Globster

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The monster of St. Augustine

A globster or glob is the name given to large, boneless and rubbery carcasses that were washed up on the beach at various points in the sea. To this day it has not always been possible to clarify what it was all about. In one case of Wal blubber assumed, generally it might be to whale carcass act or their remains.

The monster of St. Augustine

On November 30, 1896, two boys found a large carcass on St. Augustine Beach . They informed Dr. DeWitt Webb, a doctor with a passion for natural history . At first he thought it was a stranded whale . But then he examined the whitish, slightly pink, rubbery, tough body more closely. It was nearly 7 meters long, 2 meters wide, 1.2 meters high, and weighed an estimated 5 to 7 tons. He also recognized structures that he believed to be stumps from four severed arms. He let the animal photographed and sent the photos and a detailed description of the mollusc expert Addison Emery Verrill of Yale University . He had previously dealt intensively with giant squids and temporarily assigned the monster of St. Augustine to precisely these. But he very quickly revised his opinion, because the photos clearly showed something octopod-like . He published the creature as octopus gigantheus in the American Journal of Science . He had compared the proportions of the animal with those of other octopods and thus came to a length of 60 meters, almost half of which fell on the tentacles alone, and a weight of 20 tons. However, he calculated all of this without having examined the find himself.

Soon after, samples of the animal were examined and it was found that it was most likely blubber . In addition, some photos showed that the creature looked like a sperm whale with an unnaturally large nose. Verrill revoked everything he'd said up until then.

70 years later, cell biologist Joseph Gennaro and marine mammal expert Forrest Wood examined a tissue sample from the "monster". In 1971 the two announced their result: They had compared the sample with different octopods and squids and found that it was definitely not a bubbler, but belonged to an octopod.

The University of Chicago biochemist and cryptozoologist Roy Mackal came to the same conclusion. He had compared the samples with those of two species of octopus, giant squids, dolphins, and beluga whales .

Leading cryptozoologists, including Bernard Heuvelmans and Richard Greenwell , and marine biologist Richard Ellis also questioned the results that identified the carcass as a whale. They also asked why whales had not been washed up in an octopod-like shape beforehand.

Globster

The first globster (1960)

On the west coast of Tasmania in August 1960, the rancher Ben Fenton and two drivers discovered a huge mountain of tissue that covered an area of ​​about 6 by 5.4 meters. The mass weighed an estimated 5 to 10 tons.

For months, Fenton tried to find scientists interested in the object. On March 7, 1962, it was examined by zoologists . Amazingly, the indefinable mass showed no signs of decay . The zoologists were at a loss as to what it could be: It had no recognizable eyes, mouth or bones, but it had five or six gill slits on both sides of its "front" . The surface of the object was covered with fine hair.

Various studies have been made, including the speculation that Professor AM Clark of the University of Tasmania might be a large ray. Others believed " Globster ", as it was now called, to be the remains of a marine mammal. Some even suspected a dead alien . The Australian government eventually declared the mass to be a dead whale.

The Second Globster (1968)

In 1968 a similar object, 10 meters long and 2 meters high, was washed ashore in the east of the North Island of New Zealand at Muriwai Beach . Here, too, it could not be conclusively clarified what it was about.

The Third Globster (1970)

In 1970, the third Globster was discovered again by Ben Fenton. He was stranded a few miles south of Sandy Cape. As Fenton told a journalist , he wanted to avoid the hustle and bustle that was ten years earlier and therefore did not look again for interested scientists. Therefore, almost nothing is known about the third globster.

The fourth globster (1997)

In 1997 another Globster was washed ashore on Tasmania's coast . As with other Globsters , the mass had no bones, but was covered with fine fibers. It weighed four tons and had foot or tail-like protrusions. Investigations have shown that these were whale bubbles .

The blob

In 1988 the fisherman and treasure hunter Teddy Tucker found a bone - and cartilage - free white mass on the beach of Bermuda 's Mangrove Bay . The object 2.5 meters long, 1.25 meters wide, and 0.3 meters high weighed an estimated several thousand pounds. Tucker cut samples from the mass and sent them to various scientists.

At first they were at a loss as to what it might be until shark expert Eugenie Clark of the University of Maryland and a few colleagues examined the monster of St. Augustine and compared it to the tissue of cephalopods and humpback whales. After electromicroscopic and biochemical experiments, they found that the two objects did not come from molluscs. But they by no means belonged to the same species, so the blob was probably a cold-blooded animal , the carcass of St. Augustine probably came from a mammal .

Her explanation for objects of this type was that the bones of the carcasses had detached from the flesh and sank, and bacteria had eaten everything but the collagen layer .

Evidence of giant octopods

The giant octopus of the Bahamas

The residents of the Bahamas tell of large octopods with arms up to 20 meters long.

An Andros Island bailiff said he had been fishing with his son and suddenly something was pulling on the line. When they pulled up the hook, a giant octopus is said to have been hanging on it, which shortly afterwards attached itself to their boat and stayed there for a long time before diving again.

Giant cephalopods , called Lusca , are believed to live in the deep abysses around the island of Andros . The Fischer Sean Ingram told a large animal had attacked his established many meters deep crab traps and destroyed two. The sonar of his ship showed a pyramid-shaped animal about 15 meters tall, which was tampering with the traps.

Even Jacques Cousteau told of giant octopus that will live between Florida and the Bahamas. On an expedition, a camera was lowered into the water and a huge animal is said to have torn the line. When it could be recovered, it showed only an indefinable mass of brown flesh.

Other giant octopuses

In 1835, surgeon Thomas Beale claimed to have been attacked by a giant octopod on the beach on an island south of Japan .

Web links

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  • Lothar Frenz: Giant octopuses and tiger wolves - On the trail of cryptozoology , Rowohlt Taschenbuchverlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-499-61625-4