bat | Live Pterosaur

March 29, 2011November 19, 2011

How do Pterosaurs Survive the Cold?

I recently received an email from Joan Wilmington, a reader of the second edition of my book Live Pterosaurs in America:

Hi, Jonathan. I just finished reading Live Pterosaurs in America. Fascinating book. I had no idea so many sightings had occurred in the United States. . . . As I read the book, several questions came to mind. I’d love to get your insight on them:

1) How do pterosaurs deal with the cold? I noticed that several sightings were in areas that have very cold winters. Do you think they are warm-blooded by any chance? I know at this point, it would only be speculation, but I’m curious. How do they cope with the cold, without the insulating effects of fur or feathers?

2) Do you think they hibernate or migrate?

I include the second question, for it relates to the first: the challenge of cold winter weather in most of North America. But first we need to consider the rarity of sightings, in relation to common observations of most birds. I agree with Garth Guessman that pterosaurs in the 48 contiguous states are not rare to the point of being in danger of extinction. Hopeful as that idea might seem, we have struggled with the relative rarity of sighting reports, for that kind of rarity gives us limited data to analyze.

I doubt that any other cryptozoologist has a larger collection than I do, of reports of sightings of living pterosaurs in North America; many eyewitnesses have sent me emails, over the past eight years, reporting their sightings. If every report were highly detailed, including details about weather and date-of-sighting, I might come to some conclusion about how modern pterosaurs in North America deal with cold weather; but I do not have hundreds of detailed reports from this part of the world, so I can only apply general common sense: I speculate. But I do have a few details to guide speculation.

But let’s begin by considering well-known animals that must survive cold winters in North America.

How do Bats Survive the Cold?

The Big Brown Bat, Eptesicus fuscus, at about half a pound (see Wikipedia for details on this bat), survives quite well:

[These bats] hibernate during the winter months, often in different locations than their summer roosts. Winter roosts [are in] . . . caves and underground mines where temperatures remain stable; it is still unknown where a large majority of Big Brown Bats spend the winter. If the weather warms enough, they may awaken to seek water, and even breed. [Wikipedia]

I was struck by how little is known about where most Big Brown Bats spend the winter. If that common bat, with a Conservation Status at the extreme safe side (“Least Concern”), holds that kind of mystery, how easy it is for an elusive uncommon flying creature to keep hidden in winter (when most humans are usually indoors almost all the time, never trudging through any snow-covered wilderness to hunt dragons)! For that reason, I’m not holding my breath waiting for an eyewitness account of a hibernating pterosaur.

How do Reptiles Survive the Cold Winters of Canada?

Many birds escape the cold winters by migrating to warmer places, but, aside from marine turtles, reptiles can’t travel large distances. Instead, reptiles must either tolerate the cold or go underground or underwater to escape it.

. . . In places where winters are very cold . . . sites where reptiles can get deep enough underground to survive the winter may be rare. In these cases, hibernating sites may be shared by many animals, and animals may travel from far away to use the site. . . . communal hibernation.

Monarch Butterfly Migration

Four generations are involved in the migratory cycle of the Monarch Butterfly. According to monarch-butterfly.com, the fourth generation “is born in September and October and goes through exactly the same process as the first, second and third generations except for one part. . . . [It] does not die after two to six weeks. Instead, this generation of monarch butterflies migrates to warmer climates like Mexico and California . . . [living] for six to eight months until it is time to start the whole process over again.”

Pterosaur Survival in Winter

We could delve into where and how a mouse or bird or fish survives when the coldness arrives, but the point is this: Small mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and butterflies survive cold winters (or migrate), so large pterosaurs should have some way to do the same or something similar.

I was about to let the subject drop with that, but you readers who have gotten this far deserve to know something more. In a secret location, monitored by a few cryptozoologists occasionally for a few years, nocturnal flying creatures, apparent pterosaurs, fly in an area of North America where bats are found through at least most of the year. The larger creatures appear to fly in this area during colder weather, at least to some extent. I believe they hunt the bats, but I have not yet been invited to participate in the observations there, so I have still not yet personally encountered a modern living pterosaur. I still hope.

October 7, 2010December 8, 2011

Pterosaur Book About to be Published

The second edition of a nonfiction book on pterosaurs, Live Pterosaurs in America, is nearing completion, probably becoming available on Amazon in November, 2010. Several additions to this cryptozoology book make this revised edition more valuable.

Sighting in Cuba

Although the Guantanamo Bay military station in Cuba is not part of the United States, the 1971 sighting report of two long-tailed pterosaurs will be included in the book, for those two flying creatures were very similar to some of those reported by eyewitnesses in the United States, and Cuba is just to the south.

Although the marine, Eskin Kuhn, saw bats in caves, on other days, the two pterosaurs he saw in daylight, on one particular day, were not anything like any giant bat. They had long tails and head crests, an unusual combination according to fossil records of pterosaurs, but similar to many descriptions in reports of sightings worldwide.

Texas Pterosaur

For many years, eyewitnesses have reported live pterosaurs in Texas, and the new edition of Live Pterosaurs in America has new sighting reports from that state. Most extraordinary, one chapter, new to this edition of the book, is titled “Marfa Lights of Texas.” How do those strange dancing lights in southwest Texas relate to sightings of apparent pterosaurs? Consider these brief excerpts from the book.

Mr. Bunnell the scientist, has lived around Marfa, Texas, for much of his life. . . . (James Bunnell, apparently, knew nothing about ropens in New Guinea; he considered only Marfa Lights interpretations involving light-sources non-living. I communicated with him by emails, early in 2010.)

[His automatic camera] recorded time-exposed photographs of a light flying west . . . The light resembled rapid on-off states of chemical combustion: starting to burn, almost dying off, then starting up again, with occasional outbursts of greater intensity. Nothing in Bunnell’s description of this event contradicted what might be expected of a ropen-like flying creature periodically secreting something that causes extreme bioluminescence.

On May 7th and 8th, 2003, extraordinary events were photographed . . . I was intrigued at Bunnell’s description of how those two lights behaved, for it seemed consistent with my hypothesis that Marfa Lights are made by flying predators with extreme bioluminescence like the ropen of the Southwest Pacific but used for a different purpose: to attract insects that attract the Big Brown Bat.

Live Pterosaurs in America, third edition, nonfiction

The third edition of Live Pterosaurs in America was published early in November, 2011: updated and with a wonderful new sighting report from Cuba. Buy your own copy of this incredible nonfiction cryptozoology book.

May 11, 2010May 11, 2010

Boy sees pterosaur in Texas

I interviewed Aaron Tullock by email in January of this year. I delayed publishing his account until I had established a firm credibility base for this eyewitness, for part of his description of the apparent pterosaur differs from other accounts: The long-tailed flying creature was mostly colored orange and black.

Late in the afternoon of a day with “only a few clouds,” eight-year-old Aaron was looking around the yard of his grandparents’ home. Something flew over his head (coming from behind him, so he could not have seen it coming) and stopped by hovering eight feet above the ground.

The creature flew away before the boy’s mother entered the yard, and she discounted the encounter as a combination of a bird and a child’s imagination. His young age might seem to count against his credibility, but he reported many details that count against this coming from the imagination of an eight-year-old. A number of factors count against any hoax with this account. The long tail with a Rhamphorhynchoid-like shape at the end, together with absence of feathers—these count against any misidentification involving a bird or bat. What’s left except “Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur?”

I’ll give this more attention before I write the second edition of Live Pterosaurs in America. (The 2nd edition might not be published before early 2011.)

More: Giant Rhamphorhynchoid flies over Lake Pung, Papua New Guinea

April 19, 2010January 10, 2017

Scientific paper on living pterosaurs

Creation Research Society Quarterly - cover

The peer-reviewed Creation Research Society Quarterly (CRSQ), Volume 45, Number 3, contains the article “Reports of Living Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific,” by Jonathan D. Whitcomb.

Included was the eyewitness account of the Umboi Island native Gideon Koro, interviewed in 2004 by Whitcomb:

“In about 1994, at Lake Pung, Umboi, and in daylight, seven boys, aged about eleven to sixteen, saw what three of them (in 2004) told me was a ropen . . . Their testimonies were videotaped during an interview in the Awelkon Village area . . .

“According to Gideon Koro, who speaks some English, a few minutes after they had arrived at the lake, ‘it came down.’ . . . When I asked about the tail length, he pondered, seeming to recall and estimate; then he said, “seven meetuh.” [seven meters or about twenty-two feet]

“Gideon was sure that the creature was a ropen. . . . When I asked about feathers, he at first appeared to be puzzled; his answer and mannerisms then seemed to me to reveal that he was surprised that I should ask that question: ‘There’s no feathers’ . . . I then asked, ‘Was there just skin?’ The Kovai word ‘byung’ came up as did the English term ‘flying fox.’ Gideon agreed that the skin was like that of a fruit bat.”

More: Credibility of the Umboi Island Eyewitnesses

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From Chapter Two of “Live Pterosaurs in America” (nonfiction book on Amazon.com)

“The greatest danger facing innovators, rebels, and those who search for living pterosaurs—that’s a newspaper. National newspapers ignored the success of the Wright Brothers (their December, 1903, successful powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina). News reporters and editors, many of them, assumed that the controlled powered-flight of two bicycle mechanics was a lie, that it never happened. Even as late as 1908, many newspaper professionals thought the Wright Brothers ‘better liars than flyers.’ After all, a well-funded government-sponsored flying machine had crashed only a few days before the Wright Brothers were said to have first flown. But lack of news reporting and abundance of lie-insinuations can relate to both flying machines and flying pterosaurs.”