We've gotten more intriguing cryptid photos from people trying to win our Cryptid Summer bounty. Here are a few of the pictures people have sent us over the past two weeks, ranging from highly plausible to downright bizarre.
Now you can vote on which you think might really be cryptids. We'll consider your votes when deciding which photos to submit to our panel of experts in August!
Here are this week's potential cryptids, with descriptions. Vote for which you think are real in the box at the bottom of the post. (You can still vote in Round One here.)
Describing the photo at the top, Aaron writes:
I'm a wildlife biologist in Nevada. I was conducting a fish study at an isolated northeastern Nevada spring when I discovered a very unusual creature in one of the fish traps. My first thought was that it was a flounder fish, but this made no sense as I was standing in an isolated freshwater spring hundreds of miles from the ocean. I quickly realized it was a leech, but a very weird, spiny leech. I almost kept it, but instead photographed it and released it. Later, I realized it could be a yet undescribed species, so last month I returned to the spot and managed to capture a single individual. I will actually be sending this specimen to Dr. Mark Siddall for his expert opinion. It is definitely the strangest leech I have ever seen.
Mongolian Death Worm
I have photos of a mongolian death worm. The pictures were taken with a handheld camera. The mongolian death worm slid through a path discoloured by his passing. He moved too quickly for me to take a photo of his whole body but here you can see his tail as he slides over a giant log. You can really see the size comparison.
Found in Choongmuro, Korea on August, 2010. It has a fluorescent wing and body.
This is a photo of a wallaby with broad white stripes taken at my parents' house, located on the side of Mount Macedon, Victoria, Australia. For a couple of months prior to the photo, my mum had been describing to my sister and I about this white striped wallaby she had been seeing in the garden around her home. I think we both assumed in the manner of a younger generation that she was a little... mistaken and the stripes were probably bird poo or some such. But one day the mysterious wallaby made an appearance when we and a camera were on hand and as you can see, the stripes are genuine. Whilst I've only done brief research on the wallaby, I've never uncovered any similar examples of such broad white stripes on a wallaby. The photo was taken in May 2009 and we haven't seen the mysterious wallaby since around that time.
I am not sure if this is a cryptid or a mysterious animal. I just know I had never seen it before and I can't find it anywhere online. It just kind of scurried about, occasionally leaping up and flying over a little bit. It would often walk sideways and in sort of a sideways/downward walk across the window.
This photo was taken during Aug of 2004 by a motion sensor game camera. I had stayed at a hunting cabin alone the month prior and heard strange mumblings, a powerful blow being struck to a nearby tree and even something on the roof of the cabin. The next morning I went outside to look for footprints or anything I could find. I walked down a private road that ran through a pasture bordered on one side by thick woods. As I stood in the road I suddenly heard a large branch or stick snap. Up ahead of me something was running just inside the treeline down toward me. The treeline was about 25 yards away from me and whatever was running was dark and moved like lightening. I wasn't exactly sure where it stopped but then I jumped when something in the woods directly in front of me snorted. It sounded exactly like a gorilla exhaling sharply through it nostrils. I knew what it must be, I couldn't see it but I knew it could see me. I walked back to the cabin and for a time was too afraid to stay there alone.
I returned to the cabin the following month, Aug., and set a game camera up on an outside window ledge of the cabin. I was hoping maybe something would walk past the camera. This camera has a fixed focus for about 20-30 ft. Instead of walking past the camera, I believe an adult female Sasquatch was about to pick the camera up using its right hand. Just as its hand was about to make contact with the camera it flashed. When the flash reflected off of the fingers of the Sasquatch it created a light flare or glared image of the fingers (note the shape of the glare). If you look past the glare you can see the face of the adult turned slightly from the camera. At the bottom edge of the photo you can see the face of a juvenile Sasquatch looking directly at the camera. I have been visiting the cabin ever since this happened.