WELCOME TO THE CFZ BLOG NETWORK: COME AND JOIN THE FUN

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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Unlike some of our competitors we are not going to try and blackmail you into donating by saying that we won't continue if you don't. That would just be vulgar, but our lives, and those of the animals which we look after, would be a damn sight easier if we receive more donations to our fighting fund. Donate via Paypal today...




Tuesday, March 11, 2014

TODAY'S BIG CAT ROUND UP


The hunt for British Big Cats attracts far more newspaper-column inches than any other cryptozoological subject. 

There are so many of them now that we feel that they should be archived by us in some way, so we are publishing a regular round-up of the stories as they come in. 

The worldwide mystery cat phenomenon (or group of phenomena, if we are to be more accurate) is not JUST about cryptozoology. At its most basic level it is about the relationship between our species and various species of larger cat. That is why sometimes you will read stories here that appear to have nothing to do with cryptozoology but have everything to do with human/big cat interaction. As committed Forteans, we believe that until we understand the nature of these interactions, we have no hope of understanding the truth that we are seeking. 

  • FEATURELINK: Lions - A Species Under Threat - Big ...
  • NEWSLINK: After 7-hour rescue operation, leopard c...
  • US SIGHTINGS: Cougar may be on prowl in Independen...
  • NEWSLINK: Villagers want big cat back to scare awa...

  • NEWSLINK: India's urban leopards: Dog chases big c...
  • FORTEAN BIRD NEWS FROM THE WATCHER OF THE SKIES


    What has Corinna's column of fortean bird news got to do with Cryptozoology?

    Well, everything actually!

    In an article for the first edition of Cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans wrote that cryptozoology is the study of 'unexpected animals' and following on from that perfectly reasonable assertion, it seems to us that whereas the study of out-of-place birds may not have the glamour of the hunt for bigfoot or lake monsters, it is still a perfectly valid area for the Fortean zoologist to be interested in. 






    BEHOLD THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN

    The Gonzo Daily - Tuesday
     
    Up with the lark and to bed with a Wren, as my Uncle Roger used to say about his days in the Navy before WW2. I was up unfeasibly early this morning as I had an appointment in Bideford for a blood test. Being a conscientious fellow I decided that Archie needs to be habituated to the new car so we took him with us. He spent the entire journey mithering and whining, so I was right about the need for habituation, but unwise in my decision to inflict a barrage of peculiar noises from a little dog upon Corinna and myself at such an unpleasant time of the morning. In the post today came 3 dvds of the series that Prof. Bryan Sykes did for Channel 4 about mystery hominids. I blagged them from Icon Films, because I don't actually have a TV that works for anything apart from DVDs. Having just finished two more autobiographies of people who were insiders in The Beatles business affairs during the 1960s, I am looking forward to my chat with Joey Molland (ex-Badfinger) later this week,because there is a lot of stuff that I want to clarify...
     
    KING CRIMSON: INCREDIBLY HEAVY, YET SOMEHOW STILL GRAVITY-DEFYING LIVE SET FROM 1974
    http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2014/03/king-crimson-incredibly-heavy-yet.html
     
     
    ‘They keep pulling me back in!’: Yes reunion in the works for 1990s-era member Billy Sherwood
    http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2014/03/they-keep-pulling-me-back-in-yes.html
     
     
     
    FOR THOSE OF YOU INTERESTED: The latest episode of my webTV show
    http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2014/03/for-those-of-you-interested-latest.html
     
    This week's issue of Gonzo Weekly is here. Hooray!!! It has lots of Rick Wakeman stuff, a Cyrille Verdeaux auto-interview and a report on The Musical Box plus Acid Mothers Temple, Dr Who, Hawkwind, Eric Burdon, Wreckless Eric, and more news, reviews, views, interviews and sheep having a snooze (OK, no sleepy sheepies) but I got carried away with things that rhymed with OOOOS) than you can shake a stick at. And the best part is IT's ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!
     
    To make sure that you don't miss your copy of this and future issues make an old hippy a happy chappy and subscribe
    http://eepurl.com/r-VTD
     
     
     
     
    PS: If you are already a subscriber but think that you haven't been receiving your copies please check your spam filters. For some reason known only to the Gods of the internet, some e-mail programmes automatically count the magazine as 'spam' probably because it comes from a mass mailer. Either that or they are just jealous of our peerless content
     

    *  The Gonzo Daily is a two way process. If you have any news or want to write for us, please contact me at  jon@eclipse.co.uk. If you are an artist and want to showcase your work, or even just say hello please write to me at gonzo@cfz.org.uk. Please copy, paste and spread the word about this magazine as widely as possible. We need people to read us in order to grow, and as soon as it is viable we shall be invading more traditional magaziney areas. Join in the fun, spread the word, and maybe if we all chant loud enough we CAN stop it raining. See you tomorrow...

    *  The Gonzo Daily is - as the name implies - a daily online magazine (mostly) about artists connected to the Gonzo Multimedia group of companies. But it also has other stuff as and when the editor feels like it. The same team also do a weekly newsletter called - imaginatively - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about it at this link: www.gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/11/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit-to-print.html
     
    * We should probably mention here, that some of our posts are links to things we have found on the internet that we think are of interest. We are not responsible for spelling or factual errors in other people's websites. Honest guv!

    *  Jon Downes, the Editor of all these ventures (and several others) is an old hippy of 54 who - together with his orange cat (who is currently on sick leave in Staffordshire) and two very small kittens (one of whom is also orange) puts it all together from a converted potato shed in a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon which he shares with various fish, and sometimes a small Indian frog. He is ably assisted by his lovely wife Corinna, his bulldog/boxer Prudence, his elderly mother-in-law, and a motley collection of social malcontents. Plus.. did we mention the orange cat?

    ANDREW MAY: Words from the Wild Frontier

    News and stories from the remoter fringes of the CFZ blogosphere...

    From CFZ-USA:

    KARL SHUKER - Anomalous Jaguars and Other Speckled Mystery Cats From South America


    Karl Shuker tracks down some speckled mystery cats from South America.

    Read on...

    CRYPTOZOOLOGY ONLINE: On The Track (Of Unknown Animals) Episode 78



    The latest episode of our monthly webTV show from the CFZ and CFZtv, bringing you news on our activities within cryptozoology and natural history as well as the latest cryptozoological, and monster hunting news from around the world. I can't believe that we have done this every month for over six years now - 78 episodes. Golly!

    This episode brings you:

    CFZ in early Spring
    New faces
    Providing enrichment for a captive crow
    North Devon Firefly Faerie Fayre and Ball
    Hawkwind preach environmentalism
    Paddington bear
    Government lets down the ecosystem
    Badger cull
    Weird Weekend 2014
    Tasmania scat results
    Out of place birds
    New and Rediscovered: New antechinus
    New and Rediscovered: New population of Pallas' Cat
    New and Rediscovered: New beetle

    OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today

    http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

    On this day in 1845 Johnny Appleseed died. Appleseed became a folk legend in the USA due to his habit of planting tons of apple tree nurseries there and is thought of, by some Americans, as a great environmentalist, which is ironic as he was planting loads of non-native tree species which is actually very bad for the environment, and mainly for his own profit at that.

    And now the news:
  • Elizabeth Kolbert: 'The whole world is becoming a ...
  • Sterilise farmed salmon to save wild species, crit...
  • Volcanoes helped species survive ice ages, researc...
  • Campaign to track numbers of threatened juniper pl...
  • Sea Cucumbers are So Popular in Asia They Face Ext...
  • Citizen science study to map the oceans' plankton
  • Meat and cheese may be as bad for you as smoking

  • In grasslands remade by humans, animals may protec...

  • How do you like them apples?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmRe_fK7pbw