Monster Birds of the Americas: Part Two

There are myths and legends that tell of human beings abducted as a food source by flying beasties. Confining ourselves to the Americas, especially the indigenous natives of North America, the question is, is there anything verified by science that’s birdlike or that flies that could snack on a fully grown human? If not, something’s screwy somewhere and other explanations are required.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Real Monster ‘Birds’ of the Americas

Pterosaurs and Pterodactyls: These beasties weren’t really birds-of-a-feather, rather just winged and flying (or gliding) reptiles that belonged way back in fact to ‘The Age of Reptiles’ – the Mesozoic Era. The largest of these discovered (to date) was Quetzalcoatlus, named obviously after that Mesoamerican feathered serpent deity. Quetza-baby had a 36 to 40 foot wingspan, and just might have been able to snack on a human. However, pterosaurs and pterodactyls all went kaput by the end of the Mesozoic – Q-baby made it in fact through to the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 millions of years ago. Alas, that was at least 64 million years before anything resembling humans walked the planet as a food source. While Native Americans were probably aware of the fossils of these flying reptiles, they had nothing to fear from them in terms of being snack-food. 

Terror Birds: Well, these terrors really existed in the Americas and for a while were thought to be contemporary with the earliest humans in the Americas. Though they survived and thrived in mainly South America, some made it across the Isthmus of Panama land bridge into Central and North America about 3 million years ago. The most recent of them is now thought to have gone extinct about 1.8 million years ago, well before humans arrived on the scene.

But even assuming humans and terror birds were contemporary, why the terror? Well, these crows-on-steroids were up to ten feet tall and could gallop after you at velocities up to some 37 miles per hour. Relatives of these monsters with equally large beaks and talons have been found in Texas and Florida, and presumable bridged the geographical gap in-between. So, should the natives have been afraid; very afraid? Well, in this case the top apex predators probably succumbed to being ultimately human prey since the terror birds, along with the rest of the North, Central and South American mega-fauna went extinct in pretty quick-smart fashion after humans appeared on the scene. Now humans, if contemporary, probably didn’t engage in hand-to-wing combat with these ungodly raptors, but rather found their eggs as a handy-dandy breakfast food supplement to their gatherer nuts-and-berries fare. Alas, no baby terror birds hatchlings; ultimately no terror birds. In any event, terror birds were flightless, like the emus, cassowaries, the ostrich and kiwis, not to mention their extinct cousins the moa and dodos. Thus, terror birds don’t fit our description of birds that fly and pluck humans off the ground and feel us to their young.

Giant Condors & Related:  The Andean condor at 11 to 15 kg (24 – 33 pounds) is currently the Guinness Book of Records holder for being the America’s largest flying feathered member of the avian clan, at least with respect to a roughly 10 to 12 foot wingspan. The California condor at 7 to 14 kg (15 to 31 pounds) comes a very close second with wingspans around ten feet. Then too there was the Pleistocene [Ice Age] teratorns weighing in at 15 kg to 23 kg (33 to 50 pounds), huge raptors resembling eagles with wingspans 12 to 17 feet across.

Overall the wandering albatross is on a par with the Andean condor for title of ‘king of the wingspan’ (up to 11 feet for the great albatrosses), but it isn’t a common sight in North America – then or now. There are several North Pacific varieties which reach the western coast of North America, but because these are sea birds, feeding on seafood although scavenging carrion when on land (remote islands) for breeding purposes. The odds that Native American Indians would have noted the albatross as a regular part of their environment wouldn’t have been common for other than those living right on the Pacific Ocean.

Now the sixty-four cent question is, can any one or more of the above account for eyewitness accounts of monster birds abducting their comrades in arms? Well any sane person would eliminate dragons and Thunderbirds – they are mythological and therefore don’t exist. One cannot witness non-existence. Pterosaurs and pterodactyls were extinct long before humans were thought up in anyone’s philosophy. Terror birds couldn’t fly and probably weren’t actually contemporary with humans in any event. Condors, while big, aren’t big enough. I mean an average human should be large enough to punch a condor’s lights right out, and certainly humans are too large to be carried across the condor’s threshold.

Condors (Andean or Californian) are actually vultures and thus scavengers, feeding primarily on carrion, even though preferring large carcases like those of cattle. It has to feed while on the ground, and often stuffs itself silly when it does come across a suitable meal that it can’t, for a while, lift itself off the ground. This is hardly a bird likely to be the source of American Indian human-abducting mythology, although the bird certainly features in Native American mythology. However, as the condor is an endangered species, the bird had and has way more reason to fear the natives than the other way around.

The extinct teratorns however were contemporary with humans (Amerindians), but while large enough to cause more than sufficient trouble for a human infant, there’s evidence to suggest that overall, the humans were probably more the hunters than the hunted when crunch came crunch.

However, even at a weight of fifty pounds and a wingspan of 17 feet, could a teratorn have actually picked up and carried away an adult human, with a weight say at least twice or thrice that of the raptor? Fossil evidence suggests that small mammals, even fish, and carrion were its usual means of sustenance. Since the Native Americans say it’s so – at least according to their mythology – you have to ask yourself whether or not a 50 pound bird, who could obviously carry its own weight and probably a bit more through the air, could actually fly with a 100 to 150 pound payload? That’s 150 to 200 pounds all up the bird is carrying. Now that’s a pretty big ask.

Has anyone seen an owl or an eagle or other flying raptor carry off prey two to three times its own weight?  Now it might be one thing for a very large bird to pick you up (especially if you’re dead and not struggling) and carry you off while in contact with the ground, like the terror birds, at least for a short way since after all you’re still very heavy compared to the bird. But it’s quite other kettle of fish for a bird to pick you up and actually fly away with you without any leg and ground support at all. Flying (flapping wings) is very energy intensive at the best of times (we’ve all seen birds in gliding mode in order to conserve energy), far less trying to lift up and flap wings with twice or thrice its normal body weight to struggle with.

Now we’ve all seen wildlife documentaries showing a large carnivorous bird swooping low over the water and then grabbing an unsuspecting fish out of the water with its talons. Now that fish may even be as large and heavy as the bird itself, but the prey can’t be that much larger and certainly not twice as large and heavy as the predator. The bird, so close to the water, can not afford to be dragged down by extra unmanageable weight into the water – then it’s bye-bye birdie. 

Moving back to the land, raptor birds can and do attack prey much larger than themselves. The bones of these large prey animals have been found in the raptor’s nests or lairs. An eagle might attack a deer or fawn. The deer can’t really defend itself very well out in the open. But that’s not to say that the eagle can actually carry off the deer carcass whole, rather it’s going to tear out chunks at a time and carry them take-away style back to the nest. If not feeding young, it just might dine in on the spot, only flapping away if threatened by the appearance of larger scavengers.

In human terms, a normal average fit human may be able to life twice its body weight but can’t hardly be expected to run an obstacle course carrying it. Half a human’s body weight maybe, but not twice far less thrice.

Now in more ‘modern’ times, there have been a few sightings of giant and other unknown birds – critters that fall within the realm of study called cryptozoology. Having looked over the ‘modern’ (1850 to date) cryptozoological literature, most sightings prove to be ordinary birds though perhaps viewed out of their normal territory and thus somewhat unfamiliar to the viewer. Most unexplained avian species remain unverified and usually too small to be the sort of critter we’ve been looking for. Sightings of monster birds, while they exist, have never yielded up the sort of data that would have confirmed their reality. No dung, no feathers, no carcass, no bones. Unknown monster birds, if they do still exist, are running out of habitat to hide in; in fact they probably have run out of viable environmental living space. If they haven’t been confirmed by now they probably won’t ever be. Besides, any unknown North American birds, monster or otherwise, would have long since been shot out of the sky by trigger-happy Americans.  

Conclusions: No flying bird that is or was contemporary with humans (like the America Indian) was capable of lifting up and carrying off anything other than perhaps a small infant; certainly not adults. Flying birds are lightweights – they have to be in order to lift themselves up into the air. The largest of the predatory flightless birds (terror birds) were probably capable of running down, capturing, and lifting up human adults, but that’s not what the legends describe. But to a technologically unsophisticated Native American, living hundreds to thousands of years ago, a UFO abduction event might only have made natural sense to them in a Thunderbird related scenario. 

Further Readings about Monster Birds

Allan, Tony; “Beasts of the air” (in); The Mythic Bestiary: The Illustrated Guide to the World’s Most Fantastical Creatures; Duncan Baird Publishers, London; 2008; pages 14-53.

Bord, Colin & Bord, Janet; “Giant birds and birdmen” (in); Alien Animals: A Worldwide Investigation; Panther Books, London; Revised Edition 1985; pages 109-135. 

Clark, Jerome & Coleman, Loren; “Things with wings” (in); Creatures of the Outer Edge; Warner Books, New York; 1978; pages 165-194.

Mackal, Roy P.; “’Alice in Wonderland’ birds” (in); Searching for Hidden Animals: An Inquiry Into Zoological Mysteries; Doubleday & Company, New York; 1980; pages 99-128.

Mayor, Adrienne; Fossil Legends of the First Americans; Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey; 2005.

Here Be Dragons: Why?

For something that doesn’t exist, and never has existed, dragons and dragon-lore has quite the remarkable hold throughout nearly all societies, from novels to films to video games; they also appear on coats-of-arms, on calendars, in art works, sculptures, depicted on the prows of Viking longboats, incorporated into ancient jewellery, and as toys. Dragons appear as corporate logos and as part of the names of companies, not to mention sports teams. Then too in the Chinese calendar (zodiac) there is ‘The Year of the Dragon’. Just like the mythological gods might have been really closet ET’s, well maybe dragons were ET’s pets; real flesh-and-blood creatures! Yet long after most of the extraterrestrial ‘gods’ have been totally forgotten about, dragons still rule. Maybe their ‘pets’ have truly eclipsed them!

Is there anybody from the age of four onwards on the face of the Earth who isn’t aware of the mythological creature popularly known as the dragon? The exceptions would be so relatively rare that I would have to conclude that of nearly all things make-believe, dragons are probably in the top ten recognition list. So, is that the be-all-and-end-all of things? Behind most myths, folklore or fairy tales often there is a tiny kernel of fact behind the apparent fiction. What about that kernel at the core of dragon-lore?

I note for starters that dragons are apparent from the get-go. Images of dragons are frequently found on cylinder seals from the ancient Near East, Mesopotamia and surrounding regions – the cradle of civilization. 

Now mythology-themed texts are excellent at relating various dragon tales and their associated dragon-slaying humans like Saint George, Sigurd (Siegfried), and Beowulf*; what purposes dragons served like guarding treasure and the abodes or palaces of the gods, as well as go-betweens the gods and humanity (sort of like carrier pigeons) and their having some control over the weather and the waters; and what they symbolize like evil, sin, power, military might, and pagan ways in the West and the Emperor and Empress, wisdom, immortality and other positive things like good fortune in the East. Dragons were even known do be among those beasties that pulled the aerial ‘chariots’ of the ‘gods’. 

I find it interesting that in the Chinese calendar, there are years for the rat; ox; tiger; rabbit; snake; horse; goat; monkey; rooster; dog; pig and dragon. Of all the twelve, only the dragon is considered by modern society mythical. I find it odd that the Chinese would employ eleven real beasties and one mythical one. Perhaps all dozen were real!  

However, mythology texts hardly ever explain why dragons are universally past and beloved in the present in nearly all societies in the first place. It’s one thing to just say dragons are mythological beings; it’s quite something else to explain how that is in light of such detail that surrounds dragon-lore and their universality.

Let’s look at what a typical dragon looks like. The classic dragon of Western tradition was a four-legged winged serpent with scaly skin and sharp claws (or varying number). Chinese dragons were generally horned and bearded, with a pair of long whiskers protruding from the upper lip. Dragons were very large, averaging about 80 feet (25 metres) in length. They had the ability to fly through the air as well as move on the ground. Many dragons breathed fire although others killed with their venomous breath.

Actually, the fire-breathing bit was probably an embellishment – maybe more a reflection on bad breath or water vapour visible upon exhaling. Just like most of mythology is 5% truth and 95% fisherman’s embellishment – the story gets better with each reincarnation! However, in general there’s nothing vague about what dragons looked like and what they did which is odd seeing as how they never existed. Or did they – never exist that is?

As to that explanation:

The traditional mainstream explanation for the reason for mythological dragons does not usually rely on human nature to invent out of whole cloth life forms that don’t exist, but rather on an assumption that fossil remains of dinosaurs, etc. gave rise to speculations that, in this case, the life form we call the dragon, well those fossils kick-started those dragon mythologies all over the world. As expressed in a recent book on mythological creatures:

“The ubiquity of dragon legends around the world remains striking; few legendary creatures have a wider distribution. Some scholars have linked the stories with discoveries of dinosaur bones and it may be that in early times tales of dragons served to explain the existence of long-dead creatures of huge size. Yet no single reason can ever hope to cover all the many strands of draconian lore. More likely, gigantic winged serpents fill some archetypal need in the human imagination, crossing cultures in their power to excite awe and fear.” (Tony Allen; The Mythic Bestiary: An Illustrated Guide to the World’s Most Fantastical Creatures; Duncan Baird Publishers, London; 2008: Page 169)

Oh what a load of crap! Actually, loads of crap. Firstly, no large dinosaur bones come equipped with wings, etc. Have you ever seen a fossil or replica T-Rex that had wings and could fly?  Maybe they mean pterosaurs and/or pterodactyls, although they aren’t dinosaurs but a class of flying reptiles. However, fossils of flying reptiles aren’t very common and are in fact quite fragile.

Secondly, fossils aren’t going to tell you anything about colouration, scaly vs. smooth skin, beards and whiskers, fire-breathing abilities and venomous or otherwise bad breath, etc. Those sorts of details aren’t preserved in the fossil record, though very, very, very rarely dinosaur skin impressions are found but there are just about enough examples on hand that you can count them off on the fingers of one hand. .

Thirdly, the non-avian dinosaurs and flying reptiles died out 65 millions of years before humans and dragon mythology so there can be no contemporary firsthand knowledge of those previous long-dead dinosaur life forms to draw on. And the avian dinosaurs, which did survive – we now call them birds – hardly approach the sorts of sizes and other characteristics that could remotely be related to dragons.

Lastly, 99.9% of large fossils don’t just lie on the ground fully exposed in all their glory for the entire world to see. Most bits are usually buried and mainly in a somewhat jumbled state due to the various geological, hydrological and meteorological forces acting on the bones at the time of the animal’s death and the millions of years thereafter. It takes experts to piece things back together again as two of more animal fossils might be intermixed.

Further, why would the uneducated great unwashed living back before those golden years when mythological dragons ruled the skies go to all the trouble of the backbreaking sort of work it takes to fully expose a large fossil in the first place, and thus invent the mythological dragon? I mean it wouldn’t put any food on the table!

So when all else fails, put our invention of mythological and universal dragons down to some variation of nebulous Freudian psychology mumbo-jumbo. Give me a break! No, the answer is that dragons were really real and humans actually observed them. There is a single reason after all.

Now just consider, how many extinct animals did we mythologically invent prior to the discovery of their fossils? Dinosaurs weren’t all the rage before their fossil bones were uncovered and realised for what they were. Why didn’t we mentally create them before the fact? Why didn’t we have mythological trilobites in our legends 7000 years ago? We just didn’t have dinosaurs, trilobites, mythological or otherwise, before their fossils were discovered.

Why didn’t we have in our various mythologies any one of thousands of strange, now extinct, organisms? Maybe the answer is because we are NOT prone to invent fictional beasties. If strange beasts are part and parcel of our mythology, maybe it’s because those strange beasts really existed at some point in time that coincided with human existence.

On the other hand, you might wonder why there are no profound mythologies about now extinct mammoths or sabre-toothed cats, even though they coexisted for a short time with ‘modern’ man. Why not? They were pretty big and fearsome; maybe not quite in the big leagues of dragons, but big enough. Perhaps that might be because these beasties had no connection with the ‘gods’ – they weren’t alien beasties.

Now the bigger mystery here is why the cultural difference between East and West in the popular perception of dragons, although that’s not as clear cut as some texts make it out to be. For example, China too had bad dragons – evil black dragons that were credited with inciting storms and floods – and a dragon slayer (Lu Dongbin). Japan had an evil dragon too called Yamata-no-Orochi, slain* by the often troublesome Japanese trickster god Susanowo. There’s a somewhat parallel tale in ancient Babylon and Assyria between the god Marduk and the ‘dragon’ Tiamat. That a god might slay a dragon, well, I guess if you can have wild dos and feral cats, you can have rogue dragons! Maybe only ‘gods’ are allowed, or have the ability, to slay dragons.

Exceptions to the rule aside, I suggest that the relative differences in the portrayals of dragons reflect back on the nature of their masters – the gods.

The Eastern gods appear to me to be a lot less dysfunctional and all around nicer deities than the Western gods. The Greeks and Norse people may have worshiped Zeus et al. and Odin et al. but you really wouldn’t want them to serve as role models for your kids. 

There is however another, and perhaps even more logical explanation for the differences between Western and Eastern dragons. Dragons are bad in the (Christian) west because the Christian churches decrees it so. Dragons represent the old ways, the old gods, maybe even the devil incarnate. In the non-Christian (Hindu, Buddhist, etc.) east, dragons have no such baggage or stigma attached.

The extraterrestrials ‘gods’ and their dragon pets share something in common. The dragons, much like their masters, the ‘gods’ are as close to immortal as makes no odds. I think it’s safe to say ‘immortal’ in this context isn’t really forever and ever, amen, but rather a damn long time, which, as far as primitive humans were concerned translated as, for all practical purposes, ‘immortal’.  

The bottom line in all this is that the gods are really extraterrestrials; their pets, the dragons are also aliens; part of the god’s bestiary. When the gods left the building (Planet Earth), they took their dragons with them as well as the rest of their so-called ‘mythological’ menagerie. 

*As an aside, the actual slaying of dragons is problematically against such events. If as described (see above) you’d no more go up against a dragon armed only with a sword as you would a T-Rex. You’d want at least an army tank under or at your command or an army of swordsmen at the least (and expect lots of casualties too). Then too, the gods might not permit the slaying of their pets. Of course the Christian church would encourage tall tales of dragon slaying since the dragon was pagan and may even be symbolic of Satan. b

Telling tales of slaying dragons is akin, IMHO, to a fisherman’s tall tales – the six inch fish that got away, after a few drinks at the pub, turns out to be a six foot monster fish! But if dragons were really slain, where are all the mounted and stuffed dragon head trophies that should be on display in all manner of ways and places? Lack of such stuffed trophies doesn’t prove dragons didn’t exist (there are no taxidermic head trophies of sabre-toothed cats either on display), rather that mortals didn’t dare go up against them!

Further reading:

Hargreaves, Joyce; A Little History of Dragons; Walker & Company, New York; 2009:

Shuker, Karl; Dragons: A Natural History; Evergreen, Koln, the Netherlands; 2006: