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Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Tuesday, November 16, 2010

GLEN VAUDREY: Dancing Dodo

It isn’t that often that you find a cryptozoology-related advert but there are some and one of the best is the dancing dodo.

It all started with the strains of Don Fardon’s cracking tune ‘I’m Alive’ and lo and behold, there pops up a dancing dodo. Short of a juggling great auk, what could be better?

The dodo is one of the better known extinct birds and going from the one in the advert, it was also a great dancer.

Sadly, back in the in the real world the dodo was a bulky flightless bird of the Solitaire family, renowned for its clumsy movements, which would make a dancing dodo rather special; of course nowhere near as special as a living dodo as the last of its kind was reported to have died on Mauritius in the 1690s.

So it would seem rather surprising that there have been a number of reported sightings of this remarkable bird within living memory. The earliest of these sightings date from the 1930s when natives of Mauritius told Lawrence Green that the birds still could be found in caves and mountains in the remote parts of the country.

But there have been further reports not nearly so long ago. In the 1990s there started to appear reports of dodo-like birds walking along the beach in the Plain Champagne area. Whether these sightings consisted of live dodos or a related species is still open to question.

If you haven’t seen the dancing dodo it is worth tracking down, and if you haven't heard the song that is certainly worth tracking down too.

1 comment:

Neil A said...

There are actually quite a few crypto ad's featuring the goatscker, Nessie, Yeti, Bigfoot, 'beast of Bodmin' etc!

My CRYPTOZOOLOGY IN THE MOVIES book will reveal all!