Faking parakeets

Red gorillas in the Congo? Yes, red. The Strait of Hormuz sea-serpent? Yes, the Strait of Hormuz. A faked video of surviving Carolina Parakeets, perhaps in the Okefenokee swamp? I admit I never heard *these* particular tall tales before! The parakeet video was the funniest part. The guy who "discovered" it (or rather faked it) was a very colorful character! Would be big on YouTube if he had lived today, LOL. 

Super-spreader event

 

Let´s hope this is just one of those "Monthly Doomer Report" scenarios. After all, invasive marine species are already spreading throughout the world due to our international shipping lanes.

And we´re still here, right? As is most of our seafood... 

Ships stuck in strait of Hormuz pose "super-spreader" biodiversity threat, scientists warn 

Las Malvinas Argentinas

 

I told you the UK can´t fight a shooting war. Is this why they voluntarily handed over Chagos to Mauritius? Hardly a military great power, LOL. Until the King in Orange stopped them. But maybe Port Louis is paying attention to *that* guys recent contretemps in a certain waterway further to the northwest?

If Argentina wants to retake the Falkland Islands, pardon, Las Islas Malvinas, this is the time. Just an empirical observation. 

Surprise, surprise

 

Since Trump clearly has no plan how to secure the Strait of Hormuz, yes, he was surprised by the Strait of Hormuz. So probably no hoax, after all. 

CNN is spreading hoax Trump was surprised by Strait of Hormuz

Epic fury?

 

Apparently, Trump is threatening to leave NATO again.

Oh. 

Crocs

 

Is this site running out of content to write about? Why is this even news, bruh? So *saltwater* crocs which are *adapted to crossing oceans* actually crossed a saltwater ocean...I mean, duuuude, who knew? Naturally, humans killed them when *they* arrived to the Seychelles, which I suppose is a bit news worthy, I mean, why didn´t the darn crocodilians just swim to Mauritius or sumethin´?    

Saltwater crocodiles crossed the Indian Ocean to reach the Seychelles

Isolationism

 

Is this supposed to be the new "isolationism" or "Western Hemisphere-ism"?

US military hunts down, boards vessel in Indian Ocean

Possible ecologies

 

I actually assumed that marine cryptids are almost as implausible as terrestrial ones, but ChatGPT disagrees and thinks that at least in principle they are more likely. 

Explain why marine cryptids are more plausible than terrestrial ones.

Marine cryptids are more plausible than terrestrial ones not because the ocean is magical, but because physics, ecology, and sampling bias work very differently in water than on land. When scientists say this, they’re making a sober inference about where ignorance can realistically persist.

Here’s the reasoning, step by step.

---

1. The ocean is genuinely under-sampled

This is the single biggest factor.

• ~71% of Earth’s surface is ocean

• >80% of the ocean is unexplored at fine resolution

• Most of the deep sea has:

  • Never been directly observed

  • Never been biologically sampled

  • Never been filmed continuously

By contrast:

• Virtually all terrestrial biomes have been repeatedly surveyed

• Large land animals are constantly encountered

Ignorance is plausible where observation is sparse.

---

2. Water hides bodies better than land

On land:

• Bodies persist as bones and teeth

• Scavengers scatter remains slowly

• Skeletons are often found decades later

In the ocean:

• Bodies sink

• Pressure, scavengers, and microbes destroy remains rapidly

• Bones dissolve faster in deep, cold, acidic water

• Carcasses are consumed within days to weeks

This means:

A large marine animal can die without leaving recoverable remains.

That alone changes the evidential calculus.

---

3. Marine food webs can support large, sparse animals

The ocean supports:

• Enormous biomass at lower trophic levels

• Wide-ranging predators with very low population densities

• Long-distance migratory behavior

Examples:

• Blue whales: global range, rarely seen

• Giant squid: known almost entirely from fragments until recently

• Beaked whales: multiple species discovered in the last few decades

On land:

• Large mammals require:

  • Dense, localized populations

  • Stable territories

  • Predictable feeding zones

Which are easy to detect.

---

4. Size scales differently in water

Water fundamentally changes biomechanics:

• Buoyancy supports mass

• No need for load-bearing limbs

• Gigantism is energetically cheaper

This is why:

• The largest animals in Earth’s history are marine

• Many deep-sea species are much larger than their shallow-water relatives

A “giant unknown thing” is biomechanically plausible in water, not on land.

---

5. Detection technology is limited and selective

Marine detection relies on:

• Sonar (low resolution for biology)

• Trawls (sparse, destructive, biased)

• Remote cameras (tiny windows of time)

Most ocean animals:

• Are never caught

• Are never photographed

• Are known from indirect traces

Terrestrial detection:

• Trail cams

• Roads

• Satellites

• Human density

• Hunters

If a large land animal exists, we will get a clear photo or body.

---

6. History favors marine surprises

Real examples once considered “cryptids”:

• Giant squid (Architeuthis): known from myths → beaks → carcasses → video

• Megamouth shark (1976): large, slow, near surface

• Living coelacanth (1938)

• Beaked whales: new species discovered via bones/DNA

These follow a consistent pattern:

physical evidence first, live observation later.

Marine cryptids sometimes meet this standard. Terrestrial ones don’t.

---

7. What kinds of marine cryptids are actually plausible

More plausible

• Deep-sea invertebrates

• Rare sharks or rays

• Elusive cetaceans

• Large gelatinous organisms

• Deep pelagic animals with wide ranges

Much less plausible

• Humanoid sea beings

• Intelligent, tool-using marine species hiding from humanity

• Enormous surface-dwelling animals near coasts

Plausibility ≠ license for fantasy.

---

8. Why “lake monsters” mostly fail

Even water has limits.

Lakes:

• Are small

• Have limited biomass

• Are heavily monitored

This is why:

• Loch Ness monster fails ecological tests

• Lake cryptids are generally implausible

The open ocean is the real ignorance zone.

---

Bottom line

Marine cryptids are more plausible because the ocean erases evidence, limits observation, supports sparse large animals, and has a proven history of surprises.

Terrestrial ecosystems do not.

This doesn’t mean famous cryptids are real — it means where uncertainty legitimately remains.

---

If you want, I can:

• Rank famous cryptids by ecological plausibility

• Explain why humanoid cryptids are almost certainly mythic

• Compare cryptids to legitimate “unknown unknowns” in biology

• Tie this into philosophy of scientific ignorance (what kinds of unknowns are allowed)

Just say the direction.

Dead as a solitaire

 

The dodo, the passanger pigeon and the great auk are three almost iconic extinct birds. Inevitably, some people claim to have seen them after they officially traversed to the proverbial hunting grounds. 

Also as usual, some of the reports are more difficult to believe than others. For instance, a report of a living dodo in Zambia?! Hint: the dodo was a flightless bird living on the island of Mauritius. Zambia is a landlocked country in South-Central Africa. But even that pales when compared to an alleged video of a dodo in...Costa Rica. Yeaaah. 

My "favorite" is the Canadian whiskey distiller who tricked the media to a marketing event on the Orkney Islands, claiming to finance an expedition looking for surviving great auks. The runner up is the bizarre story of penguins on the run in Norway being mistaken for said auks. Is that even true, or an April Fool´s joke?

Interestingly, Teddy Roosevelt believed that he spotted passanger pigeons seven years after the species supposedly disappeared. So TR *did* have some kind of cryptid connection. The usually trigger happy rough rider decided not to shoot them. Later sightings are probably misidentified mourning doves or bizarre specimens of domestic pigeons on the run.

A very entertaining video, all in all.    

I think I found my spirit-animal

 

So if the Round Island burrowing boa still exists, it lives underground on one tiny uninhabited island? Sounds like my kind of dawg! Or, I suppose, ophidian...

The tariff tribe

 

When the Woke are for closed borders and tariffs...

Influencers new threat to uncontacted tribes

Penguins for free trade

 

Credit: White House

Donald Trump has imposed tariffs on Heard Island and McDonald Islands in the Antarctic, home only to penguins. "Which nobody have heard about". Apparently, the tariff is 10%. 

So in the unlikely case the Australian wildlife service decides to turn the local semi-pelagic avifauna into bush meat (to compete with true Amerikan raccoon and possum steak), YOU HAVE BEEN DULY WARNED.

This is Liberation Day.  

Nowhere on Earth is safe

Our cryptid cousins

 

OK, this was funny. Who would have thought that there are *cryptid* coelecanths? If an unknown animal is discovered, guess what, people suddenly see it everywhere and at all times...including half a planet away from where it was discovered?! But sure, the idea that people at Mallorca were catching and eating primordial lobe-finned fish until fairly recently does have a certain romantic appeal. 

Besides, two species of coelecanth has been discovered - not just one - the second one as late as 1998 (in Indonesia). So I suppose it´s possible that a few new species of this strange and wonderful fish (a *very* distant evolutionary cousin of...ourselves) might still be lurking out there...

Peak 2025

 

So it actually happened. A mad scientist (?) recently proposed to detonate a nuclear bomb to save the world from global warming. Yes, really.

At least he didn´t propose an actual nuclear war. Instead, the idea seems to be to detonate the mother of all A-bombs on the sea floor off the sinisterly named Desolation Island (a.k.a. Kerguelen) and then just await the results with folded arms. Pun almost intended!

The results, if I understand Sabine´s video above, is that the explosion will free enormous amounts of basalt into the sea water. The basalt will somehow bind carbon dioxide and hence save the day. Interestingly, Hossenfelder doesn´t say that its technically impossible to actually do this...it justs costs a lot of money! And may have, ahem, unintended consequences...

Peak 2025 has arrived. Already.

Winter everywhere

 

“A Year on Planet Earth” is a four-part nature documentary about…essentially everything. 

I just watched the “winter” episode, which takes us to such diverse places as the African savannah, the jungles of New Guinea, and Svalbard. Well, at least there´s winter at the latter place! Arctic night, too. The polar bears, seals and reindeer could pass for wintery animals. Maybe the penguins in the Antarctic, too. “Dancing” riflebirds in the rainforest? Elephants?! Not so much. 

The nominal point is that all these animals are active during the season *we* call winter, but in reality, I think they just wanted to show some (admittedly good) footage of various Animalia as filler on some nature channel…

Global fall

 

More like summer!

"A Year on Planet Earth" is a four-part nature documentary released in 2022. I just watched the fall or autumn episode. It´s pretty eclectic and follow very different animals all over the world. It´s not even clear whether it´s always "fall" in the various locations.

Elephants in Africa, grizzlies in the Yukon, chipmunks in Quebec, muskoxen in Norway, Amur falcons chasing swarming termites in Nagaland, and monarch butterflies in both Maine and Mexico...you get the picture. Add zillions of crabs on Christmas Island and you´re done! 

I think we´ve seen most of this before, tbh, but it was a nice diversion from the election drama in a certain North American nation...

The lesser dependencies of Mauritius

 

You learn new shit every day. I´m a notorious "flag nerd", but I completely missed this one! The coat of arms of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) includes the Latin motto "In tutela nostra Limuria", which is supposed to mean "Lemuria in our trust"! 

Yes, Lemuria. The imaginary continent of Lemuria, here with the more unusual alternative spelling Limuria. The above illustration is from the website of the BIOT administration. 

Just this Thursday, the UK announced that they will hand over control of the BIOT (a.k.a. the Chagos Archipelago) to Mauritius...but the large US military base at the main island of Diego Garcia will remain for another 99 years. So nothing really changed. Except, I suppose, that this peculiar coat of arms is soon history...  

Pygmy cryptids

 

OK, another one. There is apparently a "pygmy" subspecies of the blue whale, which "only" reaches 24 meters in length. LOL. So apparently some kind of early warning system á la Dr Strangelove detected two previously unknown populations of said pygmies in the Indian Ocean, one around the ill-reputed Chagos Archipelago, the other in the vicinity of Oman. 

I admit this little story made me somewhat more optimistic about the prospects of cryptozoology...

Nuclear bomb detectors uncover secret population of blue whales hiding in the Indian Ocean

Massacre on Marion Island

 

Credit: JJ Harrison

Some really bizarre information in this one. 

The remote Marion Island in the Indian Ocean is scene to a "zombie apocalypse" during which aggressive and hungry mice prey on the seabirds, including large albatrosses, and eventually kill them. Or, not to put too fine spin on it, eat them alive under torture-like forms. 

Homo sapiens has decided to come to the rescue, and in 2026, the plan is to kill off the mice instead. That is, to exterminate millions of them! So our response to the zombie apocalypse is mouse genocide. Not until 2028 will we know whether the pesky rodent is finally gone and our tubenose brethren saved. Oh, and in a previous hominid killing spree on the island, all cats were extirpated?! 

>>>A “zombie apocalypse” has been playing itself out on Marion Island in the Southern Indian Ocean for more than a decade, as flesh-eating mice massacre vulnerable seabirds, having already laid waste to invertebrates and otherwise tenacious vegetation.

>>>In the 20 years up to 2018, the number of mice on Marion increased by about 430%. As a result, says Anderson, “the frequency of mouse attacks is increasing very significantly. It’s exponential, and it’s related to the fact that the invertebrates on which the mice used to prey have been decimated, so the mice are feeding off the seabirds and their eggs as an alternative food source” to replace their diet of weevils, moths and seeds. 

>>>In a 2015 study, mice were found to be killing one in 10 albatross chicks. Not only has this escalated, says Anderson, but “one of our concerns is that the mice are now starting to feed on adult wandering albatrosses as well. “The loss of chicks obviously has a big impact, but once you start killing adult birds of breeding maturity, then the impact on populations increases. And this is a more recent phenomenon.”

Massacre at Marion: Mouse eradication project gathers pace

Therefore God

 

Not an Aldabra rail, I´m afraid
Credit: Jlfutari

Ooookay...

The bird that came back from the dead by evolving twice