So, I'm perusing the net this morning and I come across an article on some "creature" that washed up on the shores of Montauk, NY. Which apparenly is on Long Island. I personally didn't know the place existed, but whatever, beside the point. So they have a claim to fame now, and something that put them on the map. And it's an ugly combination of like 8 of the ugliest animals in the world, and a dog. That the only way I can think to describe it. Hmm. Well, I could show you. Yeah. So:



What do you think? Fact? Fiction? Viral Marketing? People are actually claiming it's a demon from hell, or possibly some twisted science experiment gone wrong at the nearby Plum Island Animal Disease Center. Other people are saying it's a turtle without a shell. But uh, it looks to me like it has fingers. Turtles don't have fingers.

What do you people think? 10 minutes on Google can give you a whole slew of information on this thing. There's even a website dedicated to it, Here. I'm still not sure what to make of it.

Globsters come in all sorts of surprising forms….if it's not
a hoax, it's likely to be something pretty ordinary that
decomposed in an unusual way…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globster

-Crat

My personal feeling on this is that its a fake, just like those videos of mobile phones making popcorn pop. I could bore you to death with my scientific analysis (sorry please remember i'm studying a science degree), but i wont. What i will say is that no one in the scientific community is jumping up and down saying look at this evolutionary marvel. If something like this washed up on shore, i can assure you that you would have every evolutionary biologist on the planet sticking to those in the intelligent design camp.

Heh, I have a friend who's at Montauk now… Anyhow, I vote for either fake or a perfectly normal creature after weird decomposition exacerbated by sea salt corrosion. Pretty funky looking critter, though…

That's the thing, even the scientists don't know what the thing is, but that's because apparently someone stole the carcass off the beach at some point and no scientific analysis could be done. I dunno how valid any of this, I can only ever find scattered musings on blogs, a pair of vague articles on FoxNews, and an even more vague YouTube video of a CNN story on it.

Bingo! If there are pictures of a strange thing
that rocks some field of science, but the thing
itself is "somehow missing", the explanation
pretty much writes itself.

I'll tell you what…I really really wanted to
believe that those guys from Georgia had a
Sasquatch corpse.

But somehow…at the point where awesome story
and direct scientific investigation meet…there
is so often so much disappointment :(

-Crat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montauk_mon...

This was nestled at the very bottom of that wikipedia article. There's a second article linked to that one at the bottom as well. It seems the going story is that some movie being filmed in the area made the animal as a prop and decided to use it as a way to make some more money for the film. Who knows, I think I'll snoop around this "Splinterheads" story a bit more.

[Edit:] Subsequent snooping reveals this article with the confession of the "Splinterheads" director that it wasn't theirs.

Well that Wikipedia article just confirmed what I figured all along. It was a fake. Just like I told my roommates the Bigfoot corpse was a rubber gorilla suit. I'm 2 for 2 on the skepticism scorecard this month :)

I don't quite see how the Wikipedia article confirms it's a fake. Maybe I'm missing something?

Even though I think it is very likely to be a fake, I don't really think that Wikipedia is necessarily the #1 reference on this telling one way or the other. :wink:

I find I have to agree with David on this one. I remember reading at one point on Wikipedia that Hitler was to be Sainted. But Obviously, that was fixed. :P

Didn't look at either link you posted Kayle, you were after all using them as support that it was a fake, yes? Regardless, I knew they were both fakes when they first came out.

I was actually just posting them because I'd found them, I haven't decided one way or another whether it's fake or not.

One of the legends behind Montauk and whatnot involve the Montauk Project which was purported to have been an experiment based on time travel. The place was already on the map, as it were, because of this.

Based on the incredibly unlikelihood that the Philadelphia Project (and by extension the Montauk Project which has its roots in the PP) was real, and thus the incredible unlikelihood that the Montauk Project had any bearings in reality, it's highly unlikely that any legend of a Montauk Monster (which existed before this picture, and which stemmed from the story of the Montauk Project) has any bearings in reality.

Yeah, that's a pretty freaky picture, but just as its gotten publicity because of the previously existing legends surrounding the area, I think the fabricated stories of Montauk also lend itself to also casting quite a bit of doubt on this thing being real.

Edited to add: I heard about this a few weeks ago and already did quite a bit of reading on the subject, and the legends surrounding the Philadelphia/Montauk Projects, and had already concluded that this was either a fake or a case of simply mistaken identity/unidentifiable corpse.

Well, After a hard day of research, (read: clicking random links while watching movies and posting here) And a brief discussion with Samson on AIM about this. I've come to realize there might be some validity to the picture in this gawker article.

The anonymous "artist" (who obviously uses MS Paint *shudder*) seems to be onto something with this Water Rat, or Rakali as the Australians call it, theory. If you look closely at the pictures, and then at the ones on the Montauk-monster.com website, certain similarities can be noticed. the 'fingered' toes. The seemingly beaked face. It's quite possible this little bastard could have been a stow-away on an australia ship bound for the atlantic. Got caught, tossed overboard, drifted at sea, got caught in a current and so ends up 10,000 miles away from his home washed up on a beach, bloated, decomposing, and rather hideous looking in Montauk, NY.

Now, that's just a theory, and it appears to fit. Samson and I tossed around some other theories, such as a medium breed dog, a raccoon, a pig or a boar. But all were discounted by a little bit of research. If you look at the serious of pictures on this page, you can see two distinctly different point of views of the animal, and obviously someone with a morbid curiosity felt they needed to move the thing around a bit at some point. Anyway, if you look at the images you can see certain key features that discredit our other theories. The skull structure isn't right for any kind of dog I could find X-Ray images of on the web. Dogs tend to have a lot narrower skulls in the snout area, and they have a very pronounced eye ridge at the end of it, something "Monty" is missing. The raccoon was discredited because of the length of his legs. Raccoons have very short legs, which lends to their scavenger nature. It just doesn't seem big enough to be a pig or a boar. In the picture posted in the original post, if you look very closely at the beasts back you'll notice a large black spot, that large black spot, is in fact a fly, whether it be common house fly or a horsefly I couldn't begin to tell you, there's not enough detail for that, And, I'm not an entomologist. :P

However, with the number of people who reportedly saw this thing before it vanished, I find it hard to believe it was fake. It lends itself to be far more likely that this is just a decomposing corpse that was mistaken for a monster, or a new breed of sea creature when in fact it's far more likely to be an existing creature who was lost at sea far away from home with no hope of survival, who was then sucked into the undercurrent, beaten around stripped of it's fur, and possibly skin in some places, and tossed ashore in Montauk like some cheap rag-doll from the county fair.

Hmm. Novel-ish. I'll close for now, Thanks for entertaining me, and dealing with me as I investigated the "paranormal" and proceeded to try and figure out what it was on my own. (Again read: watched movies, posted here, and clicked random links. :P)

I'd have to say those pictures remind me of the various creatures from Parasite Eve cutscenes, back in the day. Specificly, the one with the rat. (link to the cutscene, if you've never seen it :biggrin: )

It was an interesting discussion to be sure. After what we looked over I think the Water Rat theory is the most likely. The "monster" is still a fake since they've been trying to pass it off as a real deal cryptid but if the two of us can find the information as fast as we did, anyone who looked into this with any objective seriousness would probably reach the same conclusion.

I have to agree with you, out of curiosity i ran this story past my paleontology lecturer as i know he would be interested in such a beastie. His response was, Its a fake unless there is a body to examine and tissues to sample and scientific papers being written about it. A beastie like that would turn the scientific world upside down and is every scientist dream.

That's an overreaction. Let's assume it's a real picture. In that case, I'm not sure why it can't just be a body of an animal that decomposed in a strange way, aided by salt's corrosion? The "fake" is trying to claim it's some kind of new animal. The existence of a new animal and the existence of the picture are pretty different things. This doesn't have to be something that turns the scientific world upside down…

The picture is a real picture, there are several sets of photos of the beast from different people, and I don't think two people could photoshop something into looking the same just rolled onto it's side. As for turning the Scientific community upside down, Eh. Maybe. Right up until they figured out that it was a water rat. Then they'd just be like, "Wow. That's a pretty awkward way to decompose."