even possible to discern how it swayed in the wind, how it shimmers when the body bends.
I am not a supporter of fast driving, and besides, I managed to slow down five or six meters from this beast. It was about eight o'clock in the morning local time, the sun was shining in the back, the visibility was excellent. A long bushy tail, larger than a fox, was clearly striking. We examined the unknown beast for 5 minutes, until, having crossed the road, he disappeared into a ravine.
“I would never even think that such animals exist! - I thought. “But in the end, I'm not a connoisseur of the local fauna.”
In the evening of the same day, the director of the Karamogo Dumbia Institute and the manager of the farm, Bikaya Fofana, came to us "for a light" It was quite natural that I said about what I saw and asked what kind of animal it was. Doumbia, smiling condescendingly, replied that the lizard I had met was described in folk tales, but in fact it did not exist. Offended, I replied that I had never heard such tales, but that it was about someone whom my wife and I had seen not later than 12 hours ago.
Fofana, despite the exceptional restraint inherent in a real representative of the Bambara tribe, noticeably flared up and told Dumbia that he had heard about this beast and knew several people who had seen it, although he himself did not have to meet it. Fairy tales are fairy tales, he added, but folk stories are often based on real facts! But Karamogo remained a skeptic.
We saw this animal once. But there is a saying that it is better to see once than hear 100 times. We observed it absolutely distinctly from a very close distance and for quite a long time in order to generally examine and remember in detail.
What was it? Perhaps this animal is still known to connoisseurs of African fauna? In the books, no matter how much I looked, I did not find the answer."
And yet the discovery of a large mammal in the 21st century looks fantastic. This is not a butterfly for you!.. And nevertheless, just a week before I wrote these lines, the following message went through the world media feeds:
“PRETORIA, 7 October. Corr. ITAR-TASS Pavel Myltsev. Researchers have discovered a previously unknown giant humanoid creature in Central Africa. It, according to experts, may be a new species of primates. If the hypothesis is confirmed, the South African agency SAPA reports today, it will be possible to talk about the largest discovery in wildlife research in the last few decades.
Mysterious creatures have been spotted in the thickets of the cities of Bondo and Bili on the extreme northern tip of the Congo. According to eyewitness reports and video footage, the animals have wide black muzzles, their height is more than two meters, and their weight reaches 102 kg. Approximately the same size is found in gorillas, but the area in question is located 500 km from the known border of the Congolese gorilla."
- Let's say. Okay. A mammal is still all right. But what about that mysterious creature, consisting of many small creatures that ate the Chekists in the taiga? - This is no longer in any gate, so that one creature gathers from small malyavok, and then again disintegrates into boogers!..
Well, you're wrong about the gate. There are such "gates" on Earth! There is, for example, the mucous fungus myxomycete-dictyostelium. And he lives like this: his cells individually crawl in the form of amoebas in the soil. Then suddenly one or more amoebas secrete acrazine, a signaling substance. Feeling acrazine in the air, amoebas slide to its source and a multicellular organism is formed - a slug, which crawls in the form of a worm, getting out to a drier place.
And there the slug turns … into a mushroom. A natural mushroom with a thin stem and a round head containing spores. Only very tiny - only 2 mm. It is interesting that if at the stage of fusion of the amoebas, they are divided in half, then half the slug and half the fungus are formed. And if you leave only a quarter of the total number of amoebas, then the final fungus will be four times less.
Is this not a mysterious creature? Why, in this case, cannot be assumed that evolution has been going along this path for some time, having produced a certain number of similar "gathering" species? Which by now have mostly died out, like the dinosaurs died out, leaving behind only various little things such as monitor lizards, turtles and crocodiles. So here - the "gathering" creatures died out, leaving behind an amazing fungus myxomycetes. The only pity is that it is small.
A. Nikonov