Giant Bat or What?

Flying Creature With no Feathers

Sometimes a person will refer to the flying fox as a “giant bat.” That type has many species, generally being fruit eaters, but it is the largest known bat, in general.

giant bat called "flying fox"

At other times, somebody will see a giant flying creature that has no feathers but is not a fruit bat. When it has a long tail, then of course it is not a flying fox, for that kind of bat has almost no tail.

But what is it that people see when the say “giant bat” but they include a long tail in their description? We need to look into what it was that reminded an eyewitness of a bat. I believe many instances are from the featherless aspect of the flying creatures. We are so much accustomed to thinking of large flying creatures as birds, unless there are no feathers; then we think “bat.”

Now Think “Pterosaur”

Eskin Kuhn was a talented artist when he observed two flying creatures in Cuba in 1971. He was a United States Marine, stationed at the military base at Guantanamo, also called “Gitmo.” Within minutes of his astonishing sighting, he sketched those two creatures and we now have the benefit of seeing approximately what he had seen:

two pterosaurs sketched by eyewitness Eskin Kuhn

Those long tails make it obvious that those two flying creatures were not some species of giant bat. They look much more like Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs.

A few years earlier, in 1965 or so, at that same military base in Cuba, a child saw the same kind of flying creature. This one also had a long tail and no feathers:

Gitmo Pterosaur sketched by eyewitness Patty Carson

This sketch by the eyewitness Patty Carson is obviously not from an observation of a fruit bat. Although not in the sketch, the creature had a long tail, like the tails on the two flying creatures seen by Eskin Kuhn, in that same part of Cuba.

To put it in a nutshell, some sightings of giant flying creatures are from encounters with long-tailed pterosaurs, even if eyewitnesses mention the words “giant bat.”

Giant Fruit Bat

Flying Foxes sleep hanging upside down during daylight hours, sometimes on branches crowded with dozens of cousins and neighbors, chattering at each other.

Do Pterosaurs Eat Bats?

Pterosaurs sightings are often around where bats are seen at night. Eskin Kuhn has mentioned finding many bats in caves at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

How Big do Pterosaurs Get?

The “Perth Creature” seen by an Australian couple in 1997 may have had a wingspan as great as fifty feet. The minimum size that they thought it could have been was thirty feet in wingspan.

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More About the New Pterosaur Book

The new book is strictly in digital format and not available in traditional print form. Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea is shorter than the previous books by Whitcomb, about 76 pages, according to Amazon. Still, this is much longer than an article.

Is this new book a “bestseller?” From my experience looking through Amazon, Whitcomb’s new book is not a bestseller in the usual sense, at least not yet. Like many books sold online, the rankings change from hour to hour and day to day. On September 28th, this new book on modern pterosaurs was ranked number one among Kindle e-books that were classified in cryptozoology, after eliminating all the fictions and general paranormal ones.

Although much in the new book is similar to some of the eyewitness accounts in the older Searching for Ropens, other sightings are new and quite interesting to compare. I would say that in the new book sightings in Papua New Guinea outnumber those in Australia, but Whitcomb is calling for new Australian eyewitnesses to come forward, and this is important. When a few reports are published, then other people should be encouraged to also come forward. It has a cumulative effect.

Pterosaur Book is Bestseller in its Genre

Yesterday afternoon I searched on Amazon for the best-selling Kindle ebooks in the genre of nonfiction cryptozoology. I eliminated, one by one, the fictions and the paranormal books in which cryptozoology played only a limited role.

New Electronic Book on Pterosaurs in Australia and in PNG

Common Ground: Regarding Papua New Guinea, the new e-book has some of the same sightings as SFR, although there are a few added details here and there. The new sighting off the coast of Umboi Island is an exception, for it is absent from the older SFR. Both books have a chapter devoted to the Perth sighting of 1994.

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Possible Pterosaurs in Southern California Storm Drains

I don’t mean to limit this to the underground drainage lines that take rain water quickly to the ocean. I also include the rivers and open storm channels that run through some areas of Southern California. Apparently at least a few flying creatures that may be ropens or related to the ropen are seen flying nearby.

The ropen is a large featherless flying creature with a long tail and is usually associated with Umboi Island in Papua New Guinea or at least with that tropical country in general. But descriptions from Americans, and Californians in particular, often connect with descriptions in Papua New Guinea and in Australia. This creature does not seem to be confined to one part of the globe, and why should it? Giant wings make it easy for the ropen to reach distant lands across the earth.

So where should we expect to find a ropen if one were to arrive in California, a ropen whose ancestry originated in tropical island environments in the southwest Pacific? Why not areas where there is water? Storm drain channels, such as are found in Southern California, could be ideal, should nocturnal ropens try keep away from human attention. They may fly through the channels at night, searching for rats and possums and other easy prey.

Ropens Near Storm Channels in Southern California

Another lady eyewitness saw what she called a “pterodactyl” near the traffic circle in Long Beach, just east of Signal Hill. This traffic circle is very near the beginning of another storm channel, the one that goes through California State University Long Beach.

Los Angeles County’s Modern Pterosaurs

So what would keep individual creatures from venturing out? What would keep them from spreading out across the planet over a period of a thousand years?

Umboi Island Ropen

“He acknowledged that he had been interviewed before. I had studied his previous video-recorded testimony and noticed that he was much more at ease than he appeared to be years earlier. It should be noted that the previous interview may have taken place soon after the sighting itself took place, so he may have been nervous being interviewed on camera.

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