Only 200 of the bats hibernating in an abandoned mine in Upper Buck County, Pennsylvania are still alive. The rest became infected with White Nose Syndrome, a mysterious disease that's killing off bat colonies at an alarming rate from Vermont to Virginia. The news is better for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Sighted and Recorded reports that scientists working independently in three states have now published articles that recount multiple sightings of and various forms of evidence for this elusive species, which is extremely difficult to observe and photograph due to its rarity, wariness, and tendency to roam over wide areas in remote swamp habitat.
A new cluster of sightings of a Panther-like, jet-black cat have been reported in Cannock Chase in the UK. The skeptics say it's just dogs, or deer, or even a wild boar. And in Ross-shire, UK, a Grisly find as ‘big cat’ is caught on camera. The stripped-to-the-bone remains of a deer and large paw prints in the mud left one landowner pondering the possibility that a big cat was responsible. Another witness managed to catch the big black cat on camera. “It looked and moved like a cat," she said. And on the other side of the pond, an Oklahoma Town hunts for black panther preying on livestock. The creature has been seen near Pocasset in rural Grady County.
Are these Central African apemen also water monsters? In some parts of Africa it is held that a hairy ogre or Bigfoot-like creaure might transform itself into a water cryptid analogous to the Loch Ness Monster. This belief is expressed by several groups of Pygmies. But the transformation of giant, troll, or ogre into a kind of dragon is also mentioned in European Folklore--the Fafnir slain by Siegfried being one example--as well as in folktales of Greece, the Balkans, and Russia. Elsewhere, an episode of a Comcast SportsNet Northwest outdoor program follows BFRO investigators in the Olympic National Forest in Adrenaline Hunter Looks for Bigfoot.