The Australian Bunyip: aboriginal Fantasy or real and not an animal

According to the researchers folklore of the Australian aborigines, the Bunyip is just a character of folk myth, that is not the real thing.

In the aboriginal legends of the bunyip lives in swamps, streams, rivers and other water bodies, even small. There are many descriptions of this creature, sometimes very differing, but usually in the stories the natives always appear tail like a horse, flippers and tusks like a walrus. At night you can supposedly hear his horrifying screams when he eats animals or humans who inadvertently came too close to his shelter. But cryptozoologists believe that we are talking about a real animal.

The origin of the word bunyip is associated with vemba-vemba (wergaia) — one of the languages of the aborigines of South-Eastern Australia, where the "bunyip" loosely can be translated as "demon". However, the bunyip, apparently, is part of traditional aboriginal beliefs and stories throughout Australia, although its name varies depending on the specific tribes.

Writer Robert Holden indicates at least nine species of creature known as a bunyip aboriginal Australia. In the initial period of colonization of Australia it was believed that the bunyip is real, but yet have not studied animal: his description was not more remarkable than the descriptions of the other living in Australia animals such as the platypus.

Currently, the bunyip is considered to be the real animal only among cryptozoologists: the official Zoology recognizes the information about him was fiction, although some researchers suggest that the history of aboriginal people about this thing can have a real basis and describe extinct about 50 million years ago, a gigantic representative of the marsupial — the diprotodon, whose distant ancestors of modern indigenous inhabitants of the continent could see alive.

In 1801 the French scientist Charles Bain, a member of the expedition, Nicolas Boden, decided together with his companions to commit viasko deep into unexplored Australian continent. But almost after a few miles the pioneers stopped the scary, almost devilish roar that was heard from the reed beds of the Swan river. Considering that so howl can only be a tremendous monster, people fled in panic back to the shore. Later, the Europeans learned from the Australian natives that such a terrible roar publishes a bunyip. According to them, a monster hiding in the impenetrable swamps, attacking any animal that goes near, and even people. Indigenous Australians believe that people go mad and even die from only one cry of this monster.

Scientists have tried to get the natives description of the monster, to be able at least figure out to which species of animals it belongs to. Alas, descriptions bunyip was so controversial that it could go any of several different animals, or completely fictional creature. Some aboriginal people spoke about the horns of the monster, the other on his fins, and others — about the huge fangs and almost horse tail...

About bunyip remembered when the Englishman Hamilton Hume spoke about what he saw in the lake Bathurst unusual water monster. If we are to believe Hume, the creature was like a huge hybrid of the manatee and hippopotamus. Unfortunately, the more this animal no one has seen, although for his capture was offered a lot of money. In the mid-nineteenth century on Bungie spoke all Australia. The occasion was a real invasion of monsters, which is observed in various parts of the country.

In the lake George, the witnesses saw a giant seal, and the river Emerali — a creature with a long neck and small head, resembling a lizard. And in this river began to disappear people...

And in 1872. lake Burrumbeet a monster with a barrel body and a monstrous mouth caused a very real panic among the passengers of the vessel, which in result almost flipped over.

In 1875. a similar case was recorded in Queensland. Their dissatisfaction with the activities of people bunyip is very clearly expressed in the construction of Grit-Lenskogo of dam:monster popped out of the water, opened a monstrous mouth and roared so that all the workers were scared to death. In the middle of the last century, the cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans took part in several expeditions organized for exploration bunyip.

Although the mysterious monster could not be found, a scholar, communicated with the natives, concluded that Australia is not yet known to science animals.

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»