Have you noticed all the shows on tv lately that have as their subject matter, a search for exotic animals that may or may not exist. I am talking about the Yeti, Bigfoot and such, just to name a few? There are all sorts of beasts that are being searched out now, that were never spoken about much before. Could it be that we all have so many tv channels now, that new material is constantly needed to fill those spots? It just might turn out that if this is true, we are being done a favor in a way. Much more research seems to be going on now into finding new animal species, because expeditions are being funded by the stations. The problem with most of the shows, is that they are not going to find anything new and they don't seem to get any photos of any unknown animals. This leaves us to sit there and watch some scientists digging around in the dirt and setting up cameras and saying things like, "hope we get lucky and get a picture of the beast" or, "look at these bent twigs, something really big went through here recently." It is not very satisfying to sit there for an hour and find out that at the end of that time, nothing more was found out. We sit there anyway, in the vane hope that at least one of the cameras will snap something, but it never seems to happen.

All of this stuff is reminiscent of the search for the Loch Ness Monster, lovingly known as Nessie. It seems that every year, or at least every couple of years, there is some sort of expedition going to the loch. There might be a tiny submarine or two involved and surface boats dragging sonar arrays behind them, trying to ply the depths and make that big PING. It makes one wonder, could a creature that is said to be a survivor from the age of the dinosaurs, actually remain hidden from all our modern detection devices and techniques? Nessie is supposedly very big and some say they have seen her with babies. While this is quite an intriguing thought, it is certainly beginning to seem that there is nothing in that loch bigger than a fish. There is one thing that I have to mention however about the loch, some say that there is a passage into and out of it from the sea. If this is the case, could Nessie not only exist, but be a creature that travels in and out of the loch? If this is the so, it could be that Nessie is not in the loch most of the time. This certainly would make it much harder to find her there.

That is the problem with most of these things. Animals have a tendency to range, sometimes over large areas. This means that trying to find them in any one particular area is very hard to do. Look at the mystical ape creature that is said to live in the Northwest. If it does exist and some very credible witnesses claim they have actually seen it, it could be anywhere within hundreds of square miles. We are not talking about open fields, but densely wooded areas that are hard to maneuver through. There is also something else that has to be taken into consideration. When we examine the sighting reports, we can't help but notice that they show the same pattern every year. The large ape is said to be in certain areas at certain times of the year. This certainly makes the sighting reports seem much more credible, since that fits the pattern of most wild animals. They go where the food is. Would it be so outrageous to look for a great ape in the woods of the United States? Not really, since there is evidence that they lived there hundreds of thousands of years ago and some think that maybe they have survived in small numbers, or that there is some animal that has descended from them. It is expected that this ape, known by many different names such as Bigfoot, Sasquatch and in Asia as Yeti, just might exist. One has to remember the mountain Gorilla was not thought to exist, until it was found walking around a mere fifty years or so ago.

If we follow the reports of different sightings of creatures in the Congo, we find that there have been reports of a creature that seems to be a Brontosaurus. People have been reporting this animal since about 1913. If we step back, we can find paintings of this creature on rocks in the area. Can you imagine finding a live dinosaur today? There would only be one way to describe this, WOW! The natives even have a name for this creature, it is Mokele-Mbembe. When people report seeing this animal they usually describe it as having a long neck, four legs, reddish-brown color, sometimes a gray color and about the size of a large elephant. The name was given to the creature by the local pygmies and it means rainbow. It is said to have a tail that reminds one of the tail on a crocodile. Some foot prints have been found that are claimed to belong to the creature and they are three clawed. A creature was seen in the swamps of Gabon, that was said to resemble the description of this creature. The Brontosaurus is not the only dinosaur that had a long neck, although it is probably the one that us common folk know the most about. In 1981, an expedition reached lake Tele. It was the first one with Westerners to do so. Many footprints were found along with droppings. They had also made recordings of the sounds a strange creature was making that was out of sight.

So far the creatures I described are familiar to us and the only question that we have to ask ourselves is, do they still exist? We know for sure that they did exist in our dim past. They are part of our history. Truthfully, we love dinosaurs and great apes. All one has to do is look at the toys that are available and the games that kids play and they will see that dinosaurs make very popular toys. Apes may not be as popular, but they are still popular, never the less. Look at all the movies that have been made about them, not the least of them was King Kong. No one is saying that the great ape, that is supposed to exist in the Northwestern woods in this country, is the size of Kong. What they are saying is that it is the size of a very large man, at the very least and maybe as tall as about eight feet. These are not outrageous claims and I don't believe that they fall in the realm where anyone can be ridiculed over a sighting. The problem here is that there are those unscrupulous people that are making false foot prints and such and then taking plaster casts of them, so that they can put them on sale. Things like this can easily ruin serious research.

Getting into an area of a different kind of creature, one that we have no knowledge of, I have to mention the Lizard Man. The reports of this creature are way more bizarre than those of dinosaurs and great apes. Lizard Man has said to have been spotted in South Carolina. The description of this creature could make your blood run cold. It has been reported as a creature that walks on two legs, is over seven feet tall, has scaly skin and it's scariest feature is it's glowing red eyes. This is not something that you want to meet in a dark alley, or something that you want to meet at all, for that matter. It is said to have three fingers on each hand and an equal amount of toes on each foot. The story goes that a guy was working on his car, when this creature ran out of the woods at him. He jumped into the car and he and the creature wrestled each other for the door, but the guy managed to close it. The next thing that happened was that the creature jumped onto the hood. The guy accelerated and the creature fell off. Similar creatures have been seen in other parts of the country.

I would hate to be the one who says that these creatures don't exist, because there is just not enough proof either way. The creatures that existed in the past, could conceivably still be around, albeit in small numbers. As for the creatures that are not from our past, there are so many legends that talk about creatures like this, you have to wonder where they came from? This is not to say that I believe in Lizard Man, I only wonder why people are reporting things that stories have told about for hundreds of years, if they don't actually exist?