New "Mokele Mbembe" Expedition

it is my understanding that there isn't enough atmospheric oxygen for a spider to grow to that size. mokele mbembe has always interested me though.

Optimus, that is my understanding too. and thank god for earths lower present day O2 levels.

I would not be able to cope with giant spiders.

As for mokele. I want to beleive. but it's a stretch.. A giant snake sure, a giant fish seems doable. a suropod the size of an elephant or at least a rhino rambling around the jungle. I just don't believe it. A suropod running around the congos marshes. that would leave a pretty easy track to follow. seriously trackers can find animals with the tinsiest evidence. that being said I totally believe that sasquatch exists and you'd think we'd find some sort of conclusive evidence or at least be able to track the thing. so my opinion is slightly messed up too.

reply to post by optimus primal


This is true for normal spiders. But what if it is a different species of spiders, that somehow developed a way to cope with the low oxygon levels. Or requires less oxygen than normal spiders. Hmmmmm?

Oh and in two days they got 3,000 dollars. I think in 7 days they can get 6000. So it is safe to assume this expedition is going to happen. It is also safe to assume I am very jealous and want to go. And if I can get a hold of them I will spam the # out of them asking about "student opportunities."

Kickstarter Expedition

I wish them the best of luck on their expedition. who knows what new species big or small they can find!

About the spiders. it's really an insect thing in general. the way they get o2 is similar to a fish's gills. they have tubes in their body that are open to the air. the tubes are lined with tons of blood vessels. the o2 in the free standing air of the tubes pass through the thin tubes wall and enters the blood stream. these spiders would have to have completely different breathing apparatus than all known insects or arachnids. Something more like lungs.

insects and arachnids actually have some pretty crummy design for getting their O2. almost like gills that don't allow free flowing water. it works if you are very little but it's still pretty stupid. if they could develop a way to force air in and out that might help, but still they would have to deal with the fact that the system still doesn't mine too much o2 from the air. Not as efficient as our aviole in our lungs. stupid spiders and their inferior breathing apparatus!

All props go to their spinnerets though.

reply to post by Dextraphite


Blue Whales and Giant squids are massive animals. Do they need that much oxygen? Also, i heard about some reports of giant spiders in Amazonia. They are described as a huge Tarantula with the size of a large dog. The natives from the regino fears the animal and also stated that the Spider atacks frequently their chickens and as well dogs.

Interesting! The last so-called "expedition" was a joke from Destination Truth - they didn't even go up the river, and claimed it was all "hippos". I really hope they take this seriously, and come up with something. There are too many reports, and they are NOT all of rhinos or other "current" animals, either.

As for the spiders, they have been reported, in Africa and South America. The natives in some SA villages build their huts to keep them out, and claim they can carry off small children and dogs. Those people eat smaller spiders, and they know the local animals. There is a report of a British explorer and his wife seeing a HUGE spider crossing the road in Africa, too. Like maybe 3 feet across. The Monster Quest episode (season 2) on spiders talks about both of those. Seems unlikely, but the locals do know the animals in their areas, and they are afraid of them. Same with mokele mbembe. Some have IDed a sauropod, from pictures. Hard to traverse terrain, local reports, and the right climate....who knows? I have seen a few strange things myself, and won't dismiss the possibilities.

I saw a TV show about this thing a few years ago, and one thing really intrigued about it. The folks described it as vegetarian, but it just didn't like hippos and would kill them. It would not eat them, just kill them. I found that strange.

The man eating fish is real and has been documented.
animal.discovery.com...

And about the spiders, what if they are not a true spider and actually some sort of freshwater crab. Just a thought.

reply to post by LadyGreenEyes


Exactly what I am saying. I was familiar with all that, and I would trust the natives honestly.

reply to post by J-in-TX


They need to be hostile if they want to maintain their population. Or we can take the hippos and lions as an example. They kill anything that aproaches them.

i hope he doesn't find it. i've read the reports about this thing, and the huge spiders. they seem to be credible, but if they're ever found, i know some people would tear the whole forest apart to capture them and study them/put them in zoos.

reply to post by Bob Sholtz


a good point sir, finding thses creatures would do wonders for cryptozoology and related sciences but if we were to find them, no doubt they'd become endangered before long

I'd like to weigh in on behalf of the force of gravity .

Gravity is an additional limiting factor on the size of insects. Picture what would happen if your skeleton dissolved. Ok, that's nasty, but it illuminates my point, which is that an insect molts. They have to jettison that exoskeleton in order to grow larger, see? At some point gravity will prevent the insect (or arachnid) from growing larger due to squishiness. ( Why don't crabs and lobsters get huge? Seriously, why, cause it seems like they should. Oh, hey, they use copper instead of iron to transport oxygen in their "blood". Not as efficient. Maybe their second-rate breathing apparatus is a major culprit underwater too.)

Now, I could easily believe that spiders could evolve a secondary support structure to help them survive molting at larger sizes. And that they could tweak their oxygen transport/utilzation strategies (I-forget-who mentioned whales. Excellent example. Also horses, seals, Navy S.E.A.L.s, lots of animals get good at this). But my problem is that a creature that has broken a size barrier like this will have opened up a world of ecological niches for its elf. They'd be all over.

I had some stuff about pint-sized sauropods too, but it's late. We'll see if this thread stays alive tomorrow.

reply to post by BASSPLYR


Not saying I think it's definitely true, I mean this is actually the first I've heard of this but I think it could be possible for a creature like this to be undiscovered. Like others are saying the congo is a massive place, and I mean think about it, it's a pretty dangerous place and the government sure aren't going to be interested in funding or sending people to investigate a cryptid, and cryptozoology isn't exactly a normal type or research so i think it'd be quite hard and/or intimidating for an ordinary researcher to try and find something like this in a dangerous place if you get where I'm coming from?

I don't know just putting in my thoughts

Hope the guys find something and that if they do it's allowed to be shown to the world and not covered up

reply to post by doodles40


Let's not forget that some years ago an expedition team discovered more than 100,000 gorillas living in a extremely relative small area of the congo basin. The mokele-mbembe must be hidden in a place of dificult acess. I hope they at least find it's body like some other expeditions of emela-notkuta suggested (some expeditioners claimed to see the animal alive).

You can learn more about the expedition here:

newmac-expedition.com...

www.joemarrero.com... cumentary/

Originally posted by Frocharocha
reply to post by Dextraphite

 

Blue Whales and Giant squids are massive animals. Do they need that much oxygen? Also, i heard about some reports of giant spiders in Amazonia. They are described as a huge Tarantula with the size of a large dog. The natives from the regino fears the animal and also stated that the Spider atacks frequently their chickens and as well dogs.

But both of those animals have a completely different way of breathing. The blue whale is a mammal - therefore they breathe with their lungs similarly to humans and other mammals. Giant squid actually have 3 hearts. One is for their normal heart functions. The other two are for the gills on each side of the body. In other words, the gills on each side of a giant squids body are controlled by their own heart. So this argument is like the proverbial comparing of apples to oranges.
Back in the Carboniferous period, the oxygen level in our atmosphere was over 150% of what it currently is. This means that the spiders and insects of that time were much bigger than they are now since they have such an ineffective way to get their oxygen. Imagine a dragonfly with a two foot wingspan. That would be the Meganeura of that time period. There really is plenty of evidence to suggest that the size of insects is directly related to the oxygen content in the atmosphere - but I suppose if some type of spider or other insect were to evolve with a different or more efficient way to breathe it could become larger than currently accepted limits, then again it would still be limited in size due to the whole exoskeleton thing.

Originally posted by lacrimosa
i saw a documentary about this yrs ago. was interesting until they showed some of the witnesses a picture of a rhino and the witnesses said that was what they had seen.

"Mokele-Mbembe" is a generic, loose term used to describe most African cryptids, and many spiritual fictional beings that have nothing to do with the actual dinosaur. When natives admitted to a rhino being Mokele-Mbembe, they were referring to EMela-ntouka, which is a new species of rhino.

-wikipedia

edit on 1-5-2012 by lacrimosa because: (no reason given)

My question to ask here is, how accurate was the translation? Was it a positive ID? or saying something along the lines of "yes it was about that size","very similar in color" or "this is close to what I saw" ?

do you get where I am going with this? Besides, it is my opinion that TV documentaries and reality shows are more about keeping funding coming in and getting ratings as well as producing an interesting "show" than they are about finding the truth. The truth requires extended research, evaluation and testing. The average viewer, and yes, I know we are not all average viewers here, wants instant gratification...science is rarely quick to produce gratification.

I wish them luck.

It'll be cool if that guy actually finds something. He'll probably pick up a few diseases along the way and hopefully that doesn't kill him before he finds a "dinosaur".

Or bring back some kind of mutated virus and kill us all

Originally posted by Bob Sholtz
i hope he doesn't find it. i've read the reports about this thing, and the huge spiders. they seem to be credible, but if they're ever found, i know some people would tear the whole forest apart to capture them and study them/put them in zoos.

Now that I would like to see, the huge spiders. Im just not sure if he would be able to outrun such a thing if its running towards him.