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JOHN CUMMINGS / CREATIVE COMMONSDEVONSHIRE’S MYSTERY
MARTEN
A comparable degree of contention also
surrounds the recent discovery of a dead
pine martenMartes martesin Devon, an
English county where this famouslyrare
and elusive arboreal mustelid officially
died out many decadesago. According
to media reports, shepherd Ash Symons
discovered its body (pictured at right)
on land where he lives and works,
in Teignbridge, on the south side of
Dartmoor, Devon, on 22 June 2019. It
had apparently been killed by a car. This
unexpected find led to speculation that
there must be an undiscovered survivingpopulation of pine martens in Devon.
However, the truthwas even more
unexpected. Jonathan Downes from theCentre of Fortean Zoology contacted
Symons for more information, and learnt
to his great surprise that when Symons
had taken the marten’s carcase to
officials to be scanned for microchips, it
turned out “that the creature had been
transported from Scotland [where there
is a well-known surviving population] to
Wales, where it had been released”–
but how it then made itsway southward
to Devon where it subsequently died
is still a mystery.www.devonlive.com/
news/devon-news/pine-marten-devon-
rare-found-3009872 23 June; http://
forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2019/07/
doing-right-thing.html 3 July 2019.KARL SHUKERhears news of feline cryptids from South America, and an out-of-place martenVENEZUELAN MYSTERY CATS
In various of my mystery cat writings,
I ha ve documented such creatures
from several different South American
countries, including Brazil, Colombia,
Paraguay,Peru, and Ecuador, but
recently I have received brand-new
information from two separate
correspondents in relation to feline
cryptids hailing fromVenezuela. On 19
June 2019, Michael Merchant from
Maine, USA, presented me with the
following details via Facebook: “When
I was in Venezuela thePemon Indians
told me of two undescribed species
of felines they were familiar with in the
local jungle. One they saidwas huge,
the size of an African lion and they were
very fearful of, saying to see itwas to
die. The otherwas a smaller, cougar-
sized cat that travelled in packs, with
the younger ones travelling in the trees,
the adults tending more to the ground,
hunting as a group.”
Although only one scientifically
recognised species of modern-day wild
cat, the lion, is known to be a social
species and hunt in groups, Michael’s
account is the third one known to me
that features a social cryptozoological
cat, adding to two from Ecuador and
Peru respectively. However, it is the only
example in which theyoungsters and
adults are segregated into arboreal and
terrestrial hunters.Very strange indeed.
My second piece of information
regardingVenezuelan mystery cats
came from a correspondent who prefers
to be identified publicly merely by the
user name BradypusTamias, so this is
how I shall refer to him here. On 9 June
2019, I received an email from him
containing these details: “Iwas recently
looking for possible newer informationabout the unnamed‘sabre-toothed cats’
reported from Ecuador and Colombia,
and tried using some Spanish-language
keywords in my search. This led me
to a video, entitled ‘ELWAIRARIMA:
Monstruos del AmazonasParte 2
|Criptozoologia|Terror’, which revealed
two interesting pieces of information.
“The first is that these cats do
actually have a name, at least in
Venezuela: ‘tigre dantero’ (dancing tiger)
or ‘wairarima’. According to ethnological
books and blog posts, this is the name
used inVenezuela, and the cat it’s
applied to is apparently larger thana
jaguar, but the Spanish-speaking online
cryptozoological community seem to
have adopted the term to refer to those
nameless, sub-jaguar-sized fanged cats
reported from the montane forests.
You might already have known about
these names, but I’ve never seen them
mentioned in English-language sources
before, nor had I read that the cryptids
themselves were also reported from
Venezuela.”
In fact, these names were new tome too, aswas the information that the
cats themselves seemingly inhabited
Venezuela as well as Colombia and
Ecuador. But thiswas not all. On 11
June 2019, Bradypus emailed me the
following additional details: “I feel I have
to say that the namewairarima/tigre
danteromay not always refer to the
fanged cats. Descriptions in (modern)
ethnological books about thePemon
Indians, and an old description from
William Beebe, make it soundvery
much like the Ecuadoreanpama-yawa
[a huge black mystery cat] (or just an
oversized melanistic jaguar); big, dark
grey, and semi-aquatic, with no mention
of fangs or a short tail. Also, it seems
that ‘tigre dantero’ might actually mean
‘tapir tiger’, just likepama-yawa,instead
of ‘dancing tiger’, as I translated it in
my last email. On the other hand,a
1991 Venezuelan sighting described
thewairarimaas light brown, with large
fangs, a short tail, and stocky front
legs. This is obviouslyvery different(and
very much like a sabre-tooth) but itwas
explicitly identified by the eyewitness,
a Pemon Indian, as awairarima. So I’m
not quite sure what’s going on with it.”
Evidently, there is some degree of
terminological controversy occurring
here, but regardless of what its subject
is called locally, the 1991 sighting
certainly delineates a felid bearing
more than a passing resemblance to
a bona fide sabre-toothed cat, all of
which officially died out at least 10,000
years ago, at least according to the
fossil record. It also assists in adding
Venezuela to the list of South American
countries in which mystery cat forms
have been reported.Michael Merchant,
Facebook, 19 June 2019; ‘Bradypus
Tamias’, pers. comms, 9+11 June 2019.ALIEN ZOO NEWS FROM THE CRYPTOZOOLOGICAL GARDEN