A giant pig-headed lemur with an extremely developed "arm", the skeleton is on display at the American Museum of Natural History, New York. A

It is believed that giant lemurs (megaladapis) became extinct in the Pleistocene, but there are no obvious reasons for this, since they were not threatened by predators, and their food supply has remained unchanged to this day. At the same time, the hypothesis of some zoologists that the culprit in the death of these animals was man, and this happened quite recently by historical standards, looks quite convincing.

The height of an adult Megaladapis was comparable to the height of a short person, the weight was supposedly up to 70 kilograms (in the largest species, Megaladapis Edwards, the only one in the genus Peloriadapis, according to some sources, up to 140 and even up to 200 kilograms).

It is known that back in the 17th century, one of the French explorers of Madagascar described huge animals with a “human” face that terrified the aborigines. In particular, in Madagascar there were legends about the humanoid creatures tretretretra (or tratratratra, a legend recorded by Etienne de Flacourt in 1658) and tocandia, which allows us to develop theories that a population of megaladapis still survives in the depths of the island.

Other theories link the story of Tretretret, which has a round human-like head, unlike the elongated skull of Megaladapis, with another subfossil lemur, Paleopropithecus.

There are radiocarbon dates that indicate Edwards' Megaladapis was still living in Madagascar at the time Europeans arrived there in 1504. Perhaps the giant lemur can still be found in remote corners today tropical forests islands. The places where his bones were found were the upper layers of swamps and lake silt deposits.

Sometimes a “white jelly-like substance” was found in the skulls of “fossil” lemurs. Some of the bones looked suspiciously fresh.

It is hoped that a small population of giant lemurs still exists, but this hope is very slim. The nitrogen analysis may have been skewed by the high nitrogen content of the swamp sediments, and the "white jelly-like substance" in the lemur skulls may have been due to the unusual preservative effect of the swamp soil.

Do you remember how the remains of a man who died several thousand years ago were found in one of the swamps in Denmark? They turned out to be almost untouched by the process of decay, and yet they are several thousand years old!

Local legends and eyewitness accounts of living giant lemurs in Madagascar have been known to researchers for a long time, but it is still difficult to say with complete certainty whether they are based on visual observations or are simply part of folklore.

Considering that man appeared on Madagascar quite late, it can be assumed that individual representatives of the Pleistocene fauna, like the giant lemur, survived on the island until relatively recently and died only a few hundred years ago. Or maybe some still exist?

To the book "Extinct Madagascar: Picturing the Island's Past" (not published in Russian), depicting the recent - just a few hundred years ago - past of the island.

Madagascar became an island in Jurassic period, 160 million years ago, breaking away from Africa in one piece with Hindustan. Then Hindustan separated, it was pulled right under the Himalayas, docked with Asia, the continents of the Old World several times formed a single land mass with both Americas, exchanging fauna and bringing each other to a single standard, and Madagascar, like Australia, remained separate all this time a small world conveniently located almost on the equator. Separated from Africa by the seemingly narrow - 400 km - but never dry Mozambique Strait, life on it developed independently, according to its own laws. Dinosaurs were not preserved there either; their place was taken by descendants - birds, including flightless giants - apiornis.

Epiornis were different types occupied different niches - and giants Aepyornis maximus, reaching 3-5 m in height and weighing about 400 kg (their eggs, with a volume of up to 8-9 liters, were 160 times larger than the size of a chicken egg), and small “hens”. How ancient these creatures are can be evidenced by the fact that their closest relative outside of Madagascar is the New Zealand kiwi bird - relatives were scattered across the planet at the dawn of the history of birds. The relationship was established by analyzing the DNA preserved in the remains of the eggs of “elephant birds” - the last of them was killed already in historical time, around 1600 AD.

It was easier for flying birds to get to the island, and Madagascar, in many ways, like New Zealand, was the land of birds. In the picture, the ibises that have survived to this day and the endemic, but familiar-looking Madagascar mallards. But the dwarf Malagasy hippopotamuses, whose ancestors came to the island by swimming from Africa, were destroyed a thousand years ago.

In the foreground on the left are Malagasy geese, on the right is a moorhen Hovacrex roberti. Malagasy shelducks swim across the lake, watched by one of Madagascar's largest predators in history - a five-meter crocodile Voay robustus. In the background, two pairs of medium-sized apiornis of different species are grazing, and on the left are lemurs: below, a “sloth lemur” Megaladapis, the size of a person, has fallen to the water and has a lifestyle like that of a koala; at the top is also a rather large (about 50 kg) paleopropithecus, whose body structure resembled great ape– his forelimbs were longer than his hind limbs.

During its island history, Madagascar has been colonized by flightless mammals only six times. Most varieties of endemic families each originated from one species that once penetrated the island, possibly in numbers of several individuals. In the picture below left is a rodent from the nezomyid family. Nesomys rufus, to the right is a relatively small Megaladapis Madagascar, then another endemic nezomyid, followed by the largest Megaladapis Edwards, reaching a weight of 150-200 kg. Even further - a giant turtle Aldabrachelys abrupta. A Madagascar long-eared owl watches all this disgrace from above.

The Nezomyidae family is not endemic to Madagascar; their relatives are also found in sub-Saharan Africa; It is noteworthy that all island rodents (before the invasion along with humans and rats and mice) are descendants of a small population of rodents that once arrived on the island, occupying the niches of voles, gerbils, rats, hamsters - from the tiny swamp hamster with a body length of 50-63 mm and weight 5.2-6.5 g, before extinct Nesomys australis(in the center) 33 cm long. A similar situation happened with the interesting animals tenrecs, who were luckier in terms of survival and therefore are not in the pictures. I'll tell you about them later. In addition to the rodent, the picture shows three species of lemurs that have survived to this day: broad-nosed lemurs ( Hapalemur simus, on the verge of extinction), meek ( H. griseus) and crowned ( Eulemur coronatus).

In the foreground is a cuckoo Coua berthae the size of a chicken argues with a hare-lipped hamster Nesomys narindaensis. In the background is a Madagascar relative of the aardvark, interested in an insect nest. - a descendant of the fourth island family of mammals (the first three are hippopotamuses, nezomiids and tenrecs. Another of the mammals that penetrated the island were bats, but it was easier for them). Also in the background are three species of large lemurs again, this time extinct: (from left to right) Archaeolemur edwardsi, Palaeopropithecus kelyus, Hapalemur simus.

Night Madagascar. In the upper left corner is an extinct giant arm, in the lower right is the living but endangered Mungo Grandidier, representing the fifth family of endemic animals: Madagascar civets, local predators. Cute animals, relatives of mongooses. Unfortunately, there are no others - they are not strong against cats, dogs and mainland civets.

Madagascar civets are very diverse in body structure, their body length ranges from 25 cm in the ermine-like Mungo to 70 cm in the Fossa, the largest species today, which has acquired an appearance similar to that of a cat. And during the existence of giant lemurs, they were hunted by giant fossas - up to 20 kg.

After large lemurs were destroyed by people, they disappeared, having lost their prey.

Another large predator- the crowned eagle already familiar to you - suffered the same fate.

Well, and finally, lemurs. Before the arrival of humans, up to 20 species (now 10-12) of up to 200 kg Megaladapis and Archaeoindri lived in one area - it was a world where primates occupied a wide variety of niches, from flower pollinators to large terrestrial herbivores. Pictured from left to right: Pachylemur (extinct), Babakotia (extinct), Indri (endangered) and Perrier's sifaka (critically endangered).

In the foreground is the paleopropithecus, extinct in historical times, and the also extinct earthen raksha Brachypteracias langrandi, in the background are those living today ring-tailed lemurs and indri.

Approximately such landscapes were revealed to the first people who sailed to the island. This happened quite recently - in 200-500 AD, and almost simultaneously it was done by the descendants of Indonesian tribes and Bantu from the African mainland.

All animals represented in the picture, except the now extinct madagascar heron and the African razini stork have now become completely extinct - in historical times, after the settlement of Madagascar by humans.

At first, on the abundant island there was enough prey, defenseless against man, to feed both. The two branches of colonists coexisted peacefully and around the 10th century merged into a new ethnic group - the Malagasy.

Large - 200 kg archaeoindri lemur; on the tree is a 10-kilogram mesopithecus, the time of its disappearance coincides with the time of the appearance of people on the island. In addition to them, there are already familiar cuckoos Coua berthae, aardvark Plesiorycteropus germainepetterae and a crowned eagle, and in the background are Hildebrandt's apiornis. From about the 7th century, Arabs periodically sailed to the island, and their stories about elephant birds were transformed into legends about the roc bird...

A third species of extinct giant lemur has been found in Madagascar. And although scientists estimate its mass at only 35 kilograms, this is three times more than that of any living lemur.

A French-Madagascar team of paleontologists has discovered the fossil remains of a new species of giant lemur. Experts estimate that the representative of the species, called Baptised Palaeopropithecus kelyus, weighed about 35 kilograms - less than the other two previously described species of the family, but still much more than modern lemurs weigh.

Giant lemurs

Lemurs are a special group in the order of primates. They live only in Madagascar and its surrounding islands. Individuals themselves small looking lemurs - mouse - weigh about 30 grams, the largest - indri - about 10 kilograms. However, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, researchers discovered the remains of giant lemurs in Madagascar. In terms of their anatomical features and supposed way of life, they were a cross between lemurs and sloths.

The remains of a new species were found in the north-west of Madagascar, in a place surrounded by rivers and bays. Apparently, this was the reason for his isolation. Having studied the structure of its jaws, scientists came to the conclusion that, unlike its relatives who ate shoots and fruits, it ate coarser food, such as grains and seeds.

Giant sloths

Another French-Peruvian team has discovered the fossilized remains of a giant sloth that lived in the Andes five million years ago, Reuters reports. However, the first sloth was discovered not by scientists, but by builders who were installing a water supply system in one of the residential buildings in the province of Espinar at an altitude of more than 4000 m above sea level. Along with the sloth, under the concrete floor of the building, part of the skeleton of a giant armadillo was discovered, which, according to researchers, also lived about 5 million years ago.

Sloths, like armadillos, belong to the order of edentates and live only on the territory of the American continents. The length of the skeleton of the found sloth is about 3 meters. This herbivorous mammal lived during the Pliocene era.

“This skeleton is very important because it is the first fully preserved skeleton of this type, 5 million years old,” said Rodolfo Salas, an employee of Peru’s Natural History Museum, who took part in the excavations. Only partially preserved skeletons were found, and of sloths that lived in the Pleistocene, that is, no more than a million years ago.”

The dry climate of Peru is conducive to the preservation of animal remains. Fossils of extinct mammals are often found on the territory of the state, both on the coast and in the Andean hills. According to Salas, the discovered sloth, like other finds, will help paleontologists more accurately reconstruct the history of the evolution of mammals in the Andes.

New York.
The pig-headed species of adapis has managed to survive to this day, only it has become much smaller and was not eaten by the first settlers who appeared on the island 3 thousand years ago. The settlers discovered something even more interesting in Madagascar - very short, pygmy-like, dark-skinned aborigines. We don’t presume to say, but they probably suffered the same fate as the pigheads.

Some biologists have repeatedly expressed the idea for fun that a pig could be a human ancestor. This joke is much less of a joke than it might seem at first glance. A pig is very similar to a human. Suffice it to recall the scandal that erupted with the fossil human ancestor Hesperopithecus, who turned out to be a pig. The fact is that pig molars are very similar to human teeth. The transplantation of pig organs into humans is being seriously discussed. Pigs have pink skin, similar to the skin of humans. But serious biologists, of course, reject this possibility. It is clear that pigs, with their snouts, hooves and pig tails, are a specialized species and are clearly not suitable as primate ancestors.

But where then did the primate Megaladapis get its piglike features? We will be told that they appeared independently of real pigs. That's right, but if primates develop pig-headedness, then why not assume that primates (including humans) can develop into pigs.

A similar story happened with another pig, or rather, with its fossil ancestor, but on the mainland. Paleontologist D. Rose, having discovered a fossil grunt, recorded it as a close ancestor of artiodactyls based on the shape of its jaws and teeth. When they dug up a completely preserved skeleton, it turned out that this creature had a five-fingered hand, adapted for climbing trees, like our megaladapis from Madagascar. All that was left was to shrug his shoulders; the boar clearly did not fit into the pig ancestry.

And in our opinion, everything is reasonable: the ancestors of pigs, horses (the teeth of ancestral horses were adapted to feeding on leaves, not grass) and other ungulates in ancient times lived in trees and had five-fingered hands. But they had them not because they had adapted to life in the trees, but because they inherited these hands from the man who was the founder of their family. How can one not recall the Melanian legend that exists among the inhabitants of the Bank Islands. The legendary hero Kat made people and pigs according to the same model, but the pigs unexpectedly protested. And then Kat knocked the pigs to the ground with one blow of his staff, and they began to walk on all fours. The man continued to walk upright, as he was completely satisfied with his lot and did not complain about his fate. As if confirming this, now lives on the “mysterious” Fr. Madagascar is a descendant of giant lemurs, locals call it habebi. He is as tall as a ram. He has the same white fur as a ram, huge bulging eyes and large shaggy ears. Dark, ignorant people used to think that sheep grew on trees, but it turns out they came down from the trees!

The vari lemur, a typical resident of Madagascar, has, in addition to fangs, a kind of “predatory” tooth, characteristic of canids. His heartbreaking screams sound like the creepy laughter of a madman. The fact that dogs evolved from prosimians will, of course, surprise many. However, for some reason, no one is surprised that primates have the characteristics of dogs. For example, dog-headed baboons living on the African continent are undoubtedly monkeys, but they behave like dogs: they hunt in a pack, run well on all fours, bark, and to top it off, they have a “dog” head with “dog” teeth. Why not assume that a little more time will pass (in the epoch-making sense) and dog-headed baboons will finally adapt to a terrestrial lifestyle and occupy the ecological niche of canines, displacing the latter. It is quite possible that they will look like dogs, and not like primates. And take at least a small thin-bodied monkey. Two powerful saber-shaped fangs protrude from its upper jaw, gleaming menacingly, making it resemble a saber-toothed cat. What prevents us from thinking that saber-toothed cats trace their ancestry to some ancient massive primates, whose fangs were similar to the slender body?

A strange genus of bats - Pteropus - lives on a “mysterious” island, absent from neighboring Africa. Chiropterans are real flying animals, some of them have a wingspan of up to 175 cm. They are similar to primates: they have two mammary glands on the chest and a reproductive system, like all primates; Usually one baby is born at a time. Females and males form permanent pairs, even when their reproductive system is at rest. If you follow evolutionary science, then bats acquired the qualities of primates independently - developing from ancestral insectivorous animals. This means that if natural selection had taken a different path, man himself could have stood out from their order, so to speak, developed from them, and, moreover, he, most likely, would have been winged, like his ancestors. Just think what a chance we missed!

But it looks like all is not lost for us yet. How can one not remember the legends about flying monkeys? What a legend, in Southeast Asia a flying prosimian is now alive and well - the woolly wing, a strange creature that combines the characteristics of lemurs, bats and insectivores. The woolly wing is the size of a cat, but has a flight membrane covered with hair, like a flying squirrel. Thanks to her, he makes dizzying flights, flying up to 150 m. Did the woolly wing really acquire such a “wealth” of different characteristics independently, and even become a primate, almost “coming out to people”.

Sixwing.
The sifaka lemur living in Madagascar has short, human-like arms, a “face” devoid of vegetation, almost human-like hand control and strange sun worship rituals performed before sunrise. All this leads to certain associations with a person. It is not without reason that local residents claim that the ancestors of the sifaka and the ruffed lemur were once human. On the ground, the sifaka lemur moves, when necessary, on two legs, making huge, four-meter jumps. At a height, among the foliage, it prefers to “soar”, pushing off with force from a branch or trunk with two “legs”, just as birds do before taking off. The lemur spreads its thickly furred “arms” and glides, reaching a nearby branch or tree. The folds of skin that border the “arms” of the lemur on both sides, from the palms to the armpits, are the indisputable rudiment of the wing, which is found in flying foxes, flying dogs and flying mice, and in a more advanced form in birds. Even if the “arms and wings” of the sifaka are not yet developed as he would like, why not assume that after some time the sifaka will adapt to flight no worse than chiropterans that have not yet lost the characteristics of primates. And after many millions of years, they will all together occupy the ecological niche of birds, just as birds once occupied the niche of flying dinosaurs of the Cretaceous period.

Based on the above, we can assume the following: various monkeys, prosimians, playing, hunting, jumping from branch to branch, gradually grew a flying membrane on their hands - just a fold of skin covered with hair (flying lizards had a similar flying membrane, but without hair - pterodactyls). Over time, the membrane has changed. The hair changed into feathers, and the forelimb took on the appearance of a real wing. From the Eocene of China, the remains of fossil flying animals are known: their “arms” were covered with feathers, and the rest of the body was covered with wool. Thus, the “glider pilots” - woolly wings, flying squirrels and bats - are transitional forms from monkeys to birds. The fossil Archeopteryx, a feathered creature with a snout instead of a keratinized beak, may have been a descendant of arboreal mammals whose ancestry began with humans!

This is how the legends tell about the mysterious creature Kalanoro. As soon as the night covers the earth with a black blanket, the Kalanoros - small long-haired people - emerge from the darkness of the forest wilds. Creepy, like shadows, they wander under the trees, looking into all the nooks and crannies. This mysterious creature can be seen as a tenrec. As soon as the hot sun goes below the horizon and quick twilight descends on the green hills and valleys of Madagascar, nimble animals crawl out of holes, thickets of bushes, and rock crevices. They busily scurry here and there. Either they examine rotten stumps with their elongated nose, or they dig or dig up the ground with their clawed paws. Some tenrecs are covered with hair, some have real spines on their backs, like hedgehogs. They curl up into a tight ball in case of danger, and dig deep holes. But they are not hedgehogs - they are very similar to them. Where did they come from? They themselves arose on an “uninhabited” island that had no communication with land for tens of millions of years. From whom? Of course, from lemurs or their ancestors!

In Indonesia and on some Philippine islands there live little people called yara-ya-hu. You can only see them at night. They have fiery eyes, a mouth stretched in a devilish smile. These are tarsiers, a strange species of primate. As the name suggests, they have long heels and a large head. They are simply amazing with their human morphology, although they are no larger than a rat. Standing on their hind legs, they dine, putting food into their mouths with their hands. At the same time, like thieves, desperately turning their heads, they inspect the nearest bushes to see if there is any danger. On their well-groomed hands, squeezing a sweet fruit or flower, there are fingers with marigolds, the same as ours.

Tarsier; hand of the Calabar potto lemur with atrophying fingers; replacing the nail on the second toe with a claw; "reverse" evolution from top to bottom.
Another candidate for a primate is the jumper, about the size of a mouse. The jumper looks like a jerboa. Lives in bushes in Southern and Eastern Africa. It has huge eyes, a large brain and “developed” sensory organs, completely unusual for an ordinary jerboa. Doesn't this jumper indicate that jerboas and other small creatures, except for the jumper itself, have fallen out of the order of primates?

The “mysterious” island is home to mouse and rat lemurs, the smallest of all prosimians. They sleep curled up in a ball in nests made of grass, small twigs and leaves. They usually live in pairs, like humans, but can also live in large groups. Among them there are such tiny ones that can easily fit on the thumb of an adult. Among the fossilized bones of lemurs, some (plesiadopoids) were found that irrefutably indicate that during life their owners resembled rodents, while remaining lemurs. Of those that have survived to our time, this feature is distinguished by the aye-aye (when Europeans first saw it, the exclamation was exactly like this), or the little arm. Large chisel-shaped incisors protrude from her mouth above and below, which she deftly controls, just like gray robber rats. Maybe this is where hordes of rats and mice from Southeast Asia fell on our heads. But evolutionists, of course, are not allowed to assume that rodents evolved from primates because of “good upbringing” in the spirit of Darwinism.

There are also unusual representatives of primates, no larger than a rat, but very developed - these are tupayas, common in areas adjacent to the Indian Ocean. Scientists have debated for a long time whether tupaya should be classified as a primate or an insectivore. Never came to final decision. It is now believed that forms similar to the tupaya were the ancestors of primates. However, there are no apparent restrictions to state otherwise: Tupai are descendants of ancient primates.

Some species of otter, a large animal that lives in water (body length up to 150 cm), lack claws (clawless otters); instead, they have “human” nails on their fingers. Unusual view sea ​​otter- sea otter - common in Kamchatka, the Kuril Islands and North America. It has shortened forelimbs with atrophied toes. Instead, there is only a round palm pad. Despite this, the hind limbs have turned into a swimming flipper with a membrane between the toes. The sea otter, like a monkey, uses a tool - a stone, and does it very skillfully. Having dived and collected from the seabed what seemed interesting to him, he emerges with a delicacy and a “tool of labor” clutched under his arm, lies on his back in the water and, placing a stone weighing 2-3 kg on his stomach, methodically hits a mollusk or sea ​​urchin until it breaks the shell or breaks off the needles. Then, holding the stone under his arm, he takes another hedgehog or mollusk, and the procedure is repeated. What is striking is not so much the morphology, similar to primates, as the fact that the sea otter uses tools, which has always been considered distinctive feature higher primates.

How to explain the existing characteristics of primates in the sea otter, tupai, tarsier, jumper, woolly wing, fruit bat and many other animals? Are they really all losers who couldn’t stand the competition with their more “flexible” brothers - the monkey and the man? But then we must admit something else: that if you and I had not been on their road, one of them would have taken our place! But how can one get a man from different types of waterfowl, flying, jumping and burrowing animals, be it a fish man, an amphibian man, a flying man, a kangaroo man, a rat man or a shrew man? The evolutionists themselves unanimously claim that this is impossible. Ancestors of specialized species, following evolutionary theory, must be very primitive!

The real problem for biology was the lack of transitional forms. In the hands of opponents of Darwinism, this fact became a powerful argument against the evolutionary theory. In fact, all animals, plants and microorganisms are transitional, with the only difference that this transition was carried out not from more primitive to more complex, but exactly the opposite: from more complex to simpler! All the animals we have considered are transitional (mosaic) forms from the order of primates to orders of narrow specialists: swimming, running, jumping, flying animals. The qualities of good flyers, swimmers, jumpers, and runners were developed in the generations of their ancestors as adaptations to the lifestyle that they led before and lead today. The general organization of the body was inherited by them from more advanced animals. For Darwinists, mosaic forms represent a riddle of riddles - after all, interspecific crossing is impossible in nature. This has been proven by ten years of and, alas, unsuccessful attempts to breed hybrids of different species of animals and plants. If they were able to be bred, they turned out to be nonviable, and if they survived, they did not leave offspring (for example, a hybrid of a donkey and a horse: a mule and a hinny). All the more surprising are the “non-hybrid hybrids” that we were talking about. They could be formed only in one case - during the process of degradation!

The phenomenon of Madagascar can only be explained based on modern scientific data showing that Madagascar was an island for tens of millions of years and had no communication with the mainland. The development of its flora and fauna followed its own special and unique path. According to one hypothesis, Madagascar separated from the Hindustan Peninsula more than a hundred million years ago and, together with the aborigines - ancient people, drifted across the Indian Ocean until it finally approached the shores of Africa. It’s as if a ship sent from the past has sailed to the present day along with its crew. But instead of people there were lemurs on it. Some scientists see inbreeding as the most likely factor in the formation of the primates of Madagascar - inbreeding, otherwise inbreeding.

Darwin was well aware that such crossing in animals and plants usually leads to an unfavorable result: decreased viability, decreased productivity, and general form- to degeneration. A mutation process continuously occurs in the body, which adversely affects heredity. Mutants interbreed with each other, this gives rise to new combinations of genes in their descendants, which ultimately, under the influence of environmental conditions, leads to the emergence of new varieties of animals. This process may be accompanied by the loss of many valuable qualities inherent in the ancestors. The most irreparable loss is a decrease in the volume of the brain, and with it the manifested mind. Thus, on a single island, over the course of tens of millions of years, the ancient ancestors degraded into arboreal land-burrowing and flying animals.

According to another version, at the end of the Cretaceous, a powerful geological catastrophe broke out in the Indian Ocean, destroying a vast landmass, and only a small part of it in the form of the island. Madagascar and other islands have survived to this day. Time stopped for the “mysterious” island... Only the screams and howls of wild animals, the squeaking of bats and the hoots of mysterious and scary dwarfs among the singing of birds and the chirping of insects could be heard by people in impenetrable jungle Madagascar, again, after millions of years of absence, set foot on the island. To this we can add that in the Maldives, located north of Madagascar, closer to the shores of India, the famous traveler and explorer T. Heyerdahl in the impenetrable jungle discovered material traces of a very ancient highly developed civilization: huge stone slabs, huge skillfully made stone heads.

...Where lemurs live now, people lived! Apparently, the Romans were right when they called lemurs the shadows of people who once lived...

FURRY FLYING MEN
In the 18th century, the Swedish taxonomist K. Linnaeus introduced the bat into the order of primates, in addition to humans, deformed and wild humans, monkeys and prosimians. Apparently, he did this for a reason...

The bat has nothing to do with common mice. Rather, because of its resemblance to monkeys, it can be called a “flying monkey.” The homeland of the ancestors of bats was probably in the same place as the homeland of lemurs - in the sunken Lemuria. From there, several tens of millions of years ago, they scattered throughout the world. They are not present today only in the Arctic and Antarctic.

Around Indian Ocean Fruit bats, the animals closest to primates, still live, their wingspan is 1.7 m. Their large and intelligent brain has many more grooves than the brain of lemurs. Hares, rodents and insectivores are completely deprived of furrows, which is why they are not suitable as relatives of bats. Fruit bats - called flying dogs and flying foxes - have elongated muzzles, large eyes, large ears, well-developed canines and cheek teeth similar to those of predators. Fruit bats, like many lemurs, feed on fruits, managing to pick them right on the fly. And sometimes, for a change, the animal will hang next to a ripe mango, papaya or banana on one leg, and with the other pick the tasty fruit and stuff it whole into its mouth. He chews and chews, drinks the juice from it, and spits out the pulp. Legible! There is no need to say that the animal eats only the ripest, sweetest and most aromatic fruits. The eyes of some species of fruit bats emit a bright phosphoric light, leaving a lasting impression on those who see them at night. Flying foxes are 10 times more alert than humans. Flying dogs, in addition to being good fliers, are also good swimmers. When they need to wash down the sugary taste of the fruit, they hover, flapping their wings above the water, and lap it up. In hot weather, hanging upside down on a branch, fruit bats fan themselves with their wings like a fan; when it’s cold, they cover themselves with them like a blanket.

In the mythology of the descendants of the Mayan Indians living in the south of Mexico, a demon plays a special role (this word means literally: “de” - not, “man” - man; all together - non-human). Hikal is a bloodthirsty deity who demanded human sacrifices and was depicted as a black little man with winged paws. African tribes living in Cameroon still have the idea of ​​evil perfume yu-yu, hiding in caves and flying out of there to do their dirty deeds at night. One of Aesop's fables tells about a bloody war between animals and birds. Due to their dual nature, bats took either the side of animals or the side of birds. When animals and beasts divided their spheres of influence, they decided to condemn the double-dealers, condemning them to appear in the darkness of the night.

There are many mystical stories associated with bats. IN folk beliefs they are considered friends of the devil or even his very embodiment. On church icons, devils are depicted with leathery, angular wings. One gets the impression that religious tradition clearly hints at demons (non-humans) who have wings instead of hands. It is quite possible that Christianity has absorbed ancient vague legends that a person can become not only possessed (demons), black and tailed (devil), but also a winged (bat) creature. Often, bats, for unknown reasons, dive at people, trying to do this from behind, when the person does not see who is attacking him. They especially love (according to rumors) to grab women's hair with their claws. As if male bats do this to seduce a woman. But apparently these are not just rumors. There are a sufficient number of such cases known to be explained by superstition and chance. We are dealing with some kind of innate behavior, which is perhaps rooted in the desire to annoy a person. Something akin to envy. There is also a belief that if a bat touches someone's head with its wing, grabs someone's hair, or even suddenly flies low over him, then he will die. The same will happen if it flies into an open window or door of the house. Therefore, people, wanting to protect themselves from the machinations of the devil, close their windows tightly with shutters at dusk, and women go out into the street with their heads covered (in humans, like bats, this is also, one might say, an innate behavior). To this we can add that in Ancient Greece bats were dedicated to the goddess Persephone, the wife of King Hades the afterlife. It was believed that if someone sees a bat in a dream, then misfortune awaits him. And the souls of dead sinners, going to hell, preferred bats as transport.

Lemurs and bats.
It seems that the place where earthly paradise used to be located has long ago turned into earthly hell along with its inhabitants. It is in this earthly, and not afterlife, hell that all the evil spirits that are supposed to live there live. These are the “shadows” of people - tailed lemurs, and winged devils - bats, and many other “descendants” of the once glorious ancient human race. Apparently, the “illegitimate” descendants of ancient people over the multi-million-year history of their kind have adapted well to life in hell.

The extraordinary abilities of bats are amazing. In the forest night, these strange animals perform pirouettes purer than the born flyers - swallows: they somersault in the air, abruptly change the direction of flight, bending around branches and trunks. For an animal with such speed and variability of flight to touch at least one trunk or branch - never! As D. Darrell said, in appearance these animals look like shabby umbrellas. This similarity is ensured by an elastic panel - a fold of skin stretched between outstretched fingers (like the spokes of an umbrella), body and hind legs - this is their universal wing. With the help of such a device, bats flutter like birds, sometimes switching to gliding flight with motionless wings. Thanks to active flight, they develop a powerful bony ridge on the sternum - a keel, to support flight muscles, the same as in birds. There is a membrane stretched between the thighs, which they control like a bird’s tail. The hindquarters are turned out so that the knees are turned back. This is in order to hang upside down with the help of your legs and, hugging yourself with your winged arms, wrapping yourself up like a blanket, fall asleep during the day in the peaceful sleep of the righteous. Chiropterans, like birds, are prone to long journeys - seasonal migrations to wintering places - to their ancestral home. Our “native” bats fly south: to Crimea, Turkey, Greece, and fly across the Black Sea. For them the record is 1600 km. Americans - red bats - also fly to warmer climes. Some of them, ringed in America, were found in Europe. In general, they spread across the planet without any difficulty. So, in Hawaii they are clearly of American origin. However, between North America and Hawaiian Islands more than three and a half thousand kilometers! On the Pacific Islands, where fauna very scarce, only bats live, and even rats, which, as you know, will crawl everywhere...

In terms of the structure of the reproductive system, bats are more similar to primates than to any other species. And they give birth in a unique way. In some species, the female is suspended from the ceiling by all four limbs. After pushing on the upward-curved membrane between the legs, like a trough, the cub rolls out and begins to squeak loudly. Then he crawls to the mother’s nipple and attaches himself to it, holding on only with his milk teeth. So the mother flies with her baby clinging to her body. Fruit bats also give birth upside down. They pick up the born baby with their wing-like hands, then feed them milk, after this they swaddle the baby - wrap it in wings so as not to freeze, lull it to sleep, rock it to sleep - in general, they nurse it like people. After some time, his permanent teeth are cut, replacing milk ones. Now the females, flying off to get food, leave their children “hanging” at home or organize a “kindergarten” for the children, in which several teachers take care of all the cubs while their mothers are “at work.” Having arrived home, the mother will feed the child with milk and share the food with the teacher.

Chiropterans, like people, are very attached to their home - the place where they were born and raised. “Having returned from distant wanderings,” they will definitely settle in their native “nest.” Moreover, when choosing housing, they clearly gravitate toward human habitation. They and I have a similar understanding of comfort. They, just like us, love warm housing equipped with a ventilation system; they prefer to have a “bedroom” separate from other people. Therefore, they inhabit attics, sheds, walls, various voids, ventilation structures, etc. Their special love is cemeteries, cavities under the domes of Mohammedan mausoleums, tombs, crypts. There is a spirit here that perfectly corresponds to the attitude that people have towards bats as accomplices of the devil and evil spirits. It is probably this spirit that attracts them to these places. Due to the special predilection of bats for their habitat, which they rightfully consider their home, it can be very difficult, if not impossible, to smoke out a large family from human dwellings or cemetery tombs. Many bats take up residence in the caves, covering their ceilings with a living carpet of swarming and squeaking bodies. Their desire for unification exceeds all imaginable boundaries. In this regard, they were far ahead of people. For example, in the Novaya cave in Texas, where they always live side by side with each other, about 15 million of them usually live. If we compare this figure with the population of cities, we can say that the same number of individuals live in the cave as there are people population of the largest metropolis in the world. Scientists estimate that every tenth mammal on the planet is a bat or fruit bat. There are tens of billions of them. Well bred! People are still far from them. A little more, you see - they will not only push the birds, but will also push us aside. Although there is another point of view, that there is enough space for everyone, and therefore: “Be fruitful and multiply!”

Many bats have scary faces and huge ears. In America, there are legends about winged demons of the night, not only settling in human homes and cemeteries, but also drinking human blood. They emerge under the cover of darkness, soaring silently on their webbed wings. As if by skillful magic, they lull their prey to sleep, lulling the person to sleep with the soft flapping of their wings. They say that after this a person is not able to wake up and drive away the vile vampire, even if he wants to do it. Then, hovering over the sedated body and unerringly choosing the place where a blood vessel passes under the skin, the vampire makes a cut with razor-sharp incisors, and then with the tip of his tongue, lined with horny outgrowths, like a file, he deepens the wound. Vampire saliva contains painkillers and anesthetic substances that prevent blood clotting and pain. In order not to wake up his victim with the touch of his clawed paws, the vampire hovers over her, licking the flowing blood with his tongue... Knowing about the destructive passion of the demon of the night, local peasants, going to bed, seal up all the holes in their houses through which an uninvited guest could crawl inside. Not only that, they wrap themselves in a blanket, not allowing themselves to stick out either their legs or their heads from under it in their sleep. Vampires, except humans, pursue all warm-blooded animals. Even Darwin, traveling through South America, witnessed a vampire sucking blood from a horse. Bloodsuckers feed only on blood and do not want to know any other food. They don’t want and don’t know how to live differently! In short, they got along great with man and beast!

Among bats there are also false vampires who, although they do not drink blood, prefer to eat their prey entirely. These are quite large animals with a wingspan of up to 70 cm. These “destroyers of souls” attack frogs, mice, rats, and birds. They also distinguished themselves by cannibalism - they will not disdain to have breakfast with their brother the flyer.

What the tastes of big fishermen are is already clear from the name. They soar at night over rivers and bays and carefully examine the surface of the water. As soon as a fin appears or the fish splashes its tail, the fishermen immediately dive into that place, grab the fish with the claws of their hind legs and, lifting them into the air, place them in a bag formed by the membrane between the legs. Then, in a calmer atmosphere, they start eating: part of the fish is eaten, and part is put in the cheek pouch for future use.

Most bats feed on insects. They are very voracious, some of them manage to devour about a thousand insects in an hour of masterly flights. So high speed devouring is ensured with the help of screams inaudible to the human ear, to which insects flying in the air respond. A sound wave is reflected from them, caught by the sensitive ears of bats. An instant reaction follows from a body trained in flight - and the bug is already on its way to its last path along the esophagus of a flying predator. Some of the flyers continue to scream through their nostrils when their mouths are full of insects. There are butterflies that, having heard the cry of a bat, begin to “scream” themselves in the same ultrasonic range, which greatly surprises the pursuer. The pursuer is so surprised that he gives up all attempts to eat the “screaming” insect. Probably, the butterflies in their short “reply word” manage to express everything they think about bats. And those, stunned by the truthfulness of what they heard, retreat.

Cunning scientists, testing the ability of flying beasts to distinguish living from non-living, simultaneously threw a heap of sawdust and one worm into the air in front of their noses. To the surprise of scientists, the bat always accurately chose the worm, grabbing it. It turns out that she masterfully distinguished living from non-living by the nature of the echo. Bats are simply swimming in a sea of ​​sounds. Their speech is very emotional and rich. We also need to thank God for the fact that we cannot hear most of the sounds emitted by bats - they pass in the ultrasonic range. Otherwise we would have gone deaf a long time ago. The flyers scream so loudly that their scream, measured at the very mouth, turned out to be 20 times louder than a working jackhammer. And some, especially outstanding ones (Malayan folded lip), “drive a wave” of sound of 145 decibels. This is comparable to the noise level of a jet plane taking off.

It would be very interesting to trace how these creatures began to adapt to the way of life they lead. They probably shouted at each other very loudly at first, playing a game of “who can out-shout who.” The world's smallest mammal, the butterfly mouse from Thailand, also plays this game. She weighs about 3 g and is 3 cm tall. Otherwise, she has everything like a “normal” bat. She also gives birth to live young and feeds them with milk. Like other flyers, he teaches them to fly. It has sharp teeth, sensitive ears, fast wings - everything is as it should be. But she herself is very small! Also, a bat - if you compare it with a person - is very small, but how similar it is to him! One might say, a small furry man, only with wings. Small stature is not at all an obstacle to considering this creature not as a flying mouse, but as a flying “little man”. This “little man” (troll) is a descendant of a big man. But how he has changed! And that’s the science for us too - don’t yell at each other!

When in 1658 Admiral Etienne de Flacourt published “The History of the Great Island of Madagascar,” summing up his long stay in this corner of the Earth, it contained a lot of the most incredible information, perceived as fables of travelers, and their veracity was established only centuries later.

Speaking about birds “inhabiting forests,” Flacourt, for example, wrote: “Vurupatra is a large bird living in Ampatra, lays eggs, like an ostrich, in the most deserted places.” After Flacourt, other travelers wrote about the huge bird, and they were also called dreamers. And she also laid eggs, larger than those that ostriches “produce,” and the locals used them as utensils.

Here is what Ferdinand von Hochstäcker writes: “Madagascars came to Mauritius to buy rum. The containers they brought with them were egg shells eight times larger than ostrich eggs and 135 times larger than chicken eggs; they held more than 9 liters. They said that these eggs are sometimes found in desert areas, and birds are occasionally seen.” It is clear that all this was perceived as anecdotes. If an ostrich with a height of 2 meters 50 centimeters was considered a giant monster bird, then what can we say about a giant that laid eggs eight times larger than an ostrich?

As Orientalists believed, these rumors were nothing more than an echo of the legend of the Rukh bird from the tales of the Arabian Nights, scary creature, which earned a dubious reputation among Arab sailors. She was so huge, they said about her, that when she appeared in the sky, a shadow appeared: her wings covered the sun. And she is so strong that she can grab an elephant and lift it into the air, and impale several animals on its horn at once. It happened that she carried away entire ships with crews... During his second voyage, Sinbad the Sailor met this bird after he found an egg. It was 50 steps wide! When Herodotus wrote about giant African birds, their size seemed more modest: Egyptian priests told him about a race of flying giants who lived on the other side of the source of the Nile, and they had the power to lift a person. Let us remember that the largest eagle is able to lift a creature no larger than a rabbit...

Marco Polo in the fourteenth century heard echoes of the same tale from the lips of Kublai Khan. The Asian ruler showed him the feathers of a bird “about 20 meters long” and two eggs of considerable size. And he added that Rock comes from the island of Madagascar on the south side. Thus, the stories about the Rukh bird and the Malagasy legends coincided in time and space. But it seemed incredible that a bird weighing several hundred kilograms could fly into the air. But it was believed that if a bird is a bird, it must certainly be able to fly. And the Rock bird, also known as Vurupatra, was declared a fable.

Epiornis eggs

Years passed, and in 1834, the French traveler Goudeau picked up incredible-sized halves of shells on the island, which served as bottles for local residents. He made a drawing and sent it in 1840 to Paris to ornithologist Jules Verreau. He, based only on the appearance of the egg, named the bird that laid it epiornis, “big bird.”

A few years later, this name, which initially aroused suspicion, was legitimized when Dumarel saw a whole egg in the vicinity of Diego Suarez in 1848.

“It held 13 bottles of liquid.” And in 1851, it was finally officially recognized that there were giant birds on the island: the captain of the merchant ship Malavois brought to the Paris Museum two eggs 32 centimeters long and 22 centimeters wide. They mixed in about eight liters (8 ostrich and 140 chicken eggs). From one such egg you can make an omelette for 70 people.

A few years later, the famous traveler Alfred Grandidier removed from the Ambalisatre swamps bones of an indeterminate type that, at first glance, belonged to some kind of pachyderm. But research has shown that these are bird bones (“elephant birds”). To be honest, ornithologists were not very surprised, because several years earlier R. Owen described moa from bone remains from New Zealand. Based on the available material, Isidore Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire described the species Aepyornis maximus. In fact, epiornis is not at all larger than moa in height (moa is 2 meters 50 centimeters tall).

The Paris Museum has a restored skeleton of Aepornis - 2.68 meters. But this is also a very big increase.

Epiornis eggs

To be honest, there is no direct connection between the growth of a bird and its egg. Remember the kiwi from New Zealand: its eggs are comparable to those of an ostrich, and the bird itself is no larger than a chicken. And in terms of weight, the following data is obtained: 440 kilograms for the largest apiornis and 329 for a medium-sized moa.

When do giants disappear? A study of the bones of Aepyornis showed that, unlike the legendary Rukh, this real bird did not know how to fly. Like other keelbirds, its relatives are the cassowary, moa, emu... Their wings were underdeveloped. But is it the same bird that Flakur designated under the name Vurupatra?

The eggs that were found in the sand in the dunes of the south and southeast or in the mud of the swamps were suspiciously fresh, as if they had just been laid. And the bones did not seem like fossils... They began to question the residents. They answered that the birds were found in the remote corners of the island, but they were seen very, very rarely.

But naturalists, still under the influence of Cuvier, do not want to believe this, so no one today not only searched for the bird, but also studied the reasons for its disappearance.

One thing is obvious: man could not be the only reason for its death, unlike the story with the moa vurupatru, or vorompatru, was not exterminated for meat. There is not a word about this in the legends (and the Maori happily talked about hunting moa using simple pikes with a stone tip).

In an attempt to explain the death of Aepyornis, they went as far as asphyxia caused by gas releases in certain areas of the island. But isn't it too difficult? Most likely, it has to do with the habitat areas themselves. The climate changed, people drained the swamps, and the last shelters disappeared. The giant swamps dried up in the highlands of Antsirabe and Betafo. Epiornis climbed further and further into the swamps and died there, not finding food. This is proven by their remains found in peat bogs. It is clear that man hastened the end of the vorompatra; it survived until recent times, until 1862 (when the inhabitants clearly saw it), not reaching quite a bit to the present day.

Other giants of Madagascar

Various factors contributed to the death of not only Epiornis, but also other species, such as Mullerornis, the giant cassowary of the Ankaratra region, Centornis and many others. But isn't it too early to bury them? Just like on the neighboring islands - Seychelles and Mascarene - there was a giant turtle Testudo grandidieri weighing up to one ton. She apparently became a victim of drought.

But according to Raymond Decarie, an expert on the fauna of Madagascar, the extermination of the turtle was not widespread. “There are rumors about the presence in certain caves of the southwest mysterious creature, which may turn out to be a giant tortoise - are we talking about the last representatives of Testudo grandidieri? - writes the zoologist.

Another species: in Madagascar there were giant crocodiles, whose skulls reached 80 centimeters in width. There is evidence that they are still here. The total drainage of the swamps led to the disappearance of hippopotamuses on the island. Previously, there were giants here, reminiscent of the Pleistocene hippopotamuses of Africa. Didn’t the great wanderer Dumont D’Urville write about them in 1829 in his book “Travels Around the World” while sailing along the rivers of Madagascar?

On the other hand, there is an assumption that it was the hippopotamus, or rather its image, transformed by the legend, that served as the basis for the myth of the tsogombi or ombirano - a water bull, half mule, half horse with a hump. If we are talking about a hippopotamus, then it has changed a lot in the legends, because Tsogombi has huge hanging ears. In addition, he was “gifted” with a scream that would terrify anyone, as well as aggressive cannibalistic habits.

The Mahafaly and Antrandon tribes, according to R. Decarie, attribute to him eggs that actually belonged to Epyornis. There are also rumors of railalomena, which means "father or ancestor of the hippopotamus." He supposedly lives in swamps, and has a horn in his forehead. All this is very reminiscent of the famous “Dinosaur from the Congo” (Mokele-mbembe). Perhaps the Bantu invaders who appeared here brought with them descriptions of a mysterious creature from the continent.

Both hypotheses have a right to exist, and in both cases there are similarities with the Congolese reptile - the body of a hippopotamus, horn, drooping ears (which in fact may be fleshy growths on the edges of the head and are visible on the dragon from the portico of Ishtar), oviparity, talking about a reptile , swamp habitat, aggressive character and, finally, wild screams. If this creature lived in Madagascar, it could certainly have become one of the first victims of the drying out of swamps and lakes. Unless, of course, it's a giant turtle. Or a touring crocodile from the continent... Tretretre and a man with a dog's head Madagascar is called the land of semi-fossil animals.

No other island can become such a showcase of ancient history. The remains of animals, birds, and reptiles often turn out to be so fresh that many wonder: are their “owners” alive? Often legends and oral traditions claim that people knew them until relatively recently.

Let us recall Gennep's principle, according to which memories of events are lost within two centuries where there is no oral tradition. That is why there is such great interest in the memories of travelers. In addition to the epiornis, Flacourt wrote about another mysterious animal: “Tretretretra, or tratratratra, the size of a bull and with the face of a man. It is reminiscent of Ambroise Pare's tanakht. This is a solitary animal, and the inhabitants of that country are afraid of it and run away from it ... "

The first reaction of naturalists of that time was, naturally, unambiguous - a myth. Nothing like this has ever lived in Madagascar; there have never been real monkeys there. Especially such an amazing view. So, someone repeated the naive fables of Marco Polo and Ctesias?

The first camouflage was removed with the discovery of the indri (Indris brevicaudatus), the largest living lemur, fitting the description of a "dog-headed man." It is about a meter high, almost without a tail (stump), often stands on its hind legs, being on the ground, it surprisingly resembles a person. Its elongated muzzle looks more like a fox than a dog. Looking at him, you understand why members of the Betsimaraka clan both killed and deified him, calling him babakoto (father-child), considering him the descendant of a man who retired to the forests. Let us add that all lemurs for the Malagasy are fadi (taboo), because it is believed that this is another incarnation of man.

And at the end of the 19th century, the remains of a huge fossil lemur were found in Madagascar, which was called megaladapis. The height of an adult Megaladapis was comparable to the height of a short person, the weight was supposedly up to 70 kilograms (for Megaladapis Edwards even up to 200 kilograms).

Megaladapis is believed to have gone extinct as early as the 10th millennium BC, but radiocarbon dating suggests that Edwards' Megaladapis was still living in Madagascar at the time Europeans arrived there in 1504.

Megaladapis

In those same years, remains of Paleopropithecus were discovered in Madagascar. Paleopropithecus is a genus of subfossil lemurs that lived in Madagascar from the Pleistocene to historical times. Paleopropithecus was also a large primate, weighing from 40 to 55 kilograms. Paleopropithecus definitely lived in Madagascar at the time humans appeared there (the latest remains from the Ankilitheo deposit, according to radiocarbon dating, date back to the 14th-15th centuries AD). They could also be what was called a tretretre.

The fading heart of Gondwana

Logically, one could look for the same part of Gondwana in Madagascar as on the African continent. In fact, the island is not an African zoological province. Malgash animals are characterized, on the one hand, by the originality of their forms, and on the other hand, they are related to the forms of South America and the Indo-Malayan region.

Among the typical forms of Madagascar are lemurs, which differ from other primates in a number of anatomical features. It was for this appearance that scientists gave them the name “lemurs,” as the Romans called the phantoms of dead people. But lemurs live not only in Madagascar. Some are common in Africa - galago, potto and angwantibo, and in Malaysia - lorises and slow lorises. But in Madagascar there live forms completely unknown in Africa. Moreover, they are known in... the Antilles! And in South America.

This whole cocktail is explained by the presence of the once huge continent of Gondwana. A study of the fossil remains of lemurs showed that even in the recent era there were a great many of them. Magaladapis were true tree-climbing rhinoceroses. They did this despite their size, thanks to their tenacious fingers. And there were many others. And looking at them, you think that Flacourt’s descriptions do not seem so fantastic. Who is Tokandia - a “four-legged jumper” that lives in trees and makes human sounds? Who are the Kolonoros, the Malagasy gnomes?

“All tribes,” writes Decarie, “believe in some semblance of our dwarfs, brownies and gnomes. Their names vary by region: bibialona, ​​kotokeli, and so on. Colonoro is something of an amphibian. On Lake Alcatra they live like sirens or mermaids with long fluffy hair, they live in the water, they reach out to pies, they grab children.” According to Betsileo beliefs, the colonoro, on the contrary, is a land creature two cubits high, covered long hair, he has a wife named Kotokeli, lives in caves. She steals children from people and replaces them with her own. In the Kinkong Lake area, the Sakalawa have a different concept of colonoro. This is a male creature that lives along the banks of ponds. Dimensions are less than a meter. He's sweet female voice, eats fish, walks around the neighborhood in the evenings. Meets a man, talks to him and lures him into a pond. Further north, the colonoro lives in the forest and caves, does not specifically attack people, but has sharp claws and can seriously hurt when someone tries to grab it.

Strange legends spread throughout the island, fresh bones found in the southwest and the conditions of their occurrence indicate that Hadropithecus (another ancient look lemurs) could survive until recent eras in the region of Bara, Ankazoabo. Many areas of Madagascar are still completely unexplored, and giant lemurs could survive on these millions of hectares of forest. Remember the okapi - he lived incognito for a long time.

From the book by Bernard Euwelmans "In the Footsteps of Mysterious Beasts."