Some people are claiming paranormal monster. I say this is a “Guess the decayed animal game”

Click Here for Photo & Article

This gross leathery thing washes ashore (or was dumped there by someone). Some ladies at the beach take a photo, they are among several passers by who gather around it. One of them works for a marketing company and forwards the photo to some blogs to see if anyone knows what it is. (This caused some to claim it is a viral marketing hoax, which the woman denies. Also, there is no product or company tied to any of the claims.) Someone quickly said it was photo-shopped, but witnesses were located that confirmed this gross thing was on the beach. (Click article above for full story.)

It’s the “beak” and “flippers” that don’t seem to match, that are freaking people out.

Others suggestions from conspiracy theorists commenting to the article:
- “numerous metaphysical/ scientific experiments were done on the island of Montauk’s old military base back in the day, including alien, and genome projects. Maybe its something left over from that era, a cross breed.”

- “This genetic engineering at it’s worst…It looks somewhat human..and somewhat animal and the scientist are trying to hide it…but washed on shore this is definetely not and evolutionary creature…it was created from a lab and became a mistake..”

- “I looks like it could have walked on two legs.Look at the hips…look at the elbow and shoulders..this is human/Animal created in a lab..Look at the eyes…Stop messing with bio-engineering..this humanoid”

- “Not to far from this location there is an island called Plum Island, it is an animal disease place, it is a genticaly altered experiment and the monster escape and drowned, think about this an old man came along and picked it up hm previous post said that animal control was called and they did nothing hm why, if animal control did it would of made it bigger in the press. think about it”

I vote for dead dog, warped by time in the water and sun. What do you guys think?

Perhaps it’s the Republicans’ hopes for a next election win?

Well, it’s old and leathery. Could be McCain.

Jules - 02 August 2008 02:24 PM

Well, it’s old and leathery. Could be McCain.

It seems to be napping more than he does - and it isn’t wearing $520 loafers.

I vote for a decaying dog. Note that there is nothing to indicate scale. Who ever took the picture made absolutely sure there was nothing else in the picture we could use to figure out the size of the creature. Also suspicious is that there are no close ups of the ‘beak’ or ‘flippers’. the mouth definitely looks canine. Maybe MacGyver will weigh in with his opinion!

asanta - 02 August 2008 05:08 PM

Note that there is nothing to indicate scale.

Based on what I read, eyewitnesses said it was roughly 3 feet long. 

It does not look like any known animal.  And, given its proximity to the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, I am led to suspect that it’s a bioengineered mutant that escaped from the facility and drowned (that might explain why its front leg appears lashed).  They apparently do some pretty disturbing stuff on that island as chronicled by the book Lab 257 and also here.

Some think that Lyme disease was also an escapee from the island.  The reason has to do with the location of the first outbreak and its concentration around the area of Plum Island, since they admittedly experimented with it there.

It sort of looks like a skinned animal, but bloated from the water. Sometimes skinned animal corpses look very “alien” and their features are unrecognizable.

If the fabric around the leg is not trash entangled from the water, it might be that someone tied up and drowned some poor pit bull, sadly not unheard of in the NY area.

Here is the photo, in case anyone has trouble with the link. I hope I’m uploading it correctly.

You should add “photoshopped” to the poll.

Pragmatic Naturalist - 03 August 2008 01:36 PM

You should add “photoshopped” to the poll.

Good point. I don’t think it could be a bizarre animal experiment gone wrong, it would be too difficult to keep something that strange a complete secret with the number of people that would be necessarily involved.

Here is another article, with interviews, that addresses the photoshop theory, and has a photo from another angle. Experts interviewed seem to be going with the raccoon theory. (Raccoons do get very large in the northeast, the size of a medium dog. Also, nuisance wildlife trappers frequently drown raccoons after trapping them. It’s a common method of killing them. See here and here)

“...The validity of the picture has been further established by the numerous eyewitnesses who saw the animal on the beach in front of Montauk’s Surfside Inn…

Steven T. Papa, a Senior Endangered Species/Federal Projects Biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “...it appears to be a raccoon based on estimating overall ear length to body length ratio in the photos to measurements found in the literature, as well as lower jaw and front leg characteristics.”

This is great! Ilove stuff like this.

It remindes me of the “Mer-Man” that someone found in one of the Lakes around Banff, in the late 1800’s

Turned out that the man who found it was a taxidermist, and fused a Chips upper half and a Marlins lower half together. He did this for a hoax that would bring more tourists to town…. it worked and allot of people believed it for many years.

Know you can view the best at one of the local museum’s in town.

Pictures.

Thanks Roc, I couldn’t figure out how to attach them full sized, only as thumbnail attachments. Those are much easier to see.

Amos, I love trying to figure out stuff like this too! It’s a fun little mystery.

In this particular case, I’m inclined to believe it’s a real, normal animal that has been warped by decomposition, water, and sun damage, or perhaps skinned first, making it look even stranger. Multiple interviews seem to rule out photoshop. Others took camera phone pictures, although due to poor resolution, they were not picked up by the news like this woman’s photos that were taken with a high quality camera.

Does anyone remember the “Chupacabra” that was found dead in Texas a year or two ago? It was all over the news, and the thing looked freakish and unnatural. But in the end, it was just a coyote missing its hair due to disease, and the body was misshapen due to decay and the elements. I suspect this will be something similar. In the meantime, it’s fun to analyze what animal it might be.

Satan’s hound?

My favorite guess in the comments section of the article was “Zuul’s dog from Ghostbusters”