Comments on: Man-Eating River Monsters of Japan

By: thylo

thylo — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 06:21:11 +0000

the cultural importance of their arms and armour notwithstanding, it is far too impractical to consider that samurai would be fully geared when doing heavy manual labour in a non-combat setting. of course they were unarmed IF they were digging a canal. on the flipside, perhaps they were supervising a peasant labour force?
they could not wear their armour all the time… what did they wear when they sent their armour out for dry-cleaning? :p

a bit bemused by the use of the word “disemboweling”… a rather specific attack usually reserved to large cats or horned/ tusked prey animals acting in defense. more than likely i chalk this up to shoddy, sensationalistic journalism. most animals attack extremities (hands, arms, legs, heads and neck), as the torso is normally too large and awkward to access or get a jaw around.

that said, great anecdotes. if a colony of pinnipeds or otariids had taken residence in a known unusual location, perhaps a dig for skeletal evidence would be in order? a marsh should be a good medium for evidence preservation.

By: twas brillig

twas brillig — Sun, 29 May 2011 05:33:09 +0000

Additionally to support the idea of some species of unknown giant otter... Amazon Giant River Otters... Males are between 1.5 and 1.8 meters (4.9–5.9 feet) in length and females between 1.5 and 1.7 m (4.9–5.6 ft). Information on vocalizations supported.... Some photos of Amazon River Otters... Here's 2 compared to a rather large Caiman... Here's one with a monkey like expression. =)

By: twas brillig

twas brillig — Sun, 29 May 2011 05:16:02 +0000

This could be Japan’s version of the Australian “Bunyip”.

See below illustration which certainly matches the description above article if anything does …

At times, the description of the bunyip has been described as what could easily be interpreted as an extremely large species of otter (perhaps recently extinct within the last few centuries) the bunyip is often attributed having a head of a cat and dangerous to man. The giant river otters of the Amazon have a slight resemblance to the felidae (perhaps even moreso do these giant species).

I agree with Dogu4 on the Oterid idea, in theory, a giant otter (3 meters long/10 or more feet long) would be far more capable of capturing and dispatching a group of humans than a pinniped and are also social, noisy and playful. The habitat also sounds more suitable to a type of otter

By: mystery_man

mystery_man — Sat, 28 May 2011 14:53:06 +0000

Sorry, my comments were not aimed at Dogu 4, but rather doc_panda13.

By: mystery_man

mystery_man — Sat, 28 May 2011 14:49:49 +0000

Also, if they were digging under threat of attack, they probably were doing this in armor. They may also have been merely overseeing the digging of the canal and not actually doing the menial work themselves.

They would have been armed in any case, and killing them would be no easy feat.

By: mystery_man

mystery_man — Sat, 28 May 2011 14:44:08 +0000

Dogu 4- Well, actually they may have been in armor, and at the very least armed.　There is no mention as to why they were digging a canal, and if samurai were doing this, it may have had some sort of defensive or offensive reason. Depending on the reasons they were out there, they could very well have been doing this in armor. The armor was not only for defense but also a matter of pride and ceremony. So it’s difficult to say if they had removed it all in this instance.

Also Samurai were never far from their weapons and were always ready to defend themselves at a moment’s notice in any situation. There is no way they would have been out there without being armed.

So depending on the circumstances, they may not have been in full battle regalia, but they were most definitely not completely defenseless.

By: doc_panda13

doc_panda13 — Sat, 28 May 2011 13:56:13 +0000

If they were just digging a canal, they most likely weren’t in armor. Suddenly killing 12 of them doesn’t seem THAT difficult.

By: dogu4

dogu4 — Sat, 28 May 2011 13:34:51 +0000

Very interesting. Out of place pinnepeds, otarids, and even otters or sea-mink of unusual size, certainly sounds like a reasonable explanation for some of these occurances, though my current reading suggests that our modern notion of just what some northern species natural range is, or was particularly in the early holocene and right up until the reletively recent birth of modern observational field biology, leads me to wonder if it’s not more a case of some creatures re-claiming ancestral territories. What remains of the original inventory of near shore creatures along coastlines long occupied by humans who fished and hunted on the oceans is a mere shadow of what it was. Maybe some of these populations will recover and reclaim anestral ranges, if only very very slowly. Last years documented sighting of what seemed to be a Gray Whale in the eastern Mediterranean Sea suggests that surprising things can still happen. Cheers

By: flame821

flame821 — Sat, 28 May 2011 06:12:17 +0000

What if it were mating season? Would a male looking for a mate or protecting a harem be aggressive towards humans?

I think the samurai story was exaggerated a bit, as often happens with retellings of old tales, but if they were in full armor it might be possible that a large, randy, male took them for either competition or a threat and tried to ‘duel’ with one or two. If he had any sort of tusks I could easily see the disemboweling happening.