Weird Animal Report

The lystrosaurus itself was a rather mundane beast.  Initially, it was a lumbering low slung dinosaur about the size of a pig.  It walked with a "semi-sprawling gait," like an alligator.  It had a beak, and big plates for teeth, and was herbivorous.  It used its beak to nip off plants, which it ground between its plate teeth in a thoroughly pedestrian manner.

Lystrosaurus, in other words, was nothing special.

Until all the dinosaurs were wiped out, and it was the only thing left alive.

Now that's an exaggeration, of course, but not by much.  At the end of the Permian age, a huge meteor wiped out almost all life on Earth.  Everything died except for some insects, a handful of tiny rat-like proto-mammals, and the lystrosaurus.
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I was browsing around YouTube for cryptozoology videos (there are more amateur videos of "monsters" out there than you can shake a stick at) when I ran across a clip from a Japanese news show about a "sea dragon."  Intrigued, I did a bit of research, and learned about the frilled shark.

The frilled shark in the Japanese video is holding itself in a very unusual posture.  This is most likely caused by, or connected to the reasons for, it having ventured out from the depths.  As you can see from the video, the frilled shark is in very shallow water.  These are a benthic species, living deep within the ocean's depths.  
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Of all the things I expected to learn about from Cracked.com, the intriguing mystery of Scotland's Overtoun bridge was the last thing on my mind.  Starting in the 1950s or 1960s, dogs began throwing themselves off the Overtoun Bridge, to their death on the rocks or rushing river far below.  

The count varies from 50 dogs to 600 dogs having committed suicide since then, depending on who's doing the counting.  The most recent death was Ben, a collie who flung himself over the side while on a walk with his family in 2005.  Ben landed on the rocks below, and had to be euthanized due to his injuries.  A few dogs have survived the fall, only to leap off the bridge later.  Residents of the nearby town of Dumbarton refer to these dogs as "second timers."
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Amarok isn't just a popular open source media player, it is a figure in Inuit mythology with a lot of ties to the field of cryptozoology.  Amarok was a giant wolf who would "hunt down and devour anyone foolish enough to hunt alone at night."  Amarok does not travel in a pack (thank goodness for small favors) but is a lone wolf.

A lot of people like to look for real world sources of legend, and in this case the source is often said to be the giant wolves of yore.  The dire wolf, for example, was indigenous to North and South America from between 1.8 million years ago to 10,000 years ago, only dying out at the end of the Pleistocene.  
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"Darling it is no joke, this is lycanthropy" - Shakira, "She Wolf"

A strange creature has been sighted in Wisconsin, and the number of sightings has been steadily rising for the last 20 years.  The beast involved is sometimes described as being like Sasquatch, and sometimes more like the old 1940s movie era Lon Cheney werewolf.

Dubbed "The Beast of Bray Road" by one researching author because of the vicinity in which it is most frequently sighted, the cryptid has (naturally) eluded pursuit and frightened hunters for years.  Because of its resemblance to Lon Cheney's werewolf, it is often referred to as a "werewolf."  Many sightings report a canid-looking animal, like a Sasquatch descended from dogs instead of apes.
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Megalodon JawsEvery time I watch MonsterQuest, I'm reminded of why I like Destination Truth so much more.  You know the old saw, "If you hear hoof beats in Central Park, think horses, not zebras"?  When MonsterQuest hears hoof beats, it thinks "Unicorns!"

In this episode from last season, MonsterQuest travels to the Baja Peninsula to track down rumors of a giant black shark local fishermen call "the Black Demon."  Despite the fact that the legend of the Black Demon matches whale sharks and great white sharks perfectly, MonsterQuest speculates that this could be a Megalodon on the loose.  See what I mean?
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Bed BugThe Stranger’s Brendan Kiley recently wrote a disturbing piece about everybody’s second favorite bug (the cockroach of course being the first) the bedbug. In fact, the piece so disgusted me that I immediately became OCD for the first time in my life and not only had to scratch my arm 24 times, but scrub it ferociously as well in solidarity with people who have suffered an infestation.

The cute little bugs apparently reproduce violently and in a way that can kill the female or shorten her life, forcing me to contemplate whether or not the “she was asking for it” defense would have any merit in a bedbug court of law. Once the female bedbugs have reproduced, the bedbugs hide out in mattresses and pillows and are incredibly hard to get rid of.
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I enjoy watching MonsterQuest, but it tends to irritate me.  My feelings towards the show were handily summed up by a quote from the latest episode I watched.  "If ____ happens, the results would be frightening."  Well, sure!  And if crocodiles learned to drive cars, the results would be frightening, too.  What's your point?

The point of their episode "Killer Jellyfish" is that if jellyfish take over the ocean, the results would be frightening.  (Except for some of the clips from night diving in Australia, the point of which was "if these sharks were hungrier, the results would be frightening."  I mean honestly, sharks have it hard enough without the narrator throwing around terms like "feeding frenzy" to describe sharks swimming around peacefully, over a suite of horror movie music, don't you think?)
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In its year end wrap up, Cryptomundo has an excellent article on a cryptid that I hadn't heard of before, the Tsushima leopard cat.  This feline is native to one tiny island, Tsushima, which is part of Japan.  The island is ridiculously small, only 273 square miles, about the same size as a big city like Los Angeles or Atlanta, and is situated in the Korean strait about halfway between Korea and Japan.

The island of Tsushima is divided into two smaller islands by an artificial waterway, thus separating the population of Tsushima leopard cats into two sub-groups.  The Tsushima leopard cat is hanging in on the upper island, which is far less populated than the lower island, and is home to between 80 and 110 of the cats.  
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Boskops were a race of hominids with small faces and giant brains, who roamed the Earth 10,000 years ago.  The mystery about their existence and extinction was recently covered in an article in Discover magazine, spurred by the recent publication of a book about human brain capacity.

The only problem?  Boskops never existed.

I recently wrote about Stephen Jay Gould's classic book, The Mismeasure of Man.  I don't have a copy handy, so I can't double check, but if Gould didn't cover Boskops, then he really should have.  The Boskop story could have been custom created from that text.
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