Review: Rumors of Existence
From: newsletter Exotic Zoology, issue 3:2, 1996: review by Richard Ellis, author of No Turning Back: The Life and Death of Animal Species and The Search for the Giant Squid.
RUMORS OF EXISTENCE by Matthew A. Bille
Reviewed by Richard Ellis
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When Matt asked me to review his book for Exotic Zoology, he probably assumed that I would have a positive reaction -- he did, after all, devote an entire issue of the newsletter to a complimentary review of my Monsters of the Sea. He was right: I did have a positive reaction.
In any event, it's a lovely little book, jam-packed with fascinating material. Indeed, there is more than enough stuff in Rumors to keep cryptozoologists arguing well into the next century. I am grateful to report that very little of the book is devoted to the true creatures of cryptozoology; the sasquatch, snowmen, Loch Ness monster, sea serpents, etc., but rather, it concerns variations on themes that we all know well. Discussed in the book are "Recent Discoveries;" that is, those animals whose existence was unsuspected until one or more of them showed up. For me, whose area of study is the ocean, the quintessential "recent discoveries" are the megamouth shark and the coelacanth, but I was intrigued to read about previously unknown parrots, ants, frogs, and of course, the completely unsuspected Vu Quang oryx and muntjac of Vietnam.
Section II is entitled "Presumed Extinct," and concerns those creatures, like Steller's sea cow, the Tasmanian tiger, the ivory-billed woodpecker, and the Eskimo curlew, which are generally believed to be extinct, but are occasionally "sighted" in their previous or sometimes even a new habitat. (One creature that does not really belong in this section is Fraser's dolphin, which was never presumed extinct, but rather known only from a single specimen in the British Museum. Only during the intensely destructive tuna fishery of the 1970s, when millions of these and other species of dolphins were being killed in the Eastern tropical Pacific, did Fraser's dolphin get recognized as a valid -- and numerous-- species.)
Probably the most fun of all the sections is the third and last, "The Mystery Animals." Here we encounter -- as very few others have done in the wild, but often in literature -- Steller's sea monkey, the dolphin with two dorsal fins (a subject I have been debating with Matt Bille for some time; I think there is no such thing), a jaguar-spotted African lion, giant yellow bears, and something the author calls "Mr. Benchley's Monsters," which is a discussion of the giant shark in Jaws and the giant squids in Beast, which certainly exist, but not necessarily at the size that Benchley assigns to them. The inclusion of these oversize predators seems forced, since Benchley's books are supposed to be fiction, and he ought to be allowed to make his "monsters" any size he wants to.
Rumors of Existence is not only fun to read, it is a necessary adjunct to the cryptozoological literature. Bille has adopted just the right tone -- so often lacking in discussions of things cryptozoological -- where he is open-minded about the possibilities of new discoveries, or re-discoveries, but not dogmatic in his assertions that every undocumented sighting "proves" the existence of some mystery creature or heretofore extinct animal. To point up the exciting and ever-changing nature of this cryptozoology (or exotic zoology) business, as I was writing this review, I read an announcement that a completely new, unexpected two-pound squirrel-like mammal had been discovered in the forests of the Philippines. It was given the delightful name of "Panay cloudrunner," and unlike many of the more exotic new discoveries, which often appear only in the form of bones, skins or descriptions, three of these creatures are now on exhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo.
- Richard Ellis, New York