I have been following the posts on Cryptomundo about a mysterious and little-known cryptid called the Shunka Warak’in, obviously a Native American word, also called a “ringdocus” (which sounds like the kind of insult you’d hear in a seventh grade gym class). It is some kind of canid (member of the dog family), described as having brownish or reddish fur, possibly with stripes, and with the sloping hindquarters that we associate with hyenas.

There is a taxidermied specimen at a the Sherwood Museum in West Yellowstone, Montana, which Coleman claims is a specimen. It was apparently shot about 120 years ago, stuffed, put in the museum, and then subsequently disappeared, until recently.  Here is a photo, linked from here:

Shunka Warak’in

More images are available here. Now, don’t get too excited, it could just be a wolf that has been mounted extremely poorly; it’s hard to tell much of anything from a taxidermied specimen. Essentially the only thing left of the original animal is the skin. If the taxidermist was meticulous, and had access the original carcass, he would have taken measurements of the body shape and size, the lengths of the limbs, girth of the belly, etc. These things can be guessed at by the hide, but not too accurately, since the hide will shrink and stretch and distort as it is dried and then tanned and subsequently softened and re-stretched to put over the mannequin. For museum-quality mounts, the mannequin is constructed to measurements accurate to the dead animal’s skinned body, but there is no telling if that’s the case here or not. Many taxidermists will just guess.

The teeth, which in an actual specimen would be clear indicators of a species, are almost certainly plastic replacements that you could purchase at any taxidermy supply house, like here, for example.

According to Coleman, a DNA test is possible from skin and fur samples, but may not yield really usable material, and, more importantly, there is an ownership problem: no one seems to know whose permission is necessary to take a sample for DNA analysis. Read the whole series of posts here.

In the meantime, a Nebraska woman may have just seen a live one in her backyard.

Could I begin this much-belated blog with any better quote than this?

The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.

Revered/reviled pseudonymous British guerilla artist Banksy– one of my favourite artists, kind of a lowbrow Maurizio Catelan–  mounts an exhibition in his own home city of Bristol– in secret, as he is still wanted by the police there for graffitti vandalism. From the Guardian UK:

This is the first show I’ve ever done where taxpayers’ money is being used to hang my pictures up rather than scrape them off.

There is quite a nice slideshow here. Personally I am really fond of this piece:

Favorite film: Donnie Darko: Favourite battery: Duracell

Another Banksy piece, this one done on one of the “separation walls” in the Occupied West Bank of Palestine. His book, Wall and Piece, from a couple years ago,contained an explanation of this piece that went to the effect of this:

Old Palestinian man: What are you doing on that wall?

Me: Painting it. I want to make it beautiful.

Old Palestinian man: We hate that wall. We don’t want it to be beautiful. We want it gone. Go home.

Near Bethléem - 2005