Briefly: WTF?

[dianeduane]

…This is was meant to be a canned blog entry. At the time it’s was meant to have been posted, I’ll be should have been on my way to Dublin to catch my flight to Sweden. (But it seems that LJ won't let you "spike" a blog for later publication: or if it will, I can't figure out how to make it do that right now.)

Anyway, by tomorrow morning maybe there’ll be some take on whether the subject is a hoax, or a genuine monster in the technical sense of the word. (I say nothing of the ancient original sense of the word monstrum.)

So, as I was saying:  WTF??

Tags: monster, Montauk, Long+Island, weird

Comments

[beckyl.livejournal.com]

I'm with the person who was suggesting turtle-sans-shell. But yes, ick.

[chamois-shimi.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't have skin on its back if its shell had been removed.

[dameruth.livejournal.com]

Hm. To me, looks like a de-haired mammalian critter with a partially-decomposed muzzle. Don't know enough about decay processes to know if/under what conditions hair will fall out like that, though.

[lady-autumnstar.livejournal.com]

Not commenting on the "thing". The ick factor is too high.

BUT dameruth I absolutely love your icon!!

[dameruth.livejournal.com]

Aw, thanks! Captain Jack *is* love, isn't he? :D You can gank it if you want -- it's one of my home-made jobbies.

[thelauderdale.livejournal.com]

I suspect it's someone's weird hoax, possibly hoax/artwork: I suspect the photo of an actual body of something, with some photo-manip.

When I saw it, it actually made me think of this (warning: disconcerting image): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:The_Young_Family.jpg
Animal hyrids, hypothetical hybrid artwork.

[eyemage.livejournal.com]

montauk has been tied to alot of conspiratorial effluvia...

including

nikola tesla
philadelphia experiment
a possible stargate to mars
the montauk monster ( sort of like the id from forbidden planet )
underground bunkers of secrets

and lots more.

[l33tminion]

It looks like an ordinary, partially-decomposed quadruped mammal. My guess is that it's a dog.

(Although the turtle theory seems to have some plausibility, too. Don't turtles have more skeletal structure connecting their shells to their bodies?)

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Kinda looked like a small pig, to me.

Intriguing...

[lunalovegoddess.livejournal.com]

As a former zoology student, I have a few things to point out about the animal in question:

Turtle? No.
1. No shell.
2. Ribs and spine are enclosed by skin.
3. Turtle shells have fused spines and ribs. (There's a skeleton on display at the local zoo. The ribs actually branch out from the shell like hula hoops, making it impossible for a turtle to hide inside its shell.)
4. Skin is not scaly. It's pink and fleshy like ours. Therefore, not a reptile.

Carnivorous mammal? More likely.
1. Sharp teeth on lower jaw.
2. Quadruped male. Skinny tail. Built stocky and low to the ground, like a bulldog.
3. Appears skinned or shaved. It looks too "clean" and the skin appears sunburnt.
4. I don't see any claws or hooves. What people have mistaken for flippers is actually two slender forelegs. The digits look fairly long and slender, and flexible.
5. More likely to be a raccoon, for example, based on general body shape and head size.
6. Upper jaw consistent with malformation or injury. I suspect that the animal is missing teeth and half the jaw due to whatever attacked it.
7. If the ears and nose decayed, I would think that the rest of the body would show signs of scavenging or decay as well. I'm thinking small, rounded ears. I'm thinking that a person cut off the ears, to tell the truth.
8. Eyes are small and piggy. Not a nocturnal predator, I'm guessing.
9. Something bothers me about this specimen. What was it's cause of death? Because I don't see any possible trauma aside from the jaw and ears. IF someone broke it's jaw, it would have starved. However, it looks well-fed.
10. Washing up on the beach doesn't necessarily mean that it is an aquatic animal. It definitely looks built for life on land. The question is whether someone killed it for its fur and then disposed it near a body of water, or whether it was intentionally placed there. Either way, I'm sickened.

I'd like to see how big the animal is, and more information where it was found. I had been thinking opposum or raccoon, except that the eyes are inconsistent with an animal that relies on night-vision. Badger? Skunk?

Re: Intriguing...

[semiramis.livejournal.com]

Not an expert by any means, but. Re: looking well fed: is it possible that some of that's due to bloating?

Re: Intriguing...

[lunalovegoddess.livejournal.com]

ooh... well-spotted. I hadn't thought of that.

Thanks.

Re: Intriguing...

[chamois-shimi.livejournal.com]

Someone on another thread who had seen a lot of decomposed dogs (and I don't really want to know why, truly) said they were positive it was a dog.

Re: Intriguing...

[hrrunka]

My first guess was that it was something like a beaver that had been skinned and dumped... It's definitely got a high yuck-factor!

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit suspicious of the neck area and the fact that those rings of material might be hiding something. Something like stitch marks perhaps - if so then it is a deliberate composite.A modern Jenny Haniver?

If those bits are genuine then it looks like something that has been skinned but with no indicator as to size it's very difficult to say what.

Where is the body now, and has anyone run a DNA test?

[cuddles-batcave.livejournal.com]

I still think the theory that it's turtle remains is the most plausible. I know about the skeletal fusion for ribcage et al, as mentioned by lunalovegoddess but this does not perclude to fishermen/poachers harvesting the shell and dumping the body. Poor Squirt!

[martinoh.livejournal.com]

Looking at the image from the web site with magnification of >300% reveals clear indications of photo-manipulation; blending to the top of the back, especially over the neck and shoulders, quite a sharp discontinuity behind the 'ear' and substantial differences in the noise and graininess between parts of the picture all suggest that this is a digital composition, with the forward part of the head and jaw structure probably downscaled from a higher-resolution image before compositing.

Or it could be a monster from Montauk...

[azurelunatic]

Nope, LJ won't unless you're using a client that does it for you, and I have no idea what ones will. There's a suggestion in to make LJ do that, but devs are still getting regrouped after the Great Company Shuffle.

[eleika.livejournal.com]

Actually, you can future-date posts. All you have to do is enter the time you intend to post it, and check the box "Date out of order". This works on the LJ website best, though I've done it with the Semagic client as well.

Hope that helps!

[azurelunatic]

I don't think that's quite what she had in mind -- future-dating using Date Out of Order (previously 'backdate') just changes the apparent date at which it was posted, not the actual time that it appears for everyone to read.

[zenfrodo.livejournal.com]

I'm betting that it's some viral marketing ploy for some awful horror movie. ("Cloverfield II -- Its Baby's Dead, and It's PEEEEEVED!!")

[artela.livejournal.com]

I'm voting with the "shell-less turtle" brigade here :-)

[foresthouse.livejournal.com]

Ew scary monster thing!

But...how could it be real? It doesn't look even remotely like one kind of creature. I call shenanigans.

BTW, off topic but cleolinda mentioning you made me realize I'd forgotten to say - hey! I'll be at the UK Discworld con in a few weeks! Where you will also be! I'm very excited, and hopefully I will get to say hello to you sometime during the con. It'd be nice to meet before we host you at our con next year. :)

Anna (our guest liason) and Lee (our chair) will also be there. On Sunday (I think?) we are doing a panel re: the North American Con (I think? We didn't really get details yet).

[kayshapero]

Add me to the Photoshop theorists.