Allghoi Khorkhoi
The Allghoi Khorkhoi ( Mongolian олгой-хорхой olgoi-chorchoi , German 'intestinal worm' , also known as Mongolian death worm ) is a cryptid whose existence has not yet been confirmed.
He is said to live underground in the Gobi desert .
description
According to local descriptions, the creature has:
- a worm-shaped , soft, thick body that is between 60 and 120 cm long
- a smooth, bright red skin that blisters in danger.
According to reports from nomads living around the Gobi Desert, the Allghoi Khorkhoi lives underground. But if he is attracted by something - he should react to the color yellow - he moves just below the surface of the earth towards his victim, then stretches the upper body to the surface and begins to inflate. This causes many small blisters to form on his skin, spraying poison so deadly that it can kill a man and even a camel instantly if touched. Others also speak of death from electric shock .
Descriptions and research
The story of a little boy is known all over the Gobi desert who played with a yellow toy box outdoors, whereupon a worm crawled into his box and the boy died from accidental contact with the worm. The parents are said to have followed the worm, but were allegedly also killed by it.
A western researcher who has recently tracked down the death worm was the Czech author Ivan Mackerle , who had already made a name for himself with the search for Nessie . He learned the stories about the Allghoi Khorkhoi accidentally from a Mongolian student and went to the Gobi Desert to do further research. However, this turned out to be extremely difficult because - according to his account - most Mongols were afraid to talk about the death worm. He also claims that the communist regime at the time suppressed any reports about the Allghoi Korkhoi. It was not until 1990, after the fall of communism, that Mackerle claims to have heard the said stories. The fact is, however, that the legend of Olgoj-Chorchoi (this is the somewhat idiosyncratic transcription of the Mongolian name for the "death worm" from the 1950s, conveyed into Latin letters ) has by no means remained as unknown as Ivan Mackerle want to make believe. As early as the 1940s, it was the subject of a story of the same name by the Russian science fiction author Ivan Yefremov . Jefremov, who himself had toured Mongolia and the Gobi as a paleontologist in his younger years , emphasized the fantastic character of the story in a later statement. So it is not a factual report. He pointed out, however, that the story is based on a popular belief that is widespread and widely taken seriously among the Arats , i.e. among the nomadic ranchers around the Gobi desert. In the 1950s, the story was translated into German and published several times in the GDR (see below). A little later, in the early 1960s, the Russian biologist and author Igor Akimuschkin wrote the book There Are Mythical Beasts ! also with this topic. The American Roy Chapman Andrews was one of the first foreigners to have heard of the "death worm". Andrews was a zoologist and paleontologist who became world famous for digging dinosaurs between 1920 and 1925 during the Inner Asia Expedition he led in the Gobi Desert. Among other things, under his direction at Schabarach Usu (the 'Flaming Cliffs'), complete clusters of dinosaurs and the remains of the Velociraptors that later became so famous from Jurassic Park were discovered for the first time . As you can read in his famous expedition report, he was given the name of Olgoj-Chorchoi as Allergorhai-horhai . Books by Roy Chapman Andrews have also appeared in German, for example: B. Dinosaurs in the Gobi (see below).
Attempts to prove existence and attempt to classify
The existence of the Allghoi Khorkhoi is highly doubtful, especially in the form described. Despite its supposed worm-shaped appearance, if it really did exist, it would hardly be a worm. In the hot, dry climate of the Gobi desert, a creature built like a worm could never survive; it would dry out quickly as worms cannot store fluid. If one had to assign the Allghoi Khorkhoi to a species known to zoology , it would most closely correspond to the desert death otter ( Acanthophis pyrrhus ). There are reddish variations of this fat snake found in Australia . It lives in hot, dry areas and has an extremely potent poison that is very dangerous to humans if it enters the bloodstream. It is therefore most likely that either a hitherto undiscovered species of snake lives in the Gobi desert with an appearance similar to the death otter, whose danger has been exaggerated by exaggeration and superstition , or this creature must have sprung entirely from the imagination of the nomads living there, in an attempt to kill inexplicable or explain taboo murders. The fact that the Allghoi Khorkhoi exists as it is described cannot be completely ruled out, but it is extremely unlikely from a zoological point of view.
Variation of the name
The following references and links are only a fraction of the available descriptions. For further research you have to take into account that the name of the "death worm" is transcribed in very different ways by different authors . In addition to the notation used to designate this article, you can find among other things:
- Олгой-Хорхой (Mongolian)
- Olgoj-Chorchoi
- Olgoi-Khorkhoi
- Allergorhai-horhai (am., S. O.)
- olgoj chorchoj (czech.)
- olgoï-khorkhoï (French)
- Олгой-Хорхой (Russian)
- Olgoi-jorjoi (Spanish)
It is very likely that other spellings exist. With the letter combinations Ch or Kh the German Ach sound is meant.
literature
- Ivan Yefremov: Death in the Desert . In: Iwan Jefremow (ed.): The Nur-i-Descht observatory (= The small youth series ). Vol. 2. Culture and Progress, Berlin 1951, p. 41–62 (Russian: Olgoj-Chorchoi ( Олгой-хорхой) .).
- Igor Akimushkin: There are mythical animals . Leipzig 1963 (Russian: Следы невиданных зверей .).
- Roy Chapman Andrews: On the trail of primitive man. Adventure and discovery of three expeditions to the Mongolian desert . Brockhaus, Leipzig 1927.
- Roy Chapman Andrews: Dinosaurs in the Gobi . Brockhaus, Leipzig 1951.