Karl P. N. Shuker
Oct 8, 202212 min
FATE September 2005
Mystery Animals of New Guinea.
With an area of more than 340,000 square miles, New Guinea is second only to Greenland as the largest island in the world. (Australia is bigger than both but is officially deemed an island continent, rather than a mere island.) It is divided into Irian Jaya or Indonesian New Guinea as its western half and Papua New Guinea as its eastern half, but throughout its length and breadth are dense and little-explored rain forests where various, surprising new species of animal have been revealed in recent years, including a black-and-white panda-like whistling tree kangaroo known as the dingiso. Several more may still await discovery, judging from reports on file of certain bizarre beasts that cannot be satisfactorily reconciled by science with any species known to exist here.
I have documented some of these in previous Fate articles (reprinted in expanded form within my 1997 book, From Flying Toads To Snakes With Wings), such as the Papuan dragon or artrellia, the crocodilian lake monster of New Britain known as the migo, Lake Sentani’s mystery shark, and a veritable phalanx of controversial “lost” birds of paradise. However, those were just the tip of the cryptozoological iceberg, as demonstrated dramatically by the all-new selection of New Guinea enigmas now unveiled here.
Kayadi: The Papuan Bigfoot
I am greatly indebted to American cryptozoological investigator Todd Jurasek for the following information and his kind permission to publish it; it has not previously seen print anywhere. In fall 2002, Todd visited the village of Siawi in a remote region of Papua New Guinea roughly 18 miles east of the border with Irian Jaya just below the mountains and approximately six miles from the Sepik River. During his stay there, he interviewed members of several different tribes in the hope of extracting information of cryptozoological relevance, with the aid of a missionary called Jason acting as interpreter.
He obtained some information concerning giant monitors (the apparent identity of the Papuan artrellia) and also giant snakes, as well as some more surprising testimony concerning the alleged existence here of a lion-sized cat (no feline species is known to exist on New Guinea) and also a possible large canine cryptid. But by far the most extraordinary information obtained from these interviews concerned an alleged Bigfoot-like man-beast, which was described to Jason by members of both the Siawi and the Amto tribes.
According to their accounts, this New Guinea ape-man, known to the Amto people as the kayadi, was at least man-sized (that is, about five feet five inches tall, judging from the average height of most native peoples on New Guinea), hirsute, and bipedal, but also able to climb trees very rapidly and strong enough physically to throw humans if confronted. One Amti tribesman stated that in 1981 a kayadi had been startled by his uncle while digging for eggs in a cave near his village, and another claimed that a local girl had actually been kidnapped by one of these man-beasts.
Many of the major islands or island groups in the vicinity of New Guinea can lay claim to reports of man-beasts—such as the yowie in Australia, maero or macro in New Zealand, orang pendek in Sumatra, batutut in Borneo, and mumulou in the Solomon Islands. However, as far as I am aware, this is the first time that a named man-beast has been reported from New Guinea, thereby making Todd’s findings a very notable contribution to cryptozoology.
Crying Wolf in Irian Jaya?
The official extinction in 1936 on Tasmania of the remarkable thylacine or Tasmanian wolf (Tassie for short), a tiger-striped canine marsupial mammal as big as a wolf that could hop like a kangaroo and had a pouch like one too, is well-documented, as is its much earlier disappearance a couple of millennia ago on the Australian mainland. Less familiar is the fact that during the Pleistocene epoch, ending a mere 10,000 years ago, the thylacine also existed on New Guinea. Similarly, whereas the chronicles of cryptozoology are fairly bulging with unconfirmed post-1936 thylacine sightings both on Tasmania and in mainland Australia, it is not so well known that modern-day reports of suspiciously thylacine-like beasts have also emerged from New Guinea, specifically Irian Jaya, where such creatures are referred to by local people as the dobsegna.
During the early 1990s, grazier Ned Terry visited Irian Jaya and procured the following details from local testimony. Rarely seen in daylight, the dobsegna generally emerges from its den in rocks or caves at dawn or dusk to hunt for small prey animals. Its head and shoulders are dog-like, but its mouth is huge and strong, and its tail is very long and thin. Villagers claim that from its ribs to its hips it has no intestines (but this merely suggests that it is very thin in this particular body region), and that in this region it is striped.
Needless to say, this is a remarkably accurate verbal portrait of a thylacine, from the canine head and exceptionally powerful jaws to the slender, stripe-adorned hindquarters and lengthy tail. Moreover, in 2003 veteran Irian Jaya explorer Ralf Kiesel confirmed to me that since 1995 there have been persistent rumors of thylacines existing in at least two sections of Irian Jaya’s Baliem Valley—the Yali area in the valley’s northeast region, and the NP Carstenz in its southwest. The latter area is of particular significance because back in the early 1970s Jan Sarakang, a Papuan friend of Kiesel, had a most startling experience while working with a colleague in the mountains just west of NP Carstenz.
They had built a camp for some geologists near Puncac Jaya at an altitude of roughly a mile and a half and were sitting by their tents that evening, eating their meal, when two unfamiliar dog-like animals emerged from the bush. One was an adult, the other a cub, and both appeared pale in color. Most striking of all were their stiff, inflexible tails and the incredible gape of their jaws when they yawned spasmodically. Clearly drawn by the smell of the food, the two animals walked nervously from side to side, eyeing the men and their food supplies, and approaching to within 20 yards. Eventually the cub became bold enough to walk up to the men, who tried to feed it, but when one of them also tried to catch it, the cub bit his hand and both animals then ran back into the bush and were not seen again.
Except for their pallid hue, which may well have been a trick of the moonlight, these animals recalled thylacines, especially with respect to their stiff tails (a thylacine characteristic) and huge gapes. Worth noting is that the thylacine could open its mouth beyond an amazing 120 degrees—far more than any true dog or wolf can do.
Searches for the thylacine on Tasmania and mainland Australia continue on a frequent but unsuccessful basis. Perhaps it is time for Tassie seekers to turn their attention to the verdant, shadowy mountain forests and caves of Irian Jaya.
From Dung Heap to Devil Pig
The history of New Guinea’s most intriguing mystery beast began in a distinctly prosaic, unromantic manner—the finding of an unexpected pile of dung. In 1875, the eminent English scientific journal Nature carried a couple of letters from Alfred O. Walker concerning the recent discovery by Lt. Sidney Smith and Captain Moresby from H.M.S. Basilisk of a startlingly large heap of fresh dung in a forest while surveying on Papua’s north coast, between Huon Bay and Cape Basilisk. The pile of excrement in question was so big and its overall appearance such that the men assumed it to have been left by some form of rhinoceros. Yet there is no known species of rhino native to New Guinea.
The mystery deepened via a further Nature letter of 1875, submitted this time by German zoologist Dr. Adolf Meyer, who confirmed that the Papuans inhabiting the south coast of the Geelvinks Bay knew of a rare but very large pig-like creature in the area. And in 1906, two such beasts were finally encountered, albeit in a wholly unplanned manner.
During the spring of that year, explorer Capt. Charles A. W. Monckton was leading a major expedition to Papua’s Mount Albert Edward. On May 10, two of his team’s members, an army private called Ogi and a village constable called Oina, were sent on ahead to investigate a track discovered by the expedition the previous day.
Somehow the two men became separated, and while seeking Oina, Ogi came upon two extraordinary creatures grazing nearby. Although vaguely pig-like, each of these animals was approximately three and a half feet tall and five feet long, with a very dark, patterned hide, cloven feet, a long snout, and a horse-like (hairy?) tail.
Ogi was so frightened by these weird creatures, which he referred to as devil pigs as he felt sure that they must be demons in porcine guise, that he tried to shoot one, but missed. What happened after that is unclear, because when he was later found by Oina and taken back to camp, Ogi was in a severe state of shock, and unable to recollect anything further.
Intriguingly, Ogi’s testimony gained partial support from expedition leader Monckton himself, because he affirmed that some very large cloven-footed tracks had indeed been found on Mount Albert Edward. And a mysterious long-snouted beast had also been sighted during an expedition to Mount Scratchley. There is even native testimony of such a creature from Irian Jaya, gathered in 1910 by Walter Goodfellow in the vicinity of the Mimiko River during an expedition launched by the British Ornithologists Union.
Most tantalizing of all, however, is a series of stone carvings collected from 1962 onward in the Ambun Valley of New Guinea’s Enga Province, and only a few millennia old at most. They depict a very odd-looking mammal with a rotund body, forelimbs and hindlimbs clasping its belly, a well-demarcated neck, narrow head, large eyes and ears, and a notable trunk-like snout curving downward and bearing a pair of flaring nostrils at its tip. Traditionally, this animal has been identified as a New Guinea echidna (spiny anteater), even though the resemblance is superficial at best, as the carved beast lacks spines and its bulky trunk with well-defined nostrils is very different from the echidna’s slender tubicolous beak and ill-defined nostrils. Further discrepancies from the carved beast are the echidna’s tiny eyes and ears, globular head, and almost nonexistent neck.
In 1987, however, mammalogist James I. Menzies proposed a much more dramatic, yet morphologically more compatible, identity. He claimed that the Ambun beast was a palorchestid—a large and very bizarre-looking herbivorous marsupial, which did indeed have big eyes, a short trunk, well-delineated external ears, and other features displayed by the carvings. Moreover, palorchestids would have looked very like giant pigs in life, and certainly startling enough if encountered unexpectedly to conjure up notions of pig demons or devil pigs in the minds of frightened locals. The only problem with this persuasive identity is that palorchestids became extinct around 6,000 years ago—or did they? The resemblance between cryptic devil pig, palaeontological palorchestid, and carved Ambun beast is sufficiently telling to support the exciting possibility that in New Guinea’s near-impenetrable, sparsely-explored jungle heartlands, some of these amazing animals still exist, but are rarely seen, with only their tracks—and the odd dung heap—to betray their presence.
Wings of Fear
For the most spectacular prospect of prehistoric survival in New Guinea, however, we must lift our eyes to the skies and scan them for a glimpse of a truly terrifying winged entity known as the duah. Native to Papua New Guinea, it is said by witnesses to possess a bony crest on its head, a long neck, and a pair of enormous leathery wings spanning up to 20 feet—a description that, amazingly, recalls North America’s most famous prehistoric pterosaur (flying reptile)—Pteranodon! Whether Pteranodon ever lit up the sky when it flew, however, is as yet unknown—but that is precisely what the duah does. According to local testimony, its belly bears patches that glow brightly as it flies through the night sky and which it can actively turn on and off.
This extraordinary characteristic recalls the bioluminescent organs of certain deepwater fishes, as well as those of fireflies and glowworms. However, with the possible, still-controversial exception of a certain reputedly luminous lizard from Trinidad, no higher vertebrate (reptile, bird, or mammal) is bioluminescent. Anyway, this aspect metaphorically pales into insignificance compared with the formidable concept of a flying pterodactyl-lookalike the size of a small aircraft soaring through the heavens above Papua New Guinea. Yet several missionaries vehemently claim to have spied this scary creature skimming far overhead in phosphorescent flight during the past decade or two, so the duah is evidently more than a native myth or superstition.
It may not be alone, either. A much more diminutive but no less pterosaurian counterpart known as the ropen (whose name is often incorrectly applied to the duah) allegedly inhabits the small island of Rambutyo (also called Rambunzo), in the Bismarck Archipelago off the east coast of Papua New Guinea, as well as the slightly larger island of Umboi, situated between eastern Papua New Guinea and the big island of New Britain. Its lengthy beak brimming with razor-sharp teeth, its long tail ending in a diamond-shaped flange, and its three-to-four-foot wingspan collectively call forth images of a very small, primitive pterosaur known as Rhamphorhynchus. Like the duah, however, the ropen glows at night.
Despite its modest size, the ropen terrifies its human neighbors because it has a great liking for the stench of decaying human flesh. So too has the duah, which is attracted to graveyards, digging up newly buried corpses if it can retrieve them; indeed, to prevent this from happening, graves dug on these islands are fitted with a special covering.
The ropen will even attack funeral gatherings—on one such occasion, the funeral was attended by Western missionaries who were aghast to see such a creature. It also devours fish, will attack local fishing boats, snatching the fish out of their nets, and has been sighted by missionaries fishing at night too. In 2001, a correspondent of mine, Brian Irwin, visited Rambutyo and spoke to several ropen eyewitnesses, including a fisherman whose boat had been dive-bombed in 1989 by a ropen while he and a friend had been fishing on the island’s eastern coast. On Manus Island close by, the headmaster of the local school told Brian that he had personally seen a ropen sitting upright upon the branch of a tree on Goodenough Island, which would seem to rule out the more conservative option that it is merely an exotic form of bat.
Experienced cryptozoological explorer Bill Gibbons hopes to explore Papua and also some of the smaller offshore islands in the hope of exposing the identities of these winged horrors, which presently remain some of the most extraordinary cryptozoological entities on file.
Dinosaur or Dragon?
Perhaps the newest mystery beast reported from New Guinea is the volcano dinosaur of New Britain, an island province east of Papua. On March 12, 2004, a team of six heavily armed police led by Senior Sgt. Leuth Nidung and accompanied by 20 villagers set out to investigate an alleged dinosaur claimed by frightened villagers to be inhabiting a mosquito-infested marsh near the province’s capital, Kokopo, which in turn is close to the now-devastated town of Rabaul, buried in 1994 by an eruption of the local volcano.
According to Christine Samei and other eyewitnesses, the supposed dinosaur was about ten feet tall, as fat as a 900-liter water tank, and gray in color, with the head of a dog and the tail of a crocodile. It was also said to possess a formidable appetite, as it had reputedly devoured three dogs. Yet despite a thorough search by the police, nothing was found, either by this team or by a second, more sizeable party.
To my mind, this dubious dinosaur is much more likely to have been an extra-large monitor lizard. New Guinea happens to be home to the world’s longest species, Salvadori’s monitor, which is known to grow to a length of up to 15 feet 7 inches. Indeed, explorer Lt. Col. John Blashford-Snell revealed during his “Operation Drake” expedition to Papua in 1980 that this species was the bona fide identity of the artrellia or Papuan dragon, long feared by the locals. However, it is possible that there are some truly enormous specimens of Salvadori’s monitor out there, far exceeding in length (and overall stature too) the official record currently accepted for this species.
In the past, many zoologists were inclined to dismiss any such claims made by native Papuan tribes as exaggeration or folklore, but an incident took place during Operation Drake that made the scientific world think twice about this. One of the participants of that expedition was noted English zoologist and conservationist Ian Redmond, who later recalled a remarkable encounter in the Papuan forests near the Fly River. In the hope of seeing a giant monitor, he had been sitting quietly for several hours one morning in a creekbed, below the level of the forest floor, by a water hole where such a creature might come to drink, when he suddenly heard what sounded like footsteps stealthily approaching him from behind. Lizards normally tend to make a swift, scurrying sound when moving, but he was hearing distinct, separate footfalls, crunching upon the dry leaf litter on the forest floor.
Consequently he initially assumed that it was another expedition member playing a joke, enticing him to look around, so he resisted the temptation at first—but the footsteps kept coming, until he finally decided that he really did need to have a look behind him, just in case. So he sat up and slowly turned, and to his great surprise he saw the head of a huge lizard looking at him over the top of a log, no more than ten feet away. He couldn’t see the entire lizard, but its head and shoulders were far bigger than those of a six-foot-long Salvadori’s monitor that had been shot by the team a little earlier—and based upon the fact that the sounds it had made when walking toward him were distinct footsteps, not light scurrying sounds, this was clearly one very big lizard indeed. He bent down to pick up his camera, but as he did so the lizard moved away, and he didn’t see it again.
In my opinion, this mega-monitor may well have been much longer than 15 feet 7 inches, and was certainly heavier than typical Salvadori monitors, which are usually quite lightly built (unlike the slightly shorter but much stockier Komodo dragon of Indonesia). Perhaps the New Britain dinosaur was itself a super-Salvadori too, emerging briefly from its swampy seclusion before vanishing out of sight again after a fleeting moment of media fame.
It is clear from the above quintet of cryptids (not to mention the lion-sized mystery cat and large canine enigma alluded to only briefly here, plus the Papuan mystery beasts documented by me in previous Fate issues), that New Guinea has more than its fair share of cryptozoological surprises in store for any adventurous investigator keen to seek out some of the last major animals still awaiting discovery. So if anyone out there is anxious to gain cryptozoological immortality, you know now where to go in order to achieve it!
Zoologist Dr Karl P. N. Shuker is Britain’s leading cryptozoologist. He has authored several major books and hundreds of articles on this subject, and lives in the West Midlands, England.