The Cryptid Factor - 31: #031 The Lullaby Issue

Episode Date: October 1, 2017

This show sees Dan try to befriend an inter-stellar alien infested ranch owner, Rhys confess to being a land-bound Octopus and Buttons share an eye-witness account... of a shadow. It's a nail-biter of an episode for sure, tune in for all this and more!

The Cryptid Factor, with Rhys Darby and Dan Shriver. Hello! Hello! Hello everybody! Hey how amazing that since we've been away, one of us has spawned! Oh yes! Congratulations to Dan! Hey! Dan, tell us about the baby. Yeah, I've become a dad. He was known as Littlefoot, still is known as Littlefoot in the house, but we've called him Welf, Welford Jack Roger Shriver, he's five weeks old, and he's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, he's stunning, he's a dude.

Welcome to Parenthood! I know, it's an awesome club to arrive into. You've got all the classic traits, you've got the droopy eyes, you've got the disabled hair, you've got the unshaven look, so it's clearly working well. You know that this is always my look, this is now just me having found the appropriate excuse to carry it. I was actually going to say you look a bit better than you normally do. Are you doing anything to attend to the baby? Are you pulling your weight? Yeah, I do nappy changes.

Oh, good. We sing Beatles together? Well, I sing it, he kind of watches me sing it. Well, five weeks old and he's singing the Beatles. That's great. Yeah, he's really clever. What's the favourite Beatles song that you do together? Yeah, in my life, you know, there are places I remember. I'm not sure of that one.

Okay. I thought you would have gone with I want to hold your hand. I want to hold your hand. Well, that when you come over and you meet him, that can be your. That could be my one. Okay, what's what's going to be your one buttons? My one would be yesterday or my troubles seem so far away. Yeah, you're going for a ballad.

No, I'm just it's just that yesterday there were no troubles. And now with the baby, there's all the troubles. Yeah. Yeah. And he's always believed in yesterday. He's quite the time traveler. He loves to reminisce. I love how we've turned this episode already into who's got talent.

An update has just come through. I think we've, yep, here we go. We've all just been voted off. So that's good. Reese, we're about to you in the world at the moment. I am in Ottawa, which is in Canada. Oh, right. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, I don't like to hang about in one place for too long. So I've chosen this place on account of it being on the tour that I'm part of. We should one day put on a map all the places that we've done a podcast from individually and all the different places around the world. You know, I feel envious of podcasters who get to podcast all in the same room at the same time. Yeah, but that's boring, isn't it? I mean, you know, we're, we're all about being different and taking steps off to the side of the normal track.

And, you know, we've always done that. And now you can see us on the screen here if you're, if you're one of the three of us and I'm, I'm in the dark. You're in New Zealand. I'm in New Zealand. I've set up a little, a little studio in my gymnasium. If you can see there. Oh, yeah. See, there's a.

Have you ever used any of those weights? No, I don't know how I'm too scared that I'll have something that I'll break something. It's a good look, but not on you. Just the weights, the weights themselves look good, but you haven't changed. You've got a gym. Yeah. So redundant to become your podcast studio. When we bought the house, they left this gym in here, but it is like a relic.

It's like from the seventies. It is like a chart up on the wall, which has got big buff men. You know, like how Arnold Schwarzenegger used to look in his first movie, just like showing you what to do. And they've all like bulging biceps and everything. And I just get intimidated by that. So I've never touched it. It just sits there in the corner. I think it's good though.

Like if there's an apocalypse, which we're always concerned about, you've got a great gym there to suddenly get your workouts done. So you can fight the zombies or whatever it is that's going to attack us. It'll be the zombies. And unfortunately they'll come and get me whilst I'm pinned under the weight. Like a big bar, which I can't shift because I've set the weights sitting too high. So that'll be my demise. And then I'll become a zombie wanting to eat brains, but I'll still be stuck under the bar. Not being able to eat brains.

That's a really good point. If you're stuck under an exercise bit of equipment, are you stronger once you're a zombie in order to get it off? No, I think you're weaker, but you can just rip your own limbs off to free yourself. We've gone off track now. So I think we need to... Let's bring it back. Let's kick the podcast off. Weekly World Weird News.

Crazy. Freaky. Watch out. I got a fun one here. This is the headline. Arizona man selling ranch for five million dollars due to constant alien attacks. Oh, wow. That's cool. This guy called John Edmonds.

He's selling his 9.67 acre horse ranch because there's too much paranormal activity and he can't keep up with dealing with it. It's basically, it's taking up too much of his time. He's trying to run the horses there and he's just constantly distracted with alien abduction, alien activity. They just keep messing with him. So Edmonds says that basically him and his wife, Joyce, are just, they're done with interstellar interference. With head enough. Done with interstellar interference. Interstellar interference.

And he's part of what the interference involved is him having to fight aliens. So he has claimed that in his time of living on the ranch, he has killed 19 aliens and he killed them using samurai swords. Oh, that's a good way to do it. He's had to stop his wife from being abducted. He'll wake up and she's sort of being levitated out of bed and he has to grab her from the air. Oh, the stress of family life. This guy just wants to be with his horses. He's running a horse ranch and he said almost immediately from the day they moved in, they've been having these strange experiences.

Whereabouts is the ranch? It's in Rainbow Valley, Arizona. It's called the Stardust Ranch. The question I've got, if the paranormal activity is happening so often, why don't they film it and put it up there for us all to see? That would be awesome. Then they'll get an amazing price for the place because people want to turn it into a theme park or something like that. Yeah, or the government will just take it off their hands. There must be something about this area that the aliens need or are investigating.

I mean, it seems very far-fetched to me. He's selling it, so it seems to me like I need to gain some interest in getting some people in here. I have to say, it does actually make me really interested in the property. If it's a marketing ploy, it's fantastic because it makes somebody like me go, Oh man, I imagine living there, that'd be amazing. I would love to investigate it. Exactly, and I'm looking at his Facebook page. I'm not crossing any barriers here by me being on his Facebook page.

Hang on, you're not supposed to be on other people's Facebook pages. What are you doing? Yeah, how does Facebook work? Is that legit? Aren't we just supposed to stay on our own? How did you do that? I can't make mine do that. So check this out.

He's underneath what he's studied in his about section. He studied at Arizona State University and the University of Wisconsin Madison. He studied astrophysics. He studied mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy. I mean, this is a guy who seems to be a scientist more than anything as far as I can tell. Wow, how intriguing. I mean, this is something I would love to uncover more. Well, I've just clicked add friend, so I've sent a friend request.

Oh, that's the first step in our investigations. When we get back to the office, the chief will say, how did you get on guys? Well, he hasn't accepted our friend request yet. What else have you done? That's all we've done at the moment. It's a good start. Guys as well. Okay, so there's a photo here on his Facebook page of a samurai sword laying on the floor

where there is blood everywhere on the floor. Wow. Okay, so check that out. Oh, yeah. To look at his comment here, swords are always close. I have several and every place the grays show up there is a sword that I can have easy access to at all times. So the suggestion being that he's just slain a gray. That's weird.

Oh man, this is crazy. I think I might unfriend request. Can you undo that? No, no, no. Just leave it. Leave it. Leave it. I think this is interesting.

I mean, I'm concerned he's going to be done for murder at some point, but I think it's worth the investigation. I clicked on it. I think I double friend requested him now. I think I was like... Oh, you go straight up to the popular ones. The very keen bunch. I say, wifey, there's a guy here requesting me twice. Oh, that sounds nice job.

Oh, what a character. Yeah, this is that's it's worth pursuing because anyone who's into that much science but also has a horse ranch and samurai swords is an interesting character. I look forward to a some sort of follow up on that. Yeah. And we never heard from Dan again. So Reese, what have you got for weekly World Weird News? Well, I've got mysterious walking octopuses appearing on a Welsh beach. Oh, yeah.

Interesting. Spooky happenings were afoot last weekend in Wales, or should that be an arm or eight? According to local news reports, bunches of octopuses were seen oozing along the beach on Friday night. Local marine tours operators told Wales online they saw about 20 of the cephalopods. That's what they're known as octopuses. Thank you. Crawling along the sand around 10pm local time Friday with additional reports of walking octopuses on Thursday night. There's video of it, which shows the hand size pinkish mollusks creeping along the sand.

The behavior is a complete mystery. Octopus experts are stumped. I mean, obviously, you know, these are marine creatures that that stay in the water. Why are they up on the beach walking along? It's very bizarre. I mean, they can only survive out of the water for about 10 to 15 minutes before they damage themselves. Yeah. I mean, very little is actually known about octopus behavior.

They are quite a mysterious creature. I think they're the best example of alien life on our planet. They are just bizarre. They can do extraordinary things. Do you know that if you put an octopus, let's say the size of the room that you guys are both in, and then let's imagine that its eyeball is the size of, say, your head or it has a beak, which is the size of your head. If there is a hole in that room, which is just slightly bigger than your head, then it can squeeze its entire body out because it has no bones. So it gets a bit of its body onto the other side of the wall, as it were, and it starts sucking itself out through.

That's amazing. I know there's a bunch of companies out there trying to make robots out of this. They're trying to figure out how an octopus does that or a siphil pod does that. You actually wrote it down. Yes. You glanced out at your paper. Oh, I always write down new words, Dan. I always make it to keep a track of all these new words because it's so exciting.

But they, what was I saying? I don't know, but back to me, I think, so there's a few theories as to why these things were found walking along the beach in Wales. One of them is that there was a storm prior to this, and that maybe they were brought up from the storm. But also the storm itself would have brought a lot of crabs and things onto the beach, and so maybe they came up to get those, although I wouldn't see how in their minds they would know that that was the situation because it's not a common occurrence. Remember, they had the octopus that was predicting the outcome of a football world cup a few years back. Oh, yes, that's right. They seem super, super clever.

Yeah, but they can also do a thing where they are able to, if they feel intimidated, they can sit against any bit of the ocean and they can change their colour, like a chameleon match the colour. Absolutely. They can do the texture as well. Can I play you guys a quick video and we can put this on the Facebook page because I think this is the most alien thing I've seen any creature on Earth do. I know the video you're going to show, it's amazing. All right, so have you seen this, Buddens? No, no, I haven't seen it.

Look at this, bit of seaweed, just a classic bit of seaweed. Yeah. That's not the octopus, is it? Mm-hmm. Just there, I can see it. Where? Whoa! Yeah, amazing.

No! Yeah. And away it goes. Oh, you're kidding me. And an ink spray and he's off. How the shitting, I could, there's no way I could see that. And then look, he does it again. Look.

Yeah, so here it is in slow-mo going backwards. It changes the fabric of its skin to match the seaweed in the video. That's mental. Imagine that robotics engineers do actually figure out a way to make a robot octopus that you could control and that could go on land, obviously, and what have you as well. How scary would that thing be chasing you? Well, this is exactly where they get their ideas, you know, for science fiction from. And I think these things are the closest thing to that. Not only are they basically a living version of a superhero, they can change shape and form and visibility.

Totally. They can do the whole lot. But now, if my theories are correct with them getting to the next stage of leaving the water and coming up onto shore, it's the beginning of the end for all of us. They, you know, they're doing these little jaunts where they can see whether they can walk on land for a bit in the middle of the night. Who knows what they're planning. That's what I thought was interesting about the article when you read it, was they specified 10pm at night. Yeah. To say, you know, they're doing it under the cover of darkness.

That's right. It reminded me of myself when I was doing my army training back in the day and the beaches of Oriwa and we could go out at night. And of course, we were just sort of walking, doing some sidewalks along the along the sand and just very similar to the octopus training, actually. Are you sure you were in the army? It just sounds like you were going for a walk along the beach at night. Well, we did oddly enough, we did collect shells, which I thought was bad. I think this sounds like, Rhys, you've read a story that has suddenly hit home with you because actually you are an octopus who was doing 10pm walks. Yeah.

That's fully camouflaged yourself as a human now. When you've forgotten your origins. You say I've forgotten them, but you know, you've seen me dance. It's quite octopus-y, isn't it? And that's my favourite movie, by the way. The problem is, the only challenge with that is that we've also seen you swim. It's not the strongest of swimming. Since I've left the water, I've turned that whole world behind me.

Right. I don't want to go back, yeah. Like the little mermaid. I've never seen that. What? You've never seen the little mermaid? No, why would I see that? Because it's the only great classic crypto cartoon.

You're right, you're right, I really should see it. I'm waiting for the live action version. I know they'll make one. There you are. It's coming out next year. Actually, Rhys, here's a connection for you. The writer of the little mermaid action film, Richard Curtis. Really?

Yeah. Wow. The listeners Rhys worked with in The Boat That Rocked, or in America it was called Pirate Radio. That's right, yeah. Wow. Fantastic, fantastic film. Well, if you're listening to this, Sir Richard, and no doubt you are, give us a tinkle. Give us a tinkle for the little mermaid.

I'm not saying the main role, but I'll be, you know, Jermaine plays a good crab. I could be an octopus. Which is the lead villain. She's a female, but it's Ursula. She's a sort of half human, half octopus. Oh, don't give it away. I haven't seen it yet. Of course, when he auditions me, I'll say, you know, I used to be an octopus.

What? You know, Sir Richard, you know, I used to be an octopus, don't you? No. What are you talking about? Shh, keep it down. Have you read the script? No, I'm not reading. I don't read scripts.

You know, I don't like to spoil things for myself. Spoiler. I want to watch the movie when it comes out. I want to watch it when it comes out. I'm not reading the script. I'll just turn up on the day, I'll be an octopus, and then I'll watch it later. I'll watch it back. I'll look forward to it.

That's what I've done with all my other movies. I love it if in all the movies, like Jumanji, those outtakes of you at the end of the movie where they're doing the scene and you're like, whoa, spoiler alert. Don't ruin it. That is it. That's me. Yeah. I don't want to look at that.

You're in the scene, Rhys. I'll do it, but I'm not going to pay any attention to what I'm doing. Okay, your story. Okay. Well, my one, Vampire Scare triggers mob violence prompts United Nations to pull staff. Oh, wow. So this is in Malawi, where the United Nations has an office, and they have actually had to pull staff because vampire scares is triggering mass mob violence in which five people have

been killed already. There's a huge belief in witchcraft in these parts, and there is a real and true belief in vampires there, and everybody is so scared of them, and they are so certain that there have been vampire attacks and that there are vampires amongst them, that there are mass mob violence that is erupting when people are suspecting other people of being a vampire. How strange. It is. But remember back into the days of the witchcraft, and when some people calling out somebody

as a witch, and then they would be burnt at the stake, and it's kind of no different to that in a lot of ways. Well, it depends if you believe in vampires. But how did this folklore get into the system there? There's ongoing stories that have been going in Malawi for a very long time about bloodsucking and possible existence of vampires, and there are people out there that actually go hunting vampires in these parts of the world because the stories and the legends are so vivid. And it's funny, I'm actually reading a book at the moment, which is all about syndromes

in the name of the book, which I didn't realise the book was about this, but I just bought the book because of the title. And the title was Penis, Thefts and Voodoo Deaths. Penis, Thefts and Voodoo Deaths. Yeah. I've got that book. Have you? Isn't it great?

Yeah. I haven't read it. I've been saving it for a nice, you know, hot bath. It's great. And I'm only halfway through it. It's taken me six months to get halfway through. Well, congratulations on getting that far. Thank you.

Thank you so much. The great thing is that this book covers a whole bunch of syndromes like this, you know, Penis, Thefts, for one, where they will believe that their penis has been stolen. It's terrifying. And they 100% believe it. It's not made up. They go and see doctors straightaway afterwards and they're terrified. Well, don't, hang on.

Can I just stop you there? Do they not just check? No, because they're too scared to check because it's like, like, you've got a big cut or like, you know, you break your arm and your arm's facing the other way. Yeah. And it's terrifying. You don't want to look at it. Is it also that syndrome where it feels like you're missing a limb?

Yeah. Well, that basically is that because that's essentially what you're saying. But isn't there a thing where, that's a thing. That's a thing? There's a syndrome where you think that your arm is an alien to your body. Yes. A lot of people have their arms amputated off the back of thinking that it's really... It's not mine.

It's not mine, exactly. I wonder if that corresponds to that feeling that you sometimes get where you feel like your cell phone is vibrating in your pocket and it's not there and you get these vibrations. I mean, I've had them and I go to grab my cell phone but it's not there. Oh, yes. You know, I wonder if that's a similar kind of thing. That's officially recognized as a thing now. It's so common and experienced in people now that they've identified that as a thing and

I don't know what you call it. It's weird as well. There's this amazing book of buttons six months from now when you finish this book if you want another. I'll be exhausted. That's me done. Take a year off. Take a year off once you've read this one because you want to do one year on, one year

off with your reading. Yes, I think that's better. But there's this book which is called Sapiens which is honestly the most incredible book I've read in years. Hey, here's a fun fact. Ducophony was reading Sapiens during the X-Files episode I was on. No, really? Couldn't pull himself away from it.

He was reading it. I'll give you just a tiny, tiny thing to intrigue you about it. It's the whole story of all the different species of human that were on earth and then why there is only us left that was part of that big group. And he says, and I didn't know this, you know the origin of species, you know the timeline of man slowly standing up. We think that that's a sort of progression thing. You know, it was on the ground slowly getting up, getting less hairy, getting much, and

then man. Yeah, getting more upright. Yeah, that's completely wrong. Every single one of the animals in that picture were alive at the same time and now there's only one and that's us. Wow. Anyway, the book builds up to like how we turned into society and stuff and he was saying that the idea of money.

Money is like a syndrome. We've decided that when we hold this note that has power, we've all agreed on it. We've all bought into it as a religion. It's an idea. So in these communities where they think people are stealing their penis or that they believe vampires around, they believe it. They really believe it and it's, and it means that a whole society can believe it as well. It's so powerful.

The brain. So it's that shared consciousness that's, that's what's happening in Malawi. Yeah. Exactly. Before we move on to crypto news, can I just quickly get your thoughts on the sonic attacks in Cuba? Oh yeah. That's fascinating.

I've not heard about this. What's the sonic attacks? My goodness. So in Cuba at the moment, there have been targeted what they're calling attacks on US embassy workers with these incredible sonic attacks that leave people deaf. They leave people disorientated almost like with concussion type syndromes. In the very least, a ringing in the ears that doesn't stop and they're, and they're concentrating on, it's like one or two hotels, one small area in Cuba and it's, and it's,

yeah, it's very James Bond kind of stuff when you think about it because these high-ranking officials are staying in this place and they are getting beamed into their ears this weird tone noise that is effectively hurting them and then, and then they report it and then no one else can hear anything. No one else knows about it and no one knows where it comes from. It's so weird. They say that the attacks cause hearing, cognitive, visual balance, sleep and other problems. Like the people that have had it happen to them, yeah, and people said they will wake

up and hear this sound and be, be the most horrible thing. They will move one meter to the left or to the right and it'll stop. So it's like a laser focused sound. It's such an interesting weapon, isn't it? The idea of a sound, the sonic thing because it can do so many things to you, to your emotions. There's a thing I read years ago and I should double check it because I haven't, I haven't looked up to make sure it's absolutely true, but supposedly Hitler in the days when he was on the rise and he was getting these huge crowds in, what they used to do over the speaker

system while you had these huge crowds waiting for him to come on stage was they would play a noise, a sort of white noise or whatever kind of noise that wasn't an obvious noise but it was hitting you in your ears in a sort of unconscious hearing level if that makes sense, like a little kind of noise like tinnitus and, and the idea was they would play it and play it and so that there was a sense of uncomfort if you were in the crowd of like, oh, I'm just, I've got this little buzz in my head. This is crazy. And then when he came on stage, they would kill the sound and when you saw him, you associated

the feeling of, ah, okay, I'm relaxed again. But it's release. Yeah. Exactly. Talking about this makes me wonder whether that's what happened to me when I was in Vancouver, when I had my, remember I talked about my little arms. What was it? My anxiety attack.

My anxiety attack. I've blocked it out. Yeah. What was, what was wrong with me? No, I was, I woke up in the middle of the night while I stayed the middle, 1.30, but who's, who's about details? And I had this weird ringing in my, in my head and I wouldn't, I wouldn't even say in my ears.

It was a ringing in my head and I couldn't cope with this, the, the, the, my being at that time. So you can see it's affected my brain, but I do, I do shut down regularly for 3, 4 seconds at a time sometimes. Yeah. I really couldn't cope with it. And then I moved away from that space, opened a window, breath of fresh air. And this is when I called, I needed to seek some help.

So I called reception. And then I went back to bed and then I was fine. Ordered a sandwich. Asked him to do your laundry, felt great. Yeah. But I wonder whether that was, I wonder whether that was a sonic attack. Yeah. Quite possibly because I know that they are targeting comics in Canada.

Or are these guys just suffering from mild anxiety? That's probably more likely. It was such a strange feeling that I couldn't compute like I can, like I'm having trouble and now sort of even putting sentences together, just thinking about it. Wow. Yeah. The good news for you, Arice, I have a sample of the sound that people have been hearing in Cuba.

Oh, okay. You're not going to go into flashback mode and all of a sudden not be able to talk for the rest of the show because we haven't done the crypto news yet. So I'm just worried that if I play this, you're not going to go into relapse or something. Worst case, Arice is going to order a sandwich from somewhere anyway. I may call reception because I'm in a hotel now. And you're in Canada again. You're back in Canada.

Yeah. Oh my God. Oh no, this is dangerous. I'm willing to give it a try. No, for those listening to the show, you have to understand I'm about to play a sound which has caused people many different ailments. And so this is a disclaimer. So you might want to opt out now if you don't want to listen to this or fast forward a few

seconds. But here we go. I'm going to play this to you now. Oh, I'm getting nervous. I'm getting ready to take my headphones off just in case that the... Did you hear that? Yeah. Do it again.

You know, I think that might, that does sound quite similar. Doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I'd have to check. I don't know how I can check. Call back whoever picked up in reception that time. But yeah, I don't know whether the listeners heard anything there, but it was a very...

How do you describe that kind of sound? It's very... They describe it here as sort of like a mess of crickets. High-pitched wine. Right. If you think about it, that does. It sounds like, you know, that really annoying sound of crickets with a really high pitched. But like a robot cricket.

It's working. They've had to evacuate a whole bunch of people from the embassy in Cuba. People don't want to go down to Cuba and work down there anymore. There's a lot of people off on sick leave and stuff. I tell you what, it'd be a great one if you didn't want to go to work on Monday and you were like, ah, you wanted to call up and have an excuse not to go to work and you worked at the embassy. You'd just call up and say, ah, I got real bad.

I got the Sonics. I got the Sonics, mate. Oh, no. I can't come in. I can't come in today. Oh. I don't know if we could sonically blast episodes of the cryptid factor just into people's ears.

Yeah. If we could send this episode into Richard Curtis's head, you know, for Reese's audition. I think we should work on that. Okay. Well, should we move on to a bit of cryptid news for the whole reason why we're here? Attention, all personnel. It's time for this week's cryptid. Help me.

Reese, the octopus were in Wales. Am I right in saying that? Yes. That's right. No, it was in Wales. Well, my crypto story is coming from Wales as well. This is Swansea and they've been spotting wild crocodile in Swansea. And this has been a mystery that's been going on for 10 years.

They don't know what this thing is. It's assumed that it's a crocodile if it has to be a normal known species, but nothing really matches the description of it being an exact crocodile. So in the recent weeks, police were called after an alarmed dog walker spotted a suspected crocodile only to find out that it was a pond ornament. This was in London that this happened, but as a result of it being reported, people had started going, okay, so we know what this rogue crocodile is in London, but actually what about what is known in Swansea that is thought to be a crocodile, but they know

as the pluck nest monster. The legend first started at Port Talbot and it's a guy called Steve Jenkins who reported seeing a crocodile in the lake. He was walking his dog. Now, obviously they don't have crocodiles there. It's a meter long crocodile or alligator and he was walking along the lake with his dog when he saw something move in the water. It was about four meters out.

He thought I've got to be seeing things. He shouted at the dog to get out and it's the reptile as he calls it turned away and dived back down into the water. They're trying to work out if anyone's seeing any new sightings. Yeah, right. The reason I bring it up is for the sake of our podcast, I'm mostly in England and I've decided that I'm going to be England investigation because I can actually go to some of these places.

Yes. Once this week, I've been in contact with someone who's not involved in the pluck nest monster, but in the Loch Ness Monster, which is a fellow New Zealand scientist from your country who is coming over to investigate the Loch Ness Monster. He's called Neil Gemel and Neil and I are now in contact because he wants me to make a documentary with him in his search for the Loch Ness Monster. He tweeted me the other day to do that, to look for the Loch Ness Monster, not the pluck nest.

I think we can leave that one. He's planning to come over to look for it using a new scientific method whereby he's going to capture bits of water and look for it. Interesting. Yeah. Can I just say though, to that, like you choosing to focus on UK cryptids, that's great because you've got everything from alien big cats and you've got lake monsters. If I'm down here in New Zealand and I'm doing the New Zealand one, what have I got?

I've got like a little mower that people think might, and it's not fair because Chris Gemel, Neil Gemel is at New Zealand too, so surely that means that he's New Zealand territory. Does that mean I have to come over with him as well? Yes. Is that the answer you're fishing for? Here's the thing. What I like about these British lake monsters is every time you hear about them, like the pluck nest monster, there are these new bits of ideas about how they're surviving and not

being found, and if it's in a similar climate of the UK, you can take these bits of information and start applying it to the other animals. So, pluck nest monster, they think the reason it's not found, let's say when it's colder in the UK and it's always cold in the UK, they think it's hibernating at the bottom of this body of water, this lake, underneath the mud. So, they think it's burying itself underneath the mud. In which case then it can become the muck nest monster? Yes.

Well, it's already got a name, but yeah. Look, I think that's a nice shout out to anyone in the Swansea area, certainly, to give us some further updates on this and good on your whales for having something other than, you know, the obvious stuff that's weird. Another theory is that the monster may have been a terrapin. Which they have is the size smaller than a human hand. Okay, I've lost confidence in this whole pluck nest monster. Look, I didn't have a lot of confidence from the beginning, but I'm willing to go along

because I love the Welsh and, you know, I have a Welsh name. In Wales, they have the most association, let's say, to a British Yeti of any bit of the UK because they have all these giant mountains and there's constant sightings of, let's say, the British Yeti. Really? Yeah, if you look into it, Snowden, Mount Snowden and all the other Welsh mountains, constantly people are making reports as frequent as Bigfoot sightings in the American Midwest of a standing, gorilla-like, human-sized Yeti Bigfoot character that seems to be roaming.

So, Wales is actually a very cryptid hotspot. Wow, getting cryptid-heavy. Yeah. Great. Well, we need to hear more from, if you've got any Welsh stories, people, please put them through. Let's get to the bottom of this terrapin. I think he's got to the bottom already and he's just hiding down there.

Yeah. Buttons, buttons. Have you got any cryptid news? Yeah. Well, finally, my cryptid news, unfortunately, there's none from New Zealand. That's a shock. That's a surprise. So, we should move right along.

But I was involved in a cryptid sighting last week. What? What? Is this an eyewitness account? Play the sting. Let's play the sting. Okay, okay, here we go. Oh, what have you got there?

Oh, great. Eyewitness account. Account. Account. Account. I've got an actual eyewitness account, but so do millions of other people. They just don't realize it. So, last weekend, I was at a friend's place and he was watching the Austin Formula One.

Funnily enough, Rhys, when we were there hunting the Chupacabra and the Austin Formula One was on the same weekend, that's why we couldn't find any accommodation. Oh, yeah. We weren't into the Formula One. We were keeping it weird. Exactly. They want us to. Anyway, it was a big end to this race where one car overtook another car right on the last

corner. So, the last moments of the race were really full on and quite fascinating and that's important because all the eyes were on the race, right? And I was watching it and I had to rewind the live TV because across the racetrack went a massive shadow of a bird. Wow. So, the shadow of this bird was larger than a Formula One car itself. So, I rewound it and I was like, what the hell was that?

And I thought, oh, maybe it's some kind of publicity stunt, maybe something like that. But over the last week, there's been a whole bunch of articles come up and people starting to state the obvious that perhaps it was the shadow of a thunderbird that was much higher up in the sky. Yeah. And it's straight across the top of it, leaving this massive shadow. So, I'll show you guys this video. Great.

Okay. Here we go. Look at that. Wow. Yeah. How can that be so big? Like. That is a big shadow.

Yeah. It's huge. It's literally the larger than the length of a Formula One car. Now, if you think about the sun and how it might enlarge the size of the shadow a little bit. But how big would the bird have to be to create a shadow anyway? Yeah. That's huge.

There's no wing move. And that's the thing. That's when I watched it, I thought, oh, maybe it's just some kind of publicity stunt. And maybe it's like somebody's creating some kind of shadow art above the track. But the thing there with it is that there was no publicity out the back end of it. Nobody came out and claimed it. And to have to organize that as a promo stunt at a Formula One event to fly something that big over the top of the racetrack where there are helicopters and there are blimps with

cameras and them and all that kind of stuff to fly something like that to create a shadow across a track. Why would you create the shadow of a bird? Surely you'd create the shadow of a Coca-Cola logo or something like that. But if that's just the sun doing that, then extraordinary big shadow. Yeah. Well, you know, when you're in an aeroplane and you're coming into land and you can see the shadow of the plane on the ground.

It doesn't enlarge it a little bit, but not massive. And it's not like you look down on the ground from that height and the shadow is the size of five city blocks. That's so cool. I would love to see if Chief Huffer saw that, you know. Chief Huffer, as a reminder for listeners, is who we visited in Illinois, who took the original great classic footage of a Thunderbird. 40 years ago.

Yeah. By Lake Shelby. Yeah. So to finish things up, guys, I want to just briefly talk about this new species of orangutan, which has been discovered in Sumatra. Okay. Yeah. So it's already endangered.

I mean, so obviously the orangutans themselves are critically endangered. Up until now, there's only thought to have two species of orangutan, and now they've just discovered a new one. That's huge. That's huge. This has only been two, and we now have a third. That's amazing. Absolutely.

The two that we originally had were the Bornean and the Sumatran, and they have discovered another one, which they're calling the, wait for it, Pongo Tapanuluensis, okay, or Tapanuli orangutan. This is extraordinary because this is, I'm just reading the article here. This is the first new species of great ape to have been discovered since the Bonobo in 1929. Wow. It's fascinating because it's been right under our noses the entire time.

There's only, they reckon about 800 of them, and they are in a place called Batang Turu, which is basically the size of London. That's the area of forest that they have to live in. Wow. Wow. Yes. In 2017 that we've gone, the orangutans, yep, there's a couple of different types. Well, hang on.

There's another type. I mean, it just blows my mind that they're just making this discovery now, guys. Yeah. Well, the thing is as well, if you said, oh, imagine if there was another species of great ape that we haven't found yet, anyone who's a skeptic would be like, no way. We've found them. We're done. We're done.

We've classified everything. It's been 17, just under 100 years since the last discovery, and here we are, new species. It's nuts. That is nuts. The really sad thing about all of this is the deforestation that still happens in and around this habitat. Michelle, my wife, went over and filmed orangutans in the Sumatran jungle. She said, before driving into the forest, you had to drive almost for a whole day through

deforested parts of this land, and she said it was crazy because it would just be completely flattened. They'd be planting palm oil plants. Yeah, evil. Their habitat is diminishing. There's only 7,500 orangutans. Right. There's still be alive.

What? Jeez. When our children's children are alive, they say there won't be any left. Yeah. In context of the podcast, this is extraordinary because it just goes to show there is stuff out there. Yeah. But also, people are in the Sumatran jungle now, like trying to find the orang pendic,

which is reported to be an upright orang, an orang that walks around on its bipedal, and if the orang pendic's population is less than 800 of the new orang, then of course it's going to be hard to find, right? It's taken us till 2017 to find this new one. Yeah. Guys, what happened there? Deep. We got so deep.

Very, very deep, and a great way to end. Do you know what? I think we should end in song, and Dan, if you'd like to just close today's podcast in singing a Beatles song of your choice. Oh, this would be good. Maybe pretend that little wolf is here and he's crying. No, why doesn't Dan start with his one, and then you go into your chosen one, buttons, and then I'll go into...

So there'd be like rounds, and then they'll all combine. Okay. Let's see what happens. The Beatles ending. Okay. So it's the idea I'm going to keep singing, and Button's going to sing over me, and then you're going to sing over me. Yeah.

Yeah, with our different Beatles tunes, and see how it ends up. Okay, here we go. Here we go. I think I know how this is going to end up. It might be great. It might be great. We'll go on the beat on the four. Okay.

Okay. Wow, that's way better than I thought it would be. That's way better than I thought it would be.