Montauk Monster Update

A story posted yesterday on FoxNews.com claims the Montauk monster mystery has gotten even more mysterious. Well, not if you actually read the story and have even a tenuous grasp on reality. In the first five paragraphs, the article quotes two animal experts claiming it is a dead raccoon.

The first expert is none other than Animal Planet host Jeff Corwin. Now, I was always more fond of the late Steve Irwin, but I did always appreciate Corwin's sense of humor and passion for wildlife conservation. Anyway, Corwin explains in an interview with Bill Hemmer and Megyn Kelly (the video of which can be found here) what he has deduced the animal to be:

"'What you think is a beak is actually the canine teeth,' Corwin said. 'What we have is an incredibly rare' — dramatic pause — 'raccoon.'"

The article also claims New York Magazine contacted the East Hampton Department of Environmental Analysis. A representative from the Department stated rather flatly that the animal was a raccoon.

The rest of the article offers no new information, only testimony on the carcass's apparently unknown whereabouts. However, the East Hampton Department of Environmental Analysis did claim that animal control, which falls under their jurisdiction, did not remove the body from the beach. All we know is that the body is no longer on the beach. It's most likely in the possession of some quick-thinking entrepreneur who plans to sell it on eBay to the highest-bidding cryptozoology fan.

So it turns out I was wrong in surmising the animal was a small breed of dog. I did manage to come closer than most people who claim the animal had a beak. Speaking of beaks, anyone reading this should really watch Corwin's interview on Fox News. I wouldn't want to ruin it for anyone, but Corwin does a great job of examining the animal from the most famous picture of it and comes to reasonable, logical conclusions. The female anchor, however, stubbornly hangs onto misinformation, not listening at all to the animal expert. Watch it all the way through to see Fox News ignorance defined.

Rotting Animal Corpse Causes Internet Sensation

I must admit, I was avoiding this story just because there was so little credible information in the first day or two it was making its rounds on the interwebs. However, an article released today sheds some much-needed light on the mystery of the "Montauk Monster."

The article from Newsday.com provides perhaps the most insight into this story. Jenna Hewitt of Montauk, New York, a city at the eastern tip of Long Island, and three of her friends found the carcass while visiting the beach. Hewitt snapped the most circulated picture of the creature, the one that makes it appear to have a beak:



What most stories, like the one by MSNBC describing it as having a "dinosaur beak," don't tell you is that Hewitt's group of friends was the second to discover the creature. Christina Pampalone, part of the first group of beach-goers from the New York area, took her own pictures of the creature, which make it seem much less mysterious:From Pampalone's photo, the "beak" is clearly the front part of the skull which has simply rotted away. This photo also makes the proportions of the animal much more clear. Gone are the disproportionately small head and pointed ears. The animal was apparently between two and three feet in length.

The Newsday article reports Pampalone's friend, Ryan O'Shea, said everyone to whom he showed Pampalone's pictures said it looked like a dead dog. O'Shea had something else to say on the matter:

"'But looking at the claws, and at the teeth in the front, it looked like it could be something else, something vicious," O'Shea said"

Granted, the exposed skull and bottom teeth do give the carcass a slightly sinister look, but that is what most dogs look like underneath. With my severely limited experience with dogs (I watch dog shows), it looks to me like a French Bulldog or Pug skull. The short ears on the carcass are also indicative of both breeds.

The last handful of paragraphs in the Newsday article list claims of others seeing the animal in various parts of eastern New York state. One eyewitness even claims to have seen the beast alive:

"Ryan Kelso, via iPhone, said he spotted it -- alive! -- in the Montauk dunes. 'It looked about the size of an average fox, gray in color, eyes like a mole, hairless and was breathing quite heavily,' he wrote, 'needless to say we were freaked out by this discovery and fled the area quickly.'"

However, these eyewitnesses offer no tangible evidence to support their claims, just first-hand testimony. It's not a long stretch of the imagination to think that some of these "eyewitnesses" might be embellishing their respective stories a bit due to the media attention this find has received. Either way, I doubt the "Montauk monster," which Pampalone reported had been moved from the backyard of her friend's house to a new location, has been the subject of its last news story.