So Matt, today I found the worst page in the entire dictionary.
What I saw was disgraceful, disgusting, dishonest and disingenuous.
Yeah, it's all that would come in.
Yeah, I figured it would.
Good evening everybody and welcome to the graveyard.
Thank you for joining us tonight.
My name is Adam and my name's Matt.
Now, pull up a tombstone or settle into your casket and get comfortable.
Because this is graveyard tales.
Oh, right.
Everybody here we are again, Matt.
How you doing tonight, brother?
I'm pretty good, man.
Good deal.
Good deal.
It got a little bit chilly again here.
I was getting real used to the 80s.
Oh, yeah.
And it was kind of rainy and in the 50s today.
So my Texas blood had to put on a jacket.
I was cold.
Yeah, we're, you know, we're getting ready to plant a garden and everything,
trying to get all ready for that.
And I was, we were just talking.
I'm like, man, it's still my freeze.
And they're not going to go too far.
We just did that some, we planted some stuff that I think can make it through a last cold snap,
but waiting another month or so before I plant the rest of that stuff.
Yeah.
Oh, I was going to tell you.
So this past weekend, there was this, this Lego thing that Brooks wanted.
And so we made a special trip out to the Lego store.
And they had this incredible sale.
And so when we got there, man, there were so many people.
They were lined up for blocks.
You know how you saw my joke coming?
I saw that one.
I feel like a sneak one in there.
You do.
I feel like I told Michael that one or something the other day because he's a big Lego fan.
So before we get into it, we want to say go check out the pod belly network at podbelly.com.
We're proud to be associated with all the shows there.
You can find a list of those shows and a guarantee you're going to find something that you probably won't find anywhere else that you will enjoy.
We also want to thank tonight's sponsors, Lomi and care of, and we will talk more about them throughout the episode.
And while you're on the internet doing your stuff, go over to patreon.com slash graveyard tales.
We have three different levels, our top level, the $10 a month.
They get a audio ad free version of an episode when we have ads.
They get the video version of us recording the episode.
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The $5 a month gets the video version of the bonus episode as well.
So go over there, check it out, see if you want to become a patron.
We've got a ton of stuff that you can check out that this may be a little bit different than what we do on the main episode.
Yeah, they're always just slightly different.
They're more casual, a little more fun.
Adam and I get a little bit loose with our language on there.
But check it out, we've got a really good catalog now.
If you find yourself waiting between episodes going, I want to listen to something, but there's not a graveyard tales out.
Check it out.
I mean, there's a lot of stuff and we appreciate you helping the show.
Absolutely.
So Matt, I think you probably know because we've talked about it before, but I have had the worst time composting in the past.
Like, you've got to get this big clunky composter, put it out in the yard, you get flies drawn to it.
If you don't turn it right, no, it doesn't compost anything.
It doesn't work.
But then we found the loamy.
And I can't tell you how much of a game changer the loamy is.
Ashley and I love to garden.
We love to cook too.
So we thought composting would be great for us.
But with all the hassles we had, we kind of stopped doing it.
So once we found the loamy, all we do is put all of our scraps into the loamy.
You can put meat, you can put dairy, vegetables, bread, whatever you want.
You can't put bones or avocado pits or liquids in there.
But outside of that, put it in there, hit a button.
And within a few hours, you've got dirt that you can go put in your garden.
And let me tell you, I have just started like, tilling up the garden and we just planted a few things.
But as I was tilling it up, because we had been doing the loamy over the winter, I had a five gallon bucket.
Another five gallon bucket half full of loamy dirt.
So I took it out there, I threw it on the garden and tilled it in.
And I tell you what, I mean, it was so much easier.
The hassle is out of composting.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
And just tonight, before recording this ad, Amanda looks over at Madison who's in from college
and we're having salad for dinner.
And she goes, don't throw away the ends of the cucumbers.
They go in the loamy.
Right.
And she, and Madison says, I'm sorry, I just forgot.
And Amanda literally looked at her and said, I am cutting back on my food waste.
Absolutely.
I was like, I wish I had recorded this.
Yeah, no joke.
That would have been a great ad right there.
It was perfect.
And you do.
You do have less garbage each week because so much of your food scraps aren't in your trash
can.
Right.
And, you know, I have to, I recently have put together a plant wall and I'm using the
loamy dirt for all my indoor plop potted plants and they are doing phenomenal.
Yeah.
I mean, it does great.
It's great.
And the other thing I noticed too with the loamy, which may be a big thing for a lot of
people, it's a big thing for me because I'm smell sensitive, our trash does not stink
like it used to.
When you take that food and put it through the loamy instead of in your trash, your trash
doesn't stink.
Our little cabinet that would keep our trash cans in doesn't stink.
And we went from, I don't know, four or five bags of trash a week to two.
I mean, literally trash was picked up today and I had two bags from a week ago.
And it's because we cut down on food scraps.
So if you want to start making a positive environmental impact or just make cleanup after
dinner that much easier, loamy is perfect for you.
Head to loamy.com slash grave.
That's L-O-M-I dot com slash G-R-A-V-E.
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Food waste is gross.
Let loamy save you a trip out to the garbage can.
So Matt, that's all I've got.
Why don't you tell us what are we talking about tonight, brother?
Okay, so tonight Adam and I split up, we're covering technically two topics that are the
same topic.
That makes any sense.
So we're looking at, we're looking at a couple of different cryptids that are found
in Madagascar.
Scar Scarfer, how do I say that?
Madagascar is the way I want to say it.
That's how I say it.
That's how I will be saying it.
I want to pronounce it like it's somebody's last name, like Madagascar.
Yeah, all Mr. Madagascar.
But I mean Madagascar, and I mean, you know, Madagascar is so unique.
As it is, I mean, there have been discoveries there that have been nowhere else on earth.
You know, we thought the Seelacant was extinct and they find one off the coast of Madagascar.
So there's a lot of stuff that is still relatively unknown.
So I can't even pronounce Adams.
I'm not, I don't think I can.
I can pronounce mine, but we're going to get into it.
I'm going to tell you what mine is when it's my turn, but Adam, Adam is going to lead off
and he's going to tell us about the Madagascar cryptid that he researched.
Right.
As we always say, go check our sources down the bottom of the show notes.
You can find where we found our information and you can continue the research if you would
like.
Now, before we get into the cryptids, I wanted to
discuss Madagascar a little bit because to me, once we look at this, it kind of, it opens
the case for there being a cryptid on the island of Madagascar that maybe wouldn't be
anywhere else.
Like you could say, okay, well, I don't think there are big foot Roman texts.
It's because it's so populous and there's just not that unique species, but Madagascar
is very unique in flora and fauna.
And to me is a very good place to house an unknown animal.
So this is from the worldwide wildlife, World Wildlife Fund.
That's too many W's.
And it says the island nation of Madagascar has developed its own distinct ecosystems
and extraordinary wildlife since it split from the African continent and estimated 160 million
years ago.
Approximately 95% of Madagascar's reptiles, 89% of its plant life and 92% of its mammals
exist nowhere else on earth.
Can you imagine that?
That's incredible.
Now it's located off the east coast of Africa and Madagascar is the world's fifth largest
island at 144 million acres.
It's almost the size of Texas.
So that tells you how big Texas is.
Yeah, but it's also, it's a pretty big island.
Yes, it is.
Now, Madagascar's climate is tropical along the coast, temperate inland, and it has an
arid region in the south.
So it's a, I mean, if you needed any evidence that there could be multiple different interesting
unique species there, it's got multiple different climate types just within that 144 million
acres.
Yeah.
Now the island harbors lush rainforest, tropical dry forest, plateaus and deserts.
It's more than 3000 miles of coastline and over 250 islands are home to some of the world's
largest coral reef systems and most extensive mangrove areas in the western Indian Ocean.
Now it's mind boggling the amount of plant and animal diversity that's present on Madagascar.
There are more than 11,000 endemic plant species, including seven species of balebab tree and
a share the island with a vast variety of mammal reptiles, amphibians and others.
And from 1999 to 2010, scientists discovered 615 new species in Madagascar, including 41
mammals and 61 reptiles.
That's amazing.
It is.
It just, it always goes back to the idea that Adam and I really are promoters of that there's
so much of this planet that we really haven't explored in yet that so many people think,
man, there's no way we would have found whatever it is by now.
And that's just not the case.
Right.
Right.
And Madagascar is prime example of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, Madagascar has several critically threatened species.
Now it includes one of my favorite names for species, the silky safaca.
You silky safaca you.
I'm not even going to tell you what that sounds like.
Yeah, I wouldn't.
PG-13 show.
But the silky safaca, and I may not be saying that right, but I'm saying it how I enjoy
it.
So deal with it.
It's a lemur, which is one of the rarest mammals on earth.
Its name actually means angel of the forest and it refers to its white fur.
Yeah.
Now, there's another threatened species.
It's the rare plowshare tortoise.
And it's found only in a small area of northwestern Madagascar, whereas few as 1000 of these animals
survive.
The plowshare tortoises can be sold illegally for up to $200,000 a piece on exotic pet markets,
which the exotic pet market is one of the things that is endangering all of these animals.
Right.
So if you want to have a cause, like if you want to put your money and time and effort
into stopping something, it's the illegal exotic pet trade.
Yeah.
And if you purchase any of these exotic pets, stop it.
Here is a verbal smack on the wrist.
Stop it.
Shame on you.
Yeah, for shame.
Well, you think about me.
We've got a species of tortoise that lives on an island with such a unique atmosphere,
such a unique ecosystem.
And you're going to take this tortoise to another area.
There is no way that you could fully understand how to care for such an animal.
Right.
And you're going to put them in an ecosystem that could be potentially lethal.
Yeah, take them to Great Britain or something.
Yeah.
And expose them to an environment that, you know, as a species, they've never been exposed
to.
And you're just killing them off.
Yeah.
Leave them alone.
Appreciate them for what they are.
Exactly.
Go get you a dead gum box turtle when there's four gajillion of them.
Mm hmm.
That one of those red-ear sliders or something.
Yeah.
And not only that, you could be bringing disease from the plow share tortoise to the
animals of wherever you live.
Mm hmm.
And these animals could die or it could spread to humans.
I mean, there are so many bad things that could happen with the exotic pet trade.
So just stop it.
You're killing Madagascar and other places, but stop it.
Now this actually comes from Berkeley University.
And it says, understanding where all of Madagascar species came from.
Its biogeography requires understanding Madagascar's own geologic history.
So 170 million years ago, Madagascar was landlocked in the middle of the supercontinent
Gondwana.
It was sandwiched between land that would eventually become South America and Africa
and land that would eventually become India, Australia and Antarctica.
Now through movements of the Earth's crust, Madagascar along with India first split from
Africa and South America and then from Australia and Antarctica.
And it started heading north.
India eventually smashed into Asia, which formed the Himalayas in the process.
But Madagascar broke away from India and was marooned in the Indian Ocean.
Madagascar has been on its own for the past 88 million years.
So some of Madagascar's present species are there because they quote, rode there on the
continents and were left on the island when it separated from India.
Others arrived on the island after it split, immigrating from other places.
Now in biogeography, these two scenarios are known as vicariants and dispersal.
To understand the difference, imagine a species living on a continent which is then split
into two through tectonic action.
When the continent splits, the two halves of the population are separated.
And over many generations, they evolve into separate species.
The species distribution is the result of vicariants.
Many different processes can cause vicariants.
Plate tectonics, the rise of mountain ranges, a shift in the course of a river or just climate
change that causes an unfavorable habitat to develop that ends up splitting a species
range into two.
Dispersal on the other hand occurs when a species spreads or emigrates from one area to another.
If part of a population moves to a new area, the two subpopulations may eventually evolve
into separate species.
So that is one of the main things that I want to touch on before we got into the cryptozoology
part of it.
Some of these species, the vicariants of it, the ones that rode there, have had 88 million
years to bio-diversify from any other species on the planet.
They have evolved into their own species.
So you could have a cat, let's say there was a cat, that was on India and Madagascar.
And then when they split, the Madagascar cat had whole new climate, whole new temperate
zones and stuff that it had to live in.
And so over time, it evolved into a species that worked best for that area where the cat
that was left on India evolved for India's climate.
So you could end up with what was the same species 80 million years ago.
They don't look anything alike.
The Madagascar cat could have wings and a reptile tail by now.
Who knows?
It's been 80 million years.
Who knows what could happen?
Man, you took my cryptid.
I can't believe you gave it away.
Dad, come on.
A reptile-tailed wing cat of Madagascar.
But the reason to me that that is very important is because that says to me that there could
possibly be a way for the two things that we're talking about to have evolved into actual
animals, whether at one point they were in larger number than they are now, or whether
they've always been a small population, but they've just hiding out because they've evolved
to hide out.
So the one, the cryptid that I've got is called the quesoala.
And some of y'all may know what that is.
There was a TV show done on what the quesoala is supposed to be.
And I'll get to that.
The name may be familiar to some of y'all, but let's look at the quesoala.
Now the quesoala is a cryptid primate reported from Madagascar described as a giant red-ruffed
lemur.
Now in 2018, Wildlife Explorer and Adventure for scolante.
This is the show I was talking about ventured into the Madagascar jungles in search of the
quesoala for animal planet show extinct or alive.
According to theories from animal planets for scolante, the quesoala may be a species
of the extinct Paculemer genus, which is estimated to have gone extinct as late as 500
years ago.
So many witnesses have said that the quesoala lives in the tallest trees in the forest so
it can see the entire jungle below and find its prey.
Now the people who live around the area that the quesoala are said to live have said it's
quite large many times larger than the quote normal lemurs that they see in their area.
It's covered in a reddish fur and has a face similar to a dog's face.
And I'll talk more about this here in a minute.
But it's said to be a meat eater, which is unlike other lemurs in the area or the Paculemer,
which the quesoala is speculated to be.
So even the Paculemer wasn't a meat eater.
It was a fruit and nut eater.
But the people that are seeing the quesoala now say it is a meat eater.
And I'll touch more on why they say that here in a minute.
But let's look at the Paculemer.
Now the Paculemer, like I said, is an extinct giant lemur that's most closely related to
the roughed lemur of genus Barasilla or Verecia.
I don't know.
Paculemer is sometimes referred to as the giant roughed lemur because although it and
the living roughed lemurs had similar teeth and skeletons, Paculemer was more robust and
as much as three to four times larger.
So you've seen lemurs in the zoo, right?
You've seen the little ring-tailed lemurs.
From my understanding, roughed lemurs are slightly bigger than the ring-tailed lemurs.
It's kind of stockier, a little bit taller.
But they're all about that size.
The Paculemer would be ginormous compared to these lemurs.
It would be probably great dain size or something even larger than that.
Maybe a mountain lion size.
But still a lemur.
And we're going to talk more about this.
But there were several species of large or giant lemurs that have thought to have gone
extinct over the last thousand years.
Right.
Now the Paculemer were known to live in trees that are high up in the canamies of Madagascar
and eat the fruit off of these trees.
So the Paculemer has, and you'll see why I'm using current verbiage here in a second.
But the Paculemer has massive jaws.
It's got huge teeth and they say it can grow as large as five feet length.
That is a long lemur.
All if it's standing up on its hind legs.
Now like living rough lemurs, Paculemer specialized in eating fruit.
And so they were very important seed dispersers.
Possibly for tree species with seeds too large for even rough lemurs to swallow.
So that makes me think of avocados.
And the reason that makes me think of avocado is because avocados evolved when there were
large sloths that would eat these avocados.
They had just enough meat on the avocado to make it worth these sloths eating.
But the seeds could only be dispersed by these giant sloths.
So back when we had giant sloths, we had more avocado trees, a huakato trees, around everywhere.
And as those died off, we now have to cultivate avocado because there is no actual animal
large enough to eat the avocado seed and pass it.
And if you notice the avocados that we have here in the continental United States, not
talking Puerto Rico because Puerto Rico has some ginormous avocados.
But the ones we have here, the Haas ones, those were bred to have smaller pits.
Right.
And to be smaller.
But they're still a giant pit.
Think of animals out there.
But any animal out there that we know of in America disperse these seeds, there's not.
But the avocados like in Puerto Rico and stuff, they could be 12 inches long with a giant
seed in them.
So we have bred smaller avocados through genetic, whatever you call it.
Well, yeah, genetic manipulation to that's the word.
To make them more conducive for sale.
Right.
To be able to pack them and ship them and get them to supermarkets so that you can, you
know, when you decide, hey, you know, I want to have avocado toast for breakfast in the
morning, or I want to make some guacamole for Taco Tuesday.
You can go and pick up several and get them there, but I have had an avocado.
When you open it up, you're like, where the hell is all the meat?
Yes.
Yeah.
I mean, and you look at it in the pit.
It's 80% pit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you're just like, what the heck?
And at the time, I remember thinking, well, this is bizarre.
But with a little, little bit of research, you know, I learned, oh, this is how natural
avocados were in order to pit less meat, more pits, less meat.
We've just kind of made them, you know, with, like Adam said, engineered them to have that
smaller pit so that, you know, it can be a regular consumable.
Right.
And you'll notice even now go to the store and find avocados that you get one and cut
it open.
It's got a good, good size pit in it, the normal size pit.
But then you get the other one and it's like tiny pit and you're like, what happened?
Oh, yeah.
Well, that you're like, like score.
Yeah, exactly.
I get more meat.
This is a bonus.
But for the avocado, that's not good because that seed wouldn't pop out another tree, basically.
But that long tangent just to say that the packy lemur was very much like the giant sloth
in seed dispersal for Madagascar.
So there are most likely, I didn't grab this information, but there are most likely trees
that are now extinct on Madagascar because the packy lemur is not around to disperse their
seeds anymore.
Sure.
Yeah.
In the spiny thicket of southwestern Madagascar, the packy lemur also were likely to have dispersed
seeds that were evolved to attach to the fur and be carried away.
So another seed dispersal way, the seeds would have hooks on them and they grew up in the
top of these trees where the packy lemur lived.
Well, unlike rough lemurs, the four and hind limbs of packy lemurs were nearly the same
length and therefore it was likely to be a slow, deliberate climber.
So again, think of a sloth because the ring tail lemur and stuff that we got now, they
have longer back legs than front legs.
So they're able to hop, walk on the ground.
But if you look at sloths or or orangutangs or anything like that, where their limbs are
the same length or pretty close, they don't walk well.
They climb amazingly well, but they don't work well on the ground.
So the packy lemur really probably didn't get on the ground too much unlike the ring
tail lemurs.
However, both the packy lemur and modern day lemurs used hind limbs, hind limbs suspension
to reach fruit on small branches below them.
Now like other lemurs, the packy lemur was only found on the island of Madagascar and
its sub-fossil remains have been found primarily at sites in the central and southwestern parts
of the island.
Fragmentary and indeterminate remains have also been found in northern Madagascar.
So these are the same places that the quesoala is being cited nowadays.
The packy lemur once lived in diverse lemur communities within its range, but in many
of these locations, 20% are fewer of the original lemur species remain.
So what used to be there?
There's 20% fewer types of lemurs than they used to have.
Now the packy lemur went into decline following the arrival of humans in Madagascar around
350 BCE.
Habitat loss, forest fragmentation, and bushmeat hunting are thought to have been the reasons
for its disappearance.
Packy lemur is thought to have gone extinct between 680 to 960 CE, although sub-fossil
remains found in a cave pit in southwestern Madagascar may indicate that it survived up
until 500 years ago.
So a lot more recent than they originally thought.
So packy lemur remains were first described in 1895 by French zoologist Henry Philholt.
Yep, that's his name.
HOL.
I love it.
I have been waiting this whole episode to say Henry Philholt.
Probably not how you pronounce it, but again, I don't care.
I like how it sounds.
Yeah, these remains were originally included in the genus Lemur along with the ring-tailed
lemur and other close relatives currently classified within the family Lemuridae.
So in 1948, French paleontologist Charles Lamberton placed the species in the sub-genius
packy lemur, which was recognized as a genus by 1979.
However, due to earlier uses of the name packy lemur, the priority of an alternative genus
name proposed by Guiame Grandidair in 1905 and errors in Lamberton's 1948 description
of the genus, the availability of the name under the rules of zoology nomenclature were
considered questionable.
In 2011, a petition was filed with the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature to
preserve the name.
So according to this next source, it's possible that the packy lemur might have been found
might still be alive as villagers report sightings in the northern part of Madagascar.
In the Masawala Peninsula on the northeastern coast of Madagascar, it has the largest cluster
of recent sightings of the packy lemur, the quesawala.
The locals called the packy lemur the quesawala, like I said, because the villagers said that
the quesawala loves the tallest trees in the forest, like I said, has a similar face to
a dog with a reddish coat but a lot larger.
Many villagers believe that the quesawala is an aggressive animal, since its name means
knife of the forest.
So quesawala means knife of the forest, and anything that is said to pass beneath the
creature will die, which makes it a carnivorous animal.
Like I said, the packy lemur is not a carnivore.
It was an herbivore.
But do you think that the packy lemur, and here's the thing, I think it's highly possible,
in my opinion, that the packy lemur is still alive and in a very tiny population and being
seen by villagers who live there.
Now granted, we don't have photographic evidence or whatever of it, but it's because if you
and I were to go there looking for the packy lemur, we'd have a week or two to look around
the jungles of Madagascar, just like most researchers would.
And it's very hard to find anything.
Like we did a patreon on that the bovine creature from Asia that they thought was extinct for
many years, and then they just finally discovered it recently.
So you have to be living there and be in the jungle every day to see one of these things.
So do you think that the packy lemur could have maybe evolved to eat meat in an area where
let's say the trees that it once fed off of, declined and died out due to there being
fewer packy lemurs to spread the seeds.
So they had to find another way to get food.
Or do you think it's just a misinterpretation of what people are saying because a packy
lemur looks vicious?
Or do you think it's just all bunk and there is no packy lemur?
Well, I don't think that.
I think it's reasonable to believe that an animal that was an herbivore could have become
a carnivore or at least an omnivore where there was a transitional phase where food became
more scarce and it had to find other sources.
Now, I'm not saying that a lemur would have gone from I only eat fruits and berries to
I'm taking down a large mammal or another lemur.
Or a human.
Yeah, or a human for crying out loud, but insects, reptiles, sure.
I mean, you get hungry enough, you begin to learn to like other stuff.
If you're going to starve to death.
And there's trail cam footage of deer known herbivores, deer eating meat because their
bodies told them they needed a certain vitamin or mineral that they were not getting from
the plants.
Yeah.
And so they've actually seen deer eating a duck on a webcam.
They bashed the duck in the head and killed it.
And then weirdly enough, this deer is eating a frickin duck.
And I didn't believe it until I saw the video.
I mean, that's crazy.
I would have thought, you know, I would have understood a deer eating an animal that was
already dead.
I've never, I've never thought of a deer, you know, attacking killing and then eating,
you know, another animal.
It was just a duck.
You know, it could happen.
You hit it with your duck.
Just a duck.
Those, the, I meant that as a deer could kick you or I in the head and kill us.
Right.
Right.
I'm not saying that, but yeah, I get it that they could.
It just seems so out of character.
Right.
Which is why I brought it up because of the pack of lemur may, may be switching to meat.
So sure.
I think it's possible.
And I think if, if, if the packy lemur lived a lot longer than what they suspect or if
it's even hanging around today or some evolved version of it, then it absolutely would have
done that.
And that's what caused it to survive.
Yeah.
Um, you know, these creatures aren't going to go through these geological changes.
Um, and, and make it through and not come out on the other side different.
Right.
Right.
I mean, humans don't do that.
Why would we expect animals to do that?
That's very true.
You go through this, this huge continental drift.
Um, and, and your habitat breaks away and it's now out in the middle of the ocean.
You're, you're either going to, you're either going to fade out or you're going to figure
out a way to survive.
Yep.
And so not just the packy lemurs, but I would say most species that are on Madagascar and
other islands had to figure out another way to survive over, you know, over time.
Oh, yeah.
100%.
They weren't like, holy crap.
We're not connected anymore.
Yeah.
Right.
Oh, Tommy over here.
He looks like he'd be pretty good.
I'm going to go over and chew on him a little bit.
Yeah.
It, you know, it takes a long time to make these changes, but, you know, it could definitely
happen.
Well, and, and you know that even us humans in, in 2023, you know how you get a craving
for something.
Like you're like, and I'm craving salty potato chips or I'm craving water or I'm crazy.
Something your body knows when it's missing a nutrient salt from the potato chips or just
water or whatever.
So even with what we have now food wise, our body knows, oh, I need this vitamin.
I can get it from this food.
So I'm sending these signals that I am craving this food.
Now, sometimes it's not that.
Sometimes it's just you're a chunky monkey like I am and you want some chunky monkey ice
cream.
I was fixed to say, you know, what, what about, what am I missing that makes me crave ice
cream?
Yeah.
Right.
Those Twinkies hold no nutritional value.
That's just you being a chubby monkey there.
That's me.
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In other situations, that's what it's doing is you need water because so your brain sends
these signals, I need water.
Well, the lemurs could have had the same thing happen where their food source starts
going away.
So they, their body is craving a nutrient that they used to get from this fruit.
And then they're like, huh, I need this.
So they'd start adjusting their habits and their food sources to gather these nutrients
to stay alive.
Now this could have taken a long, long time to happen.
And in that case, the packulamer population could have slowly dwindled down to where there's
only a few hundred maybe if that in the Madagascar jungles.
But that would explain why there's so few and that would explain why villagers say that
they eat meat.
But the quesoala, since I learned about it, has fascinated me.
Oh, yeah.
And because I think it's a study in cryptozoology, but also in just evolutionary changes in
animals.
And like we've said many times before, cryptozoology does not necessarily mean Bigfoot or Nessie.
Cryptozoology means the study of hidden animals.
And the packulamer, the quesoala is a hidden animal in that classification.
So I'm fascinated with it.
I'm also fascinated with the one that you have.
Yeah.
And it's hard to talk about all these lemurs without saying something like shame on you,
Maurice, can't you see that you insulted the freaks?
I couldn't do this research without thinking about the movie Madagascar.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Every part of that movie popped into my head.
Everything was King Julian for me watching.
I mean, reading this stuff.
It was funny.
But the one that I'm going to talk about is called the kiddokey.
Oh, kiddokey.
Oh, kiddokey.
So the kiddokey is another lemur type cryptid that inhabits the dry deciduous forest and
the shrub lands of the Manabe region of central western Madagascar.
I mean, we're getting pretty specific.
Now the first detailed written description of the kiddokey was from Dr. David burning
and his interviews with various locals in the Maron de Vud district back in 1998.
So pretty recent.
Yeah, that is pretty recent.
So Dr. Bernie, he went to Madagascar in July and August of 95 to investigate reports of
animals that did not match the description of any of the current wildlife that was present
on the island.
Right.
Right.
The kiddokey was one of these such animals.
And although the descriptions didn't coincide with known creatures, they did match up with
historical accounts and folklore recorded in Madagascar between the mid 1600s and the
end of the 19th century.
So they've got historical records and they've got folklore that describe characters that
match up with what the descriptions from the locals give for the kiddokey.
Yeah.
So that I mean, that's intriguing.
And it intrigued Dr. Bernie because of the idea that he might have been going down there
to look for a species that has could have been extinct for as much as a thousand years.
So it sounded to Dr. burning very similar to the giant lemur.
But radiocarbon dating of animal remains puts the giant lemurs as having become extinct
several hundreds of years ago.
But either way, he knew that he was looking for very unique things.
He was either looking for a cryptid, a new species or a living creature that was thought
to long be extinct.
Either way, I'm fine with it.
It's cool.
You know, we're either going to figure out, hey, this, this thing right here managed to
live and we thought it was gone.
Or look at this, we found a whole new, a whole new species.
Either way.
That's cool.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Either way, it's cool.
Well, Bernie conducted and documented interviews with locals over sightings of multiple animals,
the kiddokey just being one of them.
Now, one individual that he spoke with, John Noleson Pascal, he gave the team information
about the kiddokey saying that it was something like a sifaka, which is a specific type of
lemur with a very long tail.
In fact, the sifaka has a tail that's as long as its body.
Yep.
Yep.
Well, that makes it unique.
And what's funny is everybody in the US, when you think lemur, you think king julian.
Yep.
That is a raw generalization that that's what I think.
And well, part of that is because that's what you see at the zoo.
Yeah.
Yep.
You know, you go to the zoo, it's a ring-tailed lemur.
Okay.
It's the most populous of all lemurs.
And in my opinion, the cutest.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's got the little raccoon looking mask.
It's got the little stripes on its tail.
They're very playful.
They're smaller in size.
So yeah, this, oh, everybody's going to love having all these lemurs.
They're going to be mean as heck though.
Well, yeah.
I mean, you know, they're like, to me, they're it's like a cross between a monkey and a fox
or something.
Yeah.
They're a primate.
So they're going to be.
But the, the kiddoke was different because it had a face like a man.
And Pascal says that it was as big as his seven year old great granddaughter.
He used her as reference.
Yeah.
That's a big lemur.
Seven year old kid.
And we're going to say this lemurs as big as her with a man's lemur.
Yeah.
With a man face.
Yeah.
Now, Pascal says he got a really good look at one very nearby in 1952.
Said it had a dark coat, but it had a conspicuous white spot on the forehead and another one
below the mouth.
A Pascal stated that the kiddoke is a shy animal.
And when encountered fleas on the ground rather than climbing trees like a cifaka would do.
Said it moves by a series of leaps and perhaps can even stand on two legs and walk bipedally.
Now, Pascal even went further and he imitated the call, which is a long single.
Okay.
Which is somewhat reminiscent of the shortened call of the injury, which is the largest species
of lemur from Madagascar's East Coast rainforest.
Okay.
So they have similarities between two different lemur species that are known.
But the differences are there where they don't fall into either category.
Right.
So they showed Pascal a picture of the injury.
Okay.
This is the large lemur.
And he said that's not it.
He said the animal that he encountered had a much rounder face, which is more like a
cifaka.
He said that if the kiddokey hears its call and imitates it effectively, it will come
closer and it will continue to call.
So Pascal had the opinion that this is probably because they are solitary and they're lonely
for their own kind.
Sure.
Yeah.
So I'll talk about that solitary thing here in a minute too.
So the team also found some wood cutters and they interviewed them, one of whom was a gentleman
named Francois and he had several friends and Francois and these other wood cutters.
They indicated that they spent a lot of time working in the forest in the thickets inland
from the main road between Monroe, Monroe, Dova and Belsour mayor.
I'm sure if they're cutting wood, they're out there by themselves a lot.
And probably are very, very familiar with what wildlife is around them.
Yep.
If not, you better be.
Yeah.
If not, you'll get there quick.
Yeah.
But several of these men said they had seen and heard the kadoki in recent years.
Their description was essentially the same as Pascal, including the appearance of a human-looking
face.
One of the wood cutters insisted that there was a lot of white on the body.
It wasn't limited to like the forehead and the chin area.
But they said others weren't so sure.
Francois, they asked Francois to imitate the call and he gave out this really long sound
again, which was just like the one that Jean Pascal imitated.
What I find interesting about that is they say Bigfoot makes similar sounds.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
So, so these, these men also said they had never seen one climb a tree.
Said it just flees over the ground in short leaps.
So what Dr. Bernie did is demonstrate, he said, you mean like this?
And he goes hopping across in this kind of a sideways leap.
He said, when he did that, the men went, no, no, no, no, no.
That's a sifaka.
He says the kadoki walks like this and the guy demonstrates this forward gallop, which
Dr. Bernie said looked very baboon-like.
Hmm.
Okay.
So they walked forward, but they, they kind of, well, they, they gallop.
Okay.
They kind of go their head goes up and down, but they're moving in a forward direction,
not sideways.
Um, but they also said that they could get one to approach if they could imitate the
call, just like Pascal said.
So that, that's the kadoki.
Okay.
So a large lemur type creature with multiple sightings.
But what is it?
Is it a lemur?
Is it something else that we've not discovered?
There's a, there's a lot of question about what it could be.
There's no doubt people have seen it, but the kadoki sounds like it could be an undiscovered
species of lemur.
Um, but it could be the descendants of a known species that was thought to be extinct, like
the giant lemur.
Yep.
But either way, like I said, it's still pretty freaking cool, but more speculation has led
to more questions as researchers have tried to kind of wedge the, the square kadoki peg
into the round lemur hole.
They're trying to make it a lemur.
Mm hmm.
Um, and it just doesn't want to fit, which makes me kind of think it's, it's either it's
own species or like you were talking about, it's evolved so much over the years.
Right.
That it, it doesn't match up with any of them, that it's evolved into its own thing.
Now in, in cryptozoologist George Erbhardt's book, mysterious creatures, a guide to crypto
crypto zoology, he speculates that the kadoki may be a surviving population of archaea lemur,
which is a genus of lemurs like the kadoki were ground welling and weighed around 55
pounds.
Okay.
So that's a pretty, that's a pretty big lemur.
That's a hefty lemur.
Um, it's probably not one you'd want to pick up and carry around with you.
That's one of those ice cream, love and chunky monkey lemur.
Right.
But archaea lemurs are thought to have died out less than 300 years before European arrival
in the 16th century.
So the only problem with this theory is that archa lemurs were quadrupedal, which is like
gorillas.
Yeah.
Okay.
So the kadoki, which hopped upright similar to the more contemporary cefakas and injuries.
But like you said, that could be an evolutionary change for food gathering purposes.
So what if the kadoki's food sources were all found on or near the ground?
Mm hmm.
There wouldn't be a reason for it to go up in the trees, at least not for food.
What about protection?
It's obviously much larger than what our typical thought of a lemur is.
If it weighs, you know, let's just say it weighs around 50 pounds.
Um, maybe it was able to protect itself.
Yeah.
And so it didn't have to be fearful of being on the ground that it could protect itself.
So it stayed there and it didn't go up in the trees.
That allowed it to be more solitary where unlike the ringtone lemurs, they had to travel
in groups for protection.
That's right.
That's right.
So based on Bernie's interviews, the kadoki's description, it is lemur like.
I mean, there is no doubt.
It's lemur like.
And you compared it to the, the Sephaka, um, by all the interviewees who described it,
but they all universally said that it was not a Sephaka.
They knew what a Sephaka was.
And if you've never seen one, look at the picture of a Sephaka.
I mean, they are, they are this white fluffy, larger lemur, like larger than a ringtail,
um, with that great, great big tail.
Okay.
They're really, really pretty.
It would be hard to mistake something for that because they're not, I mean, I don't,
they're not endangered.
They may be, they may be, it may be rare.
But all the locals knew what they were.
Sure.
Yeah.
Seeing them enough to know their traits and how they behaved and where they were found,
enough to say this other thing we saw is not a Sephaka.
Um, now, uh, the kadoki differs from the Sephaka in, in several ways.
We said it's much larger.
Uh, it's encountered on the ground.
The Sephaka is more tree dwelling, um, and then when it ran away, it stayed on the ground.
Uh, like we talked about, you know, it didn't need the protection of the height of the trees.
And Dr.
Bernie compared the gate to, um, to that of a baboon after he saw these guys, he was interviewing
mimic, you know, how it, how it walked or ran away.
Right.
But the call is more like an injury.
You know, that sound is much more like an injury.
And but, and the solitary behavior, um, that is, that is unusual for a Sephaka.
Sephaka is like Adam said, they stay in groups.
You know, they're up in the trees.
They, they keep those groups for protection.
So you know, it, like I said, it's a square peg round hole.
It's just not fitting in there.
But Bernie also points out similarities between the kadoki and another Madagascar cryptid,
the tratra tratra.
I don't know how else to say this.
It is T.R.A.
T.R.A.
T.R.A.
T.R.A.
All one word.
So I'm saying it's the tratra tratra.
And it's named that because of the sound that it makes.
So it's an onomatopoeia.
Yeah.
So this creature was one of the earliest, um, malagsee cryptids to be described.
Admiral D. Flakort wrote in 1658 that it was a man-faced, frizzy-haired animal, the
size of a two-year-old calf with a short tail, hands, and human ears.
Yeah.
And you look at pictures of it because I looked it up and the way it's drawn, think of a
gorilla, but with a tail, uh-huh, not as long as a normal lemur and a round head instead
of a pointed, like long dog face type head, it's more of a human-shaped head.
Yeah.
You know, kind of pop belly gorilla type body.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
That's it.
It was solitary and it was greatly feared by local people.
A French forester, um, may have encountered, uh, tratra tratra, um, in the 1930s.
And he described it as a forefoot high lemur with gorilla-like head and a quote face like
one of his own ancestors.
Huh.
Yeah.
So this was in the 1930s.
Yeah, a weird looking uncle then.
Yeah.
But we don't have a real explanation as to the origin of the kadoki stories.
Um, it's just kind of there and the locals just kind of know it.
Um, but there's nothing about it that says, oh, well, the story is that we, we don't
have that.
Right.
Um, but there are some possible explanations as to what it, what it really could be.
And Dr. Bernie speculated that it could be feral animals.
That's a possibility.
Uh, vague as it is, like a baboon or Reese's monkeys or other exotic primates that could
potentially survive on Madagascar if they were ever released there.
Um, but exotic candidates with the right kind of whooping call, that's a problem because
gibbons and howler monkeys would make the correct sound, but they would have to be brought
from Asia and the Neo tropics.
And they're intensively arboreal.
They, they, they rely on trees.
They don't touch the ground if they can avoid it.
So that doesn't fit either.
But, uh, he says for it to be an African candidate, one would have to look at a chimpanzee and
a champ definitely has, you know, a, a more human appearing face and it produces the hoops
and the whoops and all that stuff.
But even a, even a, a bonnebo chip is much too large for the descriptions that they're,
that these guys were giving.
Um, and chips and chips and chips are tasty are pretty much adapted to humid forests,
not semi deserts.
Right.
So it would be, uh, it'd be easy to dismiss the kadoki as a misidentified sifaka or another
large lemur that is well known.
Um, it would be a, it would be more convincing if it wasn't for all of the numerous characteristics
in the descriptions that consistently separated from a sifaka or an injury or other lemurs
that are well known to these people that they were interviewing.
And that's, that's kind of the sticking point there is that these guys know what animals
are around them.
I mean, you, you live in this environment, you live in this island, you work in it every
day, you go into the forests, you know what's there.
And I don't think it's a matter of, I know what's here and that doesn't belong.
I think they're telling them, Oh, yeah, we know all these.
This is a kadoki.
Like it's just a different one.
You know, we know it.
Yeah.
It's just different.
It's not a sifaka.
That's what that is over there.
It's not an injury because they live way over yonder.
Um, this one is bigger and it looks a little different and we call it a kadoki.
Then being like us and white-tailed deer and mule deer, like saying, yeah, I mean, like
someone never seen a white-tailed deer before, but they knew about mule deer and they're like,
Oh, so it's a mule deer and you're like, no, it's not a mule deer.
I know what mule deer look like.
This is a white-tailed deer.
It's its own thing.
It's kind of the same theory.
And that's what we see a lot with a lot of these cryptids that could be legitimate is
these people know the animals and they know what's there.
Plus all of the explanations that they try to give for, Oh, you're misidentifying a
ring-tailed lemur.
You're misidentifying a sifaka.
Well, you're being a sifaka because I'm not.
It's its own thing.
You know, I know what these are and it doesn't fit the pattern for these other animals.
It may in some tangential way, but that just means it's kind of related to it.
But like you said, the square lemur peg and the round lemur hole, it's not, it doesn't
fully work.
So you can't say, yeah, that's what they're mistaking it for.
Yeah.
I think it's its own thing.
But further than that, with the in-depth research that Dr. Bernie did and with all the
reports and the different studies that have been done on Madagascar, I think this is a
hype of archeolamer that has managed to evolve to become solitary and ground-welling
and live off the food supply that's there on the ground.
I don't know that, you know, when you call that it's lonely for its own kind, but I would
say if it hears a similar call, it's coming to investigate.
Yeah, it's intelligent enough to go wait a minute.
That sounds like me, but maybe a little bit different.
I want to see what this thing is that's trying to talk to me.
Yeah.
But if they had evolved to be more solitary, then maybe that's why they're rare.
They don't, they don't mate that often.
Maybe it's difficult for them to find mates.
So you know, a small college guys.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But you know, a small, I mean, let's say a small island, you know, it's a big island,
but a smaller area, comparative to, you know, the living area of other animals.
You just, you don't see them.
There's just not as many of them.
They don't reproduce fast enough to have a whole bunch of them running around.
But it really does sound like this is, this is something totally different.
But I think it's something that evolved into what the kiddokey is now from a, a species
of much larger giant lemur.
Right.
Over a thousand years ago.
Yeah.
And on the note of it being lonely and coming to the call, another thing to me that kind
of debunks that is I can do a dove call and there are a ton of doves around the house.
They're not lonely by any means.
But if I sit out in my backyard and I do my dove call, I can actually bring dove to come
sit on the fence or sit on the house and I'll do the call.
It will answer me and it's like tilt in its head looking like, wait a minute, that sounds
like a dove, but it looks like a giant weird monkey sitting in that tree or in that, you
know, and it, it, so I don't think it's lonely looking for mate.
I think it's curious.
Exactly.
It's curiosity.
Simp, just like the doves.
I mean, my great grandmother taught me how to do a dove call.
And since then I've been quote, talk into doves and I can bring them in and it'd be
great during hunting season, but I never dove hunt.
So whatever.
But I think that's what it is.
It's just curiosity over why is there something talking like me?
So I know that a lot of you are like, Oh, we know, Matt and Adam enjoy talking about
cryptids and looking into those things.
And this is, this is why they chose this true enough.
But I think you've kind of seen the underlying tone in this episode is that the world can
change these, these creatures can change and can adapt.
And the idea that we have found every single creature, even a primate, we're just, we're
fooling ourselves.
Sure.
Yeah.
So Sasquatch.
Yeah.
Sasquatch, Yeti, all these, these, these large hominid primates, you know, you can't just
completely dismiss them and say there's no way because we've never found a dead one or
because we surely we would have found it by now.
Not necessarily.
Right.
And, and I think, you know, these two, uh, I say, quote unquote cryptids from Madagascar
are good examples of that.
Yeah.
And, and that there is a potential to not only to continue to find undiscovered species
or species that have evolved over a thousand years and are now totally different, but
you know, the, the idea of other things that we have tagged with the, the name cryptid,
living and existing in very, very small numbers all over the world.
Mm hmm.
Yep.
I mean, I couldn't have said it better.
Um, it, it very much supports my belief that in certain areas, there can be what are considered
cryptids and we can think, well, that type of animal could not exist.
Mm hmm.
But if you let something like the, you know, the continental drift, if you take that into
account and how it can change all of these species to be endemic to Madagascar, then
how, how do you think that there possibly couldn't be a giant hippo like cryptid in Africa?
How there couldn't be some type of, uh, sea creature from the Pleistocene that is still
alive in the deep depths of the ocean or a giant ape running around North and South
America.
I don't know how you, you can totally discount it.
Yeah.
Now, if you say, well, I don't really believe in Bigfoot or I don't really believe in this
or that, but I can see how if one day we get evidence of it, I'm not going to be totally
shocked.
Yeah.
But I don't see how you can go new.
It doesn't exist.
Can't happen.
It's not a thing because we have found, I can't remember the number, but how many mammals
on Madagascar that are endemic to Madagascar never been caddled before.
And we found them as recently as 2010.
So 13 years ago, maybe less because there could have been some that they have found
and hadn't fully cataloged yet that they found last year or the year before or something.
So I think it, this is one of those episodes to me that it's its own episode because it's
Madagascar cryptids, but it ties in to nearly every other episode that we've done on similar
topics.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Any cryptid like this that we've talked about, you can go back and apply our thoughts on
this to that because it just says, hey, don't shut the door on the potential that these
creatures exist.
Keep your mind open.
Don't be skeptical.
Don't be cynical.
Right.
Right.
And you know, this is a point of the show where you tell us what you think.
You know what Adam and I think.
I mean, there's no way we don't, we don't sit on the fence on this one.
We don't have our opinions well either.
That's right.
But tell us what you think.
And one of the best places to do that is in our Facebook group.
It's called the graveyard, thousands of members in there.
It's one of the most active groups I've ever been a part of.
It's fantastic.
It's a safe space for you to share those stories, paranormal experiences, cryptid sightings,
you know, funny jokes, you know, show us your pets and all this stuff.
We love it.
So so hop in there and let us know what you think.
When you're done there, you can check out our website.
It is graveyardpodcast.com.
There you can find links to purchase graveyard, tales, merchandise.
You can listen to the show and you can become a patron.
And Adam and I, we appreciate what the donations that we've gotten for the work we do so much.
You really help keep us going.
Don't forget to rate and review us on iTunes.
It brings us up the charts.
It makes it easier for people to find the graveyard.
And we just we just want to bring more folks in.
We want to hear what their crazy stories are to.
Exactly.
So until next time, we'll save you a seat in the graveyard.
See you soon.
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