Manbeasts of New Zealand!

Not, as it happens, a reference to rugby league.
This week’s Salient (local university rag, surprisingly good this year) has a feature interview with Tony Lucas of NZ Cryptoologist talking about the mysterious critters of the NZ depths.
There’s a great page on the Maero or Moehau, NZ’s answer to bigfoot. The Moehau were describes by the Maori as being “Terrible creatures, half man, half animal”, with a very aggressive temperament, they were only too happy to massacre and eat anyone that strayed into their domain.”
I love this stuff. Why have no bodies of these beasts ever been found? I think that is readily explained by the fact that these ‘Manimals’ may have a conception of death and bury their deceased.
Also on the site is a slightly more fact-based account of the elusive NZ moose, largely accepted to be living in the inaccessible depths of Fiordland but never seen by human eyes. As far as I’m concerned, that’s another reason why this is a damn cool country: we have secret mooses, and we can prove it with science!

5 thoughts on “Manbeasts of New Zealand!”

  1. I’m quite into cryptozoology as well. There’s the occasional success – coelacanth, etc – so it’s not totally implausible that some of this stuff is out there. Plus, we really don’t know as much as we think we do about the remote bits of our planet, so there’s additional plausibility there. So it’s a fun variant on ghost stories – odd things that could well be true. OK, some are insanely implausible, but then again…
    I never particularly believed in the Fen Tiger, for instance; but, y’know, when you’ve taken a wrong turning on your bike, you’re in the middle of a wood somewhere in East Anglia, it’s getting dark, and something starts rustling in the trees next to you, your head says “Cat!” but your guts say “Sod this – ramming speed!” and you blat like hell out of there.

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