Does the Bunyip Really Roam Austraila's Wetlands?

in the feathers, as it were. The booming cry, deep and resonant of male Australian bittern birds when they're ready to breed sounds like it could have been ripped straight out of an eighties horror movie. That unsettling sound is why the Australian bittern is also called the bunyip bird, after a legendary cryptid with a similarly frightening bellow that's said to prey on humans and live in the remote

billabongs and wetlands of Australia. Legends about the bunyip began in Aboriginal communities as cautionary stories to warn people against things like going in the water alone, taking more fish than they needed, or wandering alone at night. Don't do it. The bunyip will get you. Lots of people's had similar stories about local water spirits, like the Mulawonk of the

Narringerry people love southeastern Australia. The word bunyip is thought to derive from the Wergaya language word anib, the name of a fearsome emu like river spirit from neighboring people. The legends morphed as they moved amongst different peoples, and again as European colonists picked them up. In the eighteen nineties, a novelist by the name of Rosa Campbell Prade, who had grown up in Queensland, wrote a short story called The Bunyip, now considered a classic work of Gothic horror.

In it, she wrote, the bunyip is said to be an amphibious animal, and is variously described, sometimes as a giant snake, sometimes as a species of rhinoceros with a smooth, pulpy sk and a head like that of a calf, sometimes as a huge pig, its body yellow crossed with black stripes. But it is also said to be something more than an animal, and among its supernatural attributes is the cold, awesome, uncanny feeling which creeps over a company

at night. When the bunyip becomes the subject of conversation. Over time, the bunyip further evolved. In the nineteen seventies, the city of murray Bridge received a somewhat fearsome, mechanical bunyip named Bert that, for a charge of twenty cents, could be observed emerging from the water and bellowing. It's since been rebuilt to look more friendly and renamed Bertha.

You can now visit her free of charge, and today there's a whole subgenre of children's books about the bunyip, ranging from classic cautionary myths to tales of friendly, if misunderstood monsters. Whatever the difference is in the details, the beast is usually said to have a mighty roar, hence

the Australian bitterns awesome nickname. In nineteen forty six, Australian geographer Charles Fenner wrote, the mysterious booming sound made by the bittern a very shy bird, has become associated with the bunyip, but actual observers have usually described the sound

of the latter as a roar or bellow. The tales of the bunyip flourished during Fenner's lifetime, as Europeans further settled Australia, unfamiliar with the sounds of the bush, many colonists were convinced of the bunyip's existence as an undiscovered animal. To this day, there are those who believe the legendary bunyip could be a one hundred percent real, undiscovered species

lurking in the wetlands of the vast Australian continent. Wildlife experts aren't sold, though, especially because no verified corpses or other remains have ever come to light. A skull that supposedly belonged to a bunyip went on display in eighteen forty seven at the Colonial Museum of Sydney. However, a naturalist examined it and revealed it was actually the head

of a deformed horse. Another famous bunyip head, this one complete with fur, found its way to Sydney's Macclay Museum, alas it turned out the specimen came from yet another horse. Australia has no shortage of genuine animals that seem too weird to exist, like the duck billed platypus. Equally amazing, if a bit less strange, are the multitudes of seals and sea lions that can be encountered on the nation's beaches. We should also acknowledge the saltwater crocodile, a semi aquatic

predator that stocks Australian waterways and coastlines. Capable of weighing two thousand, six hundred pounds that's one two hundred kilos and reaching lengths of over twenty feet or six meters, it's the biggest reptile alive today. Could any of these beasts have contributed to bunyip lore? Perhaps also a chance that the storytellers of ancient Australia were inspired by the now extinct rhino sized herbivore Diprotodon, a marsupial that roamed

the continent during the last Ice Age. However, paleontologists have questioned this idea too, on the grounds that Diprotodon doesn't neatly align with most descriptions of the bunyip. Whatever its origins, the bunyip, like other cryptids, holds a very real place in our collective imagination, especially should you find yourself alone

by the water on a dark night. Today's episode is based on the article does the bunyip really haunt the Australian Wetlands on how Stuffworks dot Com, written by Mark Mancini. Brain Stuff was production of by Heart Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com and as produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.