ahh!

i know at least 10 artists in my studio building alone who could have made that. photoshop, scuplture, franken-taxidermy...

then again, maybe we underestimate the amount of genetic mutations crawling around our planet.

http://www.patriciapiccinini.net

omnivorous mammalian quadruped, stripped of fur by sea, skull revealed to jaw forming "beak" .

I know there is a RoadKill Cookbook, is there a Flotsam/Jetsam Cook Book?

That's pretty clearly a small mammal - most likely a small dog (perhaps a hairless variety?). Live or dead, it must've found its way into the open sea (off a boat?) where its skin and mucous membranes got picked clean by sealife. Whatever had at it must've gone a little nuts around the face, exposing the skeleton.

That's a fair hypothesis, Takuan, but I'm curious as to why it seems intact as opposed to picked apart by scavengers. It seems to suggest to me that the photo may have been staged. I imagine if it's carcass were in the (salt) water long enough, the gulls would have been all over it as soon as it was within their feeding range, not to mention any natural decomposition.

This simply does not seem like an animal carcass that was subjected to sea, air, and sand elements. More like it was mummified and kept dry and isolated.

(PS: Unless, of course it looked like that before , and it was, at the time of the photo, only recently dead; an unlikely, but nonetheless possible scenario.)

((PPS: why is the semi-colon on home row if we almost never use it?))

Has J.J. Abrams begun his viral marketing campaign for Cloverfield 2: Electric Boogaloo already?

could have been just buoyant enough to stay below, time in water. Possible ligature on forelimb is typical of vet administered euthanasia

If they'd put it elsewhere you'd have hit the colon in sentences and potentially wrecked 'em.

PPPS: My personal best guess is that this is a turtle/tortoise sans shell. The decomposing skin may have been pushed back to obfuscate from the camera an otherwise obvious missing-spine wound incurred by the de-shelling process.

Plucked Chicken that was tortured at Gitmo.

them there carnassials don't look like any damned turtle I swum with

I can believe the dog theory. Search for pug skull on google to see how different a small dog would look like with skin torn off its face.

This was made into quite a spectacle over at the SomethingAwful boards, and we're pretty much 100% certain that it's a dog. The skull shape matches perfectly; decomposition will alter features to that extent easily. Look closely and you'll find it's not a beak, just a distended lower jaw. Besides, turtles are very attached to their shells with tissue, and this is not what a deshelled turtle looks like.

To #4, keep in mind this is salt water we're talking, with dessicant/preservative properties.

beloved family member, buried at sea

Turtles and their shells are separate only in language -- in the material world the inner fleshy body is utterly connected to the shell by a series of bones -- a turtle cannot come out of its shell.

Clearly a PS job. Note that its little hand is giving us the finger

the hind quarters looks very much like a turkey carcass tbh :)

I think it was a hit on a mobster's dog (this is purely whimsical speculation). They shot off the tip of it's nose before they dumped it in the water. It looks like there is something binding the front legs. Maybe someone is sending someone a message? It could happen.

If I ran across this on a beach, would I a) stop and take a picture, b) creep away quietly praying it doesn't wake up, or c) crap my pants and run screaming like a girlyman?

It would take extremely compelling evidence to convince me that this is not Photoshop.

its me again. interestingly enough if you study the photo closely enough you can see a human form lying on the sand, right shoulder facing the camera and he has a beard. Between the "turtles head" and the "turkey hind quarters" you can see a man prostrate on the sand with his right arm extended at right angles and a head and shoulder. Scale has been altered. Heavy set about 6'1", 230lbs, brown facial hair and a - mullet.........

Lauren O at #18 writes:

> It would take extremely compelling evidence to convince me that this is not Photoshop.

I think it must be - you can't get anything useful done with The Gimp.

It looks like a dog that had the fleshy bits of its snout stripped. And I think the front of the snout is just buried into the sand a little bit.

#22-Yes I am sorry.

Could be a kangaroo or a wallaby. The head, paws, legs look very marsupial to me.

I made the bad man go away.

#4: Because QWERTY was designed to reduce typewriter jams, not efficiency. Check out Dvorak.

I love how people write their amateur hypotheses as if they were professionals at work. The "de-shelling process"? Seriously?

You cannot be so certain that this was photoshopped. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that it was. IMHO, this is almost definitely a dog. Look at the tail, legs, stomach, eyes, and lower jaw. All dog-like. Removing the skin on a recognizable face will make it unrecognizable.

#19: What are you talking about? Please clarify; I'm extremely confused about what exactly I'm looking for and where I'm looking for it...

Thanks. The ogles do nothing!

Its a Gryphon!

"turtle/tortoise sans shell"
Nope, turtle's shell develop from their ribs and spine, it's not just glued to their back, more like their ribs grew from and wrapped around their back.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle#Shell

It's obviously one of Moorcock's Hunting Dogs of the Dharzi. If it's nose had been shot off, it would be a sphinx.

Gryphons have wings, silly. (Adjusts taped glasses and gazes nervously into pocket protector...)

Maybe it's a Gryphon of St. Mark!

here a really weird animal a found in a coast of mexico: http://youtube.com/watch?v=qrk99HSdxPY
i have no clue on what it is

I can't speculate as to what it is, but it is probably a conventional animal with the facial tissue removed.

I can however lend credibility to the claim about an animal testing facility nearby. My father told me a story about a time when he and his brother were sailing somewhere in the east end of the Island, when their boat started to approach an Island. Neither of them were familiar with the area and they came to shore, at which time spotlights were put on them and they were told to leave immediately. The explanation has been they perform chemical and biological testing there on many animal subjects, and the Island is closed government property. I do not know if the facility is related to the Camp Hero base or any other labs in the eastern suffolk county area.

And what about a Leatherback Turtle ? They don't have a bone like shell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leatherback_turtle

it's a hairless dog which has had it's muzzle biten away.

put yopur finger over the beak and look again.

the beek is I think the septum.

Plum Island Animal Disease Center: http://www.ars.usda.gov/main/site_main.htm?modecode=19400000

whatever it is, it looks like it would be...delicious!

mystery solved! it's obviously a turtle-dog (albeit out of its usual habitat).

I can however lend credibility to the claim about an animal testing facility nearby. My father told me a story about a time when he and his brother were sailing somewhere in the east end of the Island, when their boat started to approach an Island. Neither of them were familiar with the area and they came to shore, at which time spotlights were put on them and they were told to leave immediately. The explanation has been they perform chemical and biological testing there on many animal subjects, and the Island is closed government property. I do not know if the facility is related to the Camp Hero base or any other labs in the eastern suffolk county area.

It's PIADC - Plum Island Animal Disease Center - just off of Orient Point. If you try to land there, they will put spotlights on you and warn you off (my wife used to work there).

You can link to it here.

The facility is primarily concerned with foreign animal pathogens threatening the North American food supply (African Swine Fever, Foot and Mouth, etc).

The skull of this magic dog has the power to cast its shadow towards the sun.

Ok, so it seems that it's actually a very dead raccoon, according to the local paper:

http://www.indyeastend.com/picpaperissues/2008-07-23/110.lg.jpg

I convinced myself by looking at the one of the first images that came up when googling "raccoon skull":

http://www.skullsite.co.uk/Racoon/racoon.htm

The head matches very well, especially the lower skull, and everyone knows about raccoons' kinda-creepy little humanlike paws...

(I have to admit, I spent far too long trying to figure this out, and finally was satisfied by the oostings at LiveJournal)

I think this is Photoshopped. I downloaded the image, opened it in Photoshop and used the magnifying glass to look for evidence of doctoring. I find at least two suspicious areas:

1. Along the top of the neck. Something has been erased or modified.

2. At the "wrist." The junction between the forearm and "paw" appears doctored.

There is a creepy "animal disease center" near there, and get this: It's on an island! Spoooooooky! Plum Island, see google earth coordinates 41.17 -72.19

When I was a kid we had a boat and would pass by it, Dad would always point it out. There were signs that you couldn't land there. Real or fake monster who cares, spooooooky government island of Dr Moreau, awwwwwesome!

dude....where are the conspiracy theorists?

haven't you kids every heard of the montauk project?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montauk_Project

definitely reminds me of a monster i remember blasting into a fine pink mist with a plasma cannon back in 1994. i vote for creature from an other dimension. just type idclip and run around montauk until you find nikola tesla, he'll know for sure.

Did this odd ass creature happen to have my Micheal Jordan number 3's and my right foot in his mouth when he washed up? I'm having a hell of a time doing lay-ups. (I keep falling to my left)

I believe this is a decomposing Nutria or Coypu.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutria

@5

"((PPS: why is the semi-colon on home row if we almost never use it?))"

You have it the wrong way around; given the semicolon is on the home row, why do you so rarely use it?

I'M NOT a vet but that's not a Nutria Blankstare. That's photoshopnariun. It's a common breed in Louisiana periodicals.

It's one of Zul's demon dogs from Ghostbusters.

Although I detect an evolutionary resemblance to the goatsucker, it's obviously a distinct species.

regardless of whether it's real or not: of all the places they could've submitted it to, they chose... Gawker?

#8 FTW, which just goes to show how easily I may be amused when I haven't had enough coffee.

Raccoon with exposed septum sounds just about right.

whatever it is i'd like to know why it's giving me the finger.

Whatever it is, it looks like it would be DELICIOUS.

@34 -- Chixchulub Puerto is where the gigantic crater from the meteor that [may have] wiped out the dinosaur is. Coincidence?????

Gawker also reports: Montauk "Dead Monster" Maybe Tied To Cartoon Network Show.

looks like a pug nosed dog breed - flesh parts of the face, nose, lips, seem to be missing.

A dino dog escaped from a testing facility would have been cool though.

I'm going to say raccoon or dog. Although it is kind of fun to look at perfectly explainable phenomena and scream OMG FORTEAN CRYPTO BEASTESES!!!!lorencoleman!1111!!!

EL CHUPACABRAS!!!! in long island, no less.

@58

Thank God this didn't wash up in Boston, then.

That reminds me - I haven't seen an episode of ATHF in a long time. Time to dust off the DVDs.

OMG, It's a wingless Griffin.

I for one welcome our leathery, beaked, rodent-like maste-- HEY, that gesture means something rude on Earth, yo.

#46..was the game "Wasteland" by any chance?

its a racoon or other smaller furbearing mammal (cant tell the scale from the photo) thats been skinned. you can see on the front foot where the fur was cut around the wrist. during the skinning process, once you get to the head/face area, you cut the snout off from the inside to keep the nose attached to the fur.

I am a photoshop expert, I have been doing imaging for 15 years and if this is a fake it is a very good one. Noneo fo the pixels seem to be disturbed or cloned, except for just a little blurring above the head and that one long finger witht he dark outline make me just a little suspicsious, however the shadows are all correct, there is even a second ear shadow even though the second ear isn’t visible, the sand seems to have washed around the head the same as the rest of the body. Again, I can make photos that aren’t detectable that they were pjotoshopped but it takes skill and long experience. I would like to have MUCH more information on this, like where exactly it was found, the size of it. Is this the ONLY picture taken. Witht he proximity of Plum Island animal and biological warfare testing lab nearby and the infamous Philadelphia Project taking place just down the road, this is either VERY interesting if real and of course all these reasons would make a great hoax picture as well.

I, for one, welcome our new rotting aquatic overlords.

Looks like a dead Wampus Cat

Whatever it is, it must come from Plum Island Animal Disease Center, who is located on an island nearby. Although the director of the site, Dr Moreau, denies any link to the incident.

naked mole-rat. We have them in our institute. Really ugly...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_mole_rat

While here are discussing WHAT it is, we Chinese are discussing how to cook it.

http://jandan.net/2008/07/30/us-monster.html

Mom?

Plum island is off the north fork of Long Island, in the LI Sound. Montauk is on the South Fork, away from prevailing currents. There have been so many rumors about Plum Island over the years, its hard to catalog them all. I believe Nelson Demille, a LI born author also wrote about the island.

i gotta have one of those........

I'm jumping on the dog with flayed snout bandwagon (and what a fun parade it'll be!).

This looks so much like the dead sea lion I found while camping at Kirby Cove a few years ago: its body was whole, bloated and sunbleached -- shiny like the tailquarters of this beast -- except for its face which had been completely eaten away down to its white skull and provided a portal for the swarming flies to the rich, fermenting smorgasbord within.

Of course, the sea lion looked less like a dog than a sea lion...

I'm tempted to believe that it's a raccoon too but I don't understand why it only has a single tooth at the tip of the lower jaw. Or why there are no teeth on the upper jaw. There is a tiny bit of fur on the wrist but the other bit is a piece of cloth, not fur.

I will never understand the compuntion to jump abot squealing Photoshop!

at the top of your lungs.

It couldn't ever be a dead dog/racoon? no, for no such thing could ever exist.

But Photoshop, you've sen that ipso facto that must be the answer.

peculiar line of thinking.

PHOTOGRAPH!

Is that a coriander and fennel spice rub coating it? With a little garlic powder, perhaps?

Could it be one of those "attack badgers" they keep reporting in Iraq?

Looks like a job for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense.

Looks like a dog to me, with hair and quite a bit of the skin on its face worn off by the water.

I live in Beach Haven at the Jersey Shore (South LBI) and I have heard NOTHING of this creature nor seen any news reports of such a animal washing up at the Jersey Shore. I've searched all the Jersey papers, I've googled it a hundred different ways and NOTHING shoes up in any NJ news outlet other than this wacky website. I can only conclude it is fiction, the whole boing thing.

I think it's probably just a dog that has been in the water so long that some flesh has come off the snout.

To me it looks like a dead turtle that got so bloated that it popped it's shell before washing up to shore.

But what do I know?

looks like a Charlie White photograph.

Why has no one commented that the thing seems to have 3 hind legs?

It's just a dog.

The face has worn away exposing the cartilage of the nose which - in this photo- make is look like a beak.

Not the teeth are very typical of canines.

The (apparently) deleted comments and other comments referring to them by number make this a difficult thread to follow.

DNA testing would settle the matter.

Looks like a photograph to me. You can tell by the pixels. I know, I've seen a few photographs in my time.

This is clarification for #87 by TRR. Of course, if this comment gets deleted, it will seem rather pointless.
"The (apparently) deleted comments and other comments referring to them by number make this a difficult thread to follow."

Explanation: At one point #22 was a comment that said something to the effect of 'go to this blog, you won't be sorry.' When I clicked the link (hoping for more weird animal info)it led to porn. So I left the comment saying I was sorry. I assume the comment from Antinous about making the bad man go away was a reference to deleting the porn.

By the way, the carcass does look very much like a raccoon to me. I'm not a zoologist, but I buy the explanation.

The (apparently) deleted comments and other comments referring to them by number make this a difficult thread to follow.

The renumbering is from approved anonymous comments. It's better to pull a quote or use a name if you want to refer to another comment.

typical 'crypto' photo - no size reference or other relevant information.

I bet it tastes like chicken, tho'

R.O.U.S? Is there a fire swamp nearby?

Poor thing.

I'm looking at the skull, and namely the position of the eyes, and I'm pretty sure that is felis catus, the domestic cat. Other telltale signs are the shape of the body and way it is splayed out. But look at the positioning of the eyes; binocular vision, fairly far apart. The teeth are also more like those of a cat. The forepaws appearance can be explained by simple decay and "nibbling".

It's obviously a sea cow. Or maybe it's the Love Walrus.

I find it very interesting that their have been 3 boingboing posts featuring mutant animals around the time of the worth1000 "photoshop a mutant animal" contest

looks like a duck to me ;)

It's a turtle sans-shell. And for those saying you can't separate a turtle from it's shell: Yes you can...you just need an Italian plumber in a red shirt and blue overalls to jump on it's back. The little devils come poppin' right out!

This creature looks a lot like a dead pitbull; powerful back legs, not much fur (so it all came off easily), flattish muzzle. Try covering the 'beak' with a finger, it looks more like a canine face then. There is a docked tail. The front right paw looks like it has something tied around it - some tough killing a dog that got too much by tieing it to something heavy which drowned Fido then eventually degraded enough for the body to float up?

Also, if you look at it, the muzzle and ears are a bit weird and deformed - perhaps because small creatures have started to eat at the edges? The distended stomach could be a pregnant bitch, or swallowed water, or simply decomposition gases.

But before we look really stupid; can anyone get a scale or point of reference on this photo?

@teapot:

What do you mean:

I think it must be - you can't get anything useful done with The Gimp.

...? Are you sure you don't mean, I'm lost and confused because I've only been using Photoshop for the past ten+ years? I think that's more likely.

I

And the creature? ...it's obviously an early attempt by Professor Farnsworth to create Pazuzu

I am pretty sure this is a "Canadian Foot Snapper".

The CFS completely eats it's victims but for some strange reason leaves one foot to drift in the current. Scientists speculate that "The CFS can only eat so much rubber, after the first foot and the rest of the body, the CFS has had its fill".

Known to frequent the waters of the Northern Pacific
It is bizarre that this one was found in the Atlantic.... the water of the Atlantic is normally to warm to support their lifestyle.

Global Warming is Crazy!

Forevermore, when a child's dog dies...

...and they ask 'Daddy, where did Wuffles go?'...

they should be shown this picture.

That should shut them up for a few years.

I'm surprised no one recognized a Deep One yet.

Cthulu fthagn !

I really wish everyone would cut that out. They never get the accent right and the dialect hasn't be used by normal beings for decades. It's embarrassing.

Is it still legal to trap for fur around there? Every few years someone out in the woods comes across a pile of stripped 'dog carcasses' and this is taken up by hysterics as evidence of torture and Satanism. It turns out to be be legitimate fox trapping. I'm predicting that for this one. Everything looks way different without its pelt.

All I can say is Boing Boing had better keep us informed and updated on this thing.

As for what I think it is..it's damn creepy, is all I know.

No satanism here. Just a perfectly normal HellHound skinned by perfectly normal godfearing fur trappers.

"Everything looks way different without its pelt" is my favorite quote for the next 24 hours

Not dead, just sleeping. And it blogs.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-montauk-monster/mysteries-etc_b_115704.html

I acutally used to lifeguard at Kirk Beach, about 800 meters from where that thing was found (no joke).
It's frankly not inconsistent with the morphology of the "homo guido" beach-goer that would frequent that stretch of beach during this time of year.

That HuffPo blog made me snort Johnnie Walker Scotch out my nose. OW!!

Obviously, this was expired product found in a dumpster behind a local chicken joint.

You want scale? That black dot on its shoulder is a blowfly. The beast is not very big.

Reaktivo @34, that looks to me like the bitten-off rear half of a good-sized lizard.

TheBlankStare @48, it's not a nutria. They have very distinctive skulls.

Anonymous @71, I don't read Chinese. How are they suggesting it be cooked?

Back to the general discussion. The monster might be a raccoon. Its lower jaw arguably has raccoon dentition; but if it is a raccoon, the upper jaw has lost its most recognizable feature. The general shape and size is plausible. The patch of remaining fur on the side of its neck does look raccoonish. It's too bad the forepaws are in such bad shape, or we'd be able to see whether they have real raccoon-style articulation.

There's a problem with trying to identify the carcass as a dog on the basis of its skull and dentition. Consider the Saint Bernard, Sheltie, English Bulldog, Great Pyrenees, Boston Terrier, Saluki, French Bulldog, Basset Hound, Shar Pei, Shih Tzu, Dachshund, and Chihuahua. Having to allow for variant dog breeds makes the raccoon hypothesis seem positively attractive.

(Note: I am indebted to Gregory Sutton, Damon Sutton, Ned David, and Bill Brazell for the blowfly.)

Anonymous said :"R.O.U.S? Is there a fire swamp nearby?

Inconcievable!

More for the pro-raccoon side...

http://www.animachina.com/images/whatisit/montauk_monster_racoon.jpg

Cross-posted from Grant Neiser on:

http://hamptons.plumtv.com/

I took my mother in law to the beach 2 weeks ago...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:TokkaRahzarTMNTMovie.jpg

Look on the left...it's our Montauk monster at his dayjob!

I think its viral marketing for Primeval a UK tv series about to start on BBC America. It's about ancient and future monsters that travel through space/time anomalies to the present.

Unless an additional sun rose that day this is a fake.