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Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 |
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Is caddy a mammal?
"Caddy" is short for Cadborosaurus, the speculative sea animal seen rather frequently off the British Columbia coast and as far south as Oregon. Professor P. LeBlond, University of British Columbia, recently presented a paper on Caddy at a joint meeting of the Canadian and American Societies of Zoology. Of all the supposed sea serpents, Caddy seems closest to respectability. Not only are there many sightings on record, but the remains of a 3-meterlong carcass of an apparent juvenile specimen of Caddy was discovered in the stomach of a sperm whale. Adult Caddys are about 7 meters long."The descriptions [of Caddy] are generally similar. They suggest a long-necked beast with short pointed front flippers, a horse-like head, distinct eyes, a visible mouth and either ears or giraffe-like horns. Often Caddy is described as having hair like a seal, and sometimes a mane along its neck."
Most interesting is Caddy's body hair, which implies a mammal rather than a reptile. But if it is a mammal, how does it get air, since it surfaces so rarely? Some have suggested that the giraffe-like horns are snorkels! But E. Bousfield, a colleague of LeBlond, thinks that the tubercules reported along the animal's back might be gill-like tissues that would allow a mammal to extract oxygen from seawater! With so little hard evidence, speculation can get pretty wild.
(Park, Penny; "Beast from the Deep Puzzles Zoologists," New Scientist, p. 16, January 23, 1993.)
Reference. A variety of putative mammals that might qualify as "sea monsters" are cataloged in Chapter BMU in our book: Biological Anomalies: Mammals II. For details, visit: here.