Waitoreke

Waitoreke
Grouping	Aquatic mammal
Folklore	Cryptid
Other name(s)	Kaurehe, Māori otter, New Zealand otter, South Island otter, waitoreki, waitorete
Country	New Zealand
Region	South Island

Last updated September 28, 2024

Waitoreke, also commonly referred to as the South Island otter, is an otter/beaver-like creature in New Zealand folklore. In its rare inferred sightings it is usually described as a small otter-like animal that lives in the South Island of New Zealand. There are many theories on the waitoreke's true identity, such as it being an otter, beaver or pinniped. New Zealand's only recognised endemic land mammals are bats—New Zealand lesser short-tailed bat and New Zealand long-tailed bat. Land mammals introduced to New Zealand by the seafaring Polynesian ancestors of Maori, apparent to the early European visitors and settlers, were kurī (dog) and kiore (rat).

Etymology

The origin of the name "waitoreke" is not well documented; the Rev. Richard Taylor noted its use in the 1840s as "Waitoreke, otter. (Uncertain, perhaps the seal)".^[1] It does not occur in Tregear's fairly comprehensive Māori dictionary of 1891,^[2] and was said to be "ungrammatical" by leading Māori anthropologist Sir Peter Buck.^[3]

Since European settlement (late 18th century onwards) the animal has also been referred to as the "New Zealand otter", "Māori otter", "New Zealand beaver", "New Zealand muskrat" and "New Zealand platypus" based on various accounts and theories.^{[ citation needed ]}

Description

The waitoreke is usually described as a small otter-like creature sometimes as big as a cat.^[4] It is described as having brownish fur and short legs.^{[ citation needed ]} The sightings usually place the creature near or in the water on the South Island of New Zealand. Its fur is described as being short like that of an otter.^{[ citation needed ]}

Very little physical evidence proving the existence of the waitoreke exists. Julius von Haast is reported to have obtained a waitoreke pelt in 1868. The fur was brown, with white spots, and the toes lacked webbing. This is inconclusive evidence; the pelt seems to have resembled a quoll's. The common brushtail possum was successfully introduced in 1858 and is now a widespread pest, whereas the introduction of the common ringtail possum ultimately failed. Both animals are unspotted. It is possible there was an attempt to introduce quolls at the same time as the attempts with possums, as quolls were often considered a type of possum at the time; but these attempted founding populations died off soon after.

Sightings

Evidence for the existence of the waitoreke is mainly based on sporadic accounts of an "unidentified amphibious animal" in the South Island spanning well over 200 years. Areas vicinity to Otautau had more records.^[5] Some of the more infamous accounts are dubious and/or incongruous - but a significant number of descriptions (particularly from the late 19th century onwards) share a striking similarity to each other and to species known to exist outside New Zealand.^{[ citation needed ]} The Māori people said that in old times they used to keep waitoreke as pets.^[6]

Some of the most notable early (claimed) accounts come from pre-20th-century explorers and naturalists:

Captain James Cook—Dusky Sound—1772. "For three or four days after we arrived in Pickersgill harbour, and as we were clearing the woods to set up our tents, &c. a four-footed animal was seen by three or four of our people; but as no two gave the same description of it, I cannot say of what kind it is. All, however, agreed, that it was about the size of a cat, with short legs, and of a mouse colour. One of the seamen, and he who had the best view of it, said it had a bushy tail, and was the most like a jackall of any animal he knew. The most probable conjecture is, that it is of a new species. Be this as it may, we are now certain that this country is not so destitute of quadrupeds as was once thought."^[7]^[8]^[9]
Georg Forster, one of the biologists on board, doubted the observation of a quadruped in his report, A Voyage Round the World : "We were surprised to see the young black dog in the boat with them, which ran away from us [...]. Though this animal had been in the woods during a fortnight, yet it was by no means famished, but on the contrary looked well fed [...] We may from hence conclude, that as there is abundance of food for carnivorous animals in New Zealand, they would probably be very numerous if they existed there at all, especially if they were endowed with any degree of sagacity, like the fox, or cat tribes. In that case they could not have escaped the notice of our numerous parties, nor of the natives, and the latter would certainly have preserved their furs, as a valuable article of dress in their moist and raw climate, for want of which they now wear the skins of dogs and of birds. The question, whether New Zealand contained any wild quadrupeds, had engaged our attention from our first arrival there. One of our people, strongly persuaded that so great a country could not fail of possessing new and unknown animals, had already twice reported that he had seen a brown animal, something less than a jackal or little fox, about the dawn of morning, sitting on a stump of a tree near our tents, and running off at his approach. But as this circumstance has never been confirmed by any subsequent testimony, nothing is more probable than that the want of day-light had deceived him, and that he had either observed one of the numerous wood-hens, which are brown, and creep through the bushes very frequently; or that one of our cats, on the watch for little birds, had been mistaken for a new quadruped.^[10]
In 1864, Captain Frederick Hutton, speculated that the animal seen at Dusky Bay was probably a dog, "as none on board had at that time seen a dog in New Zealand. The evidence of a kind of otter inhabiting the South Island rests upon some foot-prints seen by Dr. Haast".^[11]
Walter Mantell—various—1840s. Recorded in an interview with Tarawhatta, principal chief at Umukaha/Temuka: "He informed me that the length of the animal is about two feet from the point of the nose to the root of the tail; the fur grisly brown—thick short legs—bushy tail—head between that of a dog and a cat—lives in holes—the food of the land kind is lizards, of the amphibious kind, fish—does not lay eggs. Thinking of Marsupials, from our neighbour-land New Holland, I made especial enquiry as to an abdominal pouch. The reply was in the negative; and altogether the account pointed to an animal resembling the Otter or Badger, rather than to the Beaver, which some persons have thought it might prove to be."^[12]
The Rev. Richard Taylor—various—first half of the 19th century and perhaps earlier. Taylor noted in Te Ika a Maui: "A man named Seymour, of Otaki, stated that he had repeatedly seen an animal in the Middle Island, near Dusky Bay, on the south-west coast, which he called a musk-rat, from the strong smell it emitted. He said, its tail was thick, and resembled the ripe pirori, the fruit of the kiekie, which is not unlike in appearance the tail of a beaver. This account was corroborated by Tamihana te Rauparaha, who spoke of it as being more than double the size of the Norway rat, and as having a large flat tail. A man named Tom Crib, who had been engaged in whaling and sealing in the neighbourhood of Dusky Bay for more than twenty-five years, said he had not himself seen the beaver, but had several times met with their habitations, and had been surprised by seeing little streams dammed up, and houses like bee-hives erected on one side, having two entrances, one from above and the other below the dam. One of the Camerons, who lived at Kaiwarawara, when the settlers first came to Wellington, stated that he saw one of these large rats and pursued it, but it took to the water, and dived out of sight."^[13]^{: 394–395} Also, a man named Hawkins, who lived in the green stone lake part of the island for many years, "caught one of the night emus, which is said to have stood near a yard high. He also met with what he called a kind of a fresh-water otter: as he found their skins were not equal to those of the seal, he did not trouble himself any more about them. This appears to have been the beaver already alluded to."^[13]^: 409
Julius von Haast—various—19th century. As quoted in Alfred Brehm, Brehms Tierleben , chapter Monotremes : "Another interesting creatures among the most primitive mammals are the only indigenous New Zealand mammal, waitoteke (sic), an otter-like animal which has been seen several times, once from such a short distance that it was hit with a whip, but then it disappeared in the water with a very brittle sound. Jul. v. Haast saw its tracks in the snow. Yet no-one was able to catch the animal so far. It is thought that this mammal is more primitive than Monotremes and will put some new light upon the ascent of the class which ends with the Man." As quoted in Ferdinand von Hochstetter's New Zealand: "My friend Haast wrote me about vaitoteke (sic) on June 6, 1861: '3500 feet above the sea level I found, on the upper part of Ashburton river (South Island, Canterbury province), in a part of the country which no man has ever visited before me, its tracks. These are similar to those of an otter, only a bit smaller. However, the animal itself was observed by two gentlemen who own a sheep farm near Ashburton 2100 feet above sea level. They described the animal as being dark brown, the size of a big rabbit. When hit with a whip, it made a whistle-like sound and disappeared in the water.'"

Later accounts come from a variety of settlers, farmers, trampers, hunters, tourists and scientists throughout the 20th century, for example, Philip Houghton in the vicinity of Martins Bay: "I saw it only for three or four seconds, but this is time enough to get a solid glimpse of something. I saw a furred animal of medium brown colouring – lighter rather than darker – about the size of a hare, but of totally different movement and bodily proportions. The body was solid and the small head seemed to merge into it so that the neck was not clearly defined. The hindpart of the body was larger than its forepart, and the legs were really rather small in proportion to the body. The tail was long, tapering gradually from the body."^[14] There they were said to exist in inland lakes and rivers.^[15] Many of these sightings were assessed in papers on the subject of the waitoreke by G. A. Pollock in 1970 and 1974,^[16]^[17] which led to a search of the area around lakes Waihola and Waipori in Otago during the 1980s.

Related Research Articles

$<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marsupial</span> Infraclass of mammals in the clade Metatheria$

Marsupials are a diverse group of mammals belonging to the infraclass Marsupialia. They are natively found in Australasia, Wallacea, and the Americas. One of the defining features of marsupials is their unique reproductive strategy, where the young are born in a relatively undeveloped state and then nurtured within a pouch on their mother's abdomen.

Haast's eagle is an extinct species of eagle that lived in the South Island of New Zealand, commonly accepted to be the pouākai of Māori mythology. It is the largest eagle known to have existed, with an estimated weight of 10–18 kilograms, compared to the next-largest and extant harpy eagle, at up to 9 kg (20 lb). Its massive size is explained as an evolutionary response to the size of its prey—the flightless moa—the largest of which could weigh 200 kg (440 lb). Haast's eagle became extinct around 1445, following the arrival of the Māori, who hunted moa to extinction, introduced the Polynesian rat, and destroyed large tracts of forest by fire.

The common brushtail possum is a nocturnal, semiarboreal marsupial of the family Phalangeridae, native to Australia and invasive in New Zealand, and the second-largest of the possums.

Gray's beaked whale, sometimes known as Haast's beaked whale, the scamperdown whale, or the southern beaked whale, is one of the better-known members of the genus Mesoplodon. This species is fairly gregarious and strands relatively frequently for a beaked whale. In the Māori language, this species is called hakurā or iheihe.

Fiordland National Park is a national park in the south-west corner of South Island of New Zealand. It is the largest of the 13 national parks in New Zealand, with an area covering 12,607 km² (4,868 sq mi), and a major part of the Te Wāhipounamu a UNESCO World Heritage Site established in 1990. The park is administered by the Department of Conservation. The southern ranges of the Southern Alps cover most of Fiordland National Park, combined with the deep glacier-carved valleys.

The tiger quoll, also known as the spotted-tailed quoll, spotted quoll, spotted-tailed dasyure, or tiger cat, is a carnivorous marsupial of the quoll genus Dasyurus native to Australia. With males and females weighing around 3.5 and 1.8 kg, respectively, it is the world's second-largest extant carnivorous marsupial, behind the Tasmanian devil. Two subspecies are recognised; the nominate is found in wet forests of southeastern Australia and Tasmania, and a northern subspecies, D. m. gracilis, is found in a small area of northern Queensland and is endangered.

Quolls are carnivorous marsupials native to Australia and New Guinea. They are primarily nocturnal and spend most of the day in a den. Of the six species of quoll, four are found in Australia and two in New Guinea. Another two species are known from fossil remains in Pliocene and Pleistocene deposits in Queensland. Genetic evidence indicates that quolls evolved around 15 million years ago in the Miocene, and that the ancestors of the six species had all diverged by around four million years ago. The six species vary in weight and size, from 300 g (11 oz) to 7 kg (15 lb). They have brown or black fur and pink noses. They are largely solitary, but come together for a few social interactions such as mating which occurs during the winter season. A female gives birth to up to 30 pups, but the number that can be raised to adulthood is limited by the number of teats (6–7). They have a life span of 1–5 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Southern brown kiwi</span> New Zealand endemic bird species

The southern brown kiwi, tokoeka, or common kiwi is a species of kiwi from South Island, New Zealand. Until 2000 it was considered conspecific with the North Island brown kiwi, and still is by some authorities.

Mammalia is a class of animal within the phylum Chordata. Mammal classification has been through several iterations since Carl Linnaeus initially defined the class. No classification system is universally accepted; McKenna & Bell (1997) and Wilson & Reader (2005) provide useful recent compendiums. Many earlier ideas from Linnaeus et al. have been completely abandoned by modern taxonomists, among these are the idea that bats are related to birds or that humans represent a group outside of other living things. Competing ideas about the relationships of mammal orders do persist and are currently in development. Most significantly in recent years, cladistic thinking has led to an effort to ensure that all taxonomic designations represent monophyletic groups. The field has also seen a recent surge in interest and modification due to the results of molecular phylogenetics.

The Tasmanian pygmy possum, also known as the little pygmy possum or tiny pygmy possum, is the world's smallest possum. It was first described by Oldfield Thomas in 1888, after he identified that a museum specimen labelled as an eastern pygmy possum in fact represented a species then unknown to science. The holotype resides in the Natural History Museum in London.

Aquatic mammals and semiaquatic mammals are a diverse group of mammals that dwell partly or entirely in bodies of water. They include the various marine mammals who dwell in oceans, as well as various freshwater species, such as the European otter. They are not a taxon and are not unified by any distinct biological grouping, but rather their dependence on and integral relation to aquatic ecosystems. The level of dependence on aquatic life varies greatly among species. Among freshwater taxa, the Amazonian manatee and river dolphins are completely aquatic and fully dependent on aquatic ecosystems. Semiaquatic freshwater taxa include the Baikal seal, which feeds underwater but rests, molts, and breeds on land; and the capybara and hippopotamus which are able to venture in and out of water in search of food.

The eastern pygmy possum is a diprotodont marsupial of south-eastern Australia. Occurring from southern Queensland to eastern South Australia and also Tasmania, it is found in a range of habitats, including rainforest, sclerophyll forest, woodland and heath.

The Māori people have had a strong and changing conservation ethic since their discovery and settlement of New Zealand. This is closely tied to their spiritual beliefs.

Ripogonum scandens is a common rainforest vine endemic to New Zealand. The species was described by Johann Reinhold Forster, and Georg Forster in 1776. It has a conservation status of Not Threatened.

References

↑ Taylor, Richard (1848). A Leaf from the Natural History of New Zealand. Wellington: Robert Stokes. p. 4 – via NZETC.
↑ Tregear, Edward Robert (1891). Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary. Wellington: Lyon and Blair – via NZETC.
↑ Pollock, G. A. (1970). "The South Island Otter—A Reassessment" (PDF). Proceedings of the New Zealand Ecological Society. 17. New Zealand Ecological Society: 134.
↑ McLintock, Alexander Hare; Bagnall, Austin Graham (1966). "Animals, Mythical". An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock. Ministry for Culture and Heritage / Te Manatū Taonga. Retrieved 23 July 2021.
↑ Esler, Lloyd (30 November 2017). "Whale species discovery at Mason Bay, 1933". The Southland Times . Retrieved 2 December 2017.
↑ Mareš, Jaroslav (1997). Svět tajemných zvířat (The World of Cryptids). Prague: Litera Bohemica. pp. 151–152. ISBN 80-85916-16-9.
↑ Cook, James. A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World. Vol. 1.
↑ "An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand". 1966.
↑ Gordon, C. H. (1 June 1940). "The Chequered History of Dusky Bay I". The New Zealand Railways Magazine. Vol. 15, no. 3.
↑ Forster, George (1777). A Voyage Round the World, in His Britannic Majesty's Sloop, Resolution, Commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the Years 1972, 3, 4, and 5. Vol. 1. London: B. White. p. 602.
↑ Hutton, Frederick Wollaston (1872). "Art. XXVI.—On the Geographical Relations of the New Zealand Fauna". Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand. 5: 227–228 – via Papers Past.
↑ Mantell, Gideon Algernon (1851). Petrifactions and Their Teachings. London: Henry G. Bohn. p. 106.
1 2 Taylor, Richard (1855). Te Ika a Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants. London: Wertheim and Macintosh.
↑ Houghton, Philip (1974), Hidden Water, Auckland, London, Sydney: Hodder and Stoughton, pp. 142–146
↑ Whitworth, Robert Percy (1870). Martin's Bay Settlement, West Coast of Otago: Narrative of a Voyage from Dunedin to Martin's Bay, and of a Return Journey Overland. Dunedin: Otago Daily Times. p. 59.
↑ Pollock, G. A. (1970). "The South Island Otter—A Reassessment" (PDF). Proceedings of the New Zealand Ecological Society. 17. New Zealand Ecological Society: 129–135.
↑ Pollock, G. A. (1974). "The South Island Otter—An Addendum" (PDF). Proceedings of the New Zealand Ecological Society. 21: 57–61. Retrieved 4 July 2019.