The next day, Dr. Dewit Webb (the founder of St. Augustine's Historical Society and Scientific Research Institute) went to the scene with several assistants. The team concluded that the animal weighed about 5 tons and seemed to run aground on the beach just a few days ago. Its visible part is 23 feet long, 4 feet high and its back is widest 18 feet. Its skin is slightly pink, but it looks almost pure white with silver molting. Webb didn't think it was a whale. It can only be an octopus of some kind, and its size is so large that it has never been thought of before.
In the next few days, as long as time and weather permit, Webb and his assistant will go to the beach to take pictures, because the animal carcasses began to rot and damage. According to an assistant who went to the scene alone, he found a large antenna when he was digging next to the body. According to the report of1American natural scientist in April, 897: "One antenna is located in the west of the corpse, 23 feet long, and the remaining part of one antenna is also located in the west of the corpse, about 4 feet long. Three antennas are located in the south of the corpse, the longest antenna connected to the body is 32 feet, and the others are about 3 to 5 feet shorter than the longest antenna." Before the animal was washed ashore, it seemed to be attacked and its body was partially torn.
A storm happened shortly after, and the body was washed back to the sea, and later washed back to the shore 2 kilometers away from the original discovery.
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Webb began to write letters to scientists he thought might be interested in this discovery. Among them, Verrier, a zoologist at Yale University, received a letter written in 18961February 8. Verrier has done a lot of pioneering work to study the rumor of giant squid or Kraken Tentacles Of The Deep (which has been confirmed now) and is famous for it. Verrier disagreed with Webb's view that the found animal was an octopus, because the longest known octopus specimen was only 25 feet long. He thought that the stranded animal was a giant fish, and briefly published his opinion in the American Journal of Science in April 1897. But with the further increase of information, he accepted the judgment of the giant octopus.
By comparing the beached animal antenna with the known octopus antenna specimen, Verrier came to a strange conclusion: its antenna is at least 5 feet long! If measured from the top of the antenna at one end to the top of the antenna at the other end, this incredibly large octopus is 200 feet long. Although Webb played the most important role in the process from the first discovery of octopus to the attention of the scientific community, Verrier named octopus "Verrier the Giant Octopus".
At the same time, the stormy weather in the local area caused the octopus's body to be washed away by the sea. When it was found in the third place, another part of its body was missing. But even so, the remains of the body are too heavy to move. Later, on 1897 1 month 17, Webb wrote a letter to Dole, the curator in charge of mollusks at the National Museum of Washington, telling how he used four horses with the help of six people and used thick plates to get the octopus out and park it on a board 40 feet high from the beach, so that it would not be washed away by the sea.
In the letter to Dole, Webb described the octopus specimen like this:
"The octopus's tunic or the intact part of the head is connected with the slender part of the body ... and then the body is opened for 2 1 foot ... the slender part of the body has no internal organs. The rest of the organs are not big, and it seems that the octopus doesn't look like it has been dead for a long time ... The intact muscle epidermis belongs to invertebrates, about two or three inches to six inches thick. "
He didn't see that the octopus had tail fins and other fins, "there was no tail fin, head and eyes left", and "there was no feather and any trace of bone structure" (here, "feather" refers to the feathered tubular cartilage found in all fish).
Although Webb urged Dole and Verrier to visit the site in person, neither of them went. They asked Webb to continue to work hard and send them any new news. In fact, they didn't pay attention to the message sent by Webb. For example, Dole kept calling the animals he found "cuttlefish" (a cephalopod mollusk, similar to octopus and octopus, but with 10 tentacles and a hard shell inside).
On February 23rd, Webb sent Verrier some specimens of "Octopus". On the same day, Verrier said in his letters to Science and new york Herald that the animal was probably "the upper part of the head and nose of a sperm whale". Frederick augustus Lucas of the National Museum, after studying other specimens of the animal, thinks that "they are blubber, and there is nothing to make a fuss about". He also criticized Webb for being "too imaginative" and lacking in training. Other cephalopod experts seem to basically agree with Lucas' explanation. Webb protested strongly by writing letters, but none of his letters got an answer. Finally, the body of "Verrier the Giant Octopus" slowly rotted away, and this incident was not mentioned again in the next 60 years.
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1957, forest Wood, Jr., the director of Marieland Research Laboratory in Florida, USA, saw an old newspaper clipping about the Anastasia monster. Although Wood himself is an expert on octopus, he has never heard of it.
He was very interested, so he launched an investigation and finally learned that the Smithsonian Institution of the United States still had a specimen of the animal. The specimen was sent to Joseph Ginaro Jr., an octopus expert at the University of Florida, for dissection. Ginaro concluded: "There is no doubt that the St. Augustine sea monster is actually an octopus."
Wood and Gennaro wrote their findings into three articles, all of which were published in the journal Natural History in March of 197 1, but the development of marine biology was not very advanced at that time. The editor of the magazine added so many strange and stupid comments to three articles that some readers thought the whole thing was a scam. Wood and Ginaro found that the magazine's practice was deliberate, so Wood angrily wrote a letter of complaint to Natural History, but the magazine refused to publish the contents of the letter. To make matters worse, the Index of Ocean Citation Magazine (which published abstracts of articles published in the magazine) claimed that they thought the animals they found were giant squid. Wood and Ginaro later discovered that this misstatement was not an accidental mistake.
In the mid-1980s, Roy mccall, a biologist at the University of Chicago, re-studied the specimens. He thinks that thing is actually a connected biological tissue, not "blubber". He said, "I agree and support Webb and Verrier's certification of the carcass. This giant cephalopod may be an octopus, but it is different from any known species.".
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1960 In August, the carcass found on the northwest coast of Tasmania, Australia may be similar to that found in Florida. However, the investigation work is not going very well. A farmer and two cowboys who worked for him found the carcass, but the news did not reach Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, until several months later. First, an aerial search was carried out to determine the location of the carcass, and then a four-member scientific team led by Bruce Morison, a zoologist of CSIRO, arrived at the scene in March 1962. After examining the carcass, Mollison said: "People are always willing to seek an explanation, so you will try to connect everything, but in this case, nothing makes sense."
This animal is very strange, without eyes, head and bones. Its skin is "smooth and delicate" and "elastic" and "furry".
In the following week and a half, the word "Glaub" in Tasmania was coined by zoologist Ivan Sanderson, which became the front page news of the world's major newspapers and magazines, and the Australian government was overwhelmed by the flood of problems. Faced with so many problems, the Australian government had no choice but to send a team of zoologists from Hobart to prepare for a comprehensive investigation. But the working group returned to Hobart the next day.
The official report said that because there was a long time between the time when the carcass was washed ashore and the inspection by the working group, "at present, it is not clear what the carcass is from our investigation." But zoologists still think that the carcass is like "a part of a huge rotting marine animal", not something like blubber.
But strangely, just after Senator John Gordon (Australian Federal Minister) received the report that day, he told the press: "The monster you are asking about is a lot of rotting whale fat, which may have been torn off from whales."
This conclusion made Morrison very angry. He claimed that the specimen he collected "could not be identified as anything". University of tasmania zoologist Clark also said: "Obviously, it is not a whale." Gordon's words also angered Jack Bout, the cowboy who first discovered the monster. He thinks the government is trying to cover up the de facto procrastination. "They have to say this to cover up their neglect of trying their best to investigate this matter," he insisted. "What I saw was not a whale, nor was it a part of a whale."
No matter whether the report supporting or denying that the monster is a whale has never been published publicly, the whole incident ended in neglect and confusion.
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1970 another "Glaub" was washed up on the seashore in northwest Tasmania, and this time things should have come out. The discoverer this time was the farmer named Ben Fenton. He still remembers the trouble he experienced after he first discovered the monster ten years ago, so he was not happy with this discovery. He told a local reporter: "Be careful not to quote me as a monster. I don't know what it is, and I haven't made any guesses. " But this time, no scientist came here to investigate.
1965 In March, a "Glaub" appeared on the seashore of Muriwai on the east coast of North Island. According to the news media, it is 30 feet long, 8 feet high and "furry". Morton, a zoologist at the University of Auckland, said, "I can't think of anything like it." 1988 in may, another "Glaub" was washed up in mangrove bay in Bermuda. Scientists have collected specimens of the animal, but the test results have not been made public so far.
Summarizing all the cases, Richard Greenwell of the International Society of Cryptzoology said, "The descriptions and photos in all the cases are very similar. All carcasses are described as hard, hard to cut, usually odorless and fibrous, so they are often called' furry'. " And it is strange that almost all the carcasses have not been finally identified by experts.
No one is sure that the monsters of Glaub and St. Augustine are animals, and no one is sure that they are giant octopus, but it is a possibility after all.
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If there are giant octopuses, they are not often seen, because they are deep-sea animals. However, cases where they are glimpsed often appear from time to time. Bahamian fishermen once said that they saw "giant octopus", and forest Wood, a cephalopod zoologist, confirmed that what they said was credible.
19891In late February, the news media reported a terrible Christmas Eve off the coast of Monte Carlo in the southern Philippines. People in a small boat were planning to transport the body of a baby to a nearby island for burial. Suddenly, they were horrified to see the tentacles of an octopus slamming on the side of the boat. The owner, Eleetro Sarino, said: "The thickest part of the antenna is the size of a strong man's upper arm, and there are bumps along the antenna, one of which hooks the boatside." Another passenger, Jerry Alvarez, said, "I saw huge tentacles underwater. Although the light was still dim when I turned on my flashlight, I was sure I saw a head with big eyes underwater." He also said that those tentacles were about 8 feet long.
The boat began to sway from side to side and then capsized. The passengers on the ship trudged back to the shore 200 yards away.
With the deepening of scientific research, marine biologists gradually pay attention to those unknown special animals living in the depths of the ocean. I believe that there will be a breakthrough in the near future.