Devil's Footprints Fit Shape Of Male Giant Dragonfly Clasper

[MikeG]

Here's the link to a published paper Increase in tracheal investment with beetle size supports hypothesis of oxygen limitation on insect gigantism

Thanks. That's a start, at least. However, a quick perusal of the paper suggests that we are talking increased size, not increased number, when it comes to tracheas, contrary to your stated theory.

This supports my hypothesis that if the eyewitness sightings of giant dragonflies are correct,

You mean your one drunk eyewitness?

No record of giant dragonflies for the last god knows how many million years, not one specimen in a museum anywhere, not a single report by a biologist, not even one blurry photo.......nothing other than the blatherings of one drunk guy. That's not a good start to your hypothesis, now is it?

then the leg segmentation of the exoskeleton wouldn't allow sufficient flexibility for normal walking. Therefore the male giant dragonfly, if injured or exhausted or suffering from 'insect frostbite', would have to hop on it's tail using it's wings for assistance.

Makey-uppey tosh

I'm assuming that the clasper-less females would migrate to sunnier climates and the male stay to defend their prime den sites and territory.

Makey-uppey tosh

Longest insect migration ever as dragonflies fly 11,000-mile round-trip over ocean

Wonderful what biologists can find out when they study the real world, isn't it?

 

[Alan Lowey]

And if me Auntie had balls . . .

It's more common than you think.

Giant Insect Seen on Passenger Flight

Flight X. A giant beetle. Its green shiny body opened up to show a pair of four feet veiny wings, flapping up and down at an incredibly slow speed.

That’s what Marco Gessati, a 32-year-old doctor, said he and about ten other people saw during a flight from Rome to Boston. For privacy reasons, the flight number and the airline have been omitted. Let’s just name it “Flight X.”

“I know it’s hard to believe,” explained Gessati, loudly over the phone with a strong Italian accent. “I know what I saw, you know? I have never seen anything like this. Big, big insect. Out of this world.” He had finally agreed to a phone interview after a copious e-mail correspondence. But there was too much information to be shared and he had something else to share with me: Sketches of the creature. We decided to meet at a restaurant in Boston.

 

[Agatha]

The horseshoe shape is supported by the drawing but not by the photographs, either the Daily Mail story or the photograph in post 13 which appears to be a cloven hoof print.

The photo in post 13 looks very like a cloven hoof narrowed at the top, just like a muntjac. See for example: http://www.britishwildlife.wikia.com/wiki/Large_Mammal_Footprint_Idenfication

 

[Pup]

Here's a Centre For Fortean Zoology (CFZ) Investigation of the 2009 prints in the snow.

THE CFZ INVESTIGATES: Mysterious footprints in Woolsery

Notice how I think he's got the direction correct. It probably landed from over the bush and hopped towards the house and then back out down the garden.

....

I'm not where I can hear the video's sound, but I don't get it. Those are obviously slightly melted tracks of a squirrel or rabbit or some similar animal that hops by landing on its front feet, then placing its back feet just ahead and springing off. At 2:03 you can see a good example, the print toward the bottom of the screen, where the impressions of the small front feet are separately visible from the longer back feet.

The melting snow has distorted most of them, blending the four footfalls into what looks like a single print, but one can see that the snow is starting to melt and show the grass in other areas.

If anything, I think it solves the original mystery by showing that small four-footed tracks can look enough like hooves in melting snow, that that's probably what the original "devil's footprints" were, and why they were so widespread.

 

[MikeG]

No other animals known could make the tracks.

And you know this exactly how?

I'm proposing a new species which only has a common ancestor with the known species of dragonfly.

In other words you're making something up with no evidence in support. Makey-uppey tosh.

It takes a while to imagine that this is a possibility, I agree. It's the best one there is imv. Give me something better which can explain the long enduring mystery. There isn't one.

Yep, this is what this is all about.

Oh, and the onus is on you to back up your claim, not on us to provide better alternatives. Those making spurious extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and all that. You don't have the slightest shred of evidence, and worse than wasting your time, you are wasting ours too.

 

[Mike!]

A giant, warm blooded, snow traveling dragon fly that uses it's tail as a pogo stick rather than flying, huh? I think the devil taking a winters stroll over hill and dale makes at least as much sense, if not a tiny bit more.

 

[Alan Lowey]

You're all wrong. No known animal tracks fit the bill. No known animal has been seen making the tracks.

..............


There's even been an eyewitness who has photographed the giant dragonfly with glowing wings. This hypothesis can even explain the whole UFO saga.

http://www.theufochronicles.com/2012/12/silent-glowing-dragonfly-shaped-ufo.html

Silent, Glowing Dragonfly-Shaped UFO Photographed Over Asheville, North Carolina

Edited by jhunter1163: 

Changed hotlink to regular link.

......

 

[MikeG]

.......Those are obviously slightly melted tracks of a squirrel or rabbit or some similar animal that hops by landing on its front feet, then placing its back feet just ahead and springing off. ......

Like these rabbit tracks.

Or these.

 

[Agatha]

It's more common than you think.

Giant Insect Seen on Passenger Flight

From the link:

Marco Gessati is an intelligent man. Why anyone would make up something like this is beyond me, specially when the story comes from a doctor.

The alternatives are not either truth or lie. There's being honestly mistaken (perhaps seeing a tiny insect magnified somehow), or a hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucination, which are incredibly real and detailed, or exaggerating something mundane through frequent retelling, to name just three further explanations.

I wasn’t able to contact other witnesses from Flight X.

Odd, since Dr Gessati asserted that he had an email address for another person who had seen this bug.

I am baffled by the insistence of keeping the airline and flight number secret "for privacy reasons", but splashing Dr Gessati's name all over the report. It's almost as if the reporter didn't want anyone else on that flight to come forward to confirm or deny Dr Gessati's claim.

 

[Alan Lowey]

A giant, warm blooded, snow traveling dragon fly that uses it's tail as a pogo stick rather than flying, huh? I think the devil taking a winters stroll over hill and dale makes at least as much sense, if not a tiny bit more.

LOL. At least you have the pogo stick imagery correct.

It's probably a matter of one's own upbringing and belief system. If you're religious then perhaps a supernatural cause is more probable. If you're an atheist, then a new species of giant dragonfly is more likely, despite the bizarreness.

It's bizarre beyond bizarre, I know. It takes time to get used to.

 

[MikeG]

You're all wrong. No known animal tracks fit the bill. No known animal has been seen making the tracks.......

Other than a rabbit, you mean?

But rather than a rabbit, you insist on inventing a new species, which despite having wings and legs you propose hops in a way no animal is known to have hopped in the entire history of the planet. If I proposed this, I am fairly sure that someone would advise me to only post whilst sober, or wait until I was at least 12 before joining a forum.

 

[Agatha]

Oh joy! More blurry photos with no way of determining how far away from the camera the object is. Perhaps this thread should be merged with one of ufology's, we did discuss the impossibility of assessing scale of objects without knowing the distance thereto on that thread at some length.

Several plausible theories have been put forward to explain the actual photographs of the tracks. The drawing of the tracks, however, appears to be as accurate as Lowell's Martian canal drawings.

 

[Resume]

It's more common than you think.

Giant Insect Seen on Passenger Flight

Yes, cognitive errors/biases are quite common.

 

[Resume]

LOL. At least you have the pogo stick imagery correct.

It's probably a matter of one's own upbringing and belief system. If you're religious then perhaps a supernatural cause is more probable. If you're an atheist, then a new species of giant dragonfly is more likely, despite the bizarreness.

It's bizarre beyond bizarre, I know. It takes time to get used to.

You'll find that folks around here are used to wild-ass claims.

 

[Alareth]

There's even been an eyewitness who has photographed the giant dragonfly with glowing wings. This hypothesis can even explain the whole UFO saga.

Silent, Glowing Dragonfly-Shaped UFO Photographed Over Asheville, North Carolina

......

The person who took that photo says it was the size of a jetliner.

That's a damn big dragonfly.

 

[HighRiser]

Here's a Centre For Fortean Zoology (CFZ) Investigation of the 2009 prints in the snow.

THE CFZ INVESTIGATES: Mysterious footprints in Woolsery

Notice how I think he's got the direction correct. It probably landed from over the bush and hopped towards the house and then back out down the garden.

....

I don't know how much time you spend out of Mom's basement outdoors, but if I came across tracks like these, my first thought would be rabbit.

My second thought would be rabbit stew. It's hungry work; tromping through the snow.

 

[Alareth]

The person who took that photo says it was the size of a jetliner.

That's a damn big dragonfly.

OMG ... I just had a horrifying thought.

If Megaguirus is real; then what about big G?

Someone warn Tokyo ASAP!

 

[HighRiser]

OMG ... I just had a horrifying thought.

If Megaguirus is real; then what about big G?

Someone warn Tokyo ASAP!

Mothra is tame now and protects the home islands, right? Tokyo will be fine.

 

[Mike!]

The person who took that photo says it was the size of a jetliner.

That's a damn big dragonfly.

You know, I see a spectacular SciFi Channel movie here, it just needs sharks somehow. I know, make the giant dragonfly eat Sharks! What could be scarier than a giant man-eating-shark eating Giant Dragonfly?
Nothing!
That is until, you see it hop around on it's tail like a pogo stick in snow, because you were thinking cold would kill it, but it doesn't! It just makes it hopping mad!
Now that's SCARY!!!

Sharknado? Ha!
Our Giant Hopping Dragonfly Eats Sharks out of tornados!
Top that!

 

[Checkmite]

LOL. At least you have the pogo stick imagery correct.

It's probably a matter of one's own upbringing and belief system. If you're religious then perhaps a supernatural cause is more probable. If you're an atheist, then a new species of giant dragonfly is more likely, despite the bizarreness.

It's bizarre beyond bizarre, I know. It takes time to get used to.

It is true that a giant dragonfly is not a "paranormal" or supernatural explanation, and is therefore more credible than, say, Old Nick right out of the gate when it comes to the culprit behind the footprints.

But at the same time, other non-supernatural explanations - for instance, small animals like rabbits whose tracks in melting snow look very similar to the "footprints" - are in turn more credible than giant dragonflies, because they're already widely known to exist and behave in the way necessary to cause the tracks.

The thing is, you've got an uphill battle here. You've got to not only establish the factual existence of the dragonflies, but you've got to explain why they would be structurally identical to smaller versions of themselves but display vastly different behaviors that don't seem to make sense. For instance, again taking them at face value, the witness reports of giant dragonflies do not describe them as hopping about on their claspers or flying during winter with repeated contact with the snow; so you must explain why you feel they are describing the same creature you are theorizing. Likewise, most blood-feeding insects keep the blood and other food they eat in their gut; you must explain why you think this food-blood would for instance be stored in other parts of the body where the insect's own hemolymph would be such as in the wing veins. Another problem would be how the insect keeps this blood warm enough to keep itself warm enough to be active during the winter.