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Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nolan.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer, all mission controlled decads. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. For everyone who loves cryptids, good news for everyone who hates cryptids. Oh well, got some bad news. We're back on the game. Longtime listeners, you will know we examined cryptids and depth in fact breaking news.
We're returning to the low coast of the Atlantic in just a few days, partially to look into allegations of mysterious shenanigans around the coast and swamps. But we remember our previous episode here right, previously on stuff they don't want you to do.
Yeah, it was Crypti of India Part one right, yes, yep, okay, cool.
And in it we discussed the intense biodiversity that India experiences and how cool that is and how there really might be undiscovered stuff out there, and there are a ton of rumors and myths and purported creatures already.
There and always reminds me of that was it a Star Trek film. I believe the Undiscovered Country just the idea of like a wilderness so vast that there could be, you know, in the in the colloquial use of the word country, undiscovered parts of this unseen you know, jungle for this stuff, these kinds of things to thrive.
And to that point about biodiversity. We're also going to bring some science to bear, some very exciting science that we can't wait to share with you that actually, in a weird way support some conspiracy realist arguments. We'd also before we begin, like to take a second and think truth is fiction? Why T on both Reddit and YouTube? Because truth is fiction?
Why T?
Your amazing cryptid map of India inspired a lot of our conversations last evening and this evening. Here are the facts. As as said earlier, India is legit amazing. At the beginning, you know, I was thinking, I was looking back on
our India episodes. At the beginning of every episode we have ever done on this region, we have a meditation on the history of this modern country, the stunning biodiversity, the profoundly complex and sometimes problematic socio cultural dynamics of the many civilizations that have existed there over thousands of years. We're back at it. And I don't know about you guys, but when we first began looking into this, the idea
of cryptids in India seemed kind of counterintuitive. It's one of, if not the most populous country on the planet right now, So how could people there somehow not have discovered every other type of life form in their borders.
Yeah, it just goes back to that whole point about how vast the wilderness is in that in that part of the world. We talked about our friend Mangesh, whose grandfather I believe was a high ranking official in the country's forestry commission or division or department or what have you, whatever they call it over there, and he pointed out to us just how insanely forested this part of the world really truly is. And there's lots of places where people just don't go well.
And that's the thing about humans. There could be a whole bunch of us in designated area, but we tend to clump up a whole bunch zoey.
Species.
Yeah, it likes itself, right, fire Fire makes friends, you.
Know, line insists upon itself.
And I think mostly we get bored real easily. So we want things to do, and generally other people mean things to do.
I guess we need company. We get lonely. Really, you know, it's not We're not designed to be alone for you know, long periods of time and vast stretches of of of you know, area to wander alone. It doesn't really suit our temperaments. Some people love it, but the vast majority, I would say, not really suited for it.
It calls to mind the idea of panatology, right, the study of death and the.
Infiniti Stones, the sure Infinity Stones.
Great in thanos is logic was very stupid, but it was a great series of films. The I want to shout out our pal Josh Clark in particular for recommending a book to me several years ago, Denial of Death, the argument being that all things humans do is primarily to distract themselves from the reality that they will die. This has taking a different direction.
That's a bummer way of looking at just the old pastime.
You know, we mentioned the book in previous episodes. Yeah, I'll save you some time. That's the gist of it. They take a long time to get to it, but that's the gist.
I'm sure there's some good minutia in there. But when you really do think about it, the idea of a past time passing the time, it really is just kind of counting down the seconds until the ultimate end of time for us as individuals.
And one thing we didn't mention in our previous explorations of cryptids in general, cryptids and India specifically. Indeed, the idea of mortality is a crazy fascinating fact. Species are going extinct at a higher rate than they are being discovered, which means that experts right now will tell you, in a best case scenario, human civilization knows only around twenty percent of the total unique species on planet Earth, which
is a baffling. It's a wackadoo number. It's cartoonish. Only twenty percent, one fifth of all life the humans know.
Yeah, that's that includes the oceans, right.
That includes the oceans, which of course skews you know, skews the metric quite quite a great deal because the humans do know more about the surface of the moon than they do know about the ocean.
Yeah, we can even you know, for the most part, get to the most remote parts of the jungle. We might just not want to hang out there, and definitely, but as far as the ocean is concerned, we know what happens when people try to venture too deep and yeah, now what's the opposite of flying too close to the sun. You know, they kind of implode if we have tell then too deep? There you go, Yeah, we know. Anyway,
what do we hear that? There was news about another kind of crackpot billionaire trying to make a sub to go deep, deep, deep down to the Titanic wreckage.
Again everybody gets one can Yeah.
Well, there was a really funny meme where it was like, this person has the chance to do the funniest thing ever, which is, you know, implode again. I know, it's a bummer it. Memes can be a real.
Dark Well, hopefully it will aid somehow the greater scientific endeavor, right, the great conceit that the world is worth understanding and indeed understandable. Scientists when they hear this, this stat of twenty percent of life being all we know, they take that personally. Speaking of memes, I heard that. I took that personally. This is where we go to Walter Jets
and Mario Mora. They're both out of Yale, and they created this fantastic, like profoundly informative map slash model that reverse engineers the idea the assumption that humans only know twenty percent of Earth life, and they said, well, let's look at the other eighty percent. Let's figure out what the power of science where those unidentified creatures may live, and to make things possible. They took out maritime creatures entirely,
and they took out invertebrate entirely. They just said, let's look at undiscovered terrestrial vertebrates. The end result of their project, which continues today, is something called the Map of Life, which sounds hyperbolic, but I'm gonna be honest, I think they aren't the title.
It looks cool, and you know they're backing it up, these guys both from Yale. As you said, notorious members of the Secret Society Map and Life. That's a joke of that's not true, but no, it looks incredible. And if you take a look at India specifically on this map, it get there's some pretty big regions here. It's not massive, but it's well, you tell me, what do you guys see? I see it towards the bottom near Sri Lanka, so like, I don't know what you call it? The foot of India?
Sure, the horn? The reverse?
There you go, the deally bop, Yeah, little toe. I'm sure Sri Lanka wants to be called as an independent country. I'm sure Sri Lanka wants to be called the toe of India. It's interesting the way this thing's coded. It's when you look at it zoomed out, it's like very pixelated. It's kind of an interesting choice of design for an infographic, but it does give you some really you know, granular detail.
It makes it look like it's loading.
I think I thought it was for the longest time, guys, I'm not gonna lie. And then I zoomed. I didn't realize that the text in the background was perfectly clear, and that as you zoom in, the blocks just get bigger and bigger, and it really shows you how massive this area is that we're talking about in the toe or the horn of India.
But can we talk about the discovery potential that it outlines there? For like specifically it's got a pull down for amphibia, so amphibians, birds, reptiles, and mammals and if you click on like mammals that are undiscovered, so discovery potential to find a new species. What in this large pink area, it's ranging from zero point one six percent to zero point one nine percent, so very small percentage chance of finding a new one, but still it's higher than in most of the other regions.
So you're saying there's a chance the estimation there to break down the percentage, right, there's that really cool color coded overlay with the drop down menu for mammalia, amphibia, aves or you know, birds and reptilia. That percentage, to my understanding, is saying this is the percentage of the total eighty percent. This is where that is most likely to be.
Oh yeah, it's as portion of yet to be discovered species in this class predicted by our models to be found within this specific cell on the map. Okay, that makes a lot more sense to me. Sorry, I'm probably misspoken that previous section. To call in and tell us how we got it wrong.
We're all learning this together, I think for the most part, at least me and you Ben Mass have a better grasp on it. But I was with you. I was with you all on the way. Thank you Ben for clarifying. But it is an oddly designed graphic, But I think the design inherent in the design. It packs a lot of punch. It has a lot of like interesting like I said, granular detail.
Yeah, d check it out. It's mol dot org. It's a fun thing to poke around and play with. Right, because it is a model, you can go through any part of the globe and look at what their model predicts for undiscovered terrestrial vertebrate. According to the Map of Life data, there are thousands of potentially undiscovered unique life forms in India, most of whom are likely to be
reptiles or amphibians. And because we said vertebrate things with a spine, let's remember they're not really counting the insects. They're not really counting the maritime cryptids in the vast waterways and oceanic territory of India. This is amazing and we saved it for part two because it is scientific proof, right, or scientific I would say circumstantial evidence of cryptid existence.
Well, I think a listener just wrote into us. Maybe it was on Instagram. I can't remember if it was to all of us, but asking about the Fermi paradox, and I'm certain that we've covered that in the past.
We absolutely had to. But it's this idea of the discrepancy between the lack of one conclusive evidence of extraterrestrials compared to the overall likelihood of such creatures existing, and it makes me wonder if there is such a concept for cryptids, you know, like an earth bound I guess that's not really extraterrestrials, but they kind of are in the same ballpark, right.
Yeah, it's a It's a little weird in this case though, because when we're talking about cryptids, generally there are tales or sightings or you know, a description or though I mean there are, yes, But in the models that we're talking about here we're referencing, we're talking about undiscovered I don't know, it's hard for me to square these two things, because you were talking about undiscovered species of let's say, amphibians, right, So these are amphibians that are likely very similar to
other amphibians we've already categorized and named and all of that, but they're different enough to be a complete new species right.
Right, a unique live form. There's also here's the connective tissue. If if you wrote to us on Instagram. Sorry we didn't see that on all of us. But the thing the connective tissue here, and I think the point you're making, Noel, is that there is a race toward classification against the
ticking time bomb of extinction. Fermi's paradox is closely related to as we discuss links to previous episodes, the chasms of space and time, incorporating what's called the dark forest theory, shout out three body problem and then till I finish that it's worth it. And then, in my opinion and then the terrestrial version of that would be that this planet is currently living through the sixth mass extinction in its history. So we are we talk about this in
earlier Cryptid episodes. We are more likely now than ever, thanks Fox News, to find unidentified creatures, and they are now more than ever likely to go extinct before we find them. So there is a bit of a paradox, and I do think there's a thematic relationship there.
Well, yeah, I appreciate that, Ben, And also just to double up down on what Matt said, It's something that hadn't occurred to me because my brain was sort of reaching for the completely different species that are unrecognizably different from the ones we know. And Matt's point of the minute differences of what could be considered a quote unquote cryptid just because it's something that we don't know about,
but it might not look that impressively weird. But I think today we're talking about some that would be considered impressively weird.
But tales of tales of cryptids. One of our best examples from the previous episode was the tailed slow lorius. Yeah, Laurus, the lorus is real. This one is slow like another slow loris, and it's tail to exist, but it has to tail, so it became a tall tale of it.
It's a bit of a wamp as far as the cryptis, but it's not. But it's a perfect example of we're talking about.
We just had we have to keep an open mind because it doesn't discount though more out there ones either, right, so we we we just have to go into that with our eyes open.
And so we have to ask, you know, armed with new technologies, scholarship and information, is it possible to begin parsing those legends and folk tales through the lens of science. In our previous episode, we discussed some of the most popular, prominent, well known, and plausible cryptids in all of India. Tonight, we are finally getting to the weirdest ones question. Fellow
conspiracy realists, play along at home. Will your faithful correspondence be able to solve any of these crypto zoological mysteries?
We'll find out after a quick word from our sponsors.
Here's where it gets crazy. Yes, I'm gonna say it on record. We can't always say it in these episodes, but this evening we can I am confident solve at least one cryptozoological mystery. I mean also tales of cryptids. Forgive me for that pun, guys, but hashtag no pun left behind. You know, we know it is plausible to assume in India, the given the vast biodiversity here and the continued growth of the population, if actual cryptids exist in this region in particular, they may well be discovered
in our lifetimes. And I'm not talking about just you know, like a little frog that has a different series of bumps. I'm talking like, hopefully a big one. I hope we fight a big one.
The very least one with like an extra set of nostrils or something.
Right, Yeah, like a like a half man, half monkey.
We teased this one in the last episode because I think I sort of not spoiled jumped the gun a little bit, and it just occurred to me because there was this film that was out recently by Dev Patel called Monkey Man that if I haven't seen it, but everything for everything I've read, it essentially capitalized his character capitalized on the myth of the monkey Man of New Delhi in order to strike fear into the hearts of
his like opponents in the fighting pits. You know. So that was actually I think my first exposure to this myth, and it's a really interesting one. It's got some Scooby Doo vibes after a fashion.
Of course, of course, they're bigfoot like creatures, half man, half monkey. We're not so different to you, and I says the Sasquatch with an inexplicable British accent. Humans are humans anywhere you go. Of course, it turns out pretty much every civilization on this planet has had some sort of hairy wild man mythology, and for two examples, we're going to get to Pakistan in a moment, but I like the vibe here. Let's go with the monkey Man of New Delhi. It might be unfamiliar to I put
Westerns in the notes, but I met westerners accountability moment. There. There was a straight up panic in the summer of two thousand that racked the city of Delhi. And this is a huge population, it's like nineteen million people, very dense urban environment, but they were convinced there was a murderous cryptid in their midst.
Yeah, and it was during a series of pretty serious rolling blackouts, which you know obviously affects climate control. It was very, very hot, very very scary. People were not doing super well mental health wise during this period of time. And you know, when people are pressed in this way,
it can lead to paranoia. It can lead to you know, not to say people were hallucinating or anything, but it can lead to perhaps seeing things that aren't entirely there, being unsure what it is that you're seeing, especially in the dark of night.
Well, yeah, there's something about cities, no matter how far advanced they are, no matter how early they are in human civilization, when you've got a city center, right or if we're talking about let's say Aztec mind civilization. You may not refer to those as cities, but it is a city, right, a bunch of people gathered together that
live very close together. Light is so important when you've got that type of density, and especially when you have a more modern city where people are so closely packed in at night. First of all, if there's no light and then you're just hearing the sounds of so many other creatures that are most of them human near you, it can have a psychological effect. Add to that, the heat, which we know in previous episodes, has a tremendous psychological
effect on human beings. When it's hot out, you want to get away from that generally, and if it's hot at night and you can't cool yourself down through the you know the ways that humanity has learned to cool itself down.
In the heat of the night.
Yeah, there we go.
I mean you a sexy, sexy heat of the night.
The tension that must have existed in that time in May two thousand in Deli, I can't imagine what it must have been like, because it's not like it was, you know, a blackout for a little time. You know, a couple hours. Then the utility came out. Everything was fine. We're talking especially about areas of Deli that we're poorer, right, that we're that just didn't have as many wealthy people because those folks had generators and stuff and they were GTG or whatever.
Yes, good to go.
Unpredictable rolling blackouts, so adding to the psychological horror, you don't have, for instance, the privilege and it is a privilege of knowing that the power will be in operation from say fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred. Right, you don't
have that predictability. You just have to get the light while you can right, figure out the stuff that you can before the light's cut at some moment, and hope that scream in the distance is a fun scream and not a crime, a curry more we right, maybe an animal, you know, and you know, sometimes depending on what tragedies before, folks, it can be difficult to discern the difference between the scream of an animal and the scream of a human.
Right. Well, and we're talking about too, I mean in any urban city center, especially in places that are maybe less expensive to rent and to live in. Usually people are kind of living right on top of each other, and so there really is that kind of almost hive mined mentality there as you start to maybe experience vicariously through others that fear creeping in. You know, you can create a panic because you are so close to others that might be themselves panicking.
And this is not to pick on Delhi in any way. We see this. We see the broad strokes of this occur in multiple urban environments throughout history. Check out you know, for instance, Jack the Ripper, Springhill Jack in the UK. I guess now I'm just picking on the British. But Deli police started receiving these complaints that there was a savage, unidentified attacker harassing communities and what we could call the
Delhi metro area. And the complaints started coming in on May tenth, two thousand, right in step with these blackouts and this miserable weather. Immediately after the police started to profile the attacker. The more they learned about it, the more confusing it became, and they identified you know, first off, you want description, you wantm all. The attacks took place at night, never during the day. There was never any surveillance footage, which also kind of makes sense because the
power was out. There were never any still photos, so they had to rely on our favorite thing, eye witnessed descriptions.
Yeah, and this isn't one person's description that says it was a guy who was also kind of a monkey. We're talking about around three hundred and fifty individuals or let's say, individual sightings of this thing, this person, whatever it was, and the majority of those sightings did agree that this guy, whoever it is, was kind of kind of monster like there was an ape like quality to this person. I forget it was like one meter to one point eight meters, so like three feet to six
feet tall. Yeah, and hairy, right, and no in red eyes.
Here's suit red eyes like you know, if you've ever, uh, if you've ever taken a picture of an animal where the light refracts the wrong way, like kind of glowing eyes. And then of course arms, the arm to leg ratio being longer than that of your average homo sapien. And so the I love that you're pointing this out, Matt. It was not just one person, you know, calling in
to coast to coast or something. It was multiple people who said they were being attacked by this thing that was not quite a human and allegedly.
At first, right at first, at least well while you're here, let's say we're still around May tenth. The first descriptions are really eerie because it's not like people are talking to each other about this yet. It's not like anybody knows about this. These are just the first reports that are coming in.
And they also included another allegation, an allegation of dare I say, superhuman abilities because just like a Desi spring heeled jack, this monkey man Hanuman, you might say, right, this, whatever this thing is, it allegedly has this superhuman ability to leap away from the crime scenes. It's not running, it's jumping from the ground to the top of a building and then off to the rooftops, like that old Spider Man game on PLAYSTATIONE. Yeah, or Assassin's Creed.
I'm glad you mentioned Hanuman because in my head, I knew that there was some connection to like, you know, a one of the pan antheon of Hindu gods, and Hanaman is a Hindu god who's half monkey and half human, but is a good god. It's considered a protector and is actually often his image is placed at the entrance of homes of Hindu homes and is considered a grantor of boons and.
A warder of evil word offer of evil.
So this is like a good dude, you know. So I just oftentimes when we see this hysteria around a cryptid and reports of it, it often is tied to some cultural kind of boogeyman, right, and so this isn't that exactly right? It's interesting. I don't know, I wonder what you guys make of that.
Well, Hanamon also had superpowers like could jump really far across an entire giant raging river or.
Jack you up. Though he'd like, you know.
If you were a bad guy, he would.
Just if you violated the wrong con after you.
I also accounts this is a dude that's messing with good people. This is messing with you know.
It's not a costing random people in their homes during a blackout.
Monkey monkey economs, monkey gods are a very common thing in this part of the world. Right, then there are tons of really good movies coming out of China about monkey kings.
This does most of them are based on honomon right, I mean, I.
Think that's yeah, That's what I'm saying. It's a very common thing, and these exist in the zeitgeist. These people would have seen these things, is what I'm saying.
There.
There's also a feedback loop that occurs. Local media covers this without pause. They want the clicks right and the descriptions to your earlier point, Matt. They begin to become more fanciful. We start seeing the game of telephone.
Now.
All of a sudden, one of these attacks has Freddy Krueger like clause right, and then more of those descripts later include or subsequently include Freddy Krueger like claws. And then we see stuff saying, oh, it's a guy wearing a leather jacket donating dotting a motorbike helmet, classic honomon.
I'm gonna say it was that guy the whole time. I mean, you know, not to you know, rain on
the parade, but it does strike me. I know we're going to get into this, this crime of opportunity, you know of more of like the ability to roll people kind of in the dark and capitalize on their fears, and then maybe a copycat element to it as well, which I know you wrote about, Ben, and we're gonna get to But this is when I start to think about Scooby Doo, where every time there's a ghost or a cryptid or a monster in Scooby Doo, it's always
just some jerk that's capitalizing on people's fears and suspicions of the existence of some kind of boogeyman, you know, and then you know it's every time.
But you know what, the villains and Scooby Doo always
have a motive, that's true, a reason to do it. Yeah, when you when you watch the AP newsreel that's included that that you can find for these monkey man attacks in Delhi in two thousand, there are people showing off scars and injuries and it's usually like a small scrape on their back or their arm, or a tiny child that a mom is holding up that has you know, their head wrapped into and it's just it's like small again I use the word a cost because it's like
it's almost like somebody jumped in and popped you it good, in the in the arm or in the back, hit you in the back and maybe punctured a little bit if they had a tiny claw or something.
And took off.
It's not an amputation there as well.
Yeah, there's not murders. There's not robberies. Often there's not a motive I guess for why these attacks would occur, which.
Is strange, very joker like though. It's just like sewing chaos, you know, just the idea of capitalizing on this bad situation and deciding to terrorize people, which is inherently you know, psychotic.
I would say it has a lot. It sort of functions as a precedent to those really crappy TikTok pranks of sucker punching people. But this was not documented. These reports clearly indicated to law enforcement that something was rotten in this part of India, to paraphrase Shakespeare. So they
were in a terrible position. They created a reporting hotline and they offered the equivalent of about one thousand US dollars for information that could lead to the capture of the now infamous monkey man, and that was about fifty thousand rupees at the time two thousand and Now we have to pause and say, a hotline for a cryptid run by the cops. This creates a panic feedback loop, especially amid the poor residents of the area who will get some stats on them in a second. But you know,
by and large. These folks could not afford their own backup generators, so instead they were forced to tremble through those hot, dark nights, hoping the moon was full to shed some light, wondering whether this was the evening the Monkey Man would come for them. And this had real world consequences. There were mob beatings. One poor van driver just in the wrong place at the wrong time. This mob decides that he is the monkey Man. They surround his vehicle, they drag him out of his van, and
they beat the snot out of him. He goes to the hospital. Multiple bones are broken. And then one guy runs onto a roof because he's trying to escape what he feels is an attack by the monkey Man. And then later in a panic, he falls and he dies. He falls from the roof and dies. And then worst one that we found in this all common reporting, there was a woman who was pregnant and she thought she was gonna She thought she was under attack from this
infamous monkey Man. She tried to run, she fell down a flight of stairs, she died, and the child was lost as well. Again real world consequences.
She shout out that I don't know if you guys read the same one. It was the historic Mysteries article on this. She just had a lot of good stuff and it's titled who was the Monkey Man of Delhi? It's really good bye Royson Everard.
I'm gonna hazard a guess this isn't the one that we're going to solve today.
Well, we have some interesting circumstances here, some contexts that needs to be provided, because after two weeks, the panic that swept Delhi subsided gone essentially And there was a great study in the Indian Journal of Medical Science in two thousand than three, so a few years after this incident, and they dove into the social context of this. Ninety four percent of the reports of Monkeyman came from the
poorest region of Delhi. And of those reports, eighty nine percent came from people with what we would consider an impoverished background. Or I mean it's India, so it's socioeconomics, so also lower cast. The cast system is its own bag of badgers.
Still very real.
Yeah, But then maybe this led the experts and law enforcement later to say, maybe the media kind of fan the flames here. Maybe there were criminals who decided it was hunting season or was open season because they could just attribute whatever they do to the legend of the Monkey Man. And then also the heartbreaking part is maybe there were people who made up their own Monkey Man stories in an attempt to get access to medical care.
Ooh no, that makes a lot of sense.
Oh no, it's just heartbreaking.
It matches up with again, just the footage that you can see where there are people showing off what appeared to be two very strange bite marks and a huge
scrape that looks like it's going to get infected. And I can let's just let's say, I can imagine that if you scraped your back really badly, you fell off a moped or something, you fell off a bike, whatever, you got scraped up, you can't access healthcare for whatever reason, but you come in with a report of this, or you make it look like you got attacked in a different way. I could totally see that being a plausible explanation.
To a point though, right because it's got so overwhelming and the you know, law enforcement and medical infrastructure just couldn't support the burn of the absolute deluge of calls reporting this kind of stuff, so.
Much so that eventually, again a few weeks in law enforcement went back on their note about the hotline, and they said, look, if you are making fraudulent claims, or you are distributing misleading information, or you're reporting attacks without proof, then you are going to be in trouble. It's not going to be a fine. We will put you in jail. And we have to understand in the context of this, if someone goes to jail in some of these family groups,
then the entire family is massively screwed. So this is an existential threat to a bloodline. Don't fib about monkey Man, and then just like that, as a result, the Monkey Man disappeared. We mentioned previously the works of fiction that perhaps inspired panic. We also mentioned the film dep Ptel's film that came out in April of twenty twenty four. But we haven't even gotten guys. We're almost forty minutes in.
We haven't even gotten to Pakistan and the bar Men, oh, which I like to call We have Bigfoot at home.
Oh yeah, but before you get there, just do more quick points here. The first one is we saw something similar with a hotline with a reward attached when we
were making Atlanta Monster. We're in the early eighties. The Atlanta Police Department and the FBI set up a tip line, so if you had any information on whoever this person was that was kidnapping children and killing them, call in tell us and you'll get a reward if it leads to an arrest, right, And there were so many calls that basically the task force just was in was so inundated.
They had to track down each one because each one might actually be real, which means all the time, the man hours that you pay this huge task force just got eaten up.
There's a balance there, though it starts to be like it's more trouble than it's worth. It's the same with Zodiac That was the thing too, right, there was that wasn't a reward, I don't believe, but there was a hotline at least the newspaper and there you know, it's depicted in the film, just getting all these crank cranks calling it.
Well, yeah, they tried to set him up to actually call in in the Zodiacs case, but in that case it was just a huge resource drain. In this case, I can imagine how if you know, one thousand dollars may not sound like a lot to you listening, that is a huge amount of money for a lot of people, so the desire to do something in some way to get that reward. I can just imagine that that would be a highly desirable thing.
Add this is again only one example of bigfoot like or primate esque cryptids in this region. We're going to pause for a word from our sponsors, and when we return we'll learn and why we say Pakistan said we have bigfoot at home.
And we've returned with the bar menu of Pakistan. Pakistan? Is that right, Ben the Barmanu? Yeah, yeah, we do have big foot. Oh that's a meme right where it's sort of like a janky version of the real thing. Isn't that kind of the joke there? Yeah, it's like there's one where it's like we have Pink Floyd at home and it's like this dude playing Katsio keyboard and seeing this weird version of another brick in the wall.
But yeah, the bar menu of Pakistan. The word itself comes from the Koar language Kawar language, and it roughly translates to forest man. So we go from monkey man to forest man and bore were we teasing all these forests that there could be, you know, strange and unusual and undiscovered species lurking in around India. So here we are in the shadowy darkness of the forests.
Yeah, this creature is fascinating. Just like the Orang Pandak erpendek and the orangutang right which has proven to exist. This creature is alleged to possess traits of humans and non human apes. This one, in particular real rough customer, infamous for attempting to abduct women for the purposes of mating. However, unlike a lot of campfire tales, this one got some real scrutiny. We want to introduce you to a Spanish zoologist,
Yordi Margrener. For three years he searched for this wild creature of Pakistan from nineteen eighty seven to nineteen ninety. He then continued to search throughout the nineties up until he was murdered during this search in Afganistan in two thousand and two, and he was boots on the ground interviewing folks who felt they had seen this thing. The way they describe it is very strange, because they said the creature was capable of processing animals like it wore
animal skins, it war hides. It apparently domesticated or tamed dogs and horses. Those are very human things to do, and there's so much more to the story. But the plausible verdict I would argue is this, the craziest plausible verdict, is that a human or group of humans living off the grid in the wild may have become mistaken for unknown or non human creatures due to their behavior.
You mentioned the Iraan Pendak also comes to mind the Iran Minnac of Malaysia, which was the oily Man or whatever, which also was accused of sexually assaulting women and purported to have a animal perhaps you know, ape like qualities and covered in a sheene of either fur or like oily kind of stuff. Since so a lot of this stuff, there is that even game of telephone that happens between large stretches of distance in the world.
I was reading a forum of all things, which, right, it's somebody wrote on a forum somewhere at some point, but they were talking about the death we mentioned, right, this this person who spent a lot of time looking for this creature was murdered and according to this forum, well, I'll give you the moderator's name, Rescue Ranger. That's a person who made this post. Yeah, he said that this guy Magriner was killed by his servant boy on the orders of local militants. It says, yeah, interesting.
And then we know if it's Afghanistan and shout out Tony. I've gotten conspiracy realists listening to this. But we know there is an unclean conspiracy that is pretty ancient continues today in that part of the world, which is systematized, normalized abuse of children. If you want to ruin your day, look up Batci Basi. Do you guys know what I'm talking about?
I don't. I'll save it for a day.
I want to ruin Yeah don't. We We've talked about it on the show.
For it, I must have blocked it out a good thing to block out, yeah, probably.
But the idea then, the idea of being to you, ranger Rick, if you're tuning in, the idea being that maybe this child was weaponized in that kind of system of abuse.
But yeah, who knows. It's just a strange story. And you know, we we want to find a bigfoot somewhere. Please, somebody out there, find.
A big foot.
You know, if you got big feet, maybe you can count you know, be the change We we could also move on to something a little more positive, right, a bit more historical, nerdy, straight up unicorns. That's right, the last unicorn all your favorite fairy tales. The Indis Valley unicorn is endlessly fascinating. It is described as though it is a real biological creature. Very long ago. We mentioned
plenty in an earlier episode. He writes about the unicorn in a way, I'm gonna be honest with you folks, in a way that is just realistic enough to me to think maybe it was real, because it's not pretty. It's not a pretty description. Do we want to do the quotation?
The fiercest animal is the unicorn, which in the rest of the body resembles a horse, but in the head a stag, in the feet an elephant, and in the tail a bore. It has a deep bellow and a single black horn three feet long, projecting from the middle of the forehead. They say that it's impossible to capture this animal alive.
So it's a real clomper. Yeah, you know, it's a real that's our that's our quadruped bigfoot. Apparently it is not sexy. It's not that virgin, loving, graceful equine of myth and legend in the West.
It does not think friendship is magic. It does not know it's coming.
For you, and it's instead you know what strikes me here is it's like the ivan Drago of unicorns. It's essentially an ox with a big, murderous fighting horn and it just sort of goes, you know, instead of.
It'll do that Mortal Kombat finishing move where it just skewers you and then tilts its head up so your body slowly slumps down, sinks into the horns, and then just sort of shakes you off. And it's this fatality on the screen. That's what this fellow would do.
There is additional historical context, though, because it's not just one guy, well the most famous historian of the time. It's not just one person writing about this. This is I was thinking of the best way to say this for everyone listening tonight. Imagine if Bigfoot was the national symbol of a country in the modern evening, you know, like pick a country and they say, you know what represents us our national animal? Beat me here, Paul, Bigfoot,
that's us. That's our country. That's what indiscivilization did with this unicorn. And the depictions of it are surprisingly consistent.
Yeah, the what is it the Mohenjo Daro the unicorn seal That this thing is really interesting looking. It's got it doesn't have feet like an elephant. I wouldn't say, I don't even know about the boar tale, but it's got almost it almost looks rhino like in the face to me, or something thing or zebra like. It's depicted with stripes almost in that big horn.
Yeah, and it's it's found throughout all these seals of the Harappan civilization as well what we would call loosely, uh, the Indus Valley civilizations, and these seals which are pretty common for their time. They date back to three thousand to fifteen hundred BCE, and they heavily feature this unicorn. It's the most common motif in these Indus seals overall. And like you were saying, if you look at the photo link of the seal, you can find it pretty easily.
Just go to Harrappa dot com. That's h A r a pp a dot com. You can see the gallery which depicts the thing. The one that we pulled for this has a penis uh. Okay, well, the one I put in the notes there is interesting because it has uh, it has what appears to be some sort of human made like feeding troth or chalice with decorations, so it's.
Possible snout like almost like the bore part. Yeah, to your point, Matt, there are lots of different versions of it, but I'm looking at one that's engraved in either like a coin like surface, like you know, it's etched into it, and it also appears to have kind of side boobs.
It's like the way just to finish this one part, the idea here implies that there may have been domestication, that humans may have been making something to feed it.
And then to your point, like and Matt, maybe to some of the confusion that maybe folks that are looking at diferent versions of this might be experiencing. There are ones that look just like straight up like an ox, and there's ones that look straight up more like an elephant. But then they are the ones that are kind of the more proto version of the unicorn type thing we're talking about. So maybe we're seeing depictions of what would be the product of domestication, right.
I think.
So the thing we're saying off air is that there is a large enough window of time that it is possible something like this did exist and then went extinct. Right, We know that different domesticated animals have gone extinct or tamed animals.
Can We also point out too, that some of these were looking at a profile picture of it, which makes it look like it only has one horn, But if it was a front picture, you might be seeing two horns. I'm just saying there are other images of it where it has definitely has two horns, but it's a different perspective.
But a lot of these were looking at a side image where you might just be seeing the profile of the one horn because they're kind of lined up and they'd be blocking the view of the other horn.
Yeah, and you can't really fact check at this point in history ratching, Yeah you really care. There are like four libraries and the public's not allowed in them. So obviously there's not a Wikipedia shout out to wiki. But for a cryptid to appear so commonly in state level artifacts for so long and so long ago, it is not unfair to ask could this have been a real creature? And of course, if you have cited a steroided up unicorn in your neck of the global woods. We would
love to hear about it. Please don't try to fight it, just take a picture. As always, be respectful of wildlife.
Ben, do you think you could PvP a unicorn?
Absolutely well, not that kind, absolutely not, not the roided up variety. No, and you shouldn't. But one thing that I think, unfortunately everybody listening has killed is a spider. So in our pals cryptid map of India, one thing that stood out to a several of us is the idea of bioluminescent spiders. And the weird thing is India has a ton of bioluminescent life. It also has a ton of spiders, many of which scientists believe are as
of yet not identified. So could it be possible that India has glow in the dark spiders.
Yes, it's all it's Avatar's heck over there.
Well you know nowhere else is avatars heck be. We've also talked about it and maybe even done episodes exclusively on Australia has tons of bioluminescent stuff. There's the whole Bioluminescent Beach in Jarvis Bay where you see these these things that wash up and they freaking seriously glow in the dark, and there's also bioluminescent like stones and all kinds of crazy stuff. So this feels very similar adj Simpson to me anyway, And.
Far more animals are bioluminescent than we might assume fellow non biologists. In fact, the humans have their own little bioluminescent glow which is pretty neat. Everybody's got a little bit of the shining. Shout out Stephen King. India has a.
Shinning do you want us get us seed?
Uh?
India has entire, entirely bioluminescent forests. They're not that way all the time. It depends on the monsoons, but they occur especially in an amazing part of the country called the Western Goths g h A t S. So we know another fact, which is bioluminescence is real. Bacteria, fungi, fungi, al algae, insects, and some aquatic animals all exhibit this.
The process is well understood. It is a chemical reaction occurring within the organism wherein different chemical energy sources are converted into radiant energy which produces light, and not all of it is in the spectrum of light that humans can see.
Well, yeah, like I mean, maybe you know, any of us growing up would here in the United States probably have captured fireflies. That's probably the most common bioluminescence creature that we maybe have actually seen or gotten our hands on. But Ben, you pointed out off air that there are plenty of creatures that we know and see every day, or you know, relatively frequently, I guess, depending on how doors you are that have bioluminescence. But it won't show
up because of that spectrum that you're talking about. So it requires a little help to be visible to the human eye.
Or it requires you to be a kitty cat. If you're a kitty cat, you can see them, and those spiders and other little insects probably look really tasty.
And with all these facts in mind, you know, we have to ask ourselves, is it that crazy the idea of a glue in the dark spider? I mean, we know that there are spiders everywhere. You know, shout out there had the dream where you bleed spiders, But it's odd.
Oh geez, that sugared me for some reason. Man.
Yeah, there are different estimates that say India itself is home to maybe something like fifty nine or sixty completely different families of spiders, and we know they are unique species of spiders in India spoiler by the way, they are unique species as spiders. Pretty much anywhere you go, there are a lot of spiders. But we don't have
a ton of information. Considering such a successful form of life, we don't have a ton of information about spiders overall, and it's kind of tough to find them in these very densely biodiverse parts of the world. You're looking for arachnid needles in this huge, gargantuan haystack of an ecosystem, But I don't know. It could be cool. We know that spiders can glow.
Yeah, we do. We do well. And there's one specific spider that was thought to be extinct for one hundred and fifty years and then was discovered in this region you're we were describing the gats region. After one hundred fifty years, in twenty eighteen it was rediscovered. It's this thing called the Crysilla volup chrysi la vo lupe and it's a beautiful, strange looking jumping spider that's got bands of bioluminescence in one right on its back. It's like
bluish blue and green colors. It's incredible looking.
Sorry, guys, my mind is going back to the Fateful plane ride where I was able to enjoy the film, Madam Web, I feel like that spider was bioluminescence. You all should check it out. It really is worth your time. It's terrible in a delightful way.
And we also know that. I love the point we're making here, the idea that something can be called encryptid because of his believed to be extinct only to be rediscovered. Right, And when we say rediscovered, of course there's the whole. There's the whole idea that discovery means Western science finds it and makes a special little Latin name for it, which is not the same as people not knowing it exists.
Because it also makes it sound like it was gone and all of a sudden it popped back into existence. But in order for it to exist now, as you're saying, Ben, it had to have existed the entire time. You just didn't know or couldn't see it.
Yeah, I mean, there is the outside, non zero possibility of convergent evolution.
Whoa, it came back again.
It re evolved due to environmental pressures that is possible, But that's winning a series of weird lotteries.
Dodo like just shows back up again that way in two thousand years.
No, boy, uh, you know that'd be that'd be a weird time. What kind of environment do you live in where the optimal end goal of evolution.
Is to be a Dodo?
Well, I think we might be in it.
Big eggs good, Yeah, I like a bird with some fat eggs.
You know, apparently big eggs are really difficult to cook that. I don't I've seen any cooking shows like the ostrich egg is you know if that if you if that's your grab on freaking chopped or whatever, you're gonna have a hard time just.
Scramble it, right, Yeah, but maybe that's not that.
Maybe you're supposed to proach it in this particular challenge that we're talking about. You don't always just get to scramble at maview. Dang.
Well, wish us luck as we continue our audition for Chopped, Fellow conspiracy realists, and hold the phone, hold the slow lures by its tail. We haven't gotten We have not gotten to every single thing here. Now we did, I believe, make very good case for the bioluminescent spider. As you pointed out, Matt, it is also completely possible that a series of iraq nids could have been coated with bacteria or algae or some other bioluminescent material. That's all possible,
so we can consider that when proven. We have another cryptid, a certain winged cat that can be proven. You can solve that cryptozoological mystery yourself. Just look into uh, look into winged cat, and you think of flying squirrels or gliding squirrels, and that'll be the the breadcrumbs, right, that'll lead you down that cryptozoological rabbit hole. What do you say, guys? Is that good enough of a tease?
I think so, yeah.
I was gonna say the word, but well, homework, it's okay. Well you'll find it.
You'll find it's it starts with a C.
How about that it starts as a cat.
It's cat.
It is neither cat nor colombo.
Thing. But one more thing, you guys, man, if flying cat sounds dangerous, they're they're already. So can you imagine if like as cantankers as cats can be, if they could just it's like what, I you know, I don't like birds because then before we're afraid they're gonna fly up in your face. If cats had that power, don't think i'd be a cat person, No, sir.
I think we would. This whole you know epic we're in where all the species are dying off again. I feel like it would have been over a thousand years ago if maybe it wouldn't be their fault. They're just built for it.
You know, I tried out, you know what I mean. It's like watch your babies around large predatory birds. But by the time you get full great ape size, you could probably get one. You could probably snatch one out of the air.
You could PvP of flying cat, I mean.
Fly house cat. Yeah, a fly fly it's over.
There are certain house cats that take me out by right for the jugular one.
Little You guys both have good situational awareness. It might get one of your eyes, but you'll you'll get it after you're dead.
No, I'm saying that it slices you first, waits for you to bleed out, then comes back for both eyes and all the other soft bits.
It's something about the way they lash on and then bolt out of there.
And nightmare fuel guys, And we hope We hope you can trust us when we say that the mystery of the winged cat is not an evil mystery. You're going to be looking for phrases like paulk up billy, uh p A U C A b I L L e E. It is a Hindi term roughly trans to winged cats. We can't wait to hear your guesses as you play alog at home. We also can't wait to hear from you folks. Once again, thank you to Truth is Fiction yt on reddit and YouTube for that awesome cryptid map
of India. Some of these stories, some of these creatures, their allegations thereof may well be episodes all their own. They have their own rich mythology, lots of parallels to known biology, and at the very least, they tell us a lot about the societies in which these stories propagate. If you enjoyed tonight's episode, be sure to tune in for our upcoming explorations of more strange and unusual phenomena. We're finally doing it after all these years. An episode on crop circles.
How did we not do that? How did we not do that?
We did a video long, we did a video, and we felt like, oh, we did that. Yeah, that's what happened.
That's what happened ed. Most importantly, folks, let us know what we should cover next. We try to be easy to find online.
Oh yes we do. You can find us online at the handle conspiracy Stuff where we exist. On Facebook, where you can find our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy. On YouTube, we have video content coming at you every week, as well as on XFK Twitter. You can also find it to the handle Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram and TikTok.
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