Create A Cryptid Contest - Entry #6
Name: The Shan Shou
Details:Â The Shan Shou (âMountain Beastâ) is a bizarre cryptid that has been sighted for millennia in the most remote of central Chinaâs mountainous forests. It is considerably large, easily towering over the average person. While it has grasping hands and opposable thumbs, it is reported to walk on all fours, bearing weight on its knuckles like anteaters or gorillas. Its nostrils are located at the end of a pseudo-trunk, helping it locate potential meals with its keen sense of smell, and its spotted coat helps it blend in with its natural forest habitat.
Because there are accounts both of it gently grazing and stripping bamboo with its impressive claws and mauling and devouring any who travel through its territory with its bone-crunching tusks, modern day cryptozoologists speculate it may be an opportunistic omnivore; while it subsists mainly on bamboo, grubs, roots, and tubers, it will supplement its diet with protein and vitamins found in eggs, small and young animals, and, if the stories are to be believed, the occasional hiker. Â
It is unknown how long Shan Shou live or how they breed, but there is evidence they raise their young extensively, since in his diary a Christian missionary passing through Gansu in 1902 claimed to witness a female Shan Shou with both an adolescent and an infant at her side.
Like other cryptids, there are many fantastical (and unfounded) properties attributed to the Shan Shou, such as looking into its eyes will cure blindness, its horns or tusks ground into powder will neutralize any poison, or that its hide is harder than steel armor and impervious to arrows or bullets. It was said that the first emperor of China, Emperor Qin, paid handsomely for any Shan Shou brought to him dead or alive, as some of his royal alchemists believed its blood and organs could yield the elixir of eternal life. Some folklorists theorize stories of the Shan Shou passed by travelers heading west along the Silk Road may have inspired the European legend of the Catoblepas, or even the Nandi Bear of Africa.
Referencing the fossil record of Asia, the most common theory among cryptozoologists to the Shan Shouâs identity is it may be a modern descendant of the Chalicotherium, a group of ungulates distantly related to rhinos, horses, and tapirs, which supposedly died out 3.6 million years ago. It is uncertain if the Shan Shou is elusive because it is a small, scattered population, its habitat is near-inaccessible, or because extensive hunting has diminished their numbers, though no supposed Shan Shou remains have ever been verified as authentic.
Vote now for The Shan Shou! Either hit like, reblog, or both!
*If you would like to the enter the âCreate A Cryptidâ contest, please click here for details!
-The Pine Barrens Institute
A cryptozoology blog Iâve started following, @pine-barrens-institute is hosting a âCreate Your Own Cryptidâ contest, so I had some fun with copic markers in a new sketchbook to create this make-believe cryptid, the Shan Shou.
Hit like or reblog or BOTH to vote, and check out their blog to see and vote on the other entries! People are coming up with some pretty cool critters.
