The Beast of Dean is animal from English folklore said to live, or to have once lived, in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, England. [1] Despite several attempts to encounter, capture, or kill the beast in the early 19th century, no scientific evidence has been found to support the existence of the Beast of Dean or any similar creature in the Forest of Dean. [1] The Beast is also occasionally mentioned literature related to cryptozoology. [1]
Folktales alleging the beast existed in the forest appear to have their origins in the 18th or early 19th century. Farmers from the village of Parkend undertook an expedition to capture and kill the creature in 1802 but did not find anything resembling the creature. The animal they were hunting was reported to be a boar large enough to fell trees and hedges. Large numbers of boars in the forest are reported from other 19th century accounts, and "vast droves" of them were apparently allowed into the forest in autumn to forage around this time. [2] Wild boar can still be found in the Forest of Dean to this day, [3] but many 20th and early 21st Century references to the creature are made by "cryptozoologists", who presume the beast to be (or have been) a real animal that was unknown (or new) to science. [1] In 2007, the science-fiction television series Primeval , re-imagined the Beast of Dean as a living gorgonopsid that arrived in the present day through a wormhole leading to the Permian Period. [4]
Bigfoot, also commonly referred to as Sasquatch, is a large, hairy mythical creature said to inhabit forests in North America, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. Bigfoot is featured in both American and Canadian folklore, and since the mid-20th century has grown into a cultural icon, permeating popular culture and becoming the subject of its own distinct subculture.
In several Bantu mythologies, mokele-mbembe is a mythical water-dwelling entity that is believed to exist in the Congo River Basin. Variously described as a living creature, a spirit, or an extinct lineage known as sauropods.
Gloucestershire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Herefordshire to the north-west, Worcestershire to the north, Warwickshire to the north-east, Oxfordshire to the east, Wiltshire to the south, Bristol and Somerset to the south-west, and the Welsh county of Monmouthshire to the west. The city of Gloucester is the largest settlement and the county town.
The wild boar, also known as the wild swine, common wild pig, Eurasian wild pig, or simply wild pig, is a suid native to much of Eurasia and North Africa, and has been introduced to the Americas and Oceania. The species is now one of the widest-ranging mammals in the world, as well as the most widespread suiform. It has been assessed as least concern on the IUCN Red List due to its wide range, high numbers, and adaptability to a diversity of habitats. It has become an invasive species in part of its introduced range. Wild boars probably originated in Southeast Asia during the Early Pleistocene and outcompeted other suid species as they spread throughout the Old World.
Phantom cats, also known as alien big cats (ABCs), are large felids which allegedly appear in regions outside their indigenous range. Sightings, tracks, and predation have been reported in a number of countries including Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, India, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. When confirmed, they are typically explained as exotic pets or escapees from private zoos.
The pygmy hippopotamus or pygmy hippo is a small hippopotamid which is native to the forests and swamps of West Africa, primarily in Liberia, with small populations in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Ivory Coast. It has been extirpated from Nigeria.
In Norse mythology, Sæhrímnir is the creature killed and eaten every night by the Æsir and einherjar. The cook of the gods, Andhrímnir, is responsible for the slaughter of Sæhrímnir and its preparation in the cauldron Eldhrímnir. After Sæhrímnir is eaten, the beast is brought back to life again to provide sustenance for the following day. Sæhrímnir is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional material, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson.
The Forest of Dean is a geographical, historical and cultural region in the western part of the county of Gloucestershire, England. It forms a roughly triangular plateau bounded by the River Wye to the west and northwest, Herefordshire to the north, the River Severn to the south, and the City of Gloucester to the east.
A royal forest, occasionally known as a kingswood, is an area of land with different definitions in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The term forest in the ordinary modern understanding refers to an area of wooded land; however, the original medieval sense was closer to the modern idea of a "preserve" – i.e. land legally set aside for specific purposes such as royal hunting – with less emphasis on its composition. There are also differing and contextual interpretations in Continental Europe derived from the Carolingian and Merovingian legal systems.
A feral pig is a domestic pig which has gone feral, meaning it lives in the wild. The term feral pig has also been applied to wild boars, which can interbreed with domestic pigs. They are found mostly in the Americas and Australia. Razorback and wild hog are sometimes used in the United States refer to feral pigs or boar–pig hybrids.
The Beast of Gévaudan is the historic name associated with a man-eating animal or animals that terrorized the former province of Gévaudan, in the Margeride Mountains of south-central France between 1764 and 1767.
Royal hunting, also royal art of hunting, was a hunting practice of the aristocracy throughout the known world in the Middle Ages, from Europe to Far East. While humans hunted wild animals since time immemorial, and all classes engaged in hunting as an important source of food and at times the principal source of nutrition, the necessity of hunting was transformed into a stylized pastime of the aristocracy. In Europe in the High Middle Ages the practice was widespread.
The Kellas cat is a large black cat found in Scotland. It is an interspecific hybrid between the Scottish wildcat and the domestic cat. Once thought to be a mythological wild cat, with its few sightings dismissed as hoaxes, a specimen was killed in a snare by a gamekeeper in 1984 and found to be a hybrid between the Scottish wildcat and domestic cat. It is not a formal cat breed, but a population of felid hybrids. It is named after the village of Kellas, Moray, where it was first found.
In British folklore and urban legend, British big cats refers to the subject of reported sightings of non-native, wild big cats in the United Kingdom. Many of these creatures have been described as "panthers", "pumas" or "black cats".
A zoo is a facility in which animals are kept within enclosures for public exhibition and often bred for conservation purposes.
Wolf attacks are injuries to humans or their property by gray wolves. Their frequency varies with geographical location and historical period, but overall wolf attacks are rare. Wolves today tend to live mostly far from people or have developed the tendency and ability to avoid them. Experts categorize wolf attacks into various types, including rabies-infected, predatory, agonistic, and defensive.
Boar hunting is the practice of hunting wild boar, feral pigs, warthogs, and peccaries. Boar hunting was historically a dangerous exercise due to the tusked animal's ambush tactics as well as its thick hide and dense bones rendering them difficult to kill with premodern weapons.
The Beast of Bladenboro refers to a creature responsible for a string of deaths amongst Bladenboro, North Carolina animals in the winter of 1953–54. According to witnesses and trackers, it was likely a wildcat species, but its identity was ultimately not definitively confirmed. According to reports, the animal commonly crushed or decapitated its victims, which were mostly dogs.
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