Big dog

 

The most crazy temple in India? Note the extremely large dogs! Here is ChatGPT: 

Is there a Bhairava temple in Anichunchanagiri?

Here are some images of the Kalabhairaveshwara Swamy Temple atop Adichunchanagiri Hill (also called Anichunchanagiri or Sri Kshetra Adichunchanagiri) in Mandya district, Karnataka. This temple is one of the few in South India specifically dedicated to Bhairava.

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Is There a Bhairava Temple in Anichunchanagiri?

Absolutely — there is a Kalabhairava temple in Adichunchanagiri:

• The temple is officially known as Sri Kalabhairaveshwara Swamy Temple. It serves as the Kṣetra-Pālaka (guardian deity) of the Adichunchanagiri Maha Samsthana Math, with the presiding deity being Shiva as Gangadhareshwara.hindufestivalsonline.comAstroVedWikipedia

• It is the only dedicated temple to Kalabhairava in South India, built around 2008 under the guidance of Sri Balagangadharanatha Swamiji.AstroVedparichaybp.blogspot.comsakrecubes.com

• The temple features over 64 representations of Bhairava (signifying different aspects or avatars), all carved in stone.AstroVedFree Online Library

• Architectural highlights include a fully stone-built structure—pillars, doors, ceilings—all crafted from black 'krishnashila' stone sourced from Kanchipuram, reflecting 16th–18th century Vijayanagara style.Free Online Libraryparichaybp.blogspot.com

• Other notable features at the site include the Pancha Lingas, Jwāla Pīṭha, Sthambambike, the Bindu Sarovara sacred pond, and the summit point known as Akasha Bhairava.hindufestivalsonline.comgnanamrutham.blogspot.comacnain.inAstroVedWikipedia

• A statue of a dog, the traditional vāhana (mount) of Bhairava, is found within the temple complex.Arjunpuri's Blog

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Summary

• Yes, there is a Bhairava temple—specifically dedicated to Kala Bhairava—on Adichunchanagiri Hill.

• It is a major shrine for devotees, architecturally impressive, and spiritually significant, especially in the Nath tradition of Karnataka.

• The temple uniquely combines the worship of Gangadhareshwara (Shiva) with prominent veneration of Kalabhairava.

If you're planning a visit or want to know more about the rituals, visiting hours, or historical context, I'd be happy to help!

I read a news story some time ago about a man who was arrested for blasphemy in India after trying to bring a big black dog into a temple and demanded that prasad be given to it. It struck me that the dog is a symbol of Bhairava. But in the temple at Adichunchanagiri, big black dogs are part of the worship services!

That’s a really sharp observation — you’re absolutely right to notice the irony.

In Hindu symbolism, the dog is indeed the vāhana (mount, vehicle) of Bhairava, especially Kala Bhairava. In many places, dogs (especially black dogs) are regarded as manifestations or companions of Bhairava, and devotees sometimes even feed stray dogs as a form of worship. In some Bhairava temples in North India, dogs are allowed into the temple compound, and offerings of food (prasāda) are placed out for them.

But context matters a lot:

• In Adichunchanagiri (Karnataka), the worship of Bhairava is central, so the dog as Bhairava’s vāhana is honored directly. Black dogs have even been part of rituals, festivals, and temple iconography there — it’s not just tolerated but ritually enshrined.

• In mainstream Shaiva or Vaishnava temples, especially in orthodox South Indian traditions, dogs are considered ritually impure and never allowed inside sanctums. Bringing a live dog in and demanding prasāda for it would be seen as a disruptive or deliberately provocative act — even if symbolically it makes sense from a Bhairava perspective.

So what you read in the news likely involved this clash of symbolism: in a Bhairava-oriented context, feeding a black dog prasāda is normal devotion, but in a temple that does not recognize Bhairava’s vāhana in ritual practice, it comes across as sacrilege.

Your insight is exactly right: in a temple like Adichunchanagiri, that same act could be welcomed as an offering to Bhairava; in a different temple, it’s condemned. It really shows how diverse Hindu practice is — a symbol sacred in one tradition can be taboo in another.

👉 Do you want me to dig up examples of living traditions where dogs are still ritually fed as Bhairava’s manifestation? There are some fascinating ones in Varanasi, Rajasthan, and Tamil Nadu.

Yes, please.

Absolutely—here are some living, on-the-ground examples where dogs are honored as Bhairava’s companions (or otherwise sacred), and are fed/receive prasāda:

• Varanasi & broader Bhairava observance (India): On Bhairava Aṣṭamī, devotees traditionally worship Bhairava and his vāhana, the dog, offering milk, sweets, curd and other foods to dogs. This is described in mainstream summaries of the festival. Wikipedia

• Ujjain & Varanasi folklore/practice: Popular guides about Kāl Bhairava note that feeding a black dog near Bhairava’s temple is considered auspicious, linked to Bhairava’s protective gaze—an attitude you’ll find around the famous Kāl Bhairav temples in Ujjain and Kashi. astroulagam.com.my

• Adichunchanagiri, Karnataka: At the Sri Kalabhairaveshwara shrine, Bhairava devotion is central and the dog symbolism is explicit—the temple famously features a dog image facing the sanctum and the site is often cited as a major Bhairava center; local coverage highlights the temple’s distinctive Bhairava focus and dog association. Arjunpuri's BlogHinduism Today

• Parassini Muthappan Temple, Kerala (Kannur): Different deity, same canine reverence: at this folk-Shaiva/Vaishnava shrine, dogs are sacred, roam freely, and the first prasād is traditionally given to a dog; naming-ceremonies for dogs are also reported. This is well documented in both reportage and encyclopedic entries. Hindustan TimesWikipediaCurly Tales

• Nepal (Kukur Tihar / Kukur Pūjā): During Tihar (Diwali), a whole day is devoted to honoring dogs with garlands, tilak and special food—a widely covered, living festival that underscores canine sanctity in the Hindu sphere (here linked more to Yama than Bhairava, but very relevant to the practice of feeding and honoring dogs). AP News

If you want to mirror these customs at home in a simple way, the most widely attested practice is: feed and care for local dogs—especially on Aṣṭamī tithis or on Bhairava Aṣṭamī—and then offer a brief salutation to Bhairava. That aligns closely with how devotees express this bhakti in India. Wikipedia

The last rally

 

Look what I found. 

This is a kind of follow up to the robot essay "Better than panpsychism". Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon discusses the strange phenomenon of terminal lucidity in humans *and animals*. It seems dogs and cats also experience "the last rally". The commentary section is worth reading. 

At the end of the video, Sheldrake and Vernon try to wrap everything up by discussing the resurrection of Christ from a somewhat heterodox perspective. 

Actually quite interesting. Thank you, guys, you may have saved my faith!   

I hope Laika is alive

 

I previously linked to the live performance of this song at the recent ESC, but I didn´t realize that the song is actually quite sad. This is an unofficial "lyrics video" that just showed up in my recommendations...  

Dogs in space

 

Some more Eurovision fun. This is the Irish entry (voted out in the semifinale). Yes, it´s a disco song about Laika. You know, Laika. The first dog in space. It´s called "Laika Party". Communist kitsch have never been so...I don´t know...kitschie or something?

Alter Ego

 

So I just saw a French science documentary, "Alter Ego", on Swedish TV about cloning. Artificial human cloning of non-human animals, to be exact. Remember Dolly the cloned sheep? For whatever reason, the European Union bans this kind of cloning, so the industry thrives in the rest of the world. In the docu, they interview Americans and Argentinians who clone horses (including race horses), Chinese who clone pet dogs, and a hyper-modern lab in the United Arab Emirates financed by the Emir of Dubai which clone dromedaries (camel races are popular in some nations). In the United States, there are supposedly cloned deer with exactly the qualities a wild-game hunter wants!

There are also discussions to clone mammoths and other extinct animals, such as the dodo. Maybe this is a bit too much hype? One scientist actually believes that cloning birds is extremely difficult to impossible. Another opines that "cloned mammoths" would really be genetically enhanced elephants which can live in cold weather! However, the cloned foal of a Przewalski´s horse (this species or sub-species is extinct in the wild) is real, so here is a possible avenue to save endangered species. It seems cloning can even enhance the genetic diversity of a species. The two-humped Bactrian camel (which is almost extinct in the wild) is mentioned as the object of another possible rescue mission. 

The documentary doesn´t discuss human cloning and no Raëlians are interviewed. The production is clearly pro-cloning and I do wonder after watching it why the EU has banned cloning. How does this help us? How does it help the animals? Is it just some weird superstition? On our "enlightened" continent! In reality, the applications are almost endless. Imagine killing off all wolves, but keeping their DNA around for future re-creation just in case. 

Hmmm...    

Cheq, mate

 

If Labrador Retrievers are real, why are there still Newfoundland dogs? Can you answer that, evolutionista, huh huh? 

Do Your Own Research

 

 

 

So I did my own armchair research a propos the previous blog post "Emerson´s Dogman". I admit I was...stunned.

In New Jersey, a black bear nicknamed Pedals could actually walk permanently on its hind legs, and quite fast too! It was an adaptation to the fact that one of its front paws had been damaged and rendered non-functional. There are also dogs who learned to walk bipedally for similar reasons. They, too, were quite fast. 

Bears walking on their hind legs for longer or shorter distances are (surprise) the main suspects in many purported Bigfoot observations. One clip above shows two normal bears in a South Korean safari park standing and even walking bipedally a short distance. But if bears and dogs can walk upright under certain conditions, what about wolves? While there is no scientific evidence for factultative bipedalism among wolves, who´s to say that it´s intrinsically impossible?

Note that there isn´t any particular contradiction between this and the notion that most (perhaps 99%) of Dogman sightings are misidentifications, hallucinations or hoaxes. Obviously, unusual observations of animals will be sensationalized and later mythologized. And in the Internet age, people will end up "seeing" them pretty much everywhere. 

The same logic applied to Bigfoot could yield some interesting results. Or speculations...    

The Goblin Shark feat. Marvin

 

"The best cryptid evidence" doesn´t strike me as very "cryptid". Note that the Patterson-Gimlin film of Bigfoot fame isn´t included in this survey. All animals featured (except maybe Marvin) seem to belong to known and currently extant taxa. So-called cryptozoologists don´t really care - they want to find a giant ape-man, a surviving dinosaur, or something to that effect. 

So it seems the Patterson-Gimlin film is unique, being the only good footage of an *actual* cryptid (i.e. a monster). But it´s precisely it´s singular character that makes it so hard to believe...   

Dog days

 

Credit: Jozef Fehér (Pexels)

Governor DeSantis is back on his job...

Former dog owner prosecuted

De galna hundarna

 

Erdogan-regimen gör äntligen något nyttigt...

Miljontals hundar i Turkiet kan avlivas

Taxonomic vandalism (and then some)

 

Never heard of this matie before, but he is apparently some kind of local celebrity in Australia. 

Science blogger Darren Naish isn´t impressed, and charges free-wheeling herpetologist Ray Hoser with "taxonomic vandalism" and "nomenclatural harvesting". 

Or, not to put too fine spin on it, of being a real pain the ass! Apparently, the unhinged mate has named snakes after his pet dogs, when not busy running a snake-related road show, unsuccesfully running for office, and accusing other scientists of being rapists, thieves, and what not...    

Ray Hoser: Number 1 Taxonomic Vandal

The irrational in politics

 

So Donald Trump´s possible running mate Kristi Noem is unelectable because she killed a puppy 20 years ago, but Trump himself is electable despite all *his* crazy shit? LOL. Makes you wonder if the ChiComs were right after all. American democracy really doesn´t work... 

Kristi Noem shot her dog and political future in the head

Skrovmål

 

En ovanligt korkad artikel. Ja, man äter hund i Kina. Och därför...vad?   

Kritiken av Demirok lär oss att vi kan äta hundar

Animalistic

 

 

This is so bizarre that I wonder whether it´s even real, or AI-generated. I mean, dude! But OK, the liger is real. I think. 

Like master, like dog

Credit: IDS.photos

When notorious controversialist Edward Dutton suggested that the underlying causes of obesity are genetic, his ideas turned out to be more controversial than usual. The jolly heretic was reamed out in the YouTube commentary section by less jolly denizens of Amerikwan suburbia, who hysterically screamed stuff along the lines of "are you suggesting that I can´t accuse my fat and ugly neighbor of being a moral failure to his face???". 

It´s worse than that, I´m afraid, dear Sir. It now turns out that you can´t even accuse your neighbor´s fat and ugly dog of being a moral failure either! 

Genetic quirk in Labrador retrievers can lead to obesity

The singing thylacine

The thylacine is a large Australian marsupial believed to be extinct since 1936, but enthusiasts claim (or hope) that it has survived somewhere in the Tasmanian wilderness. The short piece linked to below argues that thylacines may have survived in New Guinea instead. 

Unfortunately, misidentification cannot be ruled out in this case, since there is a similar-looking placental mammal on the island: the New Guinea "singing dog". The animal also seems ecologically impossible, according to some scientists. 

That being said, the eye witness accounts don´t sound entirely far fetched either, so perhaps thylacine-hunters should bribe the proper Indonesian authorities and aim straight for the Jajawijaya Mountains...  

Dobsegna

Thylacines in Indonesian New Guinea?

Crying Wolf in Irian Jaya?

En genuin skitfråga?

 

Credit: Mariomassone 

En genuin skitfråga, tyckte Annika Strandhäll om förslaget att förbjuda kusinäktenskap. Titta vad sossarna vill satsa på istället...

Men okej, varghybrider bör givetvis förbjudas. Och avlivas. Men om maktpartiet vill snacka varg, så har jag några förslag om vad vi ska göra med den svenska vargstammen också! 

Time to call in the terminator, guys. 

Förbjud varghybrider

The Baskerville effect

Here is a topic I haven´t revisited for some time…

Yes, it´s time for the paranormal Black Dogs (and their equally dark-colored feline cousins) to enter the fray again!

The link goes to Darren Naish´s science blog Tetrapod Zoology, which occasionally dabbles in topics cryptozoological and Fortean, usually from a skeptical perspective (although it´s obvious that Naish really wants to find a cryptid one day, preferably of the fleshly and bloodily persuasion). Naish is positive towards a kind of heterodox naturalistic explanation, according to which certain features of the landscape gives rise to anomalous electromagnetic phenomena, which are then interpreted by the human brain as “freakin´ large black dogs” (or panthers).

WHICH IS PRECISELY HOW THE FAIRIES HAVE OPERATED FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS!!!

:D

This kind of natural explanation shades seamlessly into the more forthrightly supernaturalist take that the fairies are indeed of an electromagnetic nature, at least when they manifest on our physical plane of existence.

You already know my take, citoyen! 

Legend of the Black Dog

Dog days

 

Credit: Sage Ross

“Dogs in the Wild: Meet the Family” is a 2022 BBC nature documentary. Everyone knows about the domestic dog, but here we are indeed invited to meet its “family”. I admit that the diversity of the Canidae is pretty staggering. Some live in unexpected places: the Tibetan fox in the Himalayas, the Arctic wolf at the Queen Elizabeth Islands and the diminutive fennec fox in the Sahara desert. And yes, many red foxes live in London!

Some canids are embroiled in intricate near-symbiotic relationships with other organisms. The dingoes at Fraser Island survive in part by eating eggs of sea turtles, but they inadvertently also protect hatched turtles from further predation, since no other predators dares to approach the beaches if the dingoes roam there. The Fraser Island dingo population is also considered important since these specimens are supposedly very “pure”, genetically speaking, while dingoes in other parts of Australia have interbred with domestic dogs. To stop further racial mixing, domestics have been banned from the island (sure wonder why humanity meddles into the love lives of feral canids, but there you go).

Meanwhile in South America, the wolf apple is the preferred diet of the maned wolf, a bizarre canid that looks like a fox on stilts. The maned wolf´s bad eating habits help spread the wolf apple, with some assistance from leaf-cutter ants! The canid literally shits out the seeds of the wolf apples it consumes, and the seeds are then saved from the scorching sun by ants, which takes them to shaded and moist places around their nests (the ants are interested in remaining fruit fragments attached to the seeds). There, the seeds sprout and a new wolf apple plant can wet the appetite of the maned wolf…

I don´t think “Dogs in the Wild” has any deeper purpose or meaning. The point is to show the viewer some interesting animals, and perhaps to show off the technological prowess of the BBC. But sure, I admit that “the family” was pretty wild!

Post kittens, pardon, big fluffy dogs

 

The intelligence services want us to post kittens when we feel worried about system collapse (a.k.a. 2023), but since I never been much of a cat person, here are some fluffy dogs (and one bloodhound) instead...